Two stone tablets, both of which possibly originate from Samarra, are inscribed with a text describing the military campaigns of Sennacherib in an unusual way. The inscription also has some information not found in other known inscriptions of this king, in particular the setting up and inscribing of a victory stele in the plain of Ḫalulê after the battle there (691), the enlargement of the city Sūr-marrati (probably the site of Samarra), and the construction of that city's wall. In the style of texts written on steles (and rock reliefs), the inscription begins with an invocation of gods (lines 1–2), the king's name and epithets (lines 3–5a), and a statement about the god Aššur supporting Sennacherib, in particular during his campaigns to Chaldea and Elam (lines 5b–11a). The military narration is very unusual, not only in the manner in which the campaigns are recorded, but also in the number of campaigns recorded. To conform with the king's annalistic narration on clay prisms, Sennacherib boasts of eight successful campaigns, with the centerpiece of the narrative being the eighth (the battle of Ḫalulê), but he describes in detail only three of them — his sixth (694–693), seventh (late 693), and eighth (691) campaigns. Before narrating the battle of Ḫalulê, Sennacherib states that he campaigned against Chaldea four times (the first, fourth, sixth, and eighth campaigns) and against Elam three times (the sixth, seventh, and eighth campaigns), but no details are given about those individual campaigns. The inscription then narrates the events leading up to the battle of Ḫalulê (lines 11b–59a), the battle itself and its aftermath (lines 59b–112), and the placing of an inscribed victory stele on the field of battle (lines 113–114). Reports of the king's sixth and seventh campaigns (lines 16b–19a and 19b–41a respectively) are included as part of the background to Sennacherib marching south against Mušēzib-Marduk, the king of Babylon; this was probably done to explain why Sennacherib regarded the Elamite king Umman-menanu (Ḫumban-menanu) as "a rash fellow who does not have sense or insight." Those events are introduced by the formulae "on the first occasion" and "on the second occasion" respectively, and recorded in subordinate clauses, with all of the verbs marked by the subordinate marker -u. The building report (lines 115–120a) records that Sennacherib enlarged the city Sūr-marrati and built its wall; the king states that he decided to carry this work out after spending the night there. The text is dated to the eponymy of Nabû-kēnu-uṣur (690), which is wrongly called in the text the "fourteenth year of Sennacherib"; this eponymy is actually the king's 15th regnal year. This text is sometimes referred to as the "Baltimore Inscription," the "Walters Inscription," the "Washington Inscription," and the "Sūr-marrati Inscription"; exs. 1 and 2 are named after the cities in which they now reside (Baltimore and Washington DC respectively).
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Sources [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/scores/Q004035/sources]:
Ex. 1 was purchased from E.J. Banks by the Walters Art Gallery (Baltimore) on March 16, 1931. At the time of sale, Banks stated that the stone tablet was from Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh. Given the information provided in the text itself (lines 115–121), the reliability of Banks' statement is questionable. The inscription gives the city Sūr-marrati as its place of origin and, therefore, Samarra is probably the provenance of the tablet; for the identification of ancient Sūr-marrati as modern Samarra, see Sachs, JAOS 57 (1937) pp. 419–420; and Postgate, RLA 13/3–4 (2012) p. 329. The preserved part of the tablet consists of one large fragment and two small ones; about one quarter of the tablet is missing (the bottom right hand side). Where the fragments have been joined together, the plaster has obliterated a few signs. The upper part of the obverse and lower part of the reverse are well preserved, but the lower part of the obverse and the upper part of the reverse are badly broken, damaged, and to a certain extent incrusted with salt, making the text on those parts of the tablet difficult to decipher.
Ex. 2 is a small fragment of a stone tablet that preserves a small section of the beginning and end of the inscription; parts of the first nineteen lines of the obverse and parts of the last seven lines of the reverse are extant. The object, when examined by V. Scheil (RB 9 [1900] pp. 424–427), was owned by the Catholic University of America (Washington DC). The authors have not been able to locate the object and, therefore, it is not known if that piece is still in the possession of the Catholic University of America or if it is now owned by another institution or individual. Scheil stated at the time of publication that the tablet originated from Nineveh, but there is no other evidence to support that claim. R. Borger (BAL2 p. 67) correctly identified the piece in the Catholic University of America in Washington as a duplicate of the Walters Art Galley tablet.
A.K. Grayson (AfO 20 [1963] p. 83) and E. Weissert (HSAO 6 p. 199 and nn. 57–58) both think that the inscription is a copy of one on a victory stele set up at Ḫalulê after the battle, but with a building report added. If this interpretation is correct, then the account of Sennacherib's eighth campaign in this text is likely a copy of one of the first reports of those events. Therefore, this report of the battle of Ḫalulê is earlier in date than the best known version of his eighth campaign, which is preserved in text no. 18 v 1'–vi 15', text no. 22 v 17–vi 35, and text no. 23 v 9–vi 30; that description of the events was probably modeled on the military narration on the now-lost Ḫalulê stele. Moreover, Grayson (AfO 20 [1963] p. 87) proposes that a letter to a god could have been a likely source for some of the contents of this text; this proposal, however, cannot be presently supported by the extant Sennacherib corpus. For further information about the unusual style of the inscription, see ibid. pp. 83–89.
The master text is ex. 1; the lineation of ex. 2 is marginally different. Lines 1–63 are on the obverse of ex. 1 and lines 64–126 are on the reverse. Since ex. 2 duplicates lines 1–20 and 120–126, a partial score is provided on the CD-ROM; the few minor variants are listed at the back of the book. Since ex. 2 was not available for study, the transliteration in the score generally follows Scheil's edition. Lines 11b–108a — the report of the eighth campaign (the battle of Ḫalulê), with the imbedded accounts of the sixth and seventh campaigns — duplicate with major variation text no. 22 iv 37b–39a, 44b–45, 55–v 11a, and 31–vi 35; text no. 34 lines 20–25a and 36b–55a; and text no. 35 lines 16'–52'. Restorations are generally based on those texts, especially text no. 22.
A fragment of a stone tablet discovered at Tikrit preserves the first eleven and last six lines of an inscription of Sennacherib. The prologue and summary of the first campaign (against Marduk-apla-iddina and his allies) is very similar to those same passages in text no. 34, an inscription written on a stone tablet intended for the armory at Nineveh, and the concluding formulae, as far as they are preserved, are similar to the concluding formulae of text no. 230, which is inscribed on stone tablets intended for the wall of the city Sūr-marrati. Because little of the inscription is extant, the text is difficult to date with any precision and it is unknown where Sennacherib intended it to be deposited.
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It is unclear where this stone tablet was found in Tikrit. The beginning of the inscription parallels text no. 34 lines 1–9, while the end of the text bears some resemblance to the contents of text no. 230 lines 120–125. Restorations are based on those texts. The inscription could be collated from the published photograph.
A. Kirk Grayson & Jamie Novotny
A. Kirk Grayson & Jamie Novotny, 'Assyria-Babylonia Border Region', RINAP 3: Sennacherib, The RINAP 3 sub-project of the RINAP Project, 2019 [http://oracc.org/rinap/rinap3/rinap32textintroductions/assyriababyloniaborderregion/]