The volumes in the RINAP series are modeled upon the publications of the now-defunct Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia (RIM) Project, with a few modifications, in particular the addition of indices of proper names. Like the RIM volumes, the volumes in this series are not intended to provide analytical or synthetic studies, but rather to provide basic text editions that can serve as the foundations for such studies. Thus, extensive discussions of the contents of the texts are not presented, and the core of each volume is the edition of the relevant texts.
In this volume, the order of the texts is based for the most part upon the following two criteria:
Following the practice of the RIM series, inscriptions that cannot be assigned definitely to a particular ruler are given text numbers beginning at 1001. Certain other inscriptions that provide information relevant for establishing royal names and titles (e.g. "servant seals") and any composed in the name of another member of the royal family (e.g., royal wives) have been given numbers that begin at 2001.
In the volumes of the RINAP series, the term "exemplar" is employed to designate a single inscription found on one object. The term "text" is employed to refer to an inscription that existed in antiquity and that may be represented by a number of more or less duplicate exemplars. In these editions exemplars of one text are edited together as a "master text," with a single transliteration and translation. Variants to the "master text" are provided either on page (major variants) or at the back of the volume (minor variants).
Each text edition is normally supplied with a brief introduction containing general information. This is followed by a catalogue containing basic information about all exemplars. This includes museum and excavation numbers (the symbol + is added between fragments that belong to the same object), provenance, lines preserved, and indication of whether or not the inscription has been collated (c = collated with the original, (c) = partially collated with the original, p = collated by means of a photograph, (p) = partially collated from a photograph; and n = not collated). The next section is normally a commentary containing further technical information and notes. The bibliography then follows. Items are arranged chronologically, earliest to latest, with notes in parentheses after each bibliographic entry. These notes indicate the exemplars with which the item is concerned and the nature of the publication, using the following key words: photo, copy, edition, translation, study, and provenance. Certain standard reference works (e.g., the various volumes of "Keilschriftbibliographie" and "Register Assyriologie" published in Orientalia and Archiv für Orientforschung respectively; Borger, HKL 1–3; AHw; CAD; and Seux, ERAS) are not normally cited, although they were essential in the collecting and editing of these texts. While the bibliographies should contain all major relevant items, they are not necessarily totally exhaustive; a vast amount of scattered literature exists on many of the inscriptions edited in this volume and much of this literature is of only limited scholarly interest.
As noted earlier, a distinction is made between major and minor variants to a "master text"; the major variants are placed at the bottom of the page and the minor variants at the back of the book. In brief, major variants are essentially non-orthographic in nature, while minor variants are orthographic variations. Orthographic variants of proper names may at times be significant and thus on occasion these will also appear on the page as major variants. Complete transliterations of all exemplars in the style of musical scores are found in the pdf on Oracc at http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/scores/ and thus any reader who finds the notes on variants insufficient for his/her needs may check the full reading of any exemplar (the pdfs of the scores for previous RINAP volumes are also now available on Oracc). Such scores, however, are not normally given for bricks and seal inscriptions. Objects whose attribution to a particular text is not entirely certain are given exemplar numbers that are followed by an asterisk (*); for example, K 1716+ is regarded as text no. 3 (Prism B) ex. 2*, since it is uncertain that it is an exemplar of that text or text no. 4 (Prism D). Moreover, these exemplars are listed in separate catalogues (Catalogue of Uncertain Exemplars), beneath the main catalogue.
Several photographs are included in this volume. The selection includes some of the best preserved inscriptions on clay prisms, as well as several fragments of clay prisms and a fragment of a clay vertical cylinder. There are several photographs of the king's inscriptions written on the wall slabs of the palaces at Nineveh, and there are images of a lapis-lazuli tablet, a stone tablet, and a glazed brick. These are intended to show a few of the object types upon which Ashurbanipal's inscriptions were written and to aid the reader in understanding the current state of preservation of some of the inscriptions.
As is the normal practice for transliterating cuneiform inscriptions, lower case Roman is used for Sumerian and lower case italics for Akkadian; logograms in Akkadian texts appear in capitals. The system of sign values in Borger, Mesopotamisches Zeichenlexikon, is generally followed. Italics in the English translation indicate either an uncertain translation or a word in the original language. In general, the rendering of personal names follows the PNA; however, the names of Babylonian rulers follow the spelling used in RIMB 2 and those of Egyptian rulers are based on Borger, BIWA (who follows Onasch, ÄAT 27).
There are several differences between the RIM and RINAP styles. Among these, the most notable is that all partially preserved or damaged signs, regardless of how they are broken, now appear between half brackets (⸢ and ⸣). Thus, no partially preserved sign has square brackets ([ and ]) inserted in its transliteration; for example, [DINGI]R and LUGA[L KU]R appear in the transliteration as ⸢DINGIR⸣ and ⸢LUGAL KUR⸣ respectively. This change was made to ensure compatibility of the online RINAP editions with the standards of the Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus (Oracc), the parent site and project where RINAP Online is housed. This change was implemented in the print version in order to present identical editions in RINAP 5 and RINAP Online. Note, however, that the translations may appear more damaged than their corresponding transliterations indicate, as the translations were prepared according to standard Assyriological practices; for example, ⸢DINGIR⸣ (= [DINGI]R) and ⸢LUGAL KUR⸣ (= LUGA[L KU]R) are translated as "[the go]d" and "king [of the lan]d," and not "the god" and "king of the land."
For RINAP 5, there is a small departure from previous volumes in the information provided in the catalogues: the dimensions are excluded. This decision was made primarily because a large number of objects were collated from high resolution images. Because these pieces were not examined directly from the original, the authors were not in a position to record the heights, widths, and thicknesses of many of the prism and tablet fragments edited here.
In addition to the indices of museum and excavation numbers and selected publications found in RIM volumes, the RINAP volumes also contain indices of proper names (personal names, topographical names, and divine names). Searchable online versions of the manuscripts are maintained on Oracc by MOCCI (Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative). Web versions of the editions are also hosted on CDLI (Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative).
Philadelphia, May 2018
G. Frame, Editor-in-Chief
Grant Frame
Grant Frame, 'Editorial Notes', RINAP 5: The Royal Inscriptions of Ashurbanipal, Aššur-etel-ilāni, and Sîn-šarra-iškun, The RINAP/RINAP 5 Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2019 [http://oracc.org/rinap/rinap5/rinap51frontmatter/editorialnotes/]