In the late 1980s, A. Kirk Grayson invited Hayim Tadmor to prepare the volume of inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III and Shalmaneser V for the Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia (RIM) Project. After Tadmor published his book The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III, King of Assyria (= Tigl. III) in 1994, he invited me to prepare the then-scheduled RIMA 4 jointly with him. In 2001, we began updating the editions of the Tiglath-pileser III corpus. In order to improve the transliterations, translations, and historical interpretations of the texts, we studied all of the published reviews of Tadmor, Tigl. III and other critical comments sent from colleagues to Tadmor himself. The corrections in Addenda et Corrigenda of the second printing of Tigl. III (2008), which appeared after Tadmor's death (December 11, 2005), reflect a portion of our collaborative efforts on this group of texts. Numerous other additions and corrections that Tadmor and I discussed have been incorporated into the present volume. Between 2001 and early 2007, our collaborative efforts were more or less suspended, mainly due to personal obligations but also because the fate of the RIM Project was in jeopardy due to funding problems. When Grant Frame decided to revive the Assyrian Periods sub-series of the RIM Project (RIMA) at the University of Pennsylvania in a new series, I resumed my work on inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III and Shalmaneser V. To facilitate production of the book and at the personal invitation of Grant Frame, I worked for about six months in Philadelphia, in the Babylonian Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (June–November, 2007). During that time, I wrote most of the introductions and commentaries, updated the bibliographies, and prepared the editions of texts that were not included in Tadmor, Tigl. III. Thus, I am responsible for most of the content in RINAP 1 that deviates from Tadmor's original publication; my research owes much to Hayim Tadmor's work.
It is my pleasure to acknowledge the individuals at the University of Pennsylvania who aided me in the production of this volume. Jamie Novotny not only helped with the initial computer entry of the editions published in Tadmor, Tigl. III and the preparation of the penultimate and ultimate manuscripts (2010–2011), but also with the collation of objects in the British Museum (London) and Vorderasiastiches Museum (Berlin) and the preparation of the bibliographies, indices, and images. Furthermore, he carefully reviewed the editions and suggested restorations for damaged text based on parallel passages in other late Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions, a task facilitated by the electronic tools provided by the Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus (Oracc) Project created by Steve Tinney. Grant Frame, the director and editor-in-chief of the Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period Project, always supported our research, attentively followed its progress, and provided useful feedback. Steve Tinney offered unfailing and indispensable support for generating the camera-ready copy and the full-indexed and lemmatized online version. Several student assistants helped in the completion of the volume: Hezekiah Akiva Bacovcin, Andrew Knapp, and Irene Sibbing Plantholt. Erle Leichty and Barry Eichler were friendly hosts during my repeated and extended trips to the Babylonian Section (2007–2011). My deepest gratitude is offered to all of them.
The penultimate manuscript was read by three external reviewers: Eckart Frahm, Wilfred Lambert, and Nicholas Postgate. They made astute comments and useful criticism on numerous points on the transliteration and translation, from philological and historical viewpoints. Their critical notes helped me to substantially improve the accuracy of the editions and statements made in the introductions, commentaries, and on-page notes. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all of them for their cooperative attitude and for spending considerable time and energy improving this volume.
Because Tadmor made extensive collations of many of the original texts for his 1994 publication, the inscriptions were generally not recollated from the originals for RINAP 1. Tadmor was indebted to many people for their assistance in museums or aid in other manners in the preparation of that book. These individuals were acknowledged in Tadmor, Tigl. III pp. vii–x. I hope I will be forgiven for not fully repeating those acknowledgments here, although I am well aware that the present volume indirectly benefitted from their assistance. My own museum work for this volume took me to Berlin and Paris and, therefore, I would like to thank Joachim Marzahn and Ralf B. Wartke at the Vorderasiatisches Museum (Berlin), and Béatrice André-Salvini and Ann Mettetel-Brand at the Musée du Louvre (Paris) for their assistance and for permitting me to work on objects housed in their collections.
I would also like to thank the individuals who gave me access to unpublished information about Tiglath-pileser III's stone slabs discovered by the Polish excavation at Nimrud in 1976. Franciszek Stȩpniowski (University of Warsaw) and Richard Sobolewski (Polish Center of Archaeology) were generous enough to correspond with me, providing me with useful information. Sam Paleyז״ל (The University at Buffalo, State University of New York) set at my disposal several unpublished electronic photographs of slabs. Andrzej Reiche (National Museum of Warsaw), with the permission of Piotr Bieliński (Director of the Polish Center of Miditerranean Archoelology, University of Warsaw), very generously photographed and sent to me an unpublished inventory of slabs from Nimrud. Daisuke Shibata (University of Tsukuba) helped me by bridging the gap between me and German and Polish researchers and by providing me with copies of articles from Heidelberg.
My work was financially supported by grants from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, as well as the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. The Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Tsukuba allowed me to take several leaves of absence, permitting me opportunities to work on this volume abroad. I sincerely appreciate all of these institutions' support. Moreover, I am grateful to Stefan Maul, who has accepted me at the Seminar für Sprachen und Kulturen des Vorderen Orients—Assyriology at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg and who has offered me a comfortable place to work in the library there for the final period of my work on this volume.
Regrettably, I cannot show this volume to Miriam Tadmor, who kindly granted me access to files of her late husband, as she passed away on November 19, 2009. I wish to note here my fond memories of Hayim Tadmor and state that I have had a delightful time working on this material and that I have enjoyed the opportunity that he has given me.
Philadelphia, June 2011
S. Yamada
Shigeo Yamada
Shigeo Yamada, 'Preface', RINAP 1: Tiglath-pileser III and Shalmaneser V, The RINAP 1 sub-project of the RINAP Project, 2019 [http://oracc.org/rinap/rinap1/rinap1frontmatter/preface/]