Maintenance of Temples
Chapter 4 contains texts that establish offerings to be made to various temples and/or prescribe how they are to be used or distributed. Many texts specify who is to make the offering, what is to be given, and when. At times some of the details are replaced by the phrase ša ṭuppišu, "according to its tablet," which we take to mean "as specified elsewhere" (69 r. 18, 20, 21; 80 r. 4). In some cases an official is assigned the duty of collecting and distributing the offerings for a particular temple (68 r. 20-21), a group of temples (76: 16), or all temples (77 r. iii 1-8).
No. 68 is a decree of offerings and expenditures for the temple of Šarratnipha in Assur. Postgate maintains that this is a copy from the time of Shalmaneser III (858-824) of an original text from the reign of Tukulti-Ninurta I (1244-1208) and that the note starting on r. 22 is probably a late addition by Shalmaneser III as is the votive dedication at the end.[[41]] This analysis agrees with all the known facts, and we see no reason to modify it.
No. 69-70 is a decree by Adad-nerari III of expenditures for various festivals and ceremonies in the Aššur Temple plus various offerings and gifts by the king, the magnates, provincial governors and various other individuals or groups. The transliteration is a composite text based on three different tablets.[[42]] Significant progress on the text has been made since the last edition,[[43]] principally by the publication of a fragment of the text in the Kelsey Museum by M. Stolper,[[44]] but also through the collation of the original texts in Berlin for the current edition.[[45]] Despite these advances, large portions of the text remain obscure, particularly the badly damaged central section (46-r. 13), which probably contains grand totals of the expenditures and the transition from the expenditures section to the offerings section and which might explain the nature and purpose of the offerings and dispositions stipulated in the latter part of the text, and the section beginning with r. 23, which, although the text is almost completely preserved, still is not well understood.
No. 71 is another decree of Adad-nerari III, this time detailing regular offerings (ginû) for the Aššur Temple from various cities. Nos. 72 and 73 probably contain portions of the text of this document although no. 73 is apparently a prism fragment. The structure of this text parallels that of nos. 69-70, but its most striking feature is the inclusion of a prohibition against giving "these towns, fields, buildings, orchards and people" to anyone except the person in charge of the Aššur Temple. This injunction is completely out of place here as the text does not deal with towns, fields, buildings, orchards or people, but it is identical to a passage found in no. 1, which does deal with these things. Since both texts are said to be copies of tablets "sealed with the seal of Aššur and Ninurta," one wonders if the text of all these tablets may have been in the same place (or possibly even on the same tablet or prism) making it possible for the copyist to have erroneously copied this passage onto the wrong tablet.
FIG. 1. Courtier carrying pomegranates (reign of Sennacherib). ORIGINAL DRAWING IV, 69.
Another point deserves mention in connection with this text and that is the term athusu. The writing GIŠ.at-hu-su appears in II. 6, 9, 15 and 17, in the first instance followed by ša GIŠ.NU.ÚR.MA.MEŠ, "of pomegranates," and thereafter by a ditto mark or nothing. Weidner, AfO 21 (1966) 41, n. 25, was unable to provide any interpretation, reading simply GIŠ.AD.HU.KUŠ. That the writing is in fact syllabic is shown by the variant spelling GIŠ.it-hu-su in SAA 11 36 i 26, also connected with pomegranates. Neither form of the word, athusu or ithusu, is to be found in either of the dictionaries nor in any other lexical sources. However, the fact that all occurrences of the word are associated with pomegranates calls to mind the representation of a courtier using a device to carry pomegranates in a relief from the time of Sennacherib (see Fig. 1). While this device could be a rope, it is at least equally likely that it is made from a strip of flexible wood bent into a circle and then fastened together along most of its length. It is clear from the illustration that the pomegranates are attached by their stems to the device — if it is a rope then the stems would be inserted between the twisted fibres of the rope; if it is a stick, they would be inserted along the face where the two halves join. While the only connection between the picture and the word athusu/ithusu is pomegranates, we still feel that this is sufficient to tentatively identify athusu/ithusu as a "carrying-stick (for pomegranates)."[[46]]
In Nos. 80 and 81 we meet with a slightly different category of text. These are schedules detailing offerings and their distribution, not royal decrees. However, if the other texts in this volume have any significance, then these texts must have been derived from royal decrees, perhaps by collecting all the pertinent information from various sources into a "working document" for the temple administration. No. 80 was clearly a "standing order" for wine that covered the entire year, specifying the offerings to be made to the Aššur Temple and what they are to be used for, making a kind of "balanced account."[[47]] No. 81 details the distribution of cuts of meat from what are presumably animals for offerings to various priests and temple personnel, but since the beginning and end of the text are lost it is not possible to say if it was a balanced account or how extensive its coverage was. It is clearly divided into two sections, one dealing with sacrificial bulls and calves, and another dealing with sheep.
Part of the offerings in no. 81 are destined for the royal tomb complex and the mausoleum of Ešarra-hamat, the wife of Esarhaddon.[[48]] There seems little doubt that the reading of É MAN.MEŠ MEŠ-tim should be bēt sarrāni ma'dūti "House of Many Kings." Not only is this an apt name for a group of royal tombs, but as Menzel Tempel T22 points out it is an excellent pun on bēt sarrāni mētūti "House of Dead Kings" and precisely the kind of euphemistic paronomasia that Assyrian scribes took delight in. The reference to the mausoleum of Ešarra-hamat dates the text in or after the reign of Esarhaddon.[[49]]
41 NARGD, pp. I 20-21: cf. Menzel Tempel T I 0.
42 Details will be found in the critical apparatus. Note: variants to the composite text will be found only in the critical apparatus and are not given in the glossary.
43 NARGD 42-44; Menzel Tempel did not offer a new transliteration, but made extensive comments. To our knowledge. a translation of the full text has not previously been offered.
44 AfO 27 (1973) 83-85.
45 These are generally noted in the critical apparatus. One improvement that needs some further explanation is an incorrect linking of lines from the various tablets in the composite text of NARGD. In line r.31' of the NARGD transliteration (r.21 in the present edition). the du of x]x-du šá ṭup-pi-šú of source (a) was linked with the du of Ù.sa-me-du [ of source (c) yielding an erroneous composite of Ù.sa-me-du šá ṭup-pi-šú. Collation has shown that x]x-du of (a) is most likely ṭ]i-du (for ṭiṭṭu "clay'') and that it links with the first preserved line of (c), which, contrary to NARGD, does not correspond to the first line of the section.
46 One would hope for some etymological confirmation, but none comes immediately to mind. The alternation of initial a and i suggests a foreign word (cf. e.g., asmarû and ismarû "lance''), but this is not a necessity. The form of ithusu suggests a Gt-stem passive participle, but if so, then the form is Babylonian (pitrusu) not Assyrian (pitarsu). JNP suggests a derivation from the Gt stem of e'ēlu ... to bind." as a possibility.
47 A number of other texts exhibit this property to a greater or lesser degree (e.g., nos. 68, 77). Unfortunately, since none of these texts is complete it is impossible to say how full or how accurate the accounting was.
48 On the mausoleum of Ešarra-hamat see Borger Esarh. § 10.
49 Specifically. after her death on 5/6 Adar 672 (Grayson Chronicles 85:22 and 1 27:23).
Laura Kataja & Robert Whiting
Laura Kataja & Robert Whiting, 'Maintenance of Temples', Grants, Decres and Gifts of the Neo-Assyrian Period, SAA 12. Original publication: Helsinki, Helsinki University Press, 1995; online contents: SAAo/SAA12 Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2020 [http://oracc.org/saao/saa12/edictsanddecrees/maintenanceoftemples/]