An Inscription of Ashurnasirpal II in the Australian Institute of Archaeology
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doi: 10.2143/ANES.52.0.3082867 ANES 52 (2015) 107-125 An Inscription of Ashurnasirpal II in the Australian Institute of Archaeology Luis R. SIDDALL Abstract This article provides an edition, commentary and the provenance of an exemplar of Ashurnasirpal II’s Wall Inscription (RIMA 2 A.0.101.26) which is kept in the Australian Institute of Archaeology (Melbourne). The inscription’s excavation number is ND 1121 and it is now registered in the AIA with the catalogue number IA5.034.* The Australian Institute of Archaeology (AIA) located at La Trobe University in Melbourne houses the nation’s largest collection of cuneiform texts with over a hundred items listed in its catalogue. Of these a prized artefact is a large gypsum tablet from the reign of Ashurnasirpal II who ruled Assyria from 883 to 859 BCE. The tablet was rediscovered during the British School of Archaeology in Iraq’s (BSAI)1 excavations on the North West Palace at Calah (Nimrud) in 1951 after its initial discovery during Austen Henry Layard’s excavations in 1845–1847.2 The British archaeologists found the tablet on the floor by the eastern wall of Ashurnasirpal’s throne room in the North West Palace under a fallen fresco, which may explain why a corner has broken away (Figs 1 and 3).3 On 7 November, 1952, Max Mallowan, as head of the British excavations, presented the inscription (together with 25 other artefacts from the excavation) in gratitude for the AIA’s financial support of the BSAI’s work during the 1940s and 1950s.4 The letter from M. E. L. Mallowan to J. A. Thompson, the director of the AIA at the time, is reproduced in Figure 5. The tablet’s excavation number is ND 1121 and it is now registered in the AIA with the catalogue number IA5.034. The inscription is one exemplar of a number of tablets inscribed with the “Inscription from the Wall at Nimrud” (hereafter: the Wall Inscription), so named after Ashurnasirpal’s statement * This article is a part of the Cuneiform in Australian and New Zealand Collections (CANZ) project (see Siddall and Horowitz 2013). The author would like to thank Dr Christopher J. Davey, a fellow member of CANZ and the director of Australian Institute of Archaeology (AIA), for bringing the inscription to his attention. Thanks must also go to the Australian Institute of Archaeology’s council for permission to publish an edition of the text and the AIA’s photographs of the tablet. Finally, the author would like to acknowledge the fellow members of CANZ and the anonymous referees who provided useful feedback on more than one error in the original version of this paper. Any remaining errors are the fault of the author alone. 1 Now called the British Institute for the Study of Iraq (BISI). 2 Wiseman 1952, p. 61. 3 It may be gleaned from Donald Wiseman’s (1952, pp. 61 and 66) summary of the find spot that the tablet was found in close proximity to Ashurnasirpal’s throne base (ND 1122). 4 See also Mallowan 1953, p. 1. 97958.indb 107 19/06/15 09:32 108 L.R. SIDDALL Fig. 1. IA5.034 Obverse. 97958.indb 108 19/06/15 09:32 INSCRIPTION OF ASHURNASIRPAL II IN THE AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY 109 that the inscriptions were deposited in a wall at Calah (narâ alṭur ina dūrīšu aškunu).5 Given that this tablet was found near the eastern wall of the throne room, it is most probable that Ashurna- sirpal was referring to the interring of tablets within the very walls of his throne room.6 Placing stone tablets in the fabric of buildings was a common practice among Assyrian kings from the Middle Assyrian period on.7 Indeed, Ashurnasirpal even introduced new practices of deposition, such as the use of stone tablet boxes. The location of this tablet near the throne base is of particu- lar interest because it suggests that it was once a part of the centre of the palatial complex, for the throne room, with its mythical reliefs and text-rich decorations, created a “focus of power” that served to champion Ashurnasirpal as king of Assyria.8 It should be noted that the hidden location of our tablet means that it had a different function from those reliefs and inscription on display in the throne room and other areas of the so-called state apartments of the palace. Its function was not to inform or inspire fear in a contemporary audience (i.e. the palace attendants or visit- ing officials), but rather to record the king’s deeds for future rulers when it was time to renovate the building.9 The version of the Wall Inscription in the AIA has not been edited previously, but Kirk Gray- son incorporated it into RIMA 2 (A.0.101.26) having collated the text from photographs received from David Searle, the former curator of the museum at the AIA.10 Grayson pointed out in his edition that no score of the different inscriptions could be produced for this text because he was unable to collate many of the exemplars.11 Indeed, the majority of Ashurnasirpal’s inscriptions have not been individually edited, which has become a concern for those who have worked on his inscriptions.12 While Grayson was able to use the photograph of this text in his edition of the Wall Inscription, the absence of a score means that some of the idiosyncrasies of this edition have remained hidden from scholars. Further the photographs Grayson used (Figs 13) do not show those signs inscribed on the right edge of the tablet (Fig. 4). What follows aims to fill a part of this gap by providing an edition of the inscription with philological comments that concentrate on its idiosyncrasies. The inscription opens with Ashurnasirpal II’s titles and epithets (ll. 1–12), followed by an enūma clause that summarises his victories over cities to the north, east, west and south of Aššur (ll. 13–31a) with a statement about the tax and tribute he imposed on those cities (ll. 31b–r. 10a). 5 This section of the inscription was not included in the exemplar studied here. For the relevant section see A.0.101.26:67 in Grayson 1991, p. 282. 6 Ellis (1968, p. 100) recounts that Layard discovered a number of “alabaster tablets” under collapsed reliefs that had once been deposited in the upper sections walls of the throne room, above the inscribed slabs. 7 See Ellis 1968, pp. 96–103; and Pedersén 1997, pp. xxxii–xxxiii, 63–81. 8 Oates and Oates 2001, pp. 48–53. It is beyond the present article to reconstruct the textual, artistic and architectural environment of the tablet’s context further than the present outline. For detailed studies and reconstructions of the North West Palace see Meuzyński 1981; Paley and Sobolewski 1987 and 1992; Paley 1976 and 2008; and Russell 1999, pp. 9–63, and 2008; and Roaf 2008. For recent treatments of the artistic motifs of kingship present in Ashurnasirpal’s palatial art see Russell 2008 and Ataç 2010, pp. 14–38, 85–144. 9 Ellis 1968, pp. 100–101. For detailed discussions on the possible reasons for depositing tablets and other texts in the foundations and structures of buildings see Ellis 1968; Weeks 2007; and Siddall 2013, pp. 134–146. 10 A photograph of the obverse of the tablet (Fig. 1) was published in an exhibition catalogue Davey 2003, cat. no. 1; and by Siddall and Horowitz 2013, fig. 3. 11 Grayson 1991, p. 279. 12 For example, Russell 1999, pp. 13–14. 97958.indb 109 19/06/15 09:32 110 L.R. SIDDALL Fig. 2. IA5.034 Lower edge. The text closes with a report on his building projects at Calah (ll. r. 10b–r. 32). As noted above, the tablet is missing its upper right corner which has affected ll. 1–17 on the obverse and ll. r. 21–r. 31 on the reverse. Rather interesting is the fact that the inscription is incom- plete and ends mid sentence despite having enough space for at least three more lines of text (Fig. 3). This is in contrast to the floor slabs from Ashurnasirpal’s reign which seem to have been concerned with filling the entire space available with writing.13 It is unclear why the scribe(s) did not complete the inscription. However, it is not the only exemplar that ends prematurely with at least three others finishing at approximately the same point.14 Ashurna- sirpal’s scribes later incorporated parts of this inscription into other well-known inscriptions from Calah.15 The most notable are ll. 1–58a of the longest exemplar, BM 90868,16 which were used in one of the episodes that interludes the narrative of the so-called “annals,”17 as well as part of the Standard Inscription.18 Ll. 58b–64a of BM 909868 were also incorporated into the Standard Inscription.19 Scholars generally agree that the Wall Inscription is one of the earliest texts Ashurnasirpal II commissioned at Calah. This is on account of the extent of conquered regions included in the enūma clause, the building account and the number of titles and epithets ascribed to the 13 Russell 1999, p. 49. 14 It should be noted that Grayson generalised the point at which this and the other shorter versions of the text ends in the catalogue for A.0.101.26. The present text is one line shorter than Grayson’s Ex. 2 (Grayson 1991, p. 279). 15 For a good coverage of the relationship between the Calah texts see de Filippi 1977.