About the Project

The open-access Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online (RIAo) Project is intended to present up-to-date editions of the officially commissioned texts of the rulers of Assyria from the end of the third millennium BC to the fall of Nineveh in 612 BC.

Figure 1

A bronze sword (MMA 86.11.166.1) from Ashur with an inscription of Adad-nārārī I (1295–1264 BCE).

The contents of this long-term, online project have been adapted from or are based on the following eleven publications of the now-defunct University-of-Toronto-based Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia (RIM) series and the recently-completed University-of-Pennsylvania-based Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period (RINAP) series:

  1. A. Kirk Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Third and Second Millennia BC (to 1115 BC) (The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Assyrian Periods 1; hereafter RIMA 1), Toronto et al.: University of Toronto Press [http://www.utppublishing.com/Assyrian-Rulers-3Rd-and-2Nd-Millenium.html], 1987;
  2. A. Kirk Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC I (1114–859 BC) (The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Assyrian Periods 2; hereafter RIMA 2), Toronto et al.: University of Toronto Press [http://www.utppublishing.com/Assyrian-Rulers-of-the-Early-First-Millennium-BC-I.html], 1991;
  3. A. Kirk Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC II (858–745 BC) (The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Assyrian Periods 3; hereafter RIMA 3), Toronto et al.: University of Toronto Press [http://www.utppublishing.com/Assyrian-Rulers-of-the-Early-First-Millennium-BC-II.html], 1996;
  4. Hayim Tadmor and Shigeo Yamada, The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III (744–727 BC) and Shalmaneser V (726–722 BC), Kings of Assyria (The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyria Period 1; hereafter RINAP 1), Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns [https://www.eisenbrauns.org/books/titles/978-1-57506-220-4.html], 2011;
  5. Grant Frame, The Royal Inscriptions of Sargon II, King of Assyria (721–705 BC) (The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyria Period 2; hereafter RINAP 2), University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns [https://www.eisenbrauns.org/books/titles/978-1-64602-109-3.html], 2021;
  6. A. Kirk Grayson and Jamie Novotny, The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib, King of Assyria (704–681 BC), Part 1 (The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyria Period 3/1; hereafter RINAP 3/1), Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns [https://www.eisenbrauns.org/books/titles/978-1-57506-241-9.html], 2012;
  7. A. Kirk Grayson and Jamie Novotny, The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib, King of Assyria (704–681 BC), Part 2 (The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyria Period 3/2; hereafter RINAP 3/2), Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns [https://www.eisenbrauns.org/books/titles/978-1-57506-242-6.html], 2014;
  8. Erle Leichty, The Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria (680–669 BC) (The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyria Period 4; hereafter RINAP 4), Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns [https://www.eisenbrauns.org/books/titles/978-1-57506-209-9.html], 2011;
  9. Jamie Novotny and Joshua Jeffers, The Royal Inscriptions of Ashurbanipal (668–631 BC), Aššur-etel-ilāni (630–627 BC), and Sîn-šarra-iškun (626–612 BC), Kings of Assyria, Part 1 (The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyria Period 5/1; hereafter RINAP 5/1), University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns [https://www.eisenbrauns.org/books/titles/978-1-57506-209-9.html], 2018;
  10. Joshua Jeffers and Jamie Novotny, The Royal Inscriptions of Ashurbanipal (668–631 BC), Aššur-etel-ilāni (630–627 BC), and Sîn-šarra-iškun (626–612 BC), Kings of Assyria, Part 2 (The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyria Period 5/2; hereafter RINAP 5/2), University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns [ https://www.eisenbrauns.org/books/titles/978-1-64602-223-6.html ], 2023; and
  11. Jamie Novotny, Joshua Jeffers, and Grant Frame, The Royal Inscriptions of Ashurbanipal (668–631 BC), Aššur-etel-ilāni (630–627 BC), and Sîn-šarra-iškun (626–612 BC), Kings of Assyria, Part 3 (The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyria Period 5/3; hereafter RINAP 5/3), University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 2023.

The inscriptions of the Assyrian rulers after 744 BC, from Tiglath-pileser III to Aššur-uballiṭ II, have been made available on RIAo courtesy of Grant Frame, director of the University of Pennsylvania-based and NEH-funded Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/] (RINAP) Project.

Figure 2

A stone tablet (VA 8832; Ass 19735) from Ashur with a 126-line inscription of
the Middle Assyrian ruler Tukultī-Ninurta I (1233–1197 BC).

Sponsors and timing

The open-access RIAo website was originally created as part of the research project Official Inscriptions of the Middle East in Antiquity (OIMEA), a key sub-project of the Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative [https://www.en.ag.geschichte.uni-muenchen.de/research/mocci/index.html] (MOCCI), which is headed by Karen Radner and Jamie Novotny, and in collaboration with LMU's Institute for Assyriology and Hittitology [https://www.assyriologie.uni-muenchen.de/index.html]. Funding for Phase 1 (August 2015–December 2020) was generously provided by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (through the establishment of the Alexander von Humboldt Chair for Ancient History of the Near and Middle East [http://www.ag.geschichte.uni-muenchen.de/lehrstuehle/ls_radner/index.html]) and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Historisches Seminar - Abteilung Alte Geschichte). Additional financial support for Phase 2 (June 2022–) is not only being provided by LMU Munich (especially through the Cambridge LMU Strategic Partnership [https://www.cambridge.uni-muenchen.de/index.html]; 2019–), but also from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (through the award of a Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz Prize [https://www2.daad.de/der-daad/daad-aktuell/de/82434-leibniz-preis-fuer-daad-alumna-professorin-karen-radner-im-portraet/] in 2022).

For the material post-745 BC, RIAo proxies in all 1037 (Akkadian and Sumerian) royal inscriptions published in all eight volumes of the RINAP [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/] series. These linguistically-tagged text were made accessible on RIAo through our cooperation partner Grant Frame. For further details, see the RINAP About the Project [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/abouttheproject/index.html/] page.

Phase 1 (August 2015–December 2020)

RIAo began in late 2015 and the first version of this open-access, Oracc-based website was made available in early 2016. The initial objective of RIAo was the retro-digitization and lemmatization (linguistic-tagging) of the 866 Assyrian royal inscriptions (all written in the Akkadian language) published in the three volumes by A. Kirk Grayson for RIM Project (RIMA 1–3), as well as the creation of user-friendly webpages providing some information about Assyria's 116 rulers and the inscriptions written in their names, giving relevant historical, cultural, and archaeological context to these important ancient sources. Phase 1 of RIAo — which was principally carried out by Nathan Morello, with the assistance of Jamie Novotny and Poppy Tushingham, as well as several BA and MA student assistants — was completed in December 2020. All of the texts edited in RIMA 1–3, as well as a few inscriptions not edited in those three volumes, were cataloged and linguistic-tagged, thereby enabling RIAo's users:

Moreover, approximately 175 introductory pages giving historical background and other kinds of information, including translations of (the different versions of) the Assyrian King List (henceforth AKL) and the Synchronistic King List, were prepared during Phase 1.

Figure 3

A stone tablet of Tukulti-Ninurta I from Assur now in the Morgan Library and Museum (New York City).

Phase 2 (June 2022–)

It has been clear from the very start of the project that there has been a growing need to re-evaluate and re-edit the 866 cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria's first 107 rulers that were published by A. Kirk Grayson in 1987–96. Some (minor) corrections were made while lemmatizing the corpus, but, as this was not the aim of Phase 1, the editions and translations that appeared in RIMA 1–3 were not significantly or systematically reworked and updated. Now that the RINAP project (2008–23) has been successfully completed, the time is ripe to re-edit, in an updated form, this important group of Assyrian texts and to add all additional inscriptions that have become known in the three decades since the publication of the RIMA volumes.

Phase 2 formally took shape only in June 2022, when Karen Radner and Grant Frame established the editorial board, team of consultants, and authors of the new Royal Inscriptions of Assyria (RIA) publication series, as well as signed a publication agreement with Eisenbrauns [https://www.eisenbrauns.org], an imprint of Penn State University Press [https://www.psupress.org], in August 2022.

The recently-established RIA publication project (=RIAo Phase 2) aims to provide updated editions of the complete corpus of Akkadian inscriptions of the Assyrian rulers from the late third millennium BC to the reign of Aššur-nārārī V (754–745 BC). In essence, the forthcoming publications of the RIA series will serve as "second editions" of RIMA 1–3. Following the models of RINAP and Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Empire [https://www.en.ag.geschichte.uni-muenchen.de/research/rinbe/index.html] (RINBE), the planned six-volume series will include:

  1. comprehensive introductions, including information about the historical and geographical contexts of the texts, discussions of the material supports of the inscriptions, and surveys of previous research;
  2. illustrations in the form of photographs (especially of inscribed objects) and drawings (such as annotated site plans and maps); and
  3. complete indexes of names of people, places, deities, and temples.

Adopting the editorial principals of the RINAP and RINBE series, the planned volumes of the RIA series, together with its open-access component RIAo, will edit each and every inscription separately and in their entirety. This is especially important for the text corpus of the Middle Assyrian king Adad-nārārī I (1295–1264 BC), whose inscriptions have never been fully edited; the presentation of that group of texts in RIMA 1 (pp. 128–179) conflated the introductions, body, building reports, and concluding formulas of Adad- nārārī I's most important texts, thereby obscuring the number and contents of individual inscriptions.

In order to make the books as accessible as possible, especially for non-specialists and students, the arrangement of texts for each ruler will be reworked, following the model of RINAP, which groups each corpus by provenance and material (e.g., clay, stone, metal); whenever possible, a king's texts will be presented chronologically (from earliest to latest). Not only will the text introductions and commentaries be rewritten in their entirety, the individual text bibliographies will be expanded and updated as required, as will the catalogues of known exemplars whenever new witnesses have been identified and / or whenever additional or new information has come to light about the archaeological context of the inscribed objects.

The transliterations and translations will also be reworked, as needed. In particular, the books' authors will update the translations so that they match the editorial practices of RINAP and RINBE. On the one hand, this will take into account the meanings assigned to certain words that were included in the volumes of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD) that appeared only after RIMA 1–3 were published. On the other hand, the update applies especially to the reading of personal and geographic names, which will be harmonized with the now-discipline-standard reference tools The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (PNA; 1998–2011) and Répertoire Géographique des Textes Cunéiformes (especially A.M. Bagg, Die Orts- und Gewässernamen der neuassyrischen Zeit [2007–20]). While the RIM volumes used large translation blocks, RIA and RIAo will break these into smaller units to enable their easier correlation with the Akkadian text, especially for non-specialists and students. The editions will also include more detailed notes than their RIMA counterparts, which only indicated minor (orthographic) variants in very limited on-page notes.

The RIA project, which is part of MOCCI, is the direct successor of the RIM Project (1980–2008) and the RINAP Project (2008–23). Over the next decade (starting in 2022), the RIA team will assemble a complete and authoritative modern presentation of the entire corpus of the royal inscriptions of 107 Assyrian rulers from Assyria's origins to 745 BC, both in six print volumes and in a fully annotated (linguistically tagged), open-access digital format, via the RIAo website. As the texts are updated, the revised and expanded content will be will be disseminated online for free.

Figure 4

A stone tablet (VA 8832; Ass 19735) from Ashur with a 126-line inscription of
the Middle Assyrian ruler Tukultī-Ninurta I (1233–1197 BC).

Planned Publications

In addition to this open-access, Oracc-based website, the RIA Project will produce six books and open-access PDF versions of those reference volumes, thus making reliable editions of this important group of texts freely available to scholars, students, museum personnel, and the general public. The planned publications are:

  1. A. Kirk Grayson and Jamie Novotny, The Royal Inscriptions of Assyria, Part 1: From the Origins of Assyria to Arik-dīn-ili (to 1306 BC).
  2. A. Kirk Grayson and Frauke Weiershäuser (with contributions by Nathan Morello and Jamie Novotny), The Royal Inscriptions of Assyria, Part 2: From Adad-nārārī I to Aššur-rēša-iši I (1305–1115 BC).
  3. A. Kirk Grayson and Frauke Weiershäuser (with contributions by Joshua Jeffers and Jamie Novotny), The Royal Inscriptions of Assyria, Part 3: From Tiglath-pileser I to Tukultī-Ninurta II (1114–884 BC).
  4. A. Kirk Grayson and J. Caleb Howard (with the editorial assistance of Jamie Novotny), The Royal Inscriptions of Assyria, Part 4: Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 BC).
  5. A. Kirk Grayson and J. Caleb Howard (with the editorial assistance of Jamie Novotny), The Royal Inscriptions of Assyria, Part 5: Shalmaneser III and His Successors (858–745 BC).
  6. Jamie Novotny, Indices, Corrections, and Additions (provisional title).

Project team

RIA Editorial Board

Figure 8

RIA Editorial Board and Authors. From left to right, Radner, Frame, Novotny,
Weiershäuser, Fadhil, and Howard.

RIA Consultants

RIA Team (Authors)

Figure 6

Stone, rounded-topped steles of the early Neo-Assyrian kings Ashurnasirpal II
(BM 118883; left), Shalmaneser III (BM 118884; center), and Šamšī-Adad V
(BM 115020; right).

Official Inscriptions of the Middle East in Antiquity (OIMEA) Editorial Board

OIMEA Advisory Committee

RIAo Contributors

Credits and Copyright

The contents of this website, except where noted below, are the copyright of the OIMEA Project. They are released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/] license.

This means that you are free to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt our work without permission, under the following conditions:

Any of these conditions may be waived in the right circumstances, if you explicitly ask us for permission.

Read our hints and suggestions for reusing material from Oracc [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/doc/help/visitingoracc/reusingoracc/index.html]. For information on how to cite Oracc URLs online and in print, click here [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/doc/help/visitingoracc/citingurls/index.html].

Images taken from third-party websites are all credited and linked to those websites, where information about copyright may be found.

Homepage picture credit

Statue of Ashurnasirpal II (BM ME 118871). Credit: Trustees of the British Museum.

Novotny Jamie

Novotny Jamie, 'About the Project', The Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online (RIAo) Project, The RIAo Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2023 [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/riao/abouttheproject/]

 
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