The Nassouhi List

This version of the Assyrian King List was first published by E. Nassouhi in 1927. Its badly damaged clay tablet was found at Ashur and is now housed in the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul. At the time, the only other available copy of the AKL was the tiny fragment VAT 11554, which made it extremely difficult for Nassouhi to restore the text's numerous damaged passages. E. Weidner (1945-51) was able to make some improvements, but it was not until 1954, when I.J. Gelb published two nearly complete eighth-century copies of the AKL (the Khorsabad List and the SDAS List), that any serious work on the so-called Nassouhi List could be undertaken. Since then, little has been done on this version of the AKL; in 1973, J.A. Brinkman collated the tablet in Istanbul and published the results of that examination.

Nassouhi, AfO 4 (1927) pp. 4-5.

Tablet Details

As Brinkman (1973:307) has already noted, Nassouhi's line numbering of the first column is often problematic. In the translation below, only one change has been made (see note i 34).

i 1-12 ("Tent-dwellers"): Nothing of this section seems to have survived, except for the final part of the summary line "[A total of seventeen kings, who dwelt in t]ents." Nassouhi copied a few unreadable signs in i 8-9(?); Brinkman did not see these traces when he examined the tablet (1973:307).

i 13-21 ("Forefathers"): This passage is almost completely destroyed. Occasionally, only the final signs of these lines are visible; however, enough is legible to allow a comparison between the traces here and their parallel passages in the Khorsabad and SDAS lists. It is notable that one ruler's reign was apparently omitted from this section (see note i 16). The summary line at the end of the passage is completely destroyed.

i 22-28 ("Unknown eponymies"): This section has not survived on this tablet, except (according to Nassouhi's copy) for one LUGAL ("king") sign in the supposed summary line; however, see Brinkman's comments (1973:308 n. 10).

i 29-43 (Old Assyrian rulers up to Samsī-Addu I [/riao/ria1/oldassyrianperiod/samsiaddudynasty/samsiaddui/index.html]): The lines recording the reigns of Erišum I [/riao/ria1/earlybeginnings/puzurashurdynasty/erishumi/index.html] and Ikūnum [/riao/ria1/earlybeginnings/puzurashurdynasty/ikunum/index.html] are very fragmentarily preserved. The spacing on the tablet before the slightly more readable account of Samsī-Addu I's ascent to the throne seems to imply the omission of at least one ruler from this section (see note  i 32).

The second column is also very badly damaged. The first fourteen lines, where the generation of Išme-Dagān I and the kings who were the "sons of nobody" should be listed, are (at least from the photo) unreadable. Lines 15-20 have been partly reconstructed and, after a gap of six lines, the list is fairly readable from ruler no. 58 (Išme-Dagān II) to no. 65 (Aššur-rabi I [/riao/ria1/oldassyrianperiod/mittanianhegemony/ashurrabii/index.html]).

The first eight lines of the third column (on the right side of the tablet) are badly damaged; these lines included information on rulers nos. 66-68. The rest of the column is more readable and can be fully reconstructed from the better preserved AKLs.

The fourth column is the best preserved of the tablet and lists rulers nos. 86-97, that is, up to the reign of Tiglath-pileser II [/riao/ria3/tiglathpileserii/index.html] (935). Because the tablet was inscribed during the reign of Tiglath-pileser II's successor, the Nassouhi List is presently the oldest extant version of the AKL (possibly together with the "VAT 11554" AKL). After a ruling line, the space where one expects a colophon was left blank. Regarding the uninscribed portion of the tablet, Brinkman (1973:315) commented: "Whether this latter feature is to be interpreted as evidence for an early date or whether it should simply be suggested that the inscription was not completed is uncertain."

Line	Ruler No.		Translation
(col. i)
i 1			[                                                      ]
i 2			[                                                      ]
i 3			[                                                      ]
i 4			[                                                      ]
i 5			[                                                      ]
i 6			[                                                      ]
i 7			[                                                      ]
i 8			[                                                      ]
i 9			[                                                      ]
i 10			[                                                      ]
i 11			[                                                      ]

Footnotes

Selected Bibliography

Nathan Morello

Nathan Morello, 'The Nassouhi List', The Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online (RIAo) Project, The RIAo Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2023 [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/riao/kinglists/assyriankinglist/nassouhilist/]