This class of texts, while setting out the names in order, clearly had a very different purpose from class A, being centred on the event, rather than the eponym. The concept of recording at least one notable event for each year is ancient, being attested already at Mari during the eighteenth century BC, in the fragments published by M. Birot as 'Assyrian Chronicles'.[[5]] Those manuscripts cover the years before and during the reign of Šamšī-Adad I (c. 1813-1781 BC), who made himself king of Assur and then took control of Mari. They are clearly relics from the time of Assyrian rule, for the local kings of Mari used the Babylonian year-name system for dating their texts. The Mari pieces list the eponyms' names without titles, followed by a report of one or more events, in most cases; a few names have no report beside them. Those with reports are phrased ' In eponym name, event', which can only mean ' In the eponymate of', as ina līme does in the later texts. Although no Eponym Chronicles survive between the time of those Mari texts and the Neo-Assyrian ones, the tradition continued. The entries in the Mari chronicles, so far as they can be understood, concern the affairs of various states and rulers associated with, or hostile to Assur. In editing these texts, M. Birot asserted the chronicler was setting out the tale of the rise to power of Šamšī-Adad and his family, a chequered history of defeats and successes, both reported openly.[[6]] Without more texts, that remains a possible explanation; the Eponym Chronicles may have begun in Šamšī-Adad's time, the heading of the Mari manuscript is damaged. In the Neo-Assyrian period the texts begin with the accession of Shalmaneser III, 858 BC. The single copy extant for the first years has a heading which, again, is broken (B5). If it was intended to celebrate the achievements of Shalmaneser and his successors, then it was equally honest, recording ' revolt' for each of the last four years of his reign (B4, B10), and in various years of later kings. Indeed, in some years the Eponym Chronicles note events which did not reflect well on the king, rather than successes claimed in the royal inscriptions (e.g. in the reign of Sargon, 712 BC has the entry 'in the land', yet in that year, his inscriptions announce, Ashdod and Melid fell to Assyria[[7]]). In this respect these chronicles deserve more attention than they have usually received, for they attest the existence in Assyria of that 'unbiased' attitude which the Babylonian Chronicles allegedly display, representing a style in recording history independent of the imperial image cultivated in the king's courts.[[8]] The purpose of both types of chronicle remains unknown.[[9]] While the possibility that they were intended as sources for creating omen apodoses cannot be discounted,[[10]] supplying ' good' or 'bad' information about the years of the kings, the entries in the Eponym Chronicles frequently give less specific information than the 'historical ' references found in omen texts.
5 M. Birot, 'Les chroniques "Assyriennes" de Mari,' MARI 4 (1985) 219-42; translation also in J.-J. Glassner, Chroniques mésopotamiens (Paris 1993) 157-60.
6 Birot, loc. cit. 223.
7 See H. Tadmor, JCS 12 (1958) 95.
8 For discussion of the question of bias in the Babylonian Chronicles, see J. A. Brinkman in T. Abusch, J. Huehnergard, P. Steinkeller (eds.), Lingering over Words. Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Literature in Honor of William L. Moran (Atlanta 1990) 73-104.
9 For the Babylonian chronicles, see A. K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (New York 1975) 10, 11 and the review in JAOS 100 (1980) 364-68.
10 I. Starr has shown that military events in Aššurbanipal's reign were incorporated into omen texts almost contemporaneously, AfO 32 (1985) 60-67.
Alan Millard
Alan Millard, 'The Purpose of the Eponym Chronicles', 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/purposeoftheeponymchronicles/]