Letters from Priests to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal.

• Author: Porter, Barbara Nevling
• Position: Book Review

Letters from Priests to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal. By STEVEN W. COLE and PETER MACHINIST. State Archives of Assyria, vol. 13. Helsinki: HELSINKI UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1998. Pp. xxx + 221.

The 211 letters newly edited and translated in this excellent volume deal with temple administration and cultic affairs in the reigns of the Assyrian kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal (Ca. 680-650 B.C.). Many letters are reports to the king on topics such as the construction or renovation of temples, the successful performance of rituals, or the arrival (or non-arrival) of animals required for a temple's sacrifices, while others ask his decisions on religious matters, ranging from how a particular ritual should be performed to whether a craftsman may receive more jewels from a temple's treasury for adorning a new temple statue. Seven letters are from the king himself, conveying his orders and instructions to priests or to craftsmen working on religious objects or building projects. The volume as a whole presents a remarkably detailed picture of Assyrian temple activities and of the close control kings exerted over them.

The letters are grouped by place of origin. The letters from the king come first, followed by letters from priests, temple officials, and bureaucrats dealing with temple or cultic affairs in Assur (48 letters), Calah (81), Arbela (15), Nineveh (6, a small number because the king was usually in residence there so business could be discussed face to face), Babylon (24), Kurba[contains]il, Harran, and Kilizi (a total of 4), and the province of the chief cup-bearer (). Except for the numerous letters from Babylon (whose temples Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal were in the process of repairing and whose cults were being brought under the religious supervision of the Assyrian king and his advisors), the letters focus on temple affairs in Assyria itself.

The volume is the result of a complicated collaborative effort, as Robert Whiting explains in his foreword. In 1988, Peter Machinist became the first editor of the volume, collating and translating all the texts initially planned for the book and writing a preliminary critical apparatus. Then for several years the book was put on hold while the State Archives of Assyria project dealt with urgent issues of funding and organization. In 1997, when attention was again focused on the volume, it was decided to add several letters from Babylonia and a large block of letters discussing the delivery of horses to the temple of Naba in Calah. Since Machinist had by then moved on to other work, Steven Cole replaced him as editor, translating the new texts, revising Machinist's translations for consistency of style, and updating the critical apparatus. Throughout the entire process, Simo Parpola played an active supporting role, collating numerous texts and providing advice on the specialized terminology of Assyrian temp les and rituals. In addition, Karen Radner established the place of origin of several letters, and Robert Whiting wrote essays on prophecy and on the form and content of the volume for the introduction, itself primarily written by Cole. It is a tribute to the collaborative skills of all of these people--above all, the volume's two successive editors, Machinist and Cole--that the camel designed by this changing committee has emerged as a coherent, graceful, and intelligent creation that will contribute much to our understanding of the religious and political life of the late Neo-Assyrian empire.

Some letters published here have long been recognized as important for understanding Assyrian religion but are not widely known because they, like other Neo-Assyrian letters, remained available for study only in the pioneering but often inaccurate cuneiform block-print edition of Robert Harper (Assyrian...