Since Babylonian state archives containing royal correspondence and the (administrative) records of the court are lost, it is more difficult to make accurate statements about the administration of Babylonia and the amount of direct royal involvement in internal affairs than it is for the late Neo-Assyrian Period. Everyday matters reflected in letters and administrative records are generally not topics recorded in royal inscriptions, whose principal focus is on building activities, achievements that would not have been possible to carry out without an efficient administration. Therefore, it is unfortunate that modern scholarly investigations into the central administration of the Neo-Babylonian Empire has largely been conducted without documents from these now-lost royal archives.[[82]] However, the absence of royal archives does not mean that there is no information about administering Babylonia at this time. The main sources for Neo-Babylonian state administration originate from archives found in two temples: the Eanna temple at Uruk and the Ebabbar temple at Sippar.[[83]] Royal letters, as far as they are preserved, show that the king usually corresponded directly with the highest ranking members of a temple's personnel (šatammu, šangû, ṭupšar ayakki, qīpu, and ša rēš šarri bēl piqitti ša ayakki) and that these letters attest to the king's close involvement with many everyday affairs of the kingdom, for example, the management of cultic matters, temple personnel, and irrigation.[[84]] Therefore, based on what is written in these texts, one can assume that the kings of Babylon were equally involved in the day-to-day execution of (some of) the building projects whose construction are commemorated in their royal inscriptions, even though these sources are currently not attested.
82 It is well known that at least parts of the royal correspondence of this time was conducted in Aramaic, written on perishable material and, therefore, even the discovery of royal letters written in cuneiform will never give us a complete picture of the state administration of this period; see in particular Jursa, State Correspondence pp. 97 and 101. There are a few hundred administrative records from the royal palace in Babylon that were found by German excavators, but the bulk of these texts, which are now housed in the Vorderasiatisches Museum (Berlin), are still unpublished, as M. Jursa (OHANE 5 p. 93–94) has already noted.
83 For the relation between Eanna and the palace, see Kleber, Tempel und Palast; and Jursa, State Correspondence pp. 101–111. M. Jursa (ibid.) has given an overview of the published eighteen royal letters from the Neo-Babylonian period and he has pointed out that a lot of information on these royal letters now lost can be drawn from the king's discussions with his high officials, as it is currently preserved.
84 Jursa, State Correspondence pp. 102 and 106–107.
Jamie Novotny & Frauke Weiershäuser
Jamie Novotny & Frauke Weiershäuser, ' Administering Babylonia', RIBo, Babylon 7: The Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Dynasty, The RIBo Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2024 [/ribo/babylon7/RINBE11Introduction/NebuchadnezzarII/AdministeringBabylonia/]