Eponym dates appear as a regular feature in the earliest Assyrian texts, but the duties of the office are obscure (see below). In the Middle Assyrian period, the titles of the eponyms sometimes follow their names in date-lines, showing that it was the leading men of the state who held the office, the turtānu, rab šāqê, masennu,[[14]] šakin māti and governors of various cities.[[15]] The king held the office at some point of his reign, although at present the evidence for the Middle Assyrian period is too scanty to indicate which year was given to him. The first king known to have been eponym is Enlil-nērārī (c. 1327-1318 BC).[[16]] Kings appear regularly at the commencement of their reigns in the badly damaged list (A7) covering the period from Tiglath-pileser I to Aššur-dān II (c. 1186-932 BC). The practice continued into the time of the Assyrian Empire, when centuries of tradition may have overlain the original concept. A pattern of succession can be traced through the century from Shalmaneser III (see Table 1). A new king acted as eponym in his second year of reign (see p. 13), then followed four ministers of state: the turtānu, or commander-in-chief, the rab šāqê, 'chief cupbearer', nāgir ekalli, 'palace herald', and the masennu, the chamberlain. Governors of major cities came after them, some taking precedence over others as the empire grew. The sequence was not rigid, except for the turtānu following the king. A chance discovery seems to reveal the reason for that: lots were cast to determine the order. The Yale Babylonian Collection owns a clay cube, 2.8 × 2.7 cm, inscribed for the masennu Yaḫalu who served as eponym three times, in 833, 824 and 821 BC. The text reads:
We assume such dice were prepared for the next two or three men in line for the office, shaken together in a jug and one thrown out, perhaps by a priest. The choice was probably made a year in advance, perhaps at the New Year ceremonies. The result of the draw may have settled the order for more than one year, according to the sequence of the lots. Occasionally the system was disrupted by civil war or an eponym-designate's death. If the scribe dating a document did not know the name of the current eponym, he might use the form 'eponymate after PN,' (see below, pp. 67-68). The death of an eponym prior to assuming office is one explanation for the name Balaṭu, entered in list A3 for 786 BC, which is not found in any other manuscript.[[19]] Other possibilities are, on one hand, that the text is corrupt, or, on the other, that it is the only correct record.
The office of eponym already existed at the beginning of Assyrian history as known today. When the Assyrian King List was compiled, lists of eponyms supplied some of its information, for a group of six kings near its beginning (nos. 27-32) were given without lengths of reigns because, a note advises, they were kings 'whose eponymies are destroyed'.[[20]] The successors of those kings in the List were those in whose reigns Assyrian merchants trading in Anatolian towns wrote numerous documents dated by eponyms.[[21]] Tablets from the eighteenth century BC, found at Mari and other sites, show the dating method in use wherever kings of Assyria held sway, notably under Šamšī-Adad I.[[22]]
Table 1. Regnal years in which the kings and court officials held the eponymate
| Š III | Š III(2) | Š-A V | Adn III | Š IV | Ad III | Ašn V | T-P III | Š V | Sg | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| šarru | 2 | 32 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 |
| turtānu | 3,6 | 33 | 10 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | ||
| rab šāqê | 4 | 34 | 8 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 | |||
| nāgir ekalli | 5,9 | 36 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4 | |||
| masennu | 26 | 35 | 3 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 4 | ||
| šakin māti | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 5 |
The turtānu always followed the royal eponym except in the reign of Šamšī-Adad V when, probably because of internal dissension, he does not appear until the tenth year. The variations between the next three officers may result from the fall of the dice, but it is notable that the sequence masennu — šakin māti is invariable from Adad-nērārī III to Sargon.
The origin of the office is unknown; a cultic role, 'care for the sanctuary and the cult' at Assur 'seems to have been the basis for the limmu institution,' perhaps even among tribesmen before they settled there, A. Poebel surmised.[[23]] If an etymological connection with the base lwy is accepted, then the word itself would denote 'turn (of office),' as A. Ungnad proposed.[[24]] An alternative explanation of the word associates it with līmu, 'thousand,' and Ugaritic and Hebrew lʾm seeing a semantic shift between 'group of people,' 'thousand,' and 'leader of a thousand,' comparable with the range of ʾlp in West Semitic.[[25]]
14 The reading (amēl)masennu for (LÚ)IGI.DUB is preferred over (amēl)abarakku for the Neo-Assyrian period. There is no doubt, both from syllabic writings and Aramaic correspondences, that masennu was the correct reading in the seventh century. Since a syllabic writing of masennu appears already in the Nuzi texts and, apart from literary sources, there are no syllabic writings of abarakku after the Old Babylonian period (see CAD s.v. abarakku and masennu), it is extrapolated that masennu was correct for the ninth and eighth centuries and probably for the Middle Assyrian period as well. [RMW]
15 See C. Saporetti, Gli eponimi medio-assiri, Bibliotheca Mesopotamica 9 (Malibu 1979) 20f.
16 Ibid. 18, 56; for the possibility that Erība-Adad, named as eponym in one text, was a royal eponym, see ibid. 43.
17 Hallo, Biblical Archaeologist 46 p. 20 reads liddā.
18 F. J. Stephens, YOS 9 (1937), Pls. XXVII, XLV, no. 73 (YBC 7058); E. F. Weidner, AfO 13 (1939) 30; E. Michel, WdO 1,4 (1949) 261-64; M. T. Larsen, The Old Assyrian City-State and its Colonies (Copenhagen 1976) 211-12; W. W. Hallo, Biblical Archaeologist 46 (1983) 19-27; for photographs of the piece, see the frontispiece.
19 E. Forrer, MVAG 20 (1915) 3.
20 I. J. Gelb, JNES 13 (1954) 209-30, line 26/25; A. K. Grayson, 'Königslisten.' RIA 6, 105; P. Garelli in J.-M. Durand, J.-R. Kupper (eds.), Miscellanea babylonica: Mélanges offerts à Maurice Birot (Paris 1985) 91-95.
21 See M. T. Larsen, The Old Assyrian City-State and its Colonies, Mesopotamia 4 (Copenhagen 1976) 80-84, 192-223, 375-82.
22 For a catalogue and discussion, see K. R. Veenhof, 'Eponyms of the "Later Old Assyrian Period" and Mari Chronology,' MARI 4 (1985) 191-218; for a reconstruction of the eponyrnates of the reign of Šamšī-Adad I, see R. M. Whiting, 'Tell Leilan / Šubat Enlil: Chronological Problems and Perspectives.' in S. Eichler, M. Wäfler and D. Warburton (eds.), Tall al-Ḥamīdīya 2, Orbis biblicus et orientalis: Series archaeologica 6 (Freiburg 1990) 167-218.
23 JNES 1 (1942) 280.
24 RIA 2 412.
25 See P. Fronzaroli, Archivio Glottolagico Italiano 45 (1960) 42-44.
Alan Millard
Alan Millard, 'The Office of Eponym', The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire 910-612 BC, SAAS 2. Original publication: Helsinki, Helsinki University Press, 1994; online contents: SAAo/SAAS2 Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2020 [http://oracc.org/saao/saas2/thetexts/officeofeponym/]