Considering the enormous importance that Neo-Babylonian kings attached to building activities, especially their chief administrative center, it comes as no surprise that all of the kings of this dynasty (with the exception of Lâbâši-Marduk) had inscriptions written or stamped on the baked bricks that were used for construction projects all over Babylonia.[[113]] As the present volume does not cover the brick inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar, which are being edited in RINBE 1/2, only the seven brick inscriptions of Nabopolassar are treated here. Six come from Babylon and one originates from Sippar. Most of the known Nabopolassar bricks from Babylon (Npl. 8–12) are short inscriptions with four to seven lines of text; one (Npl. 13) is an eighteen-line inscription. These inscriptions, which are on the bricks' edges, were intended for baked bricks built into the outer mantle of the ziggurat Etemenanki and into the embankment walls outside of Babylon's inner city walls (Imgur-Enlil and Nēmetti-Enlil), especially in the area northwest of the South Palace, which protected the city against the waters of the Araḫtu River. Four of the texts include only Nabopolassar's name and titles and a reference to the building project (Npl. 8–10, 12). One of the inscriptions (Npl. 11) adds a short prayer addressed to the quay wall to speak favorably about the king to Marduk, Babylon's tutelary deity. The brick intended for Etemenanki (Npl. 13) refers to Marduk commissioning the king to plunder the lands of his enemies.
The brick inscription from Sippar (Npl. 14 ex. 5), which is also written on the edge of the brick, is significantly longer than the ones from Babylon. That text, which is also inscribed on two-column clay cylinders, is thirty-one lines long (seventy-three words). That inscription commemorates Nabopolassar's work on a canal that brought water from the Euphrates River to Sippar.
113 For the bricks of the post-Nebuchadnezzar Babylonian kings, see Weiershäuser and Novotny, RINBE 2 p. 19.
Jamie Novotny & Frauke Weiershäuser
Jamie Novotny & Frauke Weiershäuser, ' Baked Bricks (only Nabopolassar) ', RIBo, Babylon 7: The Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Dynasty, The RIBo Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2024 [/ribo/babylon7/RINBE11Introduction/SurveyoftheInscribedObjects/BakedBricksonlyNabopolassar/]