The present volume is the second part of the Nineveh legal corpus and thus owes much to Tuviah Kwasman and Simo Parpola, the editors of the first volume Legal Transactions of the Royal Court of Nineveh, Part I. Tiglath- Pileser Ill through Esarhaddon, which appeared as volume VI of the State Archives of Assyria series in 1991.
Transliterations of the present volume are, as in the Part I, mainly based on the database of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. Previously unpublished high K numbers identified by Kwasman were added to the corpus in 1993 and are published here by the kind permission of the Trustees of the British Museum.
The texts have been extensively collated. Published collations include those by Parpola in 1978, published in "Collations to Neo-Assyrian Legal Texts from Nineveh", Assur 2/5 (1979) 1-89 and by Kwasman published in Neo-Assyrian Legal Documents in the Kouyunjik Collection of the British Museum (NALK) in 1988. Furthermore, Parpola collated some of the texts of the present volume in 1990, when preparing the edition of Part I. He generously gave these, and his original notes from 1978, to Mattila for use in this volume. Mattila collated the remaining tablets in the British Museum in 1994 and 1998. The new joins made by Kwasman have been checked by Mattila from the original, now joined tablets. Heather D. Baker kindly collated passages from three tablets in January 2002.
The texts were machine translated in 1994 by a computer programme written by Parpola in spring 1990. The machine translations have been checked and edited by Mattila.
All 26 tablets in the present volume bear Aramaic epigraphs. The epigraphs are among the most important sources for early Aramaic and they have been treated in several earlier studies. The latest editions are by Fales, Aramaic Epigraphs on Clay Tablets of the Neo-Assyrian Period. Studi Semitici, Nova serie 2 (Roma 1986) and by Hug, Altaramäische Grammatik der Texte des 7. und 6. Jh.s v.Chr. (Heidelberger Studien zum Allen Orient 4, Heidelberg 1993).
The drawings of the seal impressions published in the present volume are mostly adapted from Suzanne Herbordt's book Neuassyrische Glyptik des 8.-7. Jh. v. Chr. (State Archives of Assyria I, Helsinki 1992). Further seals have been adapted from Johns's copies published in "Assyrian Deeds and Dornments" in AJSL 42 ( 192 6) 170- 275, and from the impressions published in B.Kh. Ismail and J. N. Postgate, Texts from Nineveh (Texts in the Iraq Museum 11, n.d.).
In addition, seals of the following texts were drawn by Parpola in 1978 and 1990: 5, 13, 20, 24, 50, 64, 66, 84, 87, 107, 165, 179, 196, 203, 205, 222, 223, 255, 256, 260, 262 and 287.
In 1994 and 1998, Mattila checked all drawings against the originals and drew the missing, mostly badly preserved, seals to texts: 4, 68, 76, 93, 94, 112, 132, 138, 151, 190, 213, 230, 240, 242, 263, 269, 272, 273, 321, 339, 341, 342, 344, 346, 360, 373, 391, 395, 397 and 414.
Juri Ahlfors and Kaisa Åkerman scanned the seal impressions and Kaisa Åkerman carried out most of the typesetting of this volume.
Galley proofs were read by Robert M. Whiting. Heather D. Baker edited the English of the introduction.
This volume is illustrated with photographs of seal impressions and sealed tablets and the illustrations were edited by Dominique Collon.
March 2002
Raija Mattila
Raija Mattila
Raija Mattila, 'Preface', 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/saa14preface/]