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ON THE PRESENT EDITION
• ND 2605 (CTN 5 pl. 54, p. 273-75) is an administrative document
• ND 2614 (CTN 5 pl. 47, p. 238) may be an administrative document
• ND 2615 (CTN 5 pl. 54, p. 275f) is not a letter: its precise nature must be
determined by further study
• ND 2752 (CTN 5 pl. 12, p. 308) is a fragment of a legal transaction
• ND 2760 (CTN 5 pl. 61, p. 309) is not a letter but may be a fragment of a literary
text (CTN 5, p. 311, “Possibly it is an omen report”): its precise nature,
however, must be determined by further study
Except for ND 2479, all the documents listed above were written in
Neo-Assyrian but this group of texts is not published here since they are not
letters. However, this volume includes previously unpublished letters since
nos. 7, 32, 58, 64 (copy: CTN 5 pl. 37), 204 that were either mentioned or
briefly discussed by Saggs in CTN 5 267
are now edited for the first time.
Therefore, the total number of Nimrud Letters in this volume is 229 (201
Neo-Assyrian and 28 Neo-Babylonian letters), although it remains uncertain
whether no. 188 really is a letter and not an administrative document. In
addition, ND 2087 and ND 2353, mentioned by Saggs, may be letters but
remain unpublished since they are either lost (ND 2087) or too damaged to
be published (obviously ND 2353).
The Order of the Texts
The letters are arranged according to the same principles as in the previous
State Archives of Assyria volumes. All identifiable letters by the same sender
have been grouped together into dossiers, and the dossiers have been ordered
principally according to geographical criteria (the provenances of the letters),
with letters from central Assyria (especially royal letters) coming first,
followed by those from the west, north, east and south; unassigned letters
appear last. In general, there is no attempt at a chronological order within
dossiers, but it is of course crucial to assign a letter either to the reign of
Tiglath-pileser III or Sargon II wherever possible. However, as the majority
of datable letters belong to the reign of Tiglath-pileser III, we have also
placed a significant number of undatable letters within his reign, although,
as a rule, letters that are not included in TABLE II (see above) might also
originate from Sargon’s reign (or even from Shalmaneser’s much shorter
intervening reign). The only exception to chronological details is constituted
by the letters of some of the main dossiers in which the chronological order
of events may sometimes be detected. Another guiding principle worth
mentioning is that, within a dossier, intact letters often precede fragmentary
ones.
Transliterations and Translations
The transliterations that Saggs provided in CTN 5 include numerous errors
and, correspondingly, problems are rife in his translations, also from the
LVII