Search

THE READER OF ESARHADDON's BABYLON INSCRIPTIONS is inevitably struck by a curious omission: the downfall of the city is recounted without reference to its harsh destruction by the Assyrian army ten years earlier. (This is roughly comparable to an historical account of the final days of World War II in the Pacific neglecting to mention use of atomic weaponry.) Esarhaddon's texts deal in detail with the disastrous fate of the old capital; but they lay the blame on a natural cataclysm, a severe flood. This blatant revisionism for recent history seems singularly futile: after the passage of only ten years very few adult inhabitants of Mesopotamia were likely to have forgotten the ruthless decimation of Babylon by Esarhaddon's father. Yet these texts were found mostly at Babylon (where memories would be sharpest) in connection with Esarhaddon's repair of his father's ravages. What purpose would such drastic rewriting be expected to serve? To appreciate the ideological background implied by this question, we should try to understand the concrete historical circumstances and the issues of policy involved. Esarhaddon came to the throne at the end of 681, in a time of turmoil following his father's assassination.' Sennacherib, for the greater part of his reign, had been preoccupied by Babylonia and the political problems it posed.2 He had conducted several lengthy and costly campaigns against Babylonia and its Elamite allies,3 had lost his eldest son to BabylonianElamite machinations, and had finally captured and destroyed Babylon after a protracted siege. Though de facto monarch of Babylonia for ten of his twenty-four years on the Assyrian throne, he seems never to have formally acknowledged this role: in contrast to his predecessor and his two successors he did not authorize the use of Babylonian royal titles in his titulary.4 He not only distanced himself ideologically from the southern kingdom, but he eventually allowed the land around Babylon itself to become derelict and depopu

IN THIS JOURNAL 54. 40-50 (1934), I attempted a complete restoration of a cuneiform inscription of Darius in the Old Persian, to which I gave the title " The Restoration of Order in the Empire I; " I accompanied it with the Akkadian version, in which I enjoyed the collaboration of my colleague Prof. E. A. Speiser, without whom I could not have ventured into the Akkadian field. Since then, Prof. F. H. Weissbach has republished a part of this same inscription in ZDMG 91. 80-6 (1937), with the help of certain other fragments which he had identified as belonging to it. It is in the light of these additions that I wish to treat the inscription again. With one exception, the fragments were published by Pere V. Scheil in Vols. xxi and xxiv of the Memoires de la Mission Archeologique de Perse, Mission en Susiane (Paris, 1929 and 1933). Scheil himself identified as belonging together two OP fragments and one Elamite, given in 21. 61-4, and six OP fragments and a nearly complete Akk. copy on the two sides of a tablet, in 24. 11625. To these, Weissbach has added two Elam. fragments, given by Scheil 21. 71-6, as Nos. 20 and 21; one small OP fragment, given by Scheil 21. 23 at the right of the middle row of fragments, and indicated by a question-mark; an OP fragment of unknown provenience, which Weissbach had listed in his Keilinschriften der Achdmeniden as Inc. b, page xxix and page 130. Of this inscription, then, we have 10 OP fragments, 3 Elamite fragments, and a nearly complete Akkadian copy. After this article was in galley-proofs, I received Weissbach's article in Zeits. f. Assyr. 44.140-69 (1938), which lists an eleventh OP fragment (his /3, containing portions of lines 1-4 and of 46-51), and a second Akkadian fragment, both in the Louvre, unpublished, but to appear in a new volume by Scheil. The data in his article have been used here as far as possible. The first part, down to the middle of line 30 in the OP version, contains the praise of Ahuramazda, the titles of Darius, the statement of his acquisition of the empire and the list of the provinces

THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL spectrum cast by the light out of Ur is a marvelous display of ancient colors. Some of these are historical, political, ethnological, linguistic, commercial, social, and religious. So complex was the civilization in lower Babylonia in that day that to keep within our bounds, in time and space, we must delimit our discussion. In this case we have chosen that period in Sumer immediately following the overthrow of the third dynasty of Ur, when Kudur Mabug, son of Simti-shilhlak, the Elamite, is found to be sovereign of a new realm. The beginnings and the extent of his early conquests are still shrouded in mystery. The time in general was that contemporary with the first dynasty of Babylon. And we are still in the dark as to the relation, if any, that Kudur Mabug may have sustained to the monarch who ruled over the main empire of Elam. Indeed, this Elamite dynasty, on the basis of our present knowledge, seems to have been a political oasis of the Elamite Empire. Kudur Mabug, at any rate, designates himself as ad-da lcur-Mar-tu (Nos. 122, 123, 300) "father of Amurru." Warad-Sin his son calls him "ad-da Emutbal." A discussion of the geographical significance of these terms at this time would carry us too far afield. Kudur Mabug was also overlord of as much of Sumer as his arms had seized. He appointed in succession his two sons, Warad-Sin and Rim-Sin, kings of Larsa. (F. W. K6nig in his recent " Geschichte Elams" in Der Alte Orient 29.4, assigns Kudur Mabug to 20001960 B. C., and his sons Warad-Sin to 1997-1986 B. C., and Rim-Sin to 1985-1907 B. C.) We must also sidestep both the chronological and the political problems that face us here, and gather up some of the beams of religious light that appear in the activities of that apparently isolated dynasty of Elam. While some homage to Sumerian divinities had been noticed in texts of Elamite rulers already published no such display of religious devotion and loyalty has been seen as we now find in the

WE NOW have Volume xxiv of the Ministere de l'Instruction Publique et des Beaux-Arts, Memoires de la Mission Archeologique de Perse, Mission en Susiane (Paris: Leroux, 1933), in which V. Scheil presents a collection of Accadian legal documents (Actes juridiques susiens) continuing those in volumes xxii and xxiii, and in the second part a series of Achaemenian inscriptions (Inscriptions des Achen'ienides) continuing those presented in Vol. xxi. It is these Achaemenian documents that I propose to treat. The new fragments comprise 5 Old Persian, 2 Elamite, 3 Accadian fragments of the Record of Darids's Palace at Susa, Scheil's No. 1 of Vol. xxi; 6 Old Persian fragments and 1 almost complete Accadian version of Scheil's No. 15 of Vol. xxi; and 2 new Old Persian copies, 2 new Accadian copies, and 1 new Elamite copy of his No. 28, an inscription of Artaxerxes II. I propose to take these up in order, as they bring important corrections or additions to the text of these three inscriptions as previously known.