Assyrian Historiography | Page 5

the original from which it was derived._ Yet it still remains true that the most accessible editions of these annals are those which are the latest and poorest. Many of the earlier and more valuable editions have not been republished for many years, so that for our most contemporaneous sources we must often go to old books, long out of print and difficult to secure, while both translation and commentary are hopelessly behind the times. Particularly is this the case with the inscriptions of Sennacherib and Ashur bani apal. The greatest boon to the historian of Assyria would be an edition of the Assyrian historical inscriptions in which would be given, only those editions or portions of editions which may be considered as contemporaneous and of first class value. With such a collection before him, notable as much for what it excluded as for what was included, many of the most stubborn problems in Assyrian history would cease to be problems.
The historian of Assyria must test his sources before he can use them in his history. To do this, he must first of all be able to distinguish the primary sources which will reward future study from those which are secondary and are based on other and more contemporary documents which even now are actually in our possession. When these latter are cast aside as of no practical value, save perhaps as they show the peculiar mental operations of the Assyrian editor, we are then ready to test the remainder by the various methods known to the historian. The second part of this task must be worked out by the historian when he studies the actual history in detail. It is the discovery of what are the primary sources for the various reigns and of the value of the contributions which they make to Assyrian history that is to be the subject of the more detailed discussion in the following chapters.


CHAPTER II
THE BEGINNINGS OF TRUE HISTORY
(Tiglath Pileser I)
We shall begin, then, our detailed study of the sources for Assyrian history with the data for the reign of Tiglath Pileser I (circa 1100 B.C.). Taking up first the Annals, we find that the annalistic documents from the reign may be divided into two general groups. One, the Annals proper, is the so called Cylinder, in reality written on a number of hexagonal prisms. [Footnote: Photographs of B and A, Budge-King, xliii; xlvii; of the Ashur fragments, of at least five prisms, Andr?, _Anu-Adad Tempel_, Pl. xiii ff. I R. 9 ff.; Winckler, _Sammlung_, I. 1 ff.; Budge-King, 27 ff., with variants and BM numbers. Lotz, Inschriften Tiglathpilesers I, 1880; Winckler, KB. I. 14 ff. Rawlinson, Hincks, Talbot, Oppert, JRAS. OS. XVIII. 150 ff.; Oppert, _Histoire des empires de Chaldée et d'Assyrie, 1865, 44f; Menant, 35 ff.; Rawlinson, Rp1, V. 7 ff. Sayce RP2, I. 92 ff.; Muss-Arnolt in Harper, llff.; MDOG. 25, 21f; 28, 22; 29, 40; 47, 33; King, _Supplement_, 116; Andr?, _Tempel_, 32 ff.] First comes the praise of the gods and self praise of the ruler himself. Then follow the campaigns, not numbered as in the more developed style of later rulers, but separated into six sections, for the six years whose events are narrated, by brief glorifications of the monarch. Next we have the various hunting exploits of the king, and the document ends with an elaborate account of the building operations and with threats against the later ruler who should destroy the inscription or refuse credit to the king in whose honor it was made.
No relationship has been made out between the fragments, but the four-fairly complete prisms fall into two groups, A and C, B and D, as regards both the form of writing and the character of the text. All date seemingly from the same month of the same year, though from separate days. The most fragmentary of these, D, seems the best, as it has the smallest number of unique readings and has also the largest number of omissions, [Footnote: II. 21b-23a; III. 37b-39a; IV. 36.] all of which are clearly interpolations in the places where they are given. This is especially true of the one [Footnote: IV. 36.] which refers to the Anu-Adad and Ishtar temples, for not only is the insertion awkward, we know from the Obelisk [Footnote: II. 13.] that the Anu-Adad temple was not completed till year five, so that it must be an interpolation of that date. In spite of its general resemblance to D, especially in its omissions, B is very poorly written and has over two hundred unique readings. One of its omissions would seriously disarrange the chronology, [Footnote: IV. 40-42.] others are clearly unwarranted, [Footnote: II. 79081; V.4; VIII. 29b-33.] and one long addition [Footnote: VII. 17-27; also I. 35; different in VI. 37.] further