The Correspondents

The present volume contains letters from a total of 43 individuals identifiable by name or status and a few others whose names have not been preserved. Fourteen of these individuals can be identified certainly as provincial governors; altogether, their letters account for 41.5% of the material. In addition, there are 28 letters from the king, 12 from the crown prince, and 34 from the treasurer of the empire, which all told constitute about one-fourth (24.2%) of the corpus. Thus it can be said that at least 65% of the present correspondence, and probably more, is made up of letters exchanged between the king and officials of the gubernatorial or superior rank. The status of most of the remaining 27 individuals remains largely undetermined; they include a high priest, the treasurer of Sargon's new capital, the king's personal eunuch, vassal rulers (147), a palace superintendent (257), and various military officers (e.g., 155, 162).

Omitting the letters by the king, all the letters are addressed to the king, except the following nine:

Nos. 123, 191 and (probably) 244 to the Grand Vizier (the king's brother) by the governors of Calah, Harran and Naṣibina respectively;

No. 153 to the crown prince;

Nos. 215, 220 and 221 to a (probably very highly placed) individual named Nabû-duru-uṣur, whose status cannot be determined as yet; and Nos. 228 and 232 to the governor (of Calah) and an unidentified individual.

How these letters found their way into the royal archives is explained by the statuses of the addressees, who evidently were all highly placed palace officials or relatives of the king. No. 228, the only exception to this pattern, actually comes from the archive of the governor of Calah and was included in the present volume only because of its affinities with no. 227.

Ordered according to the number of their extant letters, the 'top ten' senders in the present volume appear as follows:

Governor of Assur35
Treasurer34
King28
Governor of Harran17
Governor of Naṣibina15
Governor of Calah13
Crown Prince12
Nabû-dammiq7
Governor of Zobah6
Governor of Raṣappa4

Eight more senders (mostly governors) have four or three extant letters.

From all other senders, there are only two letters or fewer. This picture agrees with the results obtained in the analysis of other segments of the Assyrian royal correspondence (see LAS II p. xvif and ARINH p. 131f.). In general, the more powerful or influential an individual, the more letters from him would be found in the royal archives. On the other hand, one must not forget the role of oral communication and the part chance of discovery and preservation must play in the 'statistics' of the above table. The Governor of Nineveh (with only one extant letter) and the governor of Que (with no extant letters) were hardly less powerful and/or influential than the obscure Nabû-dammiq figuring in the table. Nevertheless, the high profile of the senders with more than ten letters can hardly depend on mere chance.

Simo Parpola

Simo Parpola, 'The Correspondents', The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part I: Letters from Assyria and the West, SAA 1. Original publication: Helsinki, Helsinki University Press, 1987; online contents: SAAo/SAA01 Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2020 [http://oracc.org/saao/saa01/administrativecommunication/correspondents/]

 
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