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STUDIA ORIENTALIA PUBLISHED BY THE FINNISH ORIENTAL SOCIETY 106 OF GOD(S), TREES, KINGS, AND SCHOLARS Neo-Assyrian and Related Studies in Honour of Simo Parpola Edited by Mikko Luukko, Saana Svärd and Raija Mattila HELSINKI 2009 OF GOD(S), TREES, KINGS AND SCHOLARS clay or on a writing board and the other probably in Aramaic onleather in andtheotherprobably clay oronawritingboard ME FRONTISPIECE 118882. Assyrian officialandtwoscribes;oneiswritingincuneiformo . n COURTESY TRUSTEES OF T H E BRITIS H MUSEUM STUDIA ORIENTALIA PUBLISHED BY THE FINNISH ORIENTAL SOCIETY Vol. 106 OF GOD(S), TREES, KINGS, AND SCHOLARS Neo-Assyrian and Related Studies in Honour of Simo Parpola Edited by Mikko Luukko, Saana Svärd and Raija Mattila Helsinki 2009 Of God(s), Trees, Kings, and Scholars: Neo-Assyrian and Related Studies in Honour of Simo Parpola Studia Orientalia, Vol. 106. 2009. Copyright © 2009 by the Finnish Oriental Society, Societas Orientalis Fennica, c/o Institute for Asian and African Studies P.O.Box 59 (Unioninkatu 38 B) FIN-00014 University of Helsinki F i n l a n d Editorial Board Lotta Aunio (African Studies) Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila (Arabic and Islamic Studies) Tapani Harviainen (Semitic Studies) Arvi Hurskainen (African Studies) Juha Janhunen (Altaic and East Asian Studies) Hannu Juusola (Semitic Studies) Klaus Karttunen (South Asian Studies) Kaj Öhrnberg (Librarian of the Society) Heikki Palva (Arabic Linguistics) Asko Parpola (South Asian Studies) Simo Parpola (Assyriology) Rein Raud (Japanese Studies) Saana Svärd (Secretary of the Society) Editorial Secretary Lotta Aunio Typesetting Noora Ohvo ISSN 0039-3282 ISBN 978-951-9380-72-8 Gummerus Kirjapaino Oy Jyväskylä 2009 CONTENTS Preface .....................................................................................................................xi Bibliography of the Publications of Simo Parpola ................................................xv NEO -ASSYRI an STUDIES Eunuchen als Thronprätendenten und Herrscher im alten Orient ............................1 CLAUS AMBO S The Origins of the Artistic Interactions between the Assyrian Empire and North Syria Revisited ...............................................................................................9 SANNA ARO Aramaic Loanwords in Neo-Assyrian: Rejecting Some Proposals .......................19 ZACK CH ERR Y “To Speak Kindly to him/them” as Item of Assyrian Political Discourse .............27 FREDERICK MARIO FALE S Osservazioni sull’orticoltura di epoca neo-assira ..................................................41 SABRINA FAVAR O Assurbanipal at Der ................................................................................................51 ECKART FRA H M A “New” Cylinder Inscription of Sargon II of Assyria from Melid.......................65 GRANT FRAM E “Wiping the Pot Clean”: On Cooking Pots and Polishing Operations in Neo-Assyrian Sources ............................................................................................83 SALVATORE GASP A The Camels of Tiglath-pileser III and the Arabic Definite Article .........................99 JAAKKO HÄMEEN -ANTTILA Informationen aus der assyrischen Provinz Dūr-Šarrukku im nördlichen Babylonien ...........................................................................................................103 KARL H EIN Z KESSLE R A Neo-Assyrian Royal Funerary Text ..................................................................111 TH EODORE KWASMAN A Happy Son of the King of Assyria: Warikas and the Çineköy Bilingual (Cilicia) ............................................................................127 GIOVANNI B. LANFRANC H I Remembrance at Assur: The Case of the Dated Aramaic Memorials ..................151 ALASDAIR LIVIN G STON E The Chief Singer and Other Late Eponyms .........................................................159 RAI J A MATTIL A Family Ties: Assurbanipal’s Family Revisited ....................................................167 JAMIE NOVOTNY & JENNIFER SIN G LETAR Y Ašipâ Again: A Microhistory of an Assyrian Provincial Administrator ..............179 BRADLEY J. PARKE R Neo-Assyrian Texts from Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon: A Preliminary Report ....193 OLOF PEDERSÉ N Noseless in Nimrud: More Figurative Responses to Assyrian Domination ........201 BARBARA NEVLIN G PORTE R The Assyrian King and his Scholars: The Syro-Anatolian and the Egyptian Schools .....................................................................................221 KAREN RADNE R Fez, Diadem, Turban, Chaplet: Power-Dressing at the Assyrian Court ...............239 JULIAN READ E Die Inschriften des Ninurta-bēlu-uṣur, Statthalters von Kār-Salmānu-ašarēd. Teil I .....................................................................................................................265 WOLF G AN G RÖLLI G Who Were the “Ladies of the House” in the Assyrian Empire? ..........................279 SAANA SVÄRD & MIKKO LUUKK O I Feared the Snow and Turned Back ....................................................................295 GRETA VAN BUYLAER E ASSYRIOLOGIC A L an D IN TERDISCIPLI na RY STUDIES Maqlû III 1-30: Internal Analysis and Manuscript Evidence for the Revision of an Incantation ...................................................................................307 TZ VI ABUSC H Some Otherworldly Journeys in Mesopotamian, Jewish, Mandaean and Yezidi Traditions ..................................................................................................315 AMAR ANNU S The Diverse Enterprises of Šumu-ukin from Babylon ........................................327 MU H AMMAD DANDAMAYE V “Armer Mann von Nippur”: ein Werk der Krisenliteratur des 8. Jh. v. Chr. ........333 MANFRIED DIETRIC H Two Middle Assyrian Contracts Housed in Istanbul ...........................................353 VEYSEL DONBA Z Two Bilingual Incantation Fragments ..................................................................361 MARK H AM J. GELLE R Wilhelm Lagus: A Pioneer of Cuneiform Research in Finland ...........................367 TAPANI HARVIAINE N Wisdom as Mediatrix in Sirach 24: Ben Sira, Love Lyrics, and Prophecy ..........377 MARTTI NISSINE N A Mesopotamian Omen in the Cycle of Cyrus the Great ....................................391 ANTONIO PANAIN O with an “Appendix on Cuneiform Sources” by GIAN PIETRO BASELLO Some Reflections on Metaphor, Ambiguity and Literary Tradition .....................399 SIMONETTA PONC H I A Reflections on the Translatability of the Notion of Holiness ...............................409 BEATE PON G RAT Z -LEISTE N Altorientalisches im Buch Judith .........................................................................429 ROBERT ROLLIN G E R Bibliography ........................................................................................................445 Abbreviations ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������502 THE ASSYRIAN KING AND HIS SCHOLARS: THE SYRO-ANAtoLIAN AND THE EGYPTIAN SCHOOLS1 Karen Radner ABSTRACT The article highlights the presence of scholars from Egypt and Syro-Anatolia in the service of the Neo-Assyrian kings. 1. THE KING AND HIS RETINUE OF SCHOLARS In the mid-7th century, when Assyria was the most powerful state in the Near East and the eastern Mediterranean region, its territories stretched far beyond the Assyrian homeland in Northern Iraq: All of Iraq and most of Syria, wide sweeps of Eastern Turkey and Western Iran and almost the entire eastern Mediterranean coast were under the direct control of the Assyrian king, and after the invasion of 671 BC even Egypt, formerly under Nubian rule, belonged to the Assyrian block. The king of Assyria ruled as the earthly representative of Assyria’s supreme god Aššur and was chosen by the gods; they were thought to constantly guide him in his leadership and decision-making and communicated their wishes through ominous signs encountered everywhere in the natural world, their creation. The king employed scholarly advisors to monitor and interpret the messages of the gods and to perform the rituals necessary to keep the precious relationship with the divine powers in balance. Some 1300 letters and reports addressed to Esarhaddon (680–669 BC ) and his successor Assurbanipal (668–c. 630 BC )2 show dozens of specialists at work, advising their ruler and hence more often than not directly influencing his political actions. The preserved documents stem from the royal archives of Nineveh, then the main residence of the Assyrian court, and allow us 1 A first version of this article was presented in July 2007 as a lecture at the symposium “The Empirical Dimension: Assyriological Contributions” held at the University of Vienna at the occasion of Hermann Hunger’s retirement; I would like to thank Gebhard Selz for the kind invitation and the participants for their comments. As always, my thanks go to Frans van Koppen for his observations and suggestions. 2 Edited by Hunger 1992, Parpola 1993a and Starr 1990. 222 KAREN RADNER rare insight into the symbiosis and interdependency between the scholars and their patron at that time. Simo Parpola’s ground-breaking editions of the scholars’ letters have made this rich material accessible for the first time, and I would like to offer him these pages as a token of my gratitude, for giving me my first job in 1997 but also for almost single-handedly engineering the renaissance of Neo-Assyrian studies. Simo has given many years of his life, and much of his energy, to the State Archives of Assyria Project and