None of the Eponym Lists names a source. A master copy was surely kept up- to-date in the capital by the annual addition of the eponym, then each scribal centre might keep its own list á jour. The Sultantepe copies show what deviations could arise in a provincial school (see The Manuscripts, A8, B 10). From close correspondences between the Eponym Lists and the Assyrian King List, some have supposed the King List to be derived from the Eponym Lists. While they were connected, and an early section of the King List apparently relied on lists of eponyms (see below, pp. 8-9), the King List had other sources, for it relates each king to his predecessor, which the Eponym Lists do not.
The Eponym Lists (Class A) give the names alone, only marking the kings by title until the time of Tiglath-pileser III, as set out above, the change bringing them a little closer to Class B, warning against rigid distinctions on formal grounds. The change may hint at a time of editorial activity in Nineveh or Kalaḫ — it is not found in the Assur list (A 7) — about the time when the Khorsabad King List was copied (738 BC) and the Babylonian Chronicle commences.[[11]] In the following decades, too, occur the longer entries of some Eponym Chronicle texts from Nineveh, dealing with the reigns of Sargon and Sennacherib (B6, B7).
The Eponym Chronicles as a whole obviously drew upon fuller sources and, again, their nature cannot be discerned; were they the sources that fed the Class A lists and the King Lists? Whatever they were, they had wide authority, for the entry at 704 B C claims two cities were conquered in Babylonia, Larak and Sarrabanu, and those two only are included in the Babylonian Chronicle entry for that year (Bēl-ibni 3).[[12]] Note, also, that the Babylonian Chronicle reports 'plague was in Assyria' for 706 BC (ii 5´), whereas the Eponym Chronicle merely states that the king stayed in the land and various other events took place. Furthermore, the Eponym Chronicle's entry for 700 (B7), concerning materials for building a palace, in particular specifying the quarry whence the stone was obtained as Kapar-dagila, has clear affinities with the lengthy reports of Sennacherib's 'Annals '.[[13]] There seem to be hints here of fuller sources covering a variety of events, good and bad, that were available to scribes for their different purposes.
11 See Grayson, op. cit. 10ff.
12 Ibid. 77, cf. ibid. 11, n.23.
13 Edition E vi 45-75, ii 33-ii 13, D. D. Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib (Chicago 1924) 107-8, 120-2.
Alan Millard
Alan Millard, 'Sources of the Eponym Lists and 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/sourcesoftheeponymlistsandchronicles/]