Texts Excluded from RINBE 2

One inscription attributed to Neriglissar and edited in Da Riva, SANER 3 (VA 2659) is not included here because that text is actually a duplicate of an unpublished inscription of Nebuchadnezzar II recording his and his father's reconstruction of Ekunankuga ("House, Pure Stairway of Heaven"), the ziggurat at Sippar, now in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin (VA 8410).^[[106]] That inscription will be edited in RINBE 1/2, with the inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar II from Sippar.

Two texts written on multi-column clay tablets attributed to Nabonidus and edited in Schaudig, Inschriften Nabonids (BM 68234 and BM 68321) are not included in the present volume since A. Bartelmus and J. Taylor have convincingly demonstrated that these two tablets are not inscribed with copies of royal inscriptions of Babylon's last native king.^[[107]] BM 68321 joins BM 67673 + BM 71553 (+) BM 73514.^[[108]] and the new BM 67673+ is a virtually complete clay tablet inscribed with a Neo-Babylonian copy (probably dating to the time of Nabonidus) of Sumerian inscriptions of the Kassite kings Kurigalzu I and Šagarakti-Šuriaš recording their restorations of the E(ul)maš temple at Sippar-Anunītu, together with an Akkadian translation.^[[109]] BM 68234 appears to be a Neo-Babylonian copy of the statue inscription of Šagarakti-Šuriaš that Nabonidus quotes verbatim in his inscriptions.^[[110]] Because these two tablets do not contain inscriptions of Nabonidus, they are excluded from RINBE 2. Two cylinder fragments cited in Catalogue of the Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum 4–5 as possibly being attributed to Nabonidus, K 10066 and Sm 486, are not included in the present volume since the authors are not convinced that the inscriptions written on these two pieces were composed in the name of Nabonidus, despite the mention of Agade and Eulmaš in K 10066. Lastly, a damaged multi-column cylinder discovered at Babylon, VA Bab 611 (BE 43333), might bear an inscription of Nabonidus or Nebuchadnezzar II. Because the authors tentatively think that the text inscribed on that cylinder likely recorded Nebuchadnezzar's, not Nabonidus', restoration of Eḫursagsikilla ("House, Pure Mountain"; the temple of the goddess Ninkarrak) or Esabad ("House of the Open Ear"; the temple of Gula) at Babylon, that inscription is excluded from RINBE 2; it will be edited as a 1000-number of Nebuchadnezzar II in RINBE 1/2.

Some famous historical texts concerning Amēl-Marduk and Nabonidus are not edited in this volume since they are not royal inscriptions. These are the four 'propaganda' texts edited in Schaudig, Inschriften Nabonids (pp. 563–595 P1–P4):^[[111]] the first two, the Verse Account (= P1) and the King of Justice [Account] (= P2), present Nabonidus in a rather negative way, while the last two, a fragmentarily preserved chronographic text (= P3) and the so-called Royal Chronicle (= P4), offer positive images of Nabonidus' seventeen-year-long reign. The style of the fourth text, the Royal Chronicle, closely resembles a royal inscription and, like texts classified as chronicles, it is written in the third person; Neo-Babylonian inscriptions are usually written in the first person. Unlike Nabonidus' own inscriptions, the Royal Chronicle records campaigns against the city Ammanānu in Syria and against cities in Arabia; accounts of military achievements are generally not found in Neo-Babylonian inscriptions.^[[112]] That text also narrates the consecration of Nabonidus' daughter En-nigaldi-Nanna as ēntu-priestess of the moon-god Sîn at Ur and the rebuilding of the temple of the sun-god Šamaš at Sippar, topics known from several of Nabonidus' inscriptions. A translation of that text, however, is provided below, on pp. 27–28.

Unlike Schaudig, Inschriften Nabonids, the inscriptions of the Persian king Cyrus II, including the famous Cyrus Cylinder, a text that negatively portrays Nabonidus and that has shaped the image of that Babylonian king in modern scholarship for a very long time, are not included in RINBE 2 since Cyrus was not a native king of Babylon.^[[113]]

Figure 1. Map showing the most important sites in Babylonia where the inscriptions of Amēl-Marduk, Neriglissar, and Nabonidus were found.

106 Da Riva, SANER 3 pp. 138–140.

107 See Bartelmus and Taylor, JCS 66 (2014) pp. 113–128. BM 68234 and BM 68321 were edited respectively in Schaudig, Inschriften Nabonids as text no. 2.15a (p. 467) text no. 2.16 (pp. 468–469).

108 BM 68321 does not indirectly join BM 68234, as H. Schaudig (Inschriften Nabonids pp. 467–468) had tentatively suggested.

109 A. Bartelmus and J. Taylor (JCS 66 [2014] pp. 114 and 124) propose "that the Sumerian inscriptions [on BM 67673+] are copies of originals, that the compilation of them onto a single tablet is the work of a Neo-Babylonian scribe, and that the Akkadian version is a translation made at that same time" and conclude that "BM 67673+ is not the Šagarakti-Šuriaš text that Nabonidus claims to have found" in his inscriptions. The temple is called Emaš, rather than Eulmaš, in these inscriptions. As already pointed out by A. Bartelmus and J. Taylor (ibid. pp. 124–125), it is unclear "whether Emaš is another name for Eulmaš or is distinct." They further state that "it is in principle possible that Emaš could be the name of a shrine within Eulmaš or even another building altogether."

110 A. Bartelmus and J. Taylor (JSC 66 [2014] p. 124) conclude that "BM 68234 appears to give that text [=the Šagarakti-Šuriaš text that Nabonidus claims to have found], matching exactly. It is presented as a copy of an old inscription in the classical style, written in suitably archaizing characters, and in monolingual Akkadian form, no less. ... it must be either a careful copy of an original monolingual Akkadian text or a forgery in part (i.e., a translation put into archaizing characters) or in whole (i.e., a tablet created to act as a 'copy' of the inscription quoted by Nabonidus). The orthography of the text suggests that it may be a careful copy of an original. We may question whether BM 68234 was produced directly or indirectly as a consequence of Nabonidus' excavations, in exactly the same way as for BM 67673+. The information reproduced on BM 68234 was nevertheless available to, and deemed important by, Nabonidus."

111 See also, for example, De Breucker, Political Memory pp. 75–94; and Waerzeggers, Exile and Return pp. 181–222.

112 The Wadi Brissa inscription (and possibly the Nahr el-Kelb inscription) of Nebuchadnezzar II and an inscription of Neriglissar record campaigns; the former describes military expeditions in Lebanon, while the latter describes a campaign in Cilicia. See respectively Da Riva, Twin Inscriptions; and Neriglissar 7.

113 New editions of Cyrus' Akkadian inscriptions from Babylon, Ur, and Uruk, with English translations, are available online via the Babylon 8 project of RIBo; see http://oracc.org/ribo/babylon8/ [2020].

Frauke Weiershäuser & Jamie Novotny

Frauke Weiershäuser & Jamie Novotny, 'Texts Excluded from RINBE 2', RIBo, Babylon 7: The Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Dynasty, The RIBo Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2022 [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/ribo/babylon7/rinbe2introduction/textsexcludedfromrinbe2/]