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STATE ARCHIVES OF ASSYRIA XIX
On the Present Edition
With well over 200 Nimrud Letters excavated in 1952, we have a remarkably
representative body of politically important letters, extant from all points
of the compass. This fact may suggest an ancient and possibly highly selective
“preservation policy” for these tablets. Perhaps the palace scribe, or another
influential official who was responsible for old letters in the palace, chose
with his assistants a suitable selection of letters — from the reign of Tiglathpileser
III and the early and mid-reign of Sargon II — to be kept in Calah;
many others may have been transported to Nineveh via Dur-Šarruken whereas
others could have been recycled on purpose. 249 If such a practice ever existed,
it must have been carried out during the reign of Sennacherib at the latest; its
motivation may not necessarily have been political but was perhaps also
based on practical factors. Still, it is worth pointing out that it was originally
within someone’s power to have these letters kept instead of allowing them
to be discarded, even if they were later used as filling material. 250 In the first
instance, this choice of preserving the letters may be ascribed to an official
of the same generation that produced them. It is clear, however, that these
letters have successfully stood the test of time: first, until the end of the
Assyrian empire which collapsed a hundred years or so after the Nimrud
Letters were written (roughly the time span of four to six successive generations
of ambitious administrators), before falling into an oblivion lasting
more than 2,500 years, until their discovery in 1952.
In Assyriology, it is not common for another volume to be published only
ten years after the editio princeps, 251 particularly if the second book is based
solely on the material treated in the first one. Therefore, the decision to
publish this volume ought to be defended somehow and this section is an
excellent place for it.
Saggs’ Copies and Collations
In his The Nimrud Letters, 1952, H. W. F. Saggs prepared cuneiform hand
copies which were not only aesthetically beautiful but also for the most part
very accurate. His skills as epigraphist are to be admired as he drew sign
forms which follow closely the actual sign forms on the tablets. This is
important, especially in the present situation in which the corpus is split
between two collections and the other half of the tablets lie beyond collation,
as it makes it possible, to a certain extent, to compare individual hands with
one another. I have been able to confirm the accuracy of his copies by
collating c. half of the letters, i.e., the half of the corpus that nowadays
belongs to the collections of the British Museum. 252
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