This volume includes all the cuneiform documents thought to have been found on the acropolis at Nineveh dealing with the internal administration of the palaces, and associated subjects. The great bulk of this material was first published in Johns, Assyrian Deeds and Documents, mostly in Vol. II (1901) but some already in Vol. I (1898), nevertheless this is the first serious attempt at an edition of most of these texts. In addition, we are able to include a few pieces excavated subsequently by the two British Museum expeditions of 1904-5 and 1929, a single tablet from a private collection (no. 210), and other usually small fragments recently identified in the Kuyunjik collection. A number of joins have been made within the material since Johns prepared his copies, both by Johns himself and by others; of the recent joins the majority have been made by Dr. T. Kwasman (cf. SAAB 4, 77-78). Copies of fragments not previously published in copy have been prepared by Postgate and appear at the end of the volume.
One or two of these texts could equally well have been reserved for the second volume of documents dealing with provincial and military administration (e.g. nos. 127 and 128). Similarly, we may well have left for that volume pieces which could just as well have been included here. The criterion for inclusion here was little more than an intuition that a tablet was concerned with internal palace administration, or that it showed some similarity to such a tablet and so belonged with it. Texts concerned with temple offerings claim their place here because the largest group (of Assur Temple offerings) seems to be closely associated with the royal family, and the other offerings texts have been included accordingly.
There is no right way of arranging texts of this sort, especially when they include small fragments. In some groups the few dated pieces have been placed first, and on the whole large, multi-column, tablets or fragments of them have preceded single column pieces. But neither of these criteria gives sufficient guidance for the detailed ordering, and again we have simply tried as much as possible to put like with like and not worry too much.
Both the age of Johns' copies and the technical difficulty of the texts themselves have necessitated unusually heavy collation. Some of the texts were collated by Postgate in the 1970's for his editions in TCAE; more than half of the remaining texts in the volume were collated by S. Parpola in 1982. The results of both were incorporated in the Helsinki archive which forms the basis of the transliterations. For the current edition each text was collated again by Postgate: that is to say, the entire text was matched to the transliterations, not just passages which seemed doubtful. This is essential, if only because the ADD copies have not infrequently omitted whole lines or even sections of a text. However, a first collation is often insufficient, and broken or difficult passages have often been checked two or three times. We do not however imagine that these are definitive: every further collation yields fresh results. A number of passages were collated by Parpola from the photographs provided for the plates and are so marked in the critical apparatus.
An ideal would have been to recopy every piece. This would have been especially valuable in this case because the format of administrative texts, with their columns and rulings, often implicitly conveys information not present in the words alone, and the ADD copies do not usually transmit this. We must crave indulgence for shirking this massive commitment of time and effort, but the photographs on Plates I-XI may help the reader to gain a general idea of the appearance of the texts in the different groups.
Results of collation are indicated with exclamation marks. Single exclamation marks indicate corrections to published copies, double exclamation marks, scribal errors. Question marks indicate uncertain or questionable readings. Broken portions of text and all restorations are enclosed within square brackets. Parentheses enclose items omitted by ancient scribes or explanatory material inserted by the editors. An asterisk (*) after the figure 4 (and occasionally other figures) means that the figure is written with horizontal, rather than the usual vertical wedges.
The transliterations were in principle established by Postgate, and the translations by Fales, in each case with frequent input from the other editor and from the editorial staff in Helsinki. The Introduction is largely the work of Postgate. In the translations rather than leave a row of dots or repeat the Akkadian word, we have adopted a conventional English equivalent for certain frequently recurring technical terms, while marking their uncertainty by italicizing the words in question: readers are asked not to take such renderings as a firm proposal on our part.
Uncertain or conjectural translations are indicated by italics. Interpretative additions to the translation are enclosed within parentheses. All restorations are enclosed within square brackets. Untranslatable passages are indicated by dots. For the Aššur Temple offerings, a score of all the texts was created by Parpola which made the proper reconstructions obvious in almost all cases.
Month names are rendered by their Hebrew equivalents, followed by a Roman numeral (in parentheses) indicating the place of the month within the lunar year. Personal, divine and geographical names are rendered by English or Biblical equivalents if a well-established equivalent exists (e.g., Esarhaddon, Nineveh); otherwise, they are given in transcription with length marks deleted. The normalization of West-Semitic names generally follows the conventions of Zadok West Semites. West Semitic phonemes not expressed by the writing system (/o/ etc.) have generally not been restituted in the normalizations, and the sibilant system follows the NA orthography.
The rendering of professions is a compromise between the use of accurate but impractical Assyrian terms and inaccurate but practical modern or classical equivalents. For the numerous vessels and containers that occur in the texts, an attempt has been made to translate each with a separate term. Again, it is not asserted that this terminology is correct or that it corresponds to modern usage.
The primary purpose of the critical apparatus is to support the readings and translations established in the edition, and it consists largely of references to collations of questionable passages, scribal mistakes corrected in the transliteration, and alternative interpretations or restorations of ambiguous passages. Restorations based on easily verifiable evidence (e.g., parallel passages found in the text itself) are generally not explained in the apparatus; conjectural restorations only if their conjectural nature is not apparent from italics in the translation.
Collations given in copy at the end of the volume are referred to briefly as "see coll."
The critical apparatus does contain some additional information relevant to the interpretation of the texts, but it is not a commentary. Comments are kept to a minimum, and are mainly devoted to problems in the text, elucidation of lexical items or Akkadian expressions necessarily left untranslated. The historical information contained in the texts is generally not commented upon.
The glossary and indices, electronically generated, generally follow the pattern of the previous volumes. The glossary contains all lexically identifiable words occurring in the texts with the exception of suffixless numbers 1-99. The references to professions attached to the index of personal names have been provided by a computer programme written by Simo Parpola; it is hoped that these will be helpful in the prosopographical analysis of the texts, but it should be noted that the program omits certain deficiently written professions and the references are accordingly not absolutely complete.
Logo grams without a known Akkadian equivalent are included in alphabetical order in the glossary written in small capitals. The glossary and indices were prepared by Parpola and checked by the editors.
F.M. Fales & J.N. Postgate
F.M. Fales & J.N. Postgate, 'On the Present Edition', 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/onthepresentedition/]