As has been said about all of the volumes in this series, the preparation of the book has taken far longer than expected, partly because of the high number of inscriptions of Ashurbanipal; for Part 1 alone, over 700 objects (including a few with approximately 1,300 lines of text each) had to be collated. The delay was compounded by the unexpected closure of the Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia (RIM) Project resulting in a long period when no research was done at all. Grant Frame, with the encouragement of Erle Leichty, rescued the Ashurbanipal project in 2007 when he founded the Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period (RINAP) Project at the University of Pennsylvania with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The authors are extremely grateful to Professors Frame and Leichty for their initiative. There were further delays between 2008 and 2014, when Jamie Novotny assisted Grayson, Leichty, and Yamada in completing RINAP 3/1–2, RINAP 4, and RINAP 1. Thus, renewed work on RINAP 5 only began again in late 2014, with a minor pause in August–September 2015 when Novotny moved to Munich and Jeffers joined the project.
New editions of the complete corpus of inscriptions of Ashurbanipal and his successors had been planned from the inception of the RIM Project in 1981. In 1988, Laurence Shiff was assigned the task of preparing RIMA 8, Ashurbanipal and His Successors (668–612 BC). The publication was envisioned as a four-volume work: Part 1 was to include the early annals (665–648), Part 2 the later annals (647–643), Part 3 the summary inscriptions, and Part 4 the miscellaneous texts. The books were to be published between 1993 and 2000. In 1989, Shiff collated all of the pieces in the British Museum (London) that were to appear in Part 1. By the end of June 1990, significant progress had been made on Parts 1 and 3, little progress on Part 2 had been undertaken, and only a cursory review of the Part 4 texts had been made. In the early 1990s, Shiff left Assyriology to run the family business and Pamela Gerardi, a recent Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, replaced him. Shiff's notes and computer files were handed over to her to continue the task of editing the inscriptions. In January 1995, Gerardi made a short collation trip to the British Museum.
Work on RIMA 8 was completely rebooted in late 1996, shortly after Borger's BIWA appeared. That scholar's significant contributions to the corpus were intended to serve as the foundation for the books. Around that time, Grayson asked Grant Frame, Douglas Frayne, Erle Leichty, Simo Parpola, and Ron Sweet to assist Gerardi. Sweet (then the editor-in-chief of RIM) took over the day-to-day management of the volume. Frame and Frayne, as well as Grayson himself, were to work on the texts once they had finished their then-current tasks, the completion of the Sargon II corpus, the Presargonic inscriptions, and the Sennacherib texts respectively. Parpola (the Director of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project) was to prepare the translations. In 1997, Karljürgen Feuerherm was hired as a part-time student assistant to begin entering Borger's handwritten transliterations of the numerous Prism F and A exemplars into a digital format. In 1998, Sweet spent six weeks in the British Museum collating the principal exemplars of Prism F, as well as a few other inscriptions. In 1999, Jamie Novotny took over the task of entering transliterations of Ashurbanipal's inscriptions; he started with Prisms B, D, C, Kh, and T, before moving on to the numerous tablets published by T. Bauer in his two-volume Asb. Between 1999 and 2003, approximately 95% of the complete corpus of Ashurbanipal's inscriptions had been entered into Microsoft Word files.
In late 2000, Novotny started a dissertation on Ashurbanipal's building projects at Ḫarrān and, as part of that study, he examined, collated, and edited numerous inscriptions of that Assyrian king. Several collation trips to the British Museum (London) and the Oriental Institute (Chicago) were made in 2001 and 2002. After finishing his dissertation in 2003, Novotny continued working on RIMA 8 part-time; much of his time was spent helping Leichty with the then RIMA 7 (Esarhaddon) volume. In 2004, Novotny left the field of Assyriology, but continued working on Ashurbanipal's inscriptions in his spare time. Living in Chicago afforded him the opportunity to collate texts in the Oriental Institute. In 2007, when he returned to Assyriology by taking a term post at Brown University, Novotny set his sights on finishing RIMA 8. From August 2007 to June 2009, significant progress was made; first drafts of the translations of all of the prisms were prepared. In collaboration with Greta Van Buylaere, editions of numerous texts written on tablets were completed; Van Buylaere kindly collated many pieces in the British Museum. The preparation of the material, however, was put on hold when Novotny started work at the RINAP Project in 2009; priority was given to completing the volumes of inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III, Shalmaneser V, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon. Work on RINAP 5 (formerly RIMA 8) resumed in mid-2014. The project was initially funded by the University of Pennsylvania in 2014–15 and then by the National Endowment for the Humanities (2015 onwards). Beginning in August 2015, Novotny's work on Ashurbanipal's inscriptions has also been supported by LMU Munich and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation through the establishment of the Alexander von Humboldt Chair for Ancient History of the Near and Middle East (Karen Radner). In August 2015, Joshua Jeffers took over Novotny's duties as the Research Specialist for the RINAP Project. The present volume is the result of the collaboration of Novotny and Jeffers.
As for the division of labor, Novotny collated the exemplars of text nos. 1–8, 10, and 12–58 in the British Museum, as well as all of the Ashurbanipal material in the Oriental Institute (Chicago) and Vorderasiatisches Museum (Berlin); prepared the master texts of text nos. 1–57 and 61–71 and the scores of text nos. 1–8, 10, 13, 15, 20, 23, and 68–69; translated all of the inscriptions into English; wrote the book's introduction, all of the text introductions, most of the commentaries, and the bulk of the on-page notes to text nos. 1–8, 10, and 12–58; prepared the catalogues, the preliminary bibliographies, and some of the front and back material. Jeffers collated most of the exemplars of text no. 9 and all of the copies of text nos. 11, 59–60, and 65–70 in the British Museum; prepared the scores of text nos. 9, 11, and 59–60 and updated the master texts of those five inscriptions; wrote almost all of the on-page notes of text nos. 9 and 11 and several of the notes for the other inscriptions; added most of the bibliography entries for publications appearing after 1994; and prepared some of the back material, especially the minor variants.
Work on the present corpus of texts necessitated extensive travel for collation of previously published inscriptions and for examination of unpublished material. The authors wish to thank the various museums and museum authorities that have cooperated in the preparation of this book. First, they would like to thank the directors, keepers, curators, and assistants of the Vorderasiatisches Museum (Berlin), the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (Chicago), the British Museum (London), and the Louvre Museum (Paris). Specifically, the authors express their gratitude to John Brinkman, John Curtis, Walter Farber, Irving Finkel, Joachim Marzahn, Jonathan Taylor, and Christopher Walker. These colleagues, and their staff, have been extremely helpful and have extended to us every courtesy and assistance. Secondly, they would like to thank the Oriental Institute (specifically Susanne Paulus) and the Trustees of the British Museum for allowing the RINAP Project to publish photographs of objects bearing Ashurbanipal inscriptions.
As usual with a volume in this series, numerous individuals aided in the production of the volume in some way. Since the preparation of this book has spanned more than two decades, it is impossible to name everyone who has contributed to RINAP 5/1 and thus any omissions are unintentional. While the authors have collated most of the texts themselves, other scholars have kindly collated some texts, provided information on pieces, or aided in some way. These include Israel Ephʿal, Jeanette Fincke, Grant Frame, Pamela Gerardi, Kirk Grayson, Enrique Jiménez, Mikko Luukko, Karen Radner, Micheal Roaf, Laurence Shiff, Ronald Sweet, Jonathan Taylor, Greta Van Buylaere, and Christopher Walker.
In Toronto, during the RIM years, and later in Philadelphia and Munich, several individuals contributed to the technical preparation of the volume and they deserve credit for performing tedious and time-consuming tasks. For the Toronto stage of production (1997–2004), the authors offer their gratitude to Karljürgen Feuerherm for entering the provisional transliterations of exemplars of Prisms F and A from Borger's microfiche into a digital format; to Ronald Sweet for collating a few of the principal Prism F exemplars in the British Museum; and to Hope Grau and Jill Ruby for performing various other tasks. For the Munich and Philadelphia stages of production (2014–2017), the authors would like to thank the student assistants who helped in the completion of the volume: Yehonatan Heshkoviz, Daniel Patterson, and Irene Sibbing Plantholt. Last, but by no means least, special thanks must be given to Steve Tinney for undertaking the arduous task of generating the final camera-ready copy and converting and preparing the texts for the online version.
Members of the RINAP editorial board (especially Grant Frame and Karen Radner) and the project consultants offered helpful suggestions at various times near the completion of the volume. Their time, care, and generosity are greatly appreciated.
Erle Leichty†, to whom this book is dedicated, sadly passed away prior to the completion of this manuscript. Leichty served as a member of the RINAP Editorial Board from 2011 (after the publication of his RINAP 4 volume) until his death in 2016. His critical feedback, which stemmed from his vast knowledge of Mesopotamian history and secondary literature, always improved the quality of the books reviewed by him. The authors would like to acknowledge here their gratitude to Erle not only for his time, service, and generosity discussing all matters Neo-Assyrian, but also for his contributions to Assyriology.
The authors' appreciation goes out to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Historisches Seminar - Alte Geschichte), the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the University of Toronto, the University of Pennsylvania, the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (Research Collections Grant), and several private individuals, in particular Laurence Shiff and Malcolm Horsnell, whose financial support allowed for their travel to the numerous museums cited above and provided the funding necessary for them to conduct research in Ashurbanipal's inscriptions and to publish this volume.
Last, but by no means least, the authors wish to record their gratitude for the ongoing support and encouragement of their families: Denise Bolton, Robert and Diana Novotny, and Jennifer Novotny; Jordan Wesolowski, Dave and Kathy Jeffers, and Heather Zeigler.
Munich and Philadelphia, May 2018
Jamie Novotny
Joshua Jeffers
Jamie Novotny & Joshua Jeffers
Jamie Novotny & Joshua Jeffers, 'Preface', RINAP 5: The Royal Inscriptions of Ashurbanipal, Aššur-etel-ilāni, and Sîn-šarra-iškun, The RINAP/RINAP 5 Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2020 [http://oracc.org/rinap/rinap5/rinap51frontmatter/preface/]