An edition of legal texts [[1]] originating in the reign of Assurbanipal through Sin-šarru-iškun is faced with the problem of the sequence of the post-canonical eponyms, a question on which no consensus has been reached.
The provisional dates assigned by M. Falkner, "Die Eponymen der spätassyrischen Zeit," have been used widely since the publication of her valuable article in 1954-56. The new evidence that had become available by the mid 1990's was collected and evaluated by R. M. Whiting in his chapter "The Post-canonical and Extra-canonical Eponyms" in Millard, The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 910-612 BC, SAAS 2 (1994) 72-78.
Recently two different lists of the post-canonical eponyms prepared independently have appeared in print: "Assyrian eponyms, kings and pretenders, 648-605 BC" by J. E. Reade in Or. 67 (1998) 255- 265, and S. Parpola's reconstruction of the eponym order as given in the introduction to K. Radner (ed.), The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire I /I (1998) xviii-xx.
The documents of Kakkullanu edited in this volume have had a central role in the study of post-canonical eponyms. Kakkullanu's documents form a tightly knit group in which the same witnesses often appear, and importantly, mostly with their titles. The frequent mention of titles has invited scholars to attempt to solve the question of the post-canonical eponym sequence by studying the careers of these witnesses.
1 For the publication history of the legal texts from Nineveh the reader is referred to the introduction in SAA 6, XIII-XIV. Since the publication of SAA 6 in 1991, more studies on the Neo-Assyrian legal corpus have appeared. Neo-Assyrian court orders were edited by R. Jas, Neo-Assyrian Judicial Procedures (SAAS 5, Helsinki 1996). This study was reviewed by Radner in AfO 44/45 (1997/1998) 379-387. The phraseology of the legal documents, and the information pertaining to daily life that can be deduced from them, was carefully analysed in K. Radner's dissertation Die neuassyrischen Privatrechtsurkunden als Quelle für Mensch und Umwelt (SAAS 6, Helsinki 1997). See also Radner's contribution "The Relation Between Format and Content of Neo-Assyrian Texts" in Mattila (ed.), Nineveh 612 BC. The Glory and Fall of the Assyrian Empire (Helsinki 1995).
Raija Mattila
Raija Mattila, 'Introduction', Legal Transactions of the Royal Court of Nineveh, Part II: Assurbanipal Through Sin-šarru-iškun, SAA 14. Original publication: Helsinki, Helsinki University Press, 2002; online contents: SAAo/SAA14 Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2021 [http://oracc.org/saao/saa14/introduction/]