First we would like to thank the editor, Dr. Alasdair Livingstone, for his wholehearted and enthusiastic participation in the project. This book is doubtless not the one that he would have prepared had he set out to produce a work on Assyrian literature ab initio, but the completion of a volume within the somewhat limiting framework of the SAA series format in a timely manner owes much to his willing co-operation. These texts call for much more comment and discussion than can be provided by this format and we fully expect that Dr. Livingstone will provide additional commentary in the near future. One of the goals of the series is to provide Neo-Assyrian texts with the best possible transliterations, and towards this end Dr. Livingstone has made five collation trips to the British Museum in London and one to various museums in Berlin.
The project wishes to express its appreciation to the many institutions that have continued to make the publication of this series a possibility: The British Museum, London; Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin; Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte, Berlin; Musée du Louvre, Paris; and the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft. It must be kept in mind that behind the names of these institutions there are people, too numerous to be thanked individually here, whose work makes possible the access to texts and illustrative material without which the project could not function.
Our thanks are again due to the Olivetti (Finland) Corporation for continuing to provide the project with computer hardware and software, maintenance, and advice; to the Finnish Ministry of Education for providing printing subsidies for the volumes of the series; and last, but hardly least, to the Academy of Finland for the financial support that has made the project a reality.
Helsinki, May 1989
Robert M. Whiting
Robert M. Whiting
Robert M. Whiting, 'Foreword', 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/saa3foreword/]