The ability to write literary letters with high-sounding phraseology, a complex structure and intricate argumentation was cultivated at the Assyrian court. While some of these letters have a high literary quality, they are excluded from the present volume because they remain in the final analysis letters, and not literature.[[17]] The texts given here are not letters in the normal sense, but literary works formed apparently by excerpting sections of eulogy in praise of Assurbanipal from letters, and perhaps improvising similar material to give continuity.
Great ingenuity is exercised in constructing elaborate figurative language. For example, in no. 25 (obv. ii 13-1 4) there is an imaginative allusion to the rules of the royal board game of Ur, or a similar game. Complicated lines of argument are employed which appear convoluted to the modern reader but relate closely to the logic of the Assyrian and Babylonian pseudo-sciences. Typical of this intellectual argumentation is, for example, the section obv. ii 20-24 in no. 25 where a favourable statement about Assurbanipal's reign is made to follow by inference from astronomical observations. The historical events alluded to involve in particular the Šamaš-šumu-ukin wars.
17 See e.g. K. Deller, "Die Briefe des Adad-šum-uṣur," AOAT 1 (1969) 45ff, esp. p. 51.
Alasdair Livingstone
Alasdair Livingstone, 'Literary Letters', Court Poetry and Literary Miscellanea, SAA 3. Original publication: Helsinki, Helsinki University Press, 1989; online contents: SAAo/SAA03 Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2020 [http://oracc.org/saao/saa03/natureandcontent/literaryletters/]