Assigning letters of certain individual senders to Sargon is facilitated in 10 cases because the introduction names the addressee reverently as "King of The World" (šar kiššati): nos. 22 and 39, letters of Bel-iqiša, prelate of Babylon — cf. no. 27 of the same sender which in line 13 addresses Sargon by name; no. 46, letter of the priest Nabû-šuma-iškun of Babylon; no. 47, a letter of the Esaggil prelate Rimutu; no, 51, letter of the temple servant Arad-Ea from Babylon; nos. 59 and 60, the letters of the fortress commanders Ha'il-il and Zabdi-il of Šabhanu; no. 88, letter (introduction) of the commanders Da'ini and Nabû-le'i from central Babylonia; no. 145, a letter of the priests Kina and Ereši of Nemed-Laguda - the name Sargon is mentioned here in a formula of blessing - and no. 149, a letter of Abi-yaqiya from the Tubliaš region.
These 10 letters can be dated to 710/709 when Sargon subjugated Babylonia step by step[[8]] and was hailed as the new ruler. Since these documents can be firmly placed into a certain timeframe, they form a solid base for the formalistic details and contents of Sargon's correspondence with his representatives during this time: they indicate name, linguistic, stylistic and scribal idiosyncracies, as well as introductory formulas and ductus of writing of their senders. They also name the acting persons and offer a broad view of current topics of the time. The data thus gained allow us to assign 126 documents with great certainty and a further 10 with some plausibility to the reign of Sargon.
The vast majority of the letters of Sargon's reign are addressed to the king himself — only 21 are addressed to one of his subordinates. They date to the turbulent phase immediately before or during the campaign of 710 and 709[[9]] and they illuminate Babylonia at the time of the change of government from the Yakinite Merodach-Baladan to Sargon. There are good reasons to assume that no letters were sent to Sargon or any of his subjects in Assyria in the years following the conquest of Babylonia (including the ancestral seat of Merodach-Baladan) and his expulsion into neighbouring countries to the east — letter 145, written by the priests Kina and Ereši from Nemed-Laguda, indirectly addresses this event. For after the occupation of Babylonia, he moved his seat of power to Babylon and ruled from there until 707.
The letters addressed to Sargon thereafter were presumably sent to Kalah and were archived in Dur-Šarrukin when the administration moved there. It was due to the important news from the time of the conquest of Babylonia which they contained that they were taken from Dur-Šarrukin to Nineveh, and were integrated into Sennacherib's archives after the death of Sargon.[[10]]
Considering the temporary shift of the seat of power of from Kalah to Babylon and considering the perfectly working network of spies,[[11]] it is scarcely imaginable that Merodach-Baladan might have dared to act against Sargon between 709 and 707 - even in the remote and difficult to reach southeastern part of the country. This would only have been conceivable under much easier circumstances during a temporary or continuing absence of the Assyrian from Babylon, i.e., from 707 onwards after Sargon had left Babylon for the north. However, there is no information about such activity. The year 705 gave rise to a different situation when the news of the unexpected death of Sargon in battle quickly reached Merodach-Baladan. It is obvious that he was reafflfmed in his attempts to re-establish the situation of the time before 710. Again there is, however, as far as we know today, no written evidence for this from letters; one can only find reports about such actions by Merodach-Baladan after the accession of Sennacherib.
8 For the course of events during these times, cf. J. A. Brinkman, Prelude (1984) 50-52; W. Mayer Politik (1995) 337-338.
9 Cf. A. Fuchs, SAA 15, xiv-xxii.
10 Cf. S. Parpola, ARINH (1981), 121.
11 A letter of Assurbanipal to his subject Ellil-bani in
Nippur contains the following passage, which describes the activities of spies particularly well:
Manfried Dietrich
Manfried Dietrich, 'Letters from the time of Sargon', The Neo-Babylonian Correspondence of Sargon and Sennacherib, SAA 17. Original publication: Helsinki, Helsinki University Press, 2003; online contents: SAAo/SAA17 Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2020 [http://oracc.org/saao/saa17/neobabylonianletters/sargonii/]