The text part of this volume (transliterations, translations, critical apparatus, glossary and indices) took its final shape in 1993 and essentially dates from that year, although work on it had of course begun much earlier, already in the late sixties. The introduction and the notes were finished in 1994-97. It may be asked whether the time spent on them justifies the four-year delay in the publication of the edition proper, which was in proofs already at the end of 1993. In my opinion it does. There would certainly have been many quicker and much easier ways to finish the introduction. However, in that case the complex background studies included in it, without which the texts make little sense, would still remain to be written. They are needed to make this important corpus of prophecies fully accessible not just to a limited circle of Assyriologists but to specialists in religious studies as well.
I wish to thank the Trustees of the British Museum for permission to publish the previously unpublished prophecy texts as well as the illustrative material and photographs included in this volume. I am indebted to the whole staff of the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities, in particular to Ors. C. B. F. Walker and I. L. Finkel for their help with the photographs, and to Dr. Julian Reade for his help with the illustrations. Professor Othmar Keel of the Institut Biblique, Université de Fribourg, and Dr. Annie Caubet of the Département des Antiquités Orientales, Musée du Louvre, kindly granted publication permission for the objects in their custody used as illustrations in the volume. I am also grateful to Professor Rykle Borger (Göttingen) for communicating to me his join to K 1292 immediately after its discovery, and to Professor Herbert Huffmon (Drew University) for discussing the texts with me on many occasions in the eighties. Professors Ithamar Gruenwald (Tel Aviv), Abraham Malamat (Jerusalem) and Moshe Weinfeld (Jerusalem), and Dr. Martti Nissinen (Helsinki) read the final manuscript and provided important comments and additional references. Ors. Steven Cole and Robert Whiting of the SAA Project read the manuscript from the viewpoint of English and helped with the proofs. Ph. lie. Laura Kataja assisted in the typesetting of the text part. I am very grateful to all of them. Last but not least, I wish to record my indebtedness to Professor Karlheinz Deller (Heidelberg), with whom I worked on the corpus in the early seventies. Our planned joint edition never materialized, but I hope he will find the present volume an acceptable substitute.
I dedicate this book to the memory of my grandfather, the Rev. K. E. Salonen, who understood the significance of Assyriology to biblical studies and whose gentle figure I remember fondly, and to the memory of my mother, Taimi Mirjam Parpola (born Salonen), to whom I had originally hoped to present it as a gift. A devout Christian, she was not disturbed by my work on the origins of Christian beliefs but took an active interest in it until her death. I thought of her often in writing this volume.
Simo Parpola
Simo Parpola, 'Preface', Assyrian Prophecies, SAA 9. Original publication: Helsinki, Helsinki University Press, 1997; online contents: SAAo/SAA09 Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2021 [http://oracc.org/saao/saa09/preface/]