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The Author of Ashurbanipal Prism a (Rassam): an Inquiry Into His Plan and Purpose, with a Note on His Persona

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The Author of Ashurbanipal Prism a (Rassam): an Inquiry Into His Plan and Purpose, with a Note on His Persona ORIENT Volume 49, 2014 The Author of Ashurbanipal Prism A (Rassam): An Inquiry into his Plan and Purpose, with a note on his Persona Mordechai Cogan The Society for Near Eastern Studies in Japan (NIPPON ORIENTO GAKKAI) The Author of Ashurbanipal Prism A (Rassam): An Inquiry into his Plan and Purpose, with a note on his Persona Mordechai Cogan* Prism A (Rassam) is the last of the six editions of the royal annals of Ashurbanipal prepared in the 640s. Of all the extant texts from this king’s reign, it presents the longest and fullest account. The author of Prism A made use of materials from the preceding editions and, as was the common practice, added reports of events to the account given in Prism F two years earlier. Among the characteristics of Prism A are: (1) An increased number of campaign reports; (2) Reworking of previous reports using literary manipulations, and in some cases, corrected data; (3) Emphasis upon the endorsement given to the monarch by all of the gods, expressed in reports of prophetic messages and dreams; (4) Increased mention of the adê-treaties as the rationale behind divine punishment of rebels. Prism A’s thoroughly rewritten presentation of the royal achievements was undertaken in the twenty- fifth year of Ashurbanipal’s reign. The author of Prism A reshaped the earlier image of Ashurbanipal, and as its campaigns reports and final scene proved, the entire world lay at the feet of the Assyrian monarch. And it may just be that the initiator and inspiration behind this grand literary project was Ashurbanipal himself, who saw himself as a most literate monarch. Keywords: Ashurbanipal, Prism A (Rassam cylinder), Assyrian royal annals, literary editing and revisions I. Introduction Assyrian royal annals are, by all accounts, the hallmark of Assyrian literature, and the absence of similar inscriptions in the Babylonian corpus confirms this judgment. There is considerable agreement that the Assyrian annals are, in essence, “dedicatory inscriptions,” a classification that stems from the observation that annals regularly conclude with a section that relates, in varying lengths, the completion of a construction project undertaken by the king.1 This classification, however, does not give sufficient consideration to the development of the annals into an independent genre, from short dedicatory texts to inscriptions that included lengthy reports of royal achievements in the hunt and battle. The development can be seen to have begun in the late second millennium BCE, and by the mid-ninth century, the annals clearly had evolved and become an established and distinct genre.2 The late annal inscriptions comprised anywhere from six to ten columns of text, of which only the last column was devoted to the building project. These literary creations had moved well beyond dedicatory purposes, and the annal texts from the reign of Ashurbanipal truly rank as full-fledged historiographical-ideological compositions in *Professor Emeritus, Department of History of the Jewish People, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1 Renger 1980-1983; cf. Grayson 1980a; also Reiner 1985, 18: “the last seventy lines relate the king’s building activities on the crown prince’s residence, the occasion for the inscription.” 2 In this regard, see the remarks of Tadmor 1997, 327-328. Vol. XLIX 2014 69 Part I: Literary Analysis of Assyrian Royal Inscriptions their own right.3 The earliest edition of the Ashurbanipal annals, Prism E, dates to the first decade of his reign, ca. 663; this edition was followed a decade and a half later by Prisms B and D, in 649-648; Prisms C and K (Borger’s Prism G), 647-646; Prism F, 645; Prism A, 643; and Prism H, 639.4 The hiatus of close to fifteen years between editions E and B, during which it seems that no annal texts were composed, has still to be explained, but when annal writing resumed at the beginning of the king’s third decade, it did so with vigor, for in the 640s, at least six editions of the annals were written. Prism A (or “Rassam”) has survived in its entirety, making it the last complete annal text from the reign of Ashurbanipal and, for that matter, of all Assyrian annal writing. Prism A’s text comprises 1301 lines written on decagonal prisms. Nine of its ten columns are devoted to the king’s military achievements (1180 lines), with a half-column introduction and a half-column building report that relates the extensive renovations of the bīt ridûti, the House of Succession. A’s introductory passage is based on the one in Prism F,5 with some minor reworking. Similarly, the building report in A is essentially the same one that had been given two-three years earlier in Prism F. One can already see that it was something other than the need to mark a new construction that motivated the writing of Prism A. In order to suggest the purpose of this remarkable text, in what follows, Prism A will be set alongside the earlier annal editions, in order to uncover the compositional technique of its author and his goals. The reports on the military achievements of Ashurbanipal are the heart of the text. The manner of reporting these campaigns had been standardized in Prism B and consisted of a unique combination of elements found in the inscriptions of the king’s father and grandfather.6 From Sennacherib and Esarhaddon, the scribe-author of B adopted the numbering of the campaigns by girru, literally, “march, way.” However, unlike the earlier usage, in which some semblance of chronology was retained, in the Ashurbanipal annals this numbering by girru – first girru, second girru, third girru, etc. – is by no means chronological; the girru order is mostly a geographical ordering7 that surveys events by moving from the far southwest (Egypt) northwards along the Mediterranean coast (Phoenicia) to Anatolia, then to the east to mountainous areas of Urartu and Media, south to Elam and Babylonia, and ends with the Arab tribes in the desert reaches in the east and west. The non-chronological aspect of this numbering is further proven by the movement of certain campaigns either up or down the numerical ladder in the various editions of the annals. For example, the second campaign to Egypt in Prisms B and D was the first campaign in Prism F. Girru numbers were simply a convenience for separating campaigns, nothing else, though they did convey the sense of an unbroken series of military endeavors. Furthermore, not all campaign reports were included in every edition. For example, a report could appear – as did the first Egyptian campaign in Prism B – then disappear – as it did from Prism F – and then reappear a few years later in Prism A; or a campaign could be left out altogether, as was the 3 The term “annals” was given to these inscriptions during the early days of Assyriology in the late nineteenth century, though later study has shown that it is a misnomer that does not reflect either their structure or contents of these texts. 4 The order and dates follow Cogan – Tadmor 1977; cf., too, Grayson 1980b. For a different presentation, see Borger Asb., in the introductions to each edition. 5 On the short literary additions in Prism A, see Borger Asb., 256, notes 1-7. 6 See the general remarks of Grayson 1980a, 245. 7 In this aspect, the usage resembles the summary inscriptions that survey a king’s reign by geographical area. 70 ORIENT The Author of Ashurbanipal Prism A (Rassam): An Inquiry into his Plan and Purpose, with a note on his Persona case with the Qirbit campaign that is not found in the editions written after Prism C. Moreover, and most importantly, the re-use of a report from an early edition in a later one often involved revision of the early edition.8 Now from the general to the specific: What are the characteristics of Prism A’s campaign reports? II. Increased number of campaigns A’s author did not adopt the manner of Prism F, the edition that immediately preceded his own by two years. Prism F had made serious cuts in the number of campaign reports previously reported: Egypt was reduced from two campaigns to a single one, and the affairs in Qirbit, Media, Urartu, Babylon and against the Arabs tribes were omitted altogether, while Gambulu was subsumed under Elam. F’s author chose to concentrate on the various stages of the struggle with Elam and it was the first edition to report the capture, destruction and despoiling of Susa. The line count clearly reflects this focus. Of the 379 lines given over to military reports in Prism F, 282 lines, that is 75%, were devoted to Elamite affairs.9 The same can be said of Prism T, which though, strictly speaking, is not an annal text; T was written in the same year as Prism F, but differs from F and the other annals by reporting in brief only one campaign, that to Elam. The affinity of Prism T to the annals is in its introduction, which, like annals Prism C, presents Ashurbanipal as master builder of temples. Prism A rejected both F’s skewing of events and T’s image of the king, and returned to the earlier editions, choosing B and C as his models. Much material was taken over from these editions, which was augmented by reports of events that had occurred during the two years after the composition of Prism F. Thus, in A, Egypt once again became two campaigns; Babylon, for the first time, was designated as a numbered campaign, though still intertwined with Elamite matters; and all the Arab affairs were collected into a single, numbered report.
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