Numerous inscriptions written in Sennacherib's name have been recovered and most of these are housed in museum collections and private collections around the world; the majority of these are in the British Museum (London) and the Vorderasiatisches Museum (Berlin). Many other inscribed objects of his that were discovered by early excavators were too large and heavy for transport or were in such bad condition that they were reburied and left in the field. Clay, stone, and metal objects bearing texts of this once-great king originate from a broad geographic area, although most come from the two principal cities of the Assyrian heartland: Aššur and Nineveh. The present corpus comprises both excavated objects and objects purchased from local dealers.
Because of the large number of texts and the length of some of those compositions (several of which are over 500 lines/2500 words long), the inscriptions of Sennacherib are edited in two volumes. Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib (OIP 2), the last volume to edit a substantial portion of Sennacherib's official texts, did not even include all of the then-known (1924) inscriptions and treated many complete inscriptions as duplicates, citing only orthographic and major variants from those sources. Since the publication of Luckenbill, Senn. over eighty-five years ago, numerous new inscriptions and (better preserved) duplicates have come to light. The present volume, although it contains only thirty-eight individual texts (approximately a sixth of the known corpus of inscriptions), surpasses Luckenbill's publication in size.
The division of the Sennacherib corpus is somewhat arbitrary as we have tried to maintain a balance between Part 1 and Part 2 by including major, well-preserved inscriptions in both volumes. Because Part 2 will contain fewer long inscriptions than Part 1, all of the smaller texts will be edited in that volume. The present publication includes all historical inscriptions on clay cylinders, clay prisms, and stone tablets from Nineveh, while the second part will include historical inscriptions on bull and lion colossi from Nineveh, rock reliefs, stone horizontal prisms, and clay cylinders and prisms from other cities under Sennacherib's authority (especially Aššur and Tarbiṣu). An inscription on several steles from Nineveh is also included in Part 1, while epigraphs on reliefs and inscriptions on clay tablets, bricks, threshold slabs, wall panels, stone blocks, beads, etc. are edited in Part 2. The arrangement of the inscriptions more or less follows that of Frahm, Einleitung in die Sanherib-Inschriften (AfO Beiheft 26). Note, however, that historical inscriptions on stone tablets and the text on steles (Frahm's T 61–64) have been placed before inscriptions on bull and lion colossi, epigraphs, and texts written on door sockets, all of which were discovered in the ruins of the South-West Palace (Frahm's T 25–60).
All of the inscriptions included in Part 1 originate from Nineveh. Most of the exemplars of those inscriptions come from Nineveh, but several exemplars were discovered at Aššur and Kalḫu (biblical Calah). These pieces (for example, text no. 4 exs. 9, 25, 43, 45, 48, 56, 60, 67, 69–70, 74 and 82–87) preserve texts duplicating inscriptions from Nineveh, including the building reports. Unless a fragment from Aššur and Kalḫu clearly preserves an inscription unique to those cities, those pieces are treated here as duplicates of the well-known Nineveh texts.
A. Kirk Grayson & Jamie Novotny
A. Kirk Grayson & Jamie Novotny, 'Texts Included in Part 1', RINAP 3: Sennacherib, The RINAP 3 sub-project of the RINAP Project, 2019 [http://oracc.org/rinap/rinap3/rinap31introduction/textsincludedinpart1/]