The Correspondence of Assurbanipal, Part II: Letters from Southern Babylonia

The present volume completes the critical edition of the political correspondence of Assurbanipal, the first part of which was published in SAA 21. The 163 letters edited here were sent from southern Mesopotamia and Elam, mostly by governors or other high-ranking local administrators and military commanders; almost all are addressed to the Assyrian king, although a few nonroyal letters are also included. As in SAA 21, the bulk of the correspondence dates from the civil war between Assurbanipal and Samas-sumu-ukin and provides dramatic eyewitness evidence of this turbulent time.

The volume does not contain a single letter authored by Assurbanipal, but almost all the letters originate from recipients of the royal letters in SAA 21 and deal largely with the same political and military events as the corresponding royal letters. Altogether, these letters convey a multifaceted picture of the prolonged conflict, enabling a detailed reconstruction of its brutal course and consequences. As a firsthand account of a cruel war, this collection of letters is unique in Mesopotamia, with comparable sources known only from Greek and Roman times.

Grant Frame is Professor Emeritus of Assyriology and former Director of the Center for Ancient Studies at the University of Pennsylvania; Curator of the Penn Museum’s Babylonian Collection; and founder, Director, and Editor-in-Chief of the Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period Project. He is the author of The Archive of Musēzib-Marduk, Son of Kiribtu and Descendant of Sîn-nāṣir: A Landowner and Property Developer at Uruk in the Seventh Century BC and Rulers of Babylonia: From the Second Dynasty of Isin to the End of Assyrian Domination (1157-612 BC).

Simo Parpola is Professor Emeritus of Assyriology at the University of Helsinki and the publisher of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. He is the author of Letters from Assyrian Scholars to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, Parts I and II, and The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part 1, and the editor or coeditor of numerous volumes published by the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project.