Adad-nerari III

No.1 is a large grant of land to the Aššur Temple by Adad-nerari III. Nos. 2 and 3 may have been part of the same tablet or may come from other copies of the same document. The document is said to be a copy and the original is said to be sealed with the seal of Aššur and Ninurta. A large part of the text is broken away, but at least three sections detail the setting aside of large tracts of land (the two preserved areas are each 1,000 hectares) as townships under the control of the Aššur Temple. The first section of the document, however, records the donation of the "towns, fields, buildings, orchards and people" of the treasurer of Aššur, "belonging to his eunuchship," to Aššur by Adad-nerari. Whether this section is a preamble or is otherwise connected with the following sections is not clear, but some clue to its significance is perhaps to be gotten from no. 83:25' -27' where there is an, unfortunately fragmentary, reference to the reversion of property to Assur and Ninurta. The text has a closing section prohibiting the giving of the designated lands to anyone but the person in charge of the Aššur Temple (r. 9'-11'). This section is repeated word for word in no. 71 r. 4'-6', which is, however, a copy of an Adad-nerari III decree setting forth regular offerings to the Aššur Temple and is not concerned with land. No. 5 is a tiny fragment of a text duplicating the closing sections of no. 1 and may be from another copy of the same document, but as no. 71 shows, this is not necessarily the case.

TABLE I. Distribution of Land Grants by Kings

Temple Grants

Private Grants

Classification Uncertain

Nos. 6, 7 and 8 are all private land grants made in favour of eunuchs by Adad-nerari III. In nos. 6 and 7, the description of the property is followed by the name of a provincial governor.^[[25]] One has to suppose that the name Ahu-duri (possibly Ahu-duru-[...]) occurring in the corresponding position in no. 8 is yet another provincial governor. As mentioned above in connection with the administrative texts, it would have been essential to keep the provincial governors informed of tax-exempt persons and property in their provinces since they were ultimately responsible for collecting taxes. At the time of Adad-nerari III, this need was apparently met by making the governor a party, mentioned by name, to the grant.

In no.7, the details of the acquisition of the land by Adad-nerari are given, thus establishing clear title to the land (one meaning of the verb zakû). At least two separate parcels of land were purchased by the king for the grant, presumably in different provinces since the name of the provincial governor appears immediately after the description of the second group of fields rather than at the end as in no. 8 (implying that there was the name of another governor after the first group).

The exact nature of no. 9 as a private or temple grant is open to question. In view of the fact that recipients of private grants tend to be the king's personal retainers or state officials (see Table I), the presence of the high priest (of the Aššur Temple according to Menzel Tempel, pp. 194, 199) makes it quite likely that this is in fact a temple grant. The scant traces of the obverse indicate that the tax exemption clauses for land were present, but otherwise the formulary does not follow that of other Adad-nerari land grants. The attribution to Adad-nerari is based on the physical similarity of the tablet to no. 8,^[[26]] but as the tablet has neither the royal seal nor the king's name, this is not certain.

This tablet does share another feature with no. 8 in that both documents begin in media res. No. 8 begins with a list of persons followed by the statement that the king exempted from taxes "these fields, buildings and people"; as there have been no fields or buildings enumerated in the tablet up to that point, we must conclude that the document actually began on another tablet that would have started with Adad-nerari's name, titles and genealogy followed by the royal seal. The private grants of this period are much the same size and shape as the contemporary legal documents, and using oversized tablets to accommodate the additional information as was done in the time of Assurbanipal and Aššur-etel-ilani does not seem to have been the solution of the day. Rather the document was simply continued over as many standard sized tablets as was necessary. Since no. 9 also appears to begin with a personal name, it may also have been part of a multitablet document.

While no. 10 has the royal seal impressed, it is otherwise devoid of any of the standard terminology of the land grants. Even the list of gods invoked at the end is not standard, lacking Ber who appears together with Adad in later grants, but the corresponding section of other Adad-nerari grants is not preserved so this may not be a valid criterion. Still, the text seems to have more in common with the phraseology of nos. 82-85 than with the other land grants, and there is a good possibility that it may be a royal appointment or some other type of royal proclamation.

The dating of no. 13 remains an enigma.^[[27]] The fact that Tiglath-Pileser III is known to have been governor of Calah before he became king gives a basis for connecting the style with nos. 6-8, which name a provincial governor in the text. But the date of 762 B.C., which seems probable, is still 20 years after the death of Adad-nerari III whose titles and genealogy appear at the beginning of the tablet.

25 Bel-tarṣi-ilumma, governor of Calah, in 6 and Palil-ereš, governor of Raṣappa, in 7.

26 Cf. NARGD, pp. 49 and 83.

27 Ibid., p. 26.

Laura Kataja & Robert Whiting

Laura Kataja & Robert Whiting, 'Adad-nerari III', 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/grantsoflandandtaxexemption/adadnerariiii/]