Ancient Knowledge Networks Ancient Knowledge Networks A Social Geography of Cuneiform Scholarship in First-Millennium Assyria and Babylonia Eleanor Robson First published in 2019 by UCL Press University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT Available to download free: www.uclpress.co.uk Text © Eleanor Robson, 2019 Images © Eleanor Robson and copyright holders named in captions, 2019 The author has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library. This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Non- derivative 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work for personal and non-commercial use providing author and publisher attribution is clearly stated. Attribution should include the following information: Robson, E. 2019. Ancient Knowledge Networks: A Social Geography of Cuneiform Scholarship in First-Millennium Assyria and Babylonia. London: UCL Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787355941 Further details about Creative Commons licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Any third-party material in this book is published under the book’s Creative Commons license unless indicated otherwise in the credit line to the material. If you would like to re-use any third-party material not covered by the book’s Creative Commons license, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. ISBN: 978-1-78735-596-5 (Hbk.) ISBN: 978-1-78735-595-8 (Pbk.) ISBN: 978-1-78735-594-1 (PDF) ISBN: 978-1-78735-597-2 (epub) ISBN: 978-1-78735-598-9 (mobi) DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787355941 In memory of Bo Treadwell (1991–2014) Contents List of illustrations ix List of tables xv Acknowledgements xvi Bibliographical abbreviations xix Museum and excavation sigla xxi Dating conventions xxii Editorial conventions xxiii 1. Introduction 1 2. From ‘Ashurbanipal’s Library’ and the ‘stream of tradition’ to new approaches to cuneiform scholarship 10 3. Trust in Nabu? Assyrian royal attitudes to court scholarship 49 4. The writing-board was at my house: Scholarly and textual mobility in seventh-century Assyria 98 5. Grasping the righteous sceptre: Nabu, scholarship and the kings of Babylonia 149 6. At the gate of Eanna: Babylonian scholarly spaces before and after the early fifth century 204 7. Conclusions: Towards a social geography of cuneiform scholarship 253 Bibliography 272 Index 303 vii Supplementary website at http://oracc.org/cams/akno featuring: • Corpus of cuneiform texts quoted in this book • Glossary of people, gods, and places • Glossary of technical terms • Links to online resources referenced • Prosopography of Assyrian and Babylonian scholars of the first millennium bc: Tables A–B viii CONTENTS List of illustrations Figure 1.1 Map of the key places mentioned in this book. Source: Martin Brown. 2 Figure 2.1 ‘Archive chamber, Kouyunjik, sketched on the spot by S.G. Malan’ (Layard 1853: opp. p. 345). Malan was a Swiss-British scholar of the Bible and Asian languages who travelled widely in India and the Middle East and was an accom- plished artist. Many of the sketches he made while briefly visiting Layard’s expedition in 1850 formed the basis of Layard’s published illustra- tions (Gadd 1938; Clayden 2015). Public domain. 14 Figure 2.2 ‘Plan of excavated chambers of Kouyunjik’ (Layard 1853: opp. p. 67) with locations of major tablet finds added. Later generations of explorers also found tablets in the nearby temples of Ištar and Nabu as well as the North Palace on the same site. Public domain. 15 Figure 2.3 Lithograph showing the reverse side of British Museum tablet K 39, featuring Ashurbanipal’s colophon praising the divine pair Nabu and Tašmetu (Rawlinson and Norris 1866: pl. 21). Colophons like this, which described their storage in the palace at Nineveh, were key to interpreting the tablets as a ‘library’ in the late 1860s. Reproduced with the permission of the British Museum. 18 Figure 2.4 Composite digital photograph of the reverse side of British Museum tablet K 39, with the colophon highlighted. The Museum has systematically photographed all of the Kouyun- jik tablets and developed a methodology for ix stitching together images of all surfaces – front (obverse), back (reverse) and edges. They are openly licensed on the Museum’s online collec- tions database, allowing maximum accessibility and legibility for researchers with high-speed internet connections. The burn marks from the final destruction of the palace are visible, while some fragments of the original object remain missing or unidentified. Size 175 × 121 × 29 millimetres. Reproduced with the permission of the British Museum. 19 Figure 2.5 The Reading Room of the British Museum under construction, as shown in the popular periodical the Illustrated London News, 14 April 1855. Although the British Museum had had a library at its heart since its very foundation, this new building surely reshaped conceptions of the form and functions of written collections, ancient and modern. Reproduced with the permission of the British Museum. 21 Figure 2.6 The Central Assyrian Saloon of the British Museum, as shown in a newspaper clipping from the 1860s or 1870s. While the business of identifying and deciphering the Museum’s new cuneiform tablet collection went on behind the scenes, the public flocked to see the impressive sculptures that Layard had also brought to London, the first visual evidence of the Old Tes- tament world. Reproduced with the permission of the British Museum. 22 Figure 3.1 Map of Middle Assyrian scholarship. Source: Martin Brown. 54 Figure 3.2 Plan of the royal citadel at Kalhu in the eighth century bc, showing the location of major tem- ples in relation to the Northwest Palace and the Governor’s Residence (Oates and Oates 2001: fig. 10; courtesy of the British Institute for the Study of Iraq). 56 Figure 3.3 The entrance to the god Ninurta’s shrine in Kalhu, built in the early ninth century bc, during excavation in 1850. Solomon Malan’s x LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS sketch shows one of two bas-relief sculptures of Ninurta fighting the chaotic Anzu-demon for the Tablet of Destinies, now lost. Its mirror- image twin is on display in Room 6 of the Brit- ish Museum (Gadd 1938: pl. XV; courtesy of Cambridge University Press). This figure cannot be reproduced, shared, altered, or exploited commercially in any way without the permis- sion of Cambridge University Press, as it is copyrighted material and therefore not subject to the allowances permitted by a CC-BY licence. 57 Figure 3.4 One of the guardian statues outside Nabu’s cella in the Kalhu Ezida, inscribed with city governor Bel-tarṣi-ilumma’s dedication to Nabu on behalf of king Adad-nerari III and his mother Sammu-ramat in c. 800 bc. Height 1.83 metres. BM ME 118890, reproduced with the permission of the British Museum. 60 Figure 3.5 Isometric plan of the Ezida temple in Kalhu, oriented north. The northwest wing was the akītu-suite, with throne room, small twin shrines and ‘seven-day room’ opposite. The northeast courtyard housed the administration of the temple while the southern courtyard was probably restricted to scholars and priestly per- sonnel. Nabu’s shrine is immediately opposite the tablet store. Maximum dimensions c. 70 × c. 50 metres (Oates and Oates 2001: fig. 67; courtesy of the British Institute for the Study of Iraq). 71 Figure 3.6 Reconstruction of Nabu’s Ezida temple in Dur-Šarruken, looking southeast from the top of the ziggurat, c. 700 bc (Loud and Altman 1938: pl. 2; courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago). 72 Figure 3.7 Plan of the Ezida temple in Dur-Šarruken, with the locations of inscribed elements (marked with letters A–E) and abandoned tablets (marked by numerals) added by the author. The bridge to the palace is to the northwest, tablet storage along the west wall (5, 15), and the gods’ cellas to the southwest (21–4). LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi The akītu-suite with throne room (42) and ‘ seven-day room’ (35) is in the southeast wing. Maximum dimensions c. 170 × c. 120 metres (Loud and Altman 1938: pl. 67; courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago). 74 Figure 3.8 Plan of Nabu and Tašmetu’s temple in Assur, built for king Sin-šarru-iškun in c. 630 bc. The main entrance is to the northeast, the twin cellas (19, 26) to the southwest, and with per- haps a throne room to the northwest (5). There seems to have been no separate akītu-suite. Maximum dimensions c. 40 × c. 30 metres (Schmitt 2012: Taf. 13; courtesy of Harrassowitz Verlag). 85 Figure 4.1 Map of the major cities mentioned in this chapter. Source: Martin Brown. 99 Figure 4.2 Cities from which scholars travelled for royal banquets and treaty ceremonies in Nineveh in the seventh century bc. Source: Martin Brown. 106 Figure 4.3 Geographies of the scholarly professions at the Assyrian royal court in the seventh century bc. Source: Martin Brown. 107 Figure 4.4 Percentages of scholarly genres at Kouyunjik and Kalhu, with further detail of the omen series. NC = Nineveh commentaries; NB = Nineveh Babylonian tablets; NBL = scholarly works in Nineveh booty lists and inventories; KE = tablets from the Kalhu Ezida. Source: author. 114 Figure 4.5 Sources of scholarly tablets for the royal palaces at Nineveh, according to booty lists, inventories and colophons; at least two captive scholars from Nippur and the Borsippa region were also put to work making copies.