The cuneiform inscriptions and the Old Testament - The Search For ...

SECOND BOOK OF RINGS XIX. 2 1
of nations, the king of the land Assur; lord 3. of Babylon,
king of Sumlr 4. and Akkad, king of the kings of Aegypt, 336
5. of Pat[ro]s, of Aethiopia, 6. built the palace in Tarbiz
7. as a residence of Asurbanipal, the imperial son (crownprince)
of my palace, 9. the son, (-who is) the fruit of my
body, 10. (and) completed it".
Notes and Illustrations. 2. sakkanak is scarcely a prolonged form
of §akuu |JQ "viceroy", but is rather a word of Akkadian origin
signifying "head", "chieftain", as is shown in the essay quoted below
pp. 29 foil. Here it means "feudal lord". We have here the usual
ideogram for this conception. The phonetic mode of writing the word
may be observed, for example, in the Borsippa-inscription of Nebu-
cadnezar col. I. 6 ;— 3. Respecting Sumiri and Akkadi, here represented
by ideograms, see above Vol. I, pp. 103 foil.;— 5. The mutilated
Patu . . si is completed by Oppert into Patu[ru]si and also com-
pared with the Old Test, word DinflD "Upper Aegypt" Is. XI. 11.
See his L'Egypte et I'Assyrie Paris 1869, p. 41 and comp. Keilinsch.
u. Gesch. p. 285;— 6. m&t properly "land" can only mean in this passage,
if the reading be correct, "country-house", "villa". In another in-
scription of Asarhaddon, likewise discovered at Sherif Khan (I Rawl.
48. No. 8, line 2), we read the unmistakeable word ikal 73"in
"palace"; Tarbis ancient name of the modern Sherif-Khan, North-
West of Niniveh*:—7. musab 3tJ'lJ3 (from "^^H, Hebr. 2'i^^) "dwelling";
— 8. comp. Ill Eawl. 16. No. 2, 40 foil., and respecting bit riduti
"children's dwelling" =: "private -palace", see particularly Smith'.s
Assurbanipal 308, 31. 35; 312, 70 (= V Eawl. 10, 51. 55. 91);—9. situ
i- 6- nX!i meaning "sprout", root xiJN hebr. {i{\^i; libbu ^b ^ere in the
sense of body; arsip 1 pers. Kal of rasapu "to adjust or fit-in blocks
for building", comp. Hebr. njj*1, Arab. s_ji/0. ; then "to build" gene-
rally; usaklil "I completed" Imperf. Shaf. 1 pers. from kalSlu bbD-
As for the records of this monarch that have come
down to us, they consist either of short inscriptions on
* The name is probably to be connected with the root y^l "lie
down", "rest". Thus we should have in this case an Assyrian counter-
part to the German local names "Friedrichsruh", "Karlsruh" &c.—For
narbasu in the sense of "abode" see Sargon's Cyprus-stele col. II (IV).
25 (see the Transactions of the Berlin Academy of Sciences 1881 (82),
Philolog. histor. Kl. VIII. p. 33).