Several clay cylinders discovered at Nineveh, including a few found by L.W. King, appear to bear the same inscription of Sîn-šarra-iškun. That text, at least according to one exemplar, records the renovation of the western entrance of the "Palace Without a Rival" (South-West Palace) at Nineveh. Sîn-šarra-iškun calls his great-grandfather's royal residence the "Alabaster House," which undoubtedly refers to its numerous sculpted and inscribed limestone slabs and colossal apotropaic figures. In addition to boasting that he rebuilt that part of the palace from its foundations to its crenellations, Sîn-šarra-iškun claims to have expanded the building's structure beyond what it had been in the reign of Sennacherib. One copy of this text was inscribed in the eponymy of Nabû-tappûtī-alik, the chief eunuch. The inscription is generally referred to in scholarly publications as "Cylinder C."
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Several fragmentarily-preserved clay prisms discovered at Aššur are inscribed with a text stating that Ashurbanipal's son and successor Sîn-šarra-iškun constructed a temple for the god Nabû in that city. The inscription records that the building had been so neglected in the past that Nabû and his consort Tašmētu were forced to live in the (neighboring) temple of the Assyrian Ištar, where they scraped by on meager portions of leftover offerings. In typical Assyrian style, Sîn-šarra-iškun claims that he built the temple from top to bottom. Afterwards, the king reports that he had Nabû and Tašmētu ushered into their newly-constructed home and fêted with an overabundance of food offerings. The text, as far as it is preserved, is a (near or exact) duplicate of Ssi 10. Three exemplars bear dates, but those lines are not sufficiently preserved to identify in which eponym year(s) the prisms were inscribed. Scholars generally refer to this inscription as "Cylinder A."
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A (near or exact) duplicate of Ssi 7 is inscribed on three clay cylinders discovered at Aššur. This inscription fills in several gaps in the prism version of the text, including some details about the alleged building history of Nabû's temple. According to this text, which is also commonly referred to as "Cylinder A" in scholarly publications, Sîn-šarra-iškun had Nabû's temple rebuilt from top to bottom on the foundations of an earlier building, one that had been worked on by the Middle Assyrian kings Shalmaneser I and Aššur-rēša-iši I and the Neo-Assyrian ruler Adad-nārārī III. This statement, however, is contradicted in Ssi 12, which states that the Nabû temple was constructed anew on a vacant plot of land. Since the archaeological record supports what is stated in Ssi 12, one should disregard the building history included in "Cylinder A." It appears that when the building report of this text was drafted, its composer(s) might have believed that there had been an earlier Nabû temple built at Aššur (on that exact spot) and (partly) conflated its building history with that of the Ištar temple; early twentieth-century German excavations have revealed that the foundations of the western part of the Nabû temple were laid above the remains of several earlier temples. Later, when the scribes realized their mistake, references to the temple's history were no longer included in reports of this accomplishment of Sîn-šarra-iškun; compare Ssi 11–12. For further details, see Novotny, Kaskal 11 (2014) pp. 162–165. Ex. 1 was inscribed in the eponymy of Bēl-aḫu-uṣur, the palace overseer.
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A short inscription stating that this son and successor of Ashurbanipal built a temple for the god Nabû at Aššur is inscribed on numerous clay cones. The text claims that Sîn-šarra-iškun had the foundations laid during a favorable month, on an auspicious day, and that the workers performed their work happily. Several of the exemplars were inscribed during the month Tašrītu (VII), in the eponymy of Saʾīlu, the chief cook.
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Numerous clay cylinders discovered in the debris of Ezida ("True House") at Kalḫu are inscribed with a text stating that Sîn-šarra-iškun had (part) of the god Nabû's temple rebuilt; Adad-nārārī III (810–783) is cited as a previous builder. Because the inscription's building report is poorly preserved, the full extent of the renovation project is not entirely certain. The king claims that the work was carried out according to the craft of the incantation priest, that (some of) the foundations were relaid, that he built (part of) the superstructure (presumably from the foundations to the crenellations), did something with its "grand designs," and returned the temple's divine owners Nabû and Tašmētu to their daises. If the inscription is to be believed, the work started in his accession year (627); however, it is very likely that this is just royal rhetoric. The dated cylinders were inscribed in the eponymy of Dādî, the treasurer. In scholarly literature, this text is generally referred to as "Cylinder B."
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Jamie Novotny & Joshua Jeffers
Jamie Novotny & Joshua Jeffers, 'Information on Sîn-šarra-iškun Scores', RINAP Scores, The RINAP Scores sub-project of the RINAP Project, 2023 [http://oracc.org/rinap/scores/sinsharraishkunscores/]