The old Akkadian royal inscriptions: notes on a new edition.

• Author: Frayne, Douglas R.

INTRODUCTION Scholars in the field of Assyriology have long desired a new edition of the royal inscriptions of the Old Akkadian kings. H. Hirsch's edition (Hirsch 1963), while valuable, was incomplete, for it gave the texts only of inscriptions known from later OB tablet copies; the original inscriptions were simply enumerated with their bibliography. Thus the publication of I. J. Gelb's and B. Kienast's Die altakkadischen Koniginschriften des dritten Jahrtausends v. Christ is a welcome addition to Assyriological literature; its appearance should mean that the scholar need no longer thumb through a myriad of different publications in order to pursue a comprehensive study of the royal inscriptions of the Old Akkadian period. The authors are to be commended for their thoroughness in the compilation of the volume, for its compact format, and for its detailed bibliographies. The scope of the monograph is broader than indicated by its title. The authors' comments on p. xiii make it clear that the term "altakkadisch" of the title is not a designation of the Old Akkadian historical period. While the corpus of the inscriptions of the Old Akkadian kings does make up the bulk of the volume, it is by no means restricted to these texts. Rather, the monograph is to serve as a source document for philological purposes, treating all the royal inscriptions of the third millennium recorded in the Akkadian language. This follows Gelb's definition of the chronology of the Old Akkadian language: from the earliest texts in Akkadian language of pre-Sargonic times down to the end of the Ur III period. Thus the authors edit in chapters I and II pre-Sargonic inscriptions in Akkadian from Mari and other sites. A further confusion arises with the authors' use of the term "Konigsinschriften." They have included in the early chapters several dedicatory inscriptions which, while they may have belonged to high officials, were certainly not royal. A restriction of the volume to actual royal inscriptions would have decreased the size of the corpus for study, but would have had the advantage of keeping within the subject material indicated by the monograph title. It is unclear why inscriptions in Sumerian of the Gutian-period rulers of the cities of Umma (Nin-ura, p. 296; Lugal-ana-tum, pp. 296-97) and Sarrakum (Sar-adi-qubbisin, pp. 297-99) are included. One drawback in the presentation of the material is the separation into separate chapters of the original inscriptions, seal inscriptions, and later tablet copies. Is it really preferable to edit a text such as Manistusu 1 in two separate places, one giving an edition of the original inscriptions, and a second the later tablet copies? As long as the details of the various exemplars are clearly set out, no problems should arise if the original and later copies were edited together. Further, it would make more sense to collect all the seal inscriptions and votive inscriptions mentioning members of the royal family together in one place rather than editing them in separate chapters. A few words are in order about the transliteration system used by the authors, especially as it concerns the Old Akkadian sibilants. Gelb (MAD 2, 35) proposed at least three different series of S's for the earliest stages of Old Akkadian. (His postulated fourth sibilant series brings up special problems and will not be discussed in the present study.) The three-tiered system is further divided into two main groups: a) [S.sub.1] and [S.sub.2]; and b) [S.sub.3]--as shown in the following chart. [TABULAR DATA OMITTED] It should be noted that the sign [SU.sub.4] does not fit neatly into this scheme, for it is used for the sibilants of both groups a) and b). For its rendering of /su/ note the PN: [su.sub.4]-mu-be-li; for the value /su/ one may compare the common writing for the demonstrative pronoun: [SU.sub.4]-a in OAkk. curse formulae with the form found in the Kutik-Insusinak inscriptions: su-a. The fact that the Kutik-Insusinak inscriptions date to the time period before the shift (in orthography) of s to s indicates that the su-a form is original. Another example of [SU.sub.4] representing /s/ derived from original /t/ is in: [pi.sub.5]-[si.sub.x] ([SU.sub.4])-it (cf. pu-su-ut of OIP 14, 48, col. ii, line 2'; root p t t?) or in tam-[si.sub.]([SU.sub.4])-il-su of Naram-Sin C 6 (root m t l). The authors decided to differentiate OAkk. [S.sub.2] from [S. sub.1] in their volume, by transliterating [S.sub.2] as s; this follows the earlier practice of Gelb. As can be seen from the chart, this decision causes no problems when we are dealing with CV signs, for the distinction between [S.sub.2] and [S.sub.3] is clearly marked in the syllabary. Difficulties arise, however, with the VC signs. For example, the AS sign in OAkk. can be used to write either /as/ or /as/; the IS sign /is/ or /is/; and the US sign /us/ or /us/. In these cases the scholar has two methods to determine the nature of the sibilant in question. One is to examine the inner Akkadian evidence for a different form from the same verbal root. If the Akkadian evidence proves inconclusive, one could turn to the comparative evidence of cognate forms in other, preferably contemporary, Semitic languages. In the case of IS-me, for example, the evidence of the Eblaic infinitive sa-ma-um clearly tells us that the sibilant in OAkk. should be rendered as s. While the authors are generally correct in their rendering of the s phoneme in this volume, some mistakes do occur, and these will be noted in our discussion. The proper distinction between these sibilants is not a trivial point, for in some cases the correct translation of a line can depend on it. For example, in Naram-Sin C 3, line 4, the writing with sa-BI-ir tells us that this participle cannot be a form of the verb seberu(m), as some scholars have argued, for the PS root of this verb is: t b r; this would dictate a writing with sa in OAkk. Rather the line is to be read sa-pi-ir and translated "commander." Another problem arises in the transliteration of signs containing Old Akk. s. Since the phoneme is not separate from s in post-OAkk. texts, the scholars who established the modern syllabary for Akkadian transliteration have not given a complete or systematic repertory of sign values for it. Generally, the value given to the s sign was the same that was indicated for the s sign; for example, sa = sa, si = si, su = su, etc. There are exceptions, however, [SU.sub.4] with reading /su/ has the value su; [SI.sub.11] with reading /si/ is read si, and AS with reading /as/ is as. We could argue that a better system would be one that consistently assigns the same values to the s signs as to the s signs. In such a system [SU.sub.4] with reading /su/ would be transliterated as [su.sub.4]; [SI.sub.11] with a reading /si/ as [si.sub.11], and AS with reading /as/ as as, etc. Such a change does not significantly add to the number of new sign values nor does it present any conflicting values. Indeed, it would simplify matters; to the reviewer's mind the interpretation of [su.sub.4] is more readily apparent than su. The proposed new s values will be used in the present review. Another interesting problem on which the corpus edited in this volume sheds important light is the date of the shift (at least in the orthography) of s to s. A comparison of the Mari and Ur III material is particularly informative on this question. In the following discussion we cite the Mari texts according to the sigla given in the volume under review and the Ur III inscriptions according to I. Karki's numbering (Karki 1986). [TABULAR DATA OMITTED] While the data base is admittedly not large, it clearly demonstrates that the shift in the orthography of s to s occurred sometime during the reign of Sulgi. In Sulgi inscription 4, for example, the s occurs, whereas in Sulgi 14 s is found. In Sulgi 14 the king's name is rendered without the prefixed divine determinative; since the DINGIR sign was adopted as early as year 21, as is evidenced by the writing of the name of that year, we can state with certainty that the shift in the orthography of s to s cannot postdate year 21. If we were to look for an event in Sulgi's reign that might have occasioned the change in the writing system, the deed commemorated in the name of year 21 itself is a likely candidate, for it records a putting in order of the accounts in the temples of the gods Enlil and Ninlil. CHAPTER I: PRE-SARGONIC INSCRIPTIONS FROM MARI The inscriptions edited in this section exhibit numerous philological difficulties; a detailed discussion is beyond the scope of the present review. Page 4. The sixth RN is Ikun-Isar (Archi 1985: 49). MP 5. Line 1: There is some uncertainty whether the name of the river god should be read in its Sumerian or Akkadian form. For the former possibility see CAD I, s.v.; for the latter, see the comments of W. Lambert (Lambert 1965: 11). Line 2: The writing se-bum indicates that in the early Mari dialect the Proto-Akkadian *ai dipthong was reduced to e as it was in Assyrian. Further evidence of this phenomenon is found in the PN me-sar (from original *maisar) found in pre-Sargonic archival texts from Mari (Charpin 1987: 98). MP 7. Ikun-Mari. Line 5: For an identification of the GN wa-ra-ne with the [u.sub.9]-ra-nu that occurs as entry 3 in the ED list of city names from Ebla and a tentative location near the Tigris, see the comments in the reviewer's forthcoming study, The Early Dynastic List of Geographical Names (to appear in the AOS monograph series), 3.2.7. MP 8. Ikun-Samagan: The reading of the DN dUTU in the ED texts from Mari and Ebla is unknown; the proposal, based on the supposed parallel to the RN i-ku-sa-ma-gan, to see the theophoric element in the RN of MP 18 as Samagan, i.e., the Hurrian sun god, is implausible. The evidence from Ebla is relevant to this question. According to one scholar (Steiglitz 1990: 80): "The evidence for the Hurrian deities...