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STATE ARCHIVES OF ASSYRIA XIX
first drafts of the following sections of the Introduction: “Different Types of
Introductory Formulae”, “Relations between Assyria and her Neighbours in
the Second Part of the Eighth Century BC” and its subsections, and “Deportations”.
Later on, I updated and augmented all these sections in correspondence
with the latest interpretations of these letters. The tables on the correspondents
and deportations we prepared together.
I am grateful to Prof. S. Ponchia as well as her pupils to whom I was able
to present some of my interpretations as a test case when I was sojourning at
the University of Verona in late 2005. Furthermore, I would like to thank
Prof. G. B. Lanfranchi for his generosity and helpfulness every time I visited
Padua.
Here in London, Prof. K. Radner has been very helpful in many ways when
I was preparing this volume. I am especially in debt to Karen for her
unflagging enthusiasm and patience when I was finishing this manuscript at
University College London. I would also like to express many thanks to Dr.
Julian Reade for providing excellent illustrations for yet another SAA volume,
to Prof. J. N. Postgate for his full support of this project and for an
opportunity to speak about the Nimrud Letters in Cambridge.
Dr. J. Novotny and Prof. S. Yamada were very kind in letting me see an
advanced draft of RINAP 1 on Tiglath-pileser III’s royal inscriptions prior to
its publication. I owe them my warmest thanks. I am extremely grateful to
Robert Whiting for all his technical instructions and for improving the
language, especially in the critical apparatus and the editions of the volume,
and to Silvie Zamazalová for editing my English in the Introduction.
Greta Van Buylaere passed on to me many good ideas; this was especially
the case as regards the letters from the west. I also want to thank Greta for
her invaluable technical assistance while preparing the manuscript of the
volume.
Fortunately, I have been able to visit the British Museum on several
occasions between 2007 and 2011 to collate the Nimrud Letters in their
custody, and these visits have always been very pleasant. My sincere thanks
are due to the personnel working in the study room of the Museum’s Department
of the Middle East study room of the museum, and to Jon Taylor and
Christopher Walker in particular.
Finally, it gives me great pleasure to express my sincere thanks to all the
institutions that have made it possible for me to study the extraordinary,
ancient letters published in this volume. I want to emphasize that without
grants from the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Ehrnrooth Foundation and
the fruitful collaboration with the University of Verona, and, more recently
and above all, the opportunity to work on the British Arts and Humanities
Research Council-funded project “Mechanisms of Communication in an
Ancient Empire”, led by Karen Radner at University College London, I would
not have been in a position to prepare this volume.
London, August 2012
Mikko Luukko
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