Few of these documents are dated. Two of these belong in the reign of Sargon (nos. 34 and 79), and others can certainly or probably be assigned to his reign on internal criteria (nos. 45, 57, 79 and 86). One textile docket is dated to Esarhaddon (no. 94), and six pieces to Assurbanipal (nos. 49, 51, 59, 61, 93, 118). The single post-canonical date comes from the Nabû Temple (no. 81 ). In other cases Parpola has shown that in general texts from the reign of Sargon were stored and found separately from those of Esarhaddon and his son (see below). In so far as they represent royal archives, there is a presumption that they would not have been written at Nineveh before the transfer of the capital there at the accession of Sennacherib. The presence of texts from Sargon's reign must be explained in the same way as that of the many letters from his reign (cf. the comments of Parpola in CRRAI 30 (1986), 233 with note 52). Among the undated texts in this volume there are none which stand out as earlier, either from their sign forms or from the general size and quality of the tablets and script. Admittedly, there are few pre-Sargon tablets for comparison, but provisionally we may perhaps assume that the accession of Sargon in 721 is the upper limit. As for the lower limit, although the latest datable tablet is from 648 B.C., there is no reason why the occasional text should not be considerably later, and it is therefore impossible to suggest a certain terminus before 612 B.C. when the walls of Nineveh were breached by the eastern hordes.
It is probable that the majority of the texts in this volume come from the reign of Esarhaddon and the early years of Assurbanipal. Although few can be definitely attributed to a specific year, there are several groups of texts which obviously belong together, both from their format and content, and from the occasional prosopographical connection. Until the remainder of the Nineveh letters and administrative texts is presented in later volumes of this series, it would be premature to attempt any more detailed prosopographical study, so that we may merely emphasise that the external evidence mentioned in the next paragraph for the provenance of texts numbered 83-1-18 supports the internal indications that many of them belong together as an archival group.
F.M. Fales & J.N. Postgate
F.M. Fales & J.N. Postgate, 'Dating', Imperial Administrative Records, Part I: Palace and Temple Administration, SAA 7. Original publication: Helsinki, Helsinki University Press, 1992; online contents: SAAo/SAA07 Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2021 [http://oracc.org/saao/saa07/introduction/dating/]