Numerous royal inscriptions of Ashurbanipal have been recovered and most of these are housed in museum collections and private collections around the world; the British Museum (London) and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago contain the bulk of these texts. Some stone objects of his that were discovered by R. Campbell Thompson in the 1920s and 30s were left in the field and reburied after being copied; some of these were duplicates of better preserved inscriptions, while others were deemed unsuitable for transport back to London (presumably because they were heavy and/or badly damaged). Clay and stone objects bearing Ashurbanipal's name originate from a broad geographic area, with most coming from the Assyrian heartland (Nineveh and Kalḫu) and northern Babylonia (Babylon and Nippur). The present corpus comprises excavated objects and objects purchased from local dealers.
Because of the huge number of texts and the sheer length of some of the compositions (a few of which are over 1,300 lines long), the inscriptions of Ashurbanipal are edited in two volumes. The division of the corpus is somewhat arbitrary as the authors have tried to maintain, to the best of their ability, a balance between Part 1 and Part 2 by including major, well-preserved inscriptions in both volumes. The present publication includes all historical inscriptions on clay prisms, clay cylinders, and wall slabs and other stone objects from Nineveh, Aššur, and Kalḫu, while the second part will include the texts of Ashurbanipal preserved on clay tablets and all of his Babylonian inscriptions, as well as the royal compositions of Aššur-etel-ilāni and Sîn-šarra-iškun. A major portion of Part 1 (nos. 1–23) corresponds to Borger, Beiträge zum Inschriftenwerk Assurbanipals: die Prismenklassen A, B, C = K, D, E, F, G, H, J und T sowie andere Inschriften pp. 1–296; the historical texts written on tablets, however, are excluded here, as they will be included in Part 2. The inscriptions are arranged by object type (prisms, cylinders, then stone slabs, etc.) and, when possible, chronologically from earliest to latest. This generally follows the presentation of texts in Grayson and Novotny, RINAP 3/1–2 and Leichty, RINAP 4.
Most of the inscriptions included in Part 1 originate from Nineveh; text nos. 7 (Prism Kh), 12 (Prism H), and 13 (Prism J) are from Kalḫu (Biblical Calah) and Babylon. A few prism fragments were discovered at Aššur and all of these are inscribed with copies of text no. 9 (Prism F), a well-known inscription from Nineveh recording work on the House of Succession.[6] There is also a stone tablet (text no. 61) that comes from Aššur.
6 These are text no. 9 (Prism F) exs. 206–210.
Jamie Novotny & Joshua Jeffers
Jamie Novotny & Joshua Jeffers, 'Texts Included in Part 1', 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/rinap51introduction/textsincludedinpart1/]