The Order of the Eponyms

In describing the provincial organisation of the Assyrian Empire, Emil Forrer showed from the titles that many of the eponyms held office in a recognized sequence.^[[26]] The fact that there are variations can be attributed to the method of selecting the eponym for a particular year and to changes among the highest officials of the court which could lead to the new man exercising a prerogative to the position in spite of the sequence. Thus the herald, Abī-ina-ekalli-lilbur, was eponym in 854, then, after three years, Bēl-būnāya, the herald, held the position, interrupting the pattern, taking it again in 823, in his proper turn, after Shalmaneser III had started the second round of eponymates in his reign. As the chart (Table 2) displays, certain groupings can be observed among the provincial governors serving as eponyms. Raṣappa, Naṣibina and Arrapḫa filled the eighth, ninth and tenth, eleventh or twelfth years from Adad-nērārī III to Tiglath-pileser III, and the twenty-fifth, twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh years of Shalmaneser II I, Naibina and Arrapḫa occur in years six and seven of Sargon. Māzamua follows Arrapḫa in three reigns. Ḫabruri, Tušḫan, Guzana and Amedi form clusters in the reigns of Shalmaneser IV, Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon, the first three standing in succession under Adad-nērārī III. Nineveh and Kilizi marked the twenty-third and twenty-fourth years of Shalmaneser III, the twentieth and twenty-first of Tiglath-pileser III, and occupy similar positions in the reigns of Adad-nērārī III, Shalmaneser IV and the continuation of Sargon, accompanied by Arbail and Isana.

Table 2. Regnal years in which provincial governors held the eponymate

1. Very few titles are known for the eponyms of Aššurnaṣirpal II. The eponym for year 18 (866 BC) was Šamaš-nūrī. The fact that governors of Guzana held the eponymate in the 18th years of later kings makes it very tempting to suppose that Šamaš-nūrī, governor of Guzana, comemorated by the Tell Fekheriyeh statue, was the eponym for 866.^[[27]]

2. The seats of eponyms of Shalmaneser III are listed with the regnal years followed by the theoretical year (asterisked) in which they would have fallen had a new turtānu not been inserted for year 6, a new nāgir ekalli for year 9 and a new masennu for year 26.

3. The eponymates of Aššur-dān III and his turtānu (771, 770 BC) merely interrupt the sequence which began with the eponymate of Shalmaneser IV, and so are not counted here.

4. There was no interruption to the sequence at the death of Sargon in 705 BC, Sennacherib not taking the eponymate until 687, when he was followed by Bēl-ēmuranni, the turtānu, but not by the other high officers who had previously succeeded the king. The reason for Sennacherib's delay in taking the office is not explained; the death of his father in battle, a matter which obviously troubled him,^[[28]] may have been the cause, and the reason for his taking the office later might have been to celebrate his triumph over Babylon in 689.

5. The seats of eponyms of Sargon II are listed with the regnal years followed by the theoretical year (asterisked) in which they would have fallen had the turtānu, nāgir ekalli and rab šāqê held office at the start of the reign. Their absence from the list may be due to the apparently abnormal circumstances in which Sargon came to the throne.

6. The latter part of the List, from 696 BC, includes many places which were not previously part of the empire, showing the sequence was no longer followed.

Table 3. The basic sequence of eponym holders for the ninth and eighth centuries BC

26 E. Forrer, Die Provinzeinteilung des assyrischen Reiches (Leipzig 1920).

27 See A. Abou-Assaf, P. Bordreuil, A. R. Millard, La Statue de Tell Fekherye et son inscription bilingue assyro-araméenne (Paris 1982) 103- 1 05.

28 See H. Tadmor, B. Landsberger, S. Parpola, SAAB 3 (1989) 3-51.

Alan Millard

Alan Millard, 'The Order of the Eponyms', 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/orderoftheeponyms/]