“The Text of the Cyrus Cylinder”, in: M. Rahim Shayegan (ed.), Cyrus the Great: Life and Lore. Ilex Series 21 (Harvard University Press 2019), pp. 16-25. (2024)

The Royal Inscriptions of Amēl-Marduk (561–560 BC), Neriglissar (559–556 BC), and Nabonidus (555–539 BC), Kings of Babylon

2020

Scores of The Royal Inscriptions of Nabopolassar (625-605 BC) and Nebuchadnezzar II (604-562 BC), Kings of Babylon, Part 1. Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, Vol. 1/1. University Park: Eisenbrauns.

2024

OA PDF: https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/118421/ Nabopolassar was the first ruler of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Rising to power from obscure origins, Nabopolassar defeated the Neo-Assyrians, who had controlled Babylonia for more than one hundred years. During the reign of Nabopolassar’s son, Nebuchadnezzar II, the Neo-Babylonian Empire developed into a major superpower. Best known for his ambitious building projects, including the famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Ishtar Gate, Nebuchadnezzar also figures prominently in the Hebrew Bible as the king who destroyed Jerusalem and its temple, conquering Judah and inaugurating the Babylonian captivity. In this book, Jamie Novotny and Frauke Weiershäuser provide updated, reliable editions of seventy-one historical inscriptions of the Babylonian kings Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II, including nineteen never-before-published texts. Each text edition is accompanied by an English translation, a catalog of all exemplars, a comprehensive bibliography, and commentary containing notes and technical information. The volume also contains a general introduction to the reigns of these two rulers, the corpus of inscriptions, previous studies, and chronology; translations of the relevant passages of several Mesopotamian chronicles and king lists; photographs of objects; and indexes of museum and excavation numbers, selected publications, and proper names.

2021

This paper reconstructs the transmission of the letter from the “obedient Borsippans” to the Assyrian king Assurbanipal (r. 669-631 BC), which - unusually for a letter to an Assyrian king - is attested on a clay tablet dating to the first century BC. Drawing on the text of the letter itself and on information contained in the tablet's scribal notes, it focuses on three moments in the letter’s “life”: the senders’ original intentions in writing the letter; the context in which the surviving manuscript, the tablet BM 45642, was produced; and the inscription of the letter onto a stone monument at some point prior to the production of BM 45642. It is argued that the object onto which the letter was inscribed was a stele rather than a stone tablet, and that it could have been displayed in the main courtyard of the E-zida temple in Borsippa on the occasion of Antiochus III’s visit to Borsippa in 187 BC.

Other Neo-Babylonian royal inscriptions

Cuneiform Royal Inscriptions and Related Texts in the Schøyen Collection, ed. A. R. George, 2011

A Collector’s Edition of the Past: Personal Collections of Mesopotamian Royal Inscriptions from the Old Babylonian Period

David Durand-Guédy and Jürgen Paul (eds), Personal Manuscripts: Copying, Drafting, Taking Notes, 2023

The present study focuses on multiple-text manuscripts compiled by scribes for their own use, based on royal monuments set up in temples and thus collectible, in this way, only for ancient scholars. However, these collections were more than mere copies of ancient relics: scribes studied these inscriptions in terms, not only of their contents, but also their palaeography, orthography, grammar and visual organization. All these interests can be discerned based on the collections preserved up to the present day on clay tablets.

Babylonian Texts from the Folios of Sidney Smith part 4: Two Old Babylonian letters. Revue d'Assyriologique 103 (2009) 49–57

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Presses Universitaires de France is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Revue d'Assyriologie et d'archéologie orientale

New Proposed Chronological Sequence and Dates of Composition of Esarhaddon’s Babylon Inscriptions Revisited. In: Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol. 67: pp. 145-168

New Proposed Chronological Sequence and Dates of Composition of Esarhaddon’s Babylon Inscriptions Revisited, 2015

The Babylon Inscriptions of Esarhaddon, perhaps the best-known group of texts in the extant corpus this seventh-century Assyrian king, have for decades presented a real challenge in cracking the various levels of ideology imbedded in their contents, as well as the chronological order in which they were written. The latter issue is closely tied to the fact that several clay prisms inscribed with these texts are all dated by the formula šanat rēš šarrūti, "accession year. " This paper will argue that the intentional dating of the Babylon Inscriptions reflects historical reality and that Esarhaddon's did not deliberately falsify the dates of inscriptions. It will also closely examine the contents of the known texts in this small subcorpus of this Assyrian king's official inscriptions and suggest new dates of composition for each text (especially Babylon A and Babylon D), as well as a new chronological sequencing of the inscriptions. Lastly, this paper will present updated editions of Babylon G and Babylon F based on an old nonphysical join proposed by A. R. Millard and a new international join discovered by the author.

A Past Preserved in Clay: Old Babylonian Collections of Royal Inscriptions

By one’s own hand, for one’s own use. Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, Hamburg, 20-21 February 2020.

From the collections of an old Babylonian literary connoisseur

Revue d'assyriologie et d'archéologie orientale, 2013

Review of The Raging Torrent: Historical Inscriptions from Assyria and Babylonia Relating to Ancient Israel by Mordechai Cogan

Review of Biblical Literature, 2018