Assyrian Historiography | Page 5

and therefore seemed to him to have a
greater importance. Now it would seem that all Assyriologists should
have long ago recognized that _any one of these editions is of value
only when it is the most nearly contemporaneous of all those preserved.
When it is not so contemporaneous, it has absolutely no value when we
do have 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, Andrä,
_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;
Andrä, _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