The final lot of letters, which are roughly datable to the reigns of Sargon and Sennacherib, are collected in the categories Unassigned and Fragmentary. These letters are subdivided into two groups, the first one devoted to Letters of Unknown Provenance, and the second to Letters of unknown authorship.
This group consists of 13 letters of which the senders' names are known at least partly (no. 164) or by profession (no. 165).
The first document of this subgroup, no. 156, was written by a certain Ahi-nuri, to the paymaster of the Palace, his superior. He asks the treasurer that Ilu-iada' the governor of Dur-Kurigalzu/Der[[65]] might intervene in his home town where the difficult political situation partly caused by the Yakinite in general and conspiracies in particular threatened the author even on a personal level. This gives us reason to assume that Ahi-nuri wrote this letter in Babylon or a town in its vicinity in 710.
No. 157 is a fragmentary letter of Gabbarru, probably a commander of troops (presumably in middle Babylonia). The letter is probably addressed to Sargon.[[66]]
No. 158 is a letter of a certain Marduk-apla-iddina. There has been an intense discussion concerning the date of this letter — even the fall of Babylon at the end of the war between Assurbanipal and his brother Šamaššumukin in 648 bas been suggested:[[67]] Considering the introduction of the letter, one ought to dismiss this suggestion in favour of a date during Sargon's (or Sennacherib's) reign.[[68]] Thus one should pose the question whether the sender is the B abylonian king of the same name, Merodach-Baladan (722 to 710).[[69]] Indeed one must answer this question in the affirmative because under normal circumstances it is not conceivable that the name Marduk-apla-iddina (mdAMAR.UTU-DUMU.UŠ-SUM-na, or something similar) had been used for anyone else but Merodach-Baladan. It is equally inconceivable that the names Šarru-kin or Sin-ahhe-eriba were used for any contemporary person other than Sargon (II) or Sennacherib respectively. The address in the introduction of the letter does not contradict this: according to the general usage of language and given Merodach-Baladan's stance towards Sargon as a patient king of Babylonia, a scribe of the Babylonian ruler could not have employed a different address, as the dossier of the viceroy Bel-ibni (nos. 52-57) shows.[[70]] Our assumption that Merodach-Baladan is the author of letter no. 158 is also not proven wrong by the contents of the letter. In the surviving parts of the obverse of the tablet, Merodach-Baladan denies that his troops had violated the sacred character of the temple by shooting arrows at it. He names the father of his contemporary Zakir as a witness for this incident. Since he thus implies that the accusation concerns an event far in the past we can answer the question about the date of this letter: Before Sargon's campaign against Babylon began in 710, Merodach-Baladan was apparently accused of an incident that occurred during his accession in 722. By refuting this charge, the accused apparently intended to show that the anger and resentment of the priesthood and the population stemming from this incident was baseless. An allusion to the same incident seems to be preserved in the fragment no. 199, a letter probably from the prelate Bel-iqiša to Sargon.
Perhaps Nabû-ili was the author of fragments nos. 159 and 160 (both letters to the king) because it might be possible to complete the sender's name Nabû-... in no. 160 accordingly. The author of no. 159 speaks about a group of Tyreans and their leaders Sagibi (ll. 4, r. 4 ); in no. 160 he speaks of a throne of Bel (l. 4), which must refer to the throne of Marduk in Babylon, and accordingly we should assume a Babylonian origin for this letter.
The following three fragmentary letters nos. 161-163 have Naṣib-il as their sender — the ductus of writing and the introdnction of the letter suggest that Naṣib-il was also the author of no. 163. With respect to their contents, they allude to unrest related to Sargon's campaign in 710/709.
It is difficult to determine the place and time of origin for no. 164, which Šuzubu sent to the governor, his superior. He asks the governor to ignore the slander being spread about him.[[71]]
The topic of the sale of southern Babylonian Mar-Sinaeans, who conspired with Merodach-Baladan,[[72]] links the next two fragments, no. 165 and no. 166 (as does their ductus of writing). Whereas no. 165 was addressed to the king, no. 166 was sent to one of his officials. The sender of these letters was Ullubaya who apparently had connections to the Mar-Sinaeans during Sargon's reign.
The sender of no. 167, of whose name only the last syllable ( ...-qu) remains, was apparently a priest because he asks the gods to bless the king. The poorly preserved context makes it impossible to recognise why he professes loyalty to Assyria. In any case, this indicates that the letter dates to the time after Sargon assumed control over Babylonia in 710. The author of the last fragmentary letter of this group, no. 168, is a commander of a cohort, whose name is lost. Although the letter is addressed to the king, the remaining pieces offer no clues about the contents.
65 Cf. above p. XXll for the letters of Nabû-ahhe-lumur, nos. 7-9, and SAA 15, xxxviii, and nos. 155-76.
66 Cf. H. Hunger, PNA 1/2, 411, no. 3. The large irregular ductus of writing suggest that the commander wrote these lines himself.
67 Cf. e.g. J. A. Brinkman, Fs. Oppenheim (1964), 47 (including n. 247), where he assumes that Merodach-Baladan might not be referred to in this letter. Ibid., 35 where he dates it to the time of Assurbanipal.
68 Cf. G. Frame, Babylonia (1992), 155 n. 106; H. D. Baker, PNA 2/2, 710-711, no. 2; M. Dietrich, AOAT 253, 103.
69 Cf. in the corpus of NB letters for example no. 23 r. 9: mdAMAR.UTU-DU]MU.UŠ-SUM-na LUGAL.
70 Cf. M. Dietrich, AOAT 253, 105.
71 Cf. M. Dietrich, WO 4/1 (1967) 100: the identification with the Babylonian king Mušezib-Marduk (692-689). Under this premise, the letters should be linked with no. 170, the fragmentary letter of an unknown sender to the vizier concerni ng Mušezib-Marduk.
72 Cf. R. Zadok, RGTC 8 221-222; A. Fuchs, Sar. (1994), 450.
Manfried Dietrich
Manfried Dietrich, 'Letters of Unknown Provenance (nos. 156-168)', 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/presentationoftheletters/unknownprovenancenos156168/]