Tablet Types

Outlines of nos. 1-3 and 5-9
Note: Broken lines indicare reconstructions, solid lines actual outlines and rulings drawn by scribes"

Both tablet types are well known from the Ninevite archives. The horizontal format (u'iltu) was used for notes, reports, receipts, and memoranda - in short, for information primarily meant for immediate use, not for permanent storage.^[[276]] The vertical, multi-column format (ṭuppu) was used for treaties, census lists, balanced accounts and inventories of treasury, as well as for collections of all sorts, including royal decrees and ordinances, recipes, etc. - in short, for documents specifically drawn up for archival storage and reference purposes. ^[[277]] The two tablet types rarely overlap in content, but there is evidence that information recorded on horizontal tablets was archivized by copying them onto multi-column tablets, whereafter the originals were routinely destroyed. ^[[278]] The archival documents normally have a short heading, short scribal notes interspersed within the text, and a date or colophon at the end. The u 'iltus also usually have short notes added to the text, mostly specifying the source of the information.

The tablets of the prophecy corpus share these characteristics. We can thus conclude that nos. 5-8 report freshly received oracles, whereas nos. 1-4 are copies made from reports like nos. 5-8. No. 9 also has to be considered an archival copy because of its vertical format and the formulation of its authorship indication (see below). The careful finish of the tablet, the elaborate wording of the oracle, and the eponym date found at the end likewise clearly distinguish it from the reports. The only respect in which no. 9 formally differs from nos. 1-4 is its single-column format. However, the multi-column format would have been purposeless in a tablet accommodating one oracle only. The 1:2 side-length ratio of the tablet is in perfect agreement with the one-column archival standard of Nineveh.

The quotation particle mā introducing the oracles in nos. 6-8 and 10-11 confirms that they were not written down by the prophets themselves but by professional scribes. ^[[279]] This is also made clear by the colophon of no. 6.

276 See LAS II (1983) p. 65 no. 60:7; L. Kataja, SAAB I (1987) 65; and K. Radner, "The Relation Between Format and Content of Neo-Assyrian Texts," in R. Mattila (ed.), Nineveh 612 BC. The Glory and Fall of the Assyrian Empire (Helsinki 1995), pp. 70 and 72ff.

277 For treaties, census lists, balanced accounts, and inventories of treasury see the diagrams in SAA 2, p. XLIVf, ZA 64 (1975) 102f, SAAB 6 (1990) 19ff, JNES 42 (1983) 3 (books), as well as the photographs in SAA 7, pls. Illf. For collections of royal decrees and ordinances, see SAA 12 77 and PKTA 39-40; for collections of recipes, see Oppenheim Glass p. 23 and figs. 1-10, etc.

278 Cf. Veenhof, CRRAI 30 (1986) 7, and Van De Mieroop, ibid. p. 94.

279 Cf. Jer. 36:2ff: "In the fourth year of Jehoiakim ... this word came to Jeremiah from the LORD: 'Take a scroll and write on it every word that I have spoken to you about Jerusalem and Judah and on the nations, from the day that I first spoke to you in the reign of Josiah down to the present day. Perhaps the house of Judah will be warned of the calamity that I am planning to bring to them ... ' So Jeremiah called Baruch son of Neriah, and he wrote on the scroll at Jeremiah's dictation all the words which the LORD had spoken to him. He gave Baruch this instruction: 'I am prevented from going to the LORD's house. You must go there in my place on a fast-day and read the words of the LORD in the hearing of the people from the scroll you have written at my dictation."' On this passage and a similar one from Mari see A. Malamat, "New Light from Mari (ARM XXVI) on Biblical Prophecy III: A Prophet's Need of a Scribe," in D. Garrone and F. Israel (eds.), Storia e tradizioni di Israele: scritti in onore di J. Alberto Soggin (Brescia 1991), pp. 185-8.

Simo Parpola

Simo Parpola, 'Tablet Types ', 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/theprophecycorpus/tablettypes/]