Sennacherib has been a popular subject of study from the very beginning of Assyriology. There are numerous books, dissertations and articles devoted to him, his inscriptions, and his reign.[10] Clay, stone, and metal objects bearing texts of this once-great king were among the earliest cuneiform texts brought back to Europe and deciphered in the mid-nineteenth century. The birth of the modern study of Sennacherib and his inscriptions began well before the decipherment of Akkadian cuneiform, when C.J. Rich visited Mosul in 1820 and acquired what he described as "a small earthen vase covered with cuneiform writing." Shortly thereafter, K. Bellino, his secretary, made a facsimile of the text, which he sent to G.F. Grotefend, a man who had by that time already made several breakthroughs in the decipherment of the Old Persian language, also written in cuneiform. Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, objects inscribed with cuneiform writing were purchased from local dealers and brought back to Europe, where they made their way into museums and private collections. The discovery of Assyrian palaces at Khorsabad (ancient Dūr-Šarrukīn), Nimrud (ancient Kalḫu, biblical Calah), and Nineveh in the 1840s, the display of those objects in the British Museum (London) and the Louvre (Paris), and the publication of popular accounts of their discovery (with their fanciful reconstructions) generated a great deal of interest in the decipherment of "Assyrian" cuneiform and the history of kings named in the Bible.[11]
From 1850 to the present, numerous works, large and small, have been devoted to Sennacherib. Because this is not the place to present a complete and detailed historical survey of the publication of the Sennacherib corpus, or to provide a complete bibliographical study of this king, we will focus on previous editions (and translations) and major studies of the corpus that have advanced our knowledge of this king's royal inscriptions. Extensive bibliographies are provided for each text.
Treatments of Sennacherib and his reign are to be found in every general history of Assyria or Mesopotamia. Particularly useful are the biographical sketches by A.K. Grayson in CAH2 3/2 and by E. Frahm in Sanherib, as well as the entries on Sennacherib by E. Frahm in PNA 3/1 pp. 1113–1127 sub Sīn-aḫḫē-erība and RLA 12/1–2 (2009) pp. 12–22. Translations of selected inscriptions of his, usually those with descriptions of his campaign to the Levant, often appear in collected works of Mesopotamian texts in translation, for example, Borger in Galling, Textbuch2; Oppenheim in ANET3; Borger in TUAT 1/4; Cogan in COS 2; Melville in Chavalas, ANE; and Cogan, Raging Torrent.
Before discussing previous editions and major studies of this text corpus, we would like to cite here other works in which Sennacherib texts have been published. For copies, typeset Neo-Assyrian or hand-drawn facsimiles, see: Layard, Monuments; Layard, ICC; 1 R; 3 R; Ungnad, VAS 1; Messerschmidt, KAH 1; Schroeder, KAH 2; King, PSBA 35 (1913) pp. 66–94; Thompson, Arch. 79 (1929); Thompson, AAA 18 (1931); Thompson, AAA 19 (1932); and Marzahn and Rost, VAS 23. For editions/transliterations of a single text, or a very small group of texts, often accompanied by a copy and/or photograph(s), see in particular: King, CT 26; S. Smith, Senn.; Jacobsen and Lloyd, OIP 24; Thompson, Iraq 7 (1940); Heidel, Sumer 9 (1953); Grayson, AfO 20 (1963); Walker, CBI; George, Iraq 48 (1986); Galter, ARRIM 5 (1987); Ling-Israel, Studies Artzi; Ahmad and Grayson, Iraq 61 (1999); Frahm, ISIMU 6 (2003); Searight, Assyrian Stone Vessels; and Frahm, KAL 3. Information on objects inscribed with inscriptions of Sennacherib is provided in numerous museum and excavation catalogues. The most useful of these are: Bezold, Cat. 1–4; King, Cat.; Lambert and Millard, Cat.; Pedersén, Katalog; and Lambert, Cat.
In 1878, G. Smith's History of Sennacherib, Translated from the Cuneiform Inscriptions was the first book dedicated entirely to Sennacherib's inscriptions. Work on the volume began in November 1871 and it was expected to be 300 to 400 pages long. Smith had prepared as far as page 152 when the publisher revealed to Smith that the cost of publication would far exceed the original estimate. The project was suspended, in part due to an expedition that Smith took to "Assyria." Smith hoped to complete his history of Sennacherib when he returned, with the help of new inscriptions he expected to discover in the ruins of Nineveh. Smith never saw the completed publication of the fruits of his labors, as he died in August 1876. His manuscript was then handed over to J.W. Bosanquet to finish, but he too died suddenly. Before his death, Bosanquet was able to write a short essay on the date of the siege of Lachish (Appendix 1). In 1878, A.H. Sayce completed Smith's History of Sennacherib, namely by preparing the final thirteen pages of the text editions. The format of the volume was modeled upon Smith's History of Assurbanipal Translated from the Cuneiform Sources. The texts were edited passage by passage (prologue, first campaign, etc.), with the master text appearing in typeset Neo-Assyrian cuneiform, beneath which appeared the corresponding transliteration and English translation. Occasionally minor variants were cited and some major variants were edited after the master text. In total, twenty-three texts were utilized, including the Bellino Cylinder (text no. 3), the Rassam Cylinder (text no. 4; = his Cylinder B), Smith Bull 4, the Taylor Prism (text no. 22 ex. 2), the Nebi Yunus Inscription (text no. 34; = his Memorial Tablet), and the Bavian Inscription.
In 1890, in a volume of Neo-Assyrian historical texts edited by E. Schrader (KB 2), C. Bezold published editions of a handful of Sennacherib inscriptions. His contribution included full editions of the Taylor Prism (text no. 22 ex. 2) and the two epigraphs on the Lachish Room reliefs, and very short excerpts from the Bellino Cylinder (text no. 3), the Rassam Cylinder (text no. 4), and the Nebi Yunus Inscription (text no. 34). Bezold, unlike G. Smith, gave extensive notes on textual variants. His critical apparatus included variants from seven (hexagonal and octagonal) clay prisms, fourteen clay cylinders, one bull inscription, and two clay tablets.
Three years later, in 1893, B. Meissner and P. Rost published their Die Bauinschriften Sanheribs; this was the second volume devoted entirely to the inscriptions of Sennacherib. Meissner and Rost's edition focused only on the building reports of the then well-known inscriptions, especially those describing the construction of the "Palace Without a Rival" (the South-West Palace) and the armory (the "Rear Palace"). Five cylinders, one clay tablet, fragments of five inscribed bull colossi, and one clay prism were used in their composite edition of Sennacherib's description of the construction of his royal residence. The building reports of the Taylor Prism (text no. 22 ex. 2) and the Nebi Yunus Inscription (text no. 34) were combined as a single account of the rebuilding of the armory. Just as Bezold had done in KB 2, Meissner and Rost provided extensive notes on minor and major variants. Unlike Smith and Bezold, they provided detailed philological commentary. In addition to the two main composite building reports, editions of eighteen other short texts, all concerned with Sennacherib's building activities (including those at Kalḫu and Tarbiṣu), were included in the volume. Hand-drawn facsimiles of fifteen texts accompanied the editions.
In 1924, D.D. Luckenbill published The Annals of Sennacherib in the series Oriental Institute Publications (vol. 2) because he felt there was "a crying need for an up-to-date publication of the Assyrian sources," and because it seemed "the opportune moment to make available in translation a complete body of Sennacherib's historical and building texts." The acquisition by the Oriental Institute of a six-sided clay prism in "almost as perfect condition as when it left the hands of the ancient scribe" and the fact that many of Sennacherib's inscriptions had already been edited for incorporation into the files of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary were further incentive for him to pursue this publication. Luckenbill was influenced by A.T.E. Olmstead's Assyrian Historiography and took to heart the latter's complaint about the growing tendency to use only "the final Assyrian edition," and thus Luckenbill edited the earlier or alternate versions of reports known in Sennacherib's "final edition of the annals" separately. Duplicate passages, however, were still not edited as independent texts; minor, orthographic variants appearing in those texts were cited in on-page notes. In total, sixty-four objects inscribed with texts of Sennacherib, with the Chicago Prism (text no. 22 ex. 1) as the centerpiece of the book, were utilized. Of these, seven clay cylinders, four clay prisms, two clay tablets, three bull colossi, two stone tablets, and two rock reliefs were used for his edition of the annals and their building reports. Photographs and a hand-drawn facsimile of the Chicago Prism accompanied the editions. Editions of forty-four building inscriptions, texts that did not include annalistic narration, and epigraphs were also included. Most of those were short texts inscribed on limestone blocks, door sockets, and bricks, many of which were discovered at Aššur and published in copy in Messerschmidt, KAH 1 and Schroeder, KAH 2. Although Luckenbill states that he made available "a complete body of Sennacherib's historical and building texts," he did not publish all of the then-known inscriptions; he appears to have made use of texts published in only twelve books and journals. Nevertheless, Luckenbill's The Annals of Sennacherib was at that time the most comprehensive volume of Sennacherib inscriptions. Three years later, in 1927, Luckenbill included the translations of The Annals of Sennacherib in his Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia (vol. 2), a two-volume set that published English translations of the entire corpus of Assyrian royal inscriptions.
In 1963, R. Borger published his three-volume Babylonisch-assyrische Lesestücke, which included a hand-drawn facsimile and a transliteration of the Taylor Prism (text no. 22 ex. 2). Borger took the opportunity in the introduction to that text to provide up-to-date information about the historical inscriptions of Sennacherib. Relevant information was provided for inscriptions on clay cylinders, clay prisms, bull colossi, clay tablets, stone tablets, and rock reliefs. Numerous unpublished cylinders, prisms, and tablets catalogued by C. Bezold (Cat. 1–4) and L.W. King (Cat.) were listed under the edition to which they belonged. Borger, unlike Luckenbill forty years earlier, made a concerted effort to gather in one place all of the known published and still-unpublished sources for Sennacherib's historical texts. That contribution formed the solid base upon which most future studies and editions of Sennacherib's res gestae were to be built.
In 1967, G.L. Russell completed and submitted a dissertation entitled Sennacherib's Annals: A Foundational Text Study (Dropsie College). His work was to present a detailed study for a new edition of the Sennacherib corpus. Building upon Luckenbill's 1924 publication, Russell's unpublished dissertation arranged the texts into three groups (annalistic material, building inscriptions, and varia [unclassified texts]), discussed the style of the inscriptions, and presented new editions of six historical texts (with some commentary). The inscriptions edited were: the First Campaign Cylinder (text no. 1), the Bellino Cylinder (text no. 3), the Rassam Cylinder (text no. 4), the King Prism and Heidel Prism (text no. 17 exs. 1–2), Smith Bull 3, and the Judi Dagh Inscription. A list of 118 inscriptions was included in an appendix. That list was compiled for a projected new edition of the entire Sennacherib corpus, a work that was never completed.
J.E. Reade felt that the textual evidence for following the evolution of Sennacherib's building and irrigation projects in and around Nineveh was not as accessible as one could hope for. In July and August 1974, he carefully examined in the British Museum the published and unpublished Sennacherib prisms, as well as some unidentified prism fragments. His work was facilitated by W.G. Lambert, E. Leichty, and A.R. Millard. The fruits of his labors were published as "Sources for Sennacherib: The Prisms," which appeared in JCS 27 (1975) pp. 189–196. That article presented information on all of the known and conjectured res gestae of Sennacherib that were inscribed on octagonal and hexagonal clay prisms from Nineveh. Reade's study benefited greatly from Borger, BAL and Lambert and Millard, Cat. From published and unpublished material, Reade was able to identify twelve different prism editions, several more than previously thought.
Borger published a second edition of his Babylonisch-assyrische Lesestücke in 1979. He did not, however, substantially update his study of Sennacherib's historical texts.
At a colloquium held in Jerusalem on May 9th 1979, L.D. Levine delivered a lecture on the inscriptions of Sennacherib. A few years later, in 1983, he published his "Preliminary Remarks on the Historical Inscriptions of Sennacherib" in History, Historiography, and Interpretation: Studies in Biblical and Cuneiform Literatures, edited by H. Tadmor and M. Weinfeld. In that work, he reviewed the history of research on Sennacherib's inscriptions, provided a general discussion of the sources and corpus, and discussed various methods of editing this large corpus.
The most comprehensive study of Sennacherib, his reign, and his inscriptions was published by E. Frahm in 1997. Einleitung in die Sanherib-Inschriften (AfO Beiheft 26) was the product of his 1996 doctoral dissertation (Universität Göttingen), which was written under the supervision of Borger. Frahm's careful study not only included up-to-date information on the nearly two hundred royal inscriptions composed under the auspices of this Assyrian king, but also included detailed studies on Sennacherib's reign and its legacy; his family; his character; previous research (1820–1996); the function of the texts; the language, structure, and style of the inscriptions; aspects of the military reports; his building activities; the role of the king in the composition of royal inscriptions; and the inscriptions as sources for Sennacherib's religious views. For each text, Frahm provided information on the principal sources (main exemplars and duplicates), previous publications, provenance, contents, and date of composition. For many texts, he gave historical and philological commentary, including information on old misreadings of signs and words, as well as other errors (or misinterpretations) in previous publications. Difficult-to-read passages were often clarified by collation, for which he provided copies. Although some editions are provided in the volume, few texts were edited in full (for example, text no. 4 is fully edited, with all minor variants listed). The book also included a catalogue of sources and selected hand-drawn copies. Frahm did not intend his Einleitung in die Sanherib-Inschriften to be a new edition of the complete corpus of Sennacherib inscriptions; this was in part because A.K. Grayson was already preparing such a publication. It is, as indicated by its title, an introduction to Sennacherib's inscriptions, and a very good and comprehensive primer on the subject.
10 For a good historical survey of previous work on the Sennacherib corpus (1820–1997), see Levine, History, Historiography and Interpretation pp. 59–64; and Frahm, Sanherib pp. 29–32.
11 For a recent study on the early explorations of Assyria, see in particular Larsen, Conquest of Assyria.
A. Kirk Grayson & Jamie Novotny
A. Kirk Grayson & Jamie Novotny, 'Overview of Previous Editions', RINAP 3: Sennacherib, The RINAP 3 sub-project of the RINAP Project, 2019 [http://oracc.org/rinap/rinap3/rinap31introduction/overviewofpreviouseditions/]