This volume was originally scheduled to be the second volume of the State Archives Assyria series to be edited by the late Professor Karlheinz Deller, the doyen of Neo-Assyrian studies. Unfortunately, his work on the volume stopped short because of a chain of obligations that prevented him from concentrating on it after 1987, so the task of editing this important but difficult corpus of texts fell on Simo Parpola. The history of the volume and the circumstances causing the delay of its appearance beyond the initially scheduled date of publication are set out in the Preface.
We wish to express our gratitude to the Trustees and the Near East Department (formerly the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities) of the British Museum, as well as to the Vorderasiatisches Museum of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, for continued support of the SAA Project and permission to collate and publish cuneiform tablets and illustrative materials in their custody. We are also indebted to the Academy of Finland for funding the Project between 1986 and 1995; to the University of Helsinki for choosing the Project as one of its Centres of Excellence and supporting its research in 1997-2001; and to the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, for financing Simo Parpola's research at the Institute in 1999.
Helsinki, December 2016
Robert Whiting
Robert Whiting
Robert Whiting, 'Foreword', Assyrian Royal Rituals and Cultic Texts, SAA 20. Original publication: Winona Laka, IN, Eisenbrauns, 2017; online contents: SAAo/SAA20 Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2020 [http://oracc.org/saao/saa20/saa20foreword/]