RINAP 5 was originally conceived as being split into three parts. Part 1 was to include all of the historical inscriptions on clay prisms, clay cylinders, and wall slabs and other stone objects from Nineveh, Aššur, and Kalḫu; Part 2 was to edit together the texts of Ashurbanipal preserved on clay tablets; and Part 3 was to contain all of Ashurbanipal's Babylonian inscriptions, the royal inscriptions of Aššur-etel-ilāni and Sîn-šarra-iškun, as well as the texts whose attribution is uncertain (the 1000-numbered texts) and inscriptions written in the names of other members of the royal family (the queens) and officials (including loyal supporters in Babylonia). In 2018, however, the authors had felt that RINAP 5 should be published in two parts, rather than in three parts; this is stated several times in Part 1, especially in the book's introduction. During the course of the preparation of Part 2, it became increasingly clear that the original plan to split the corpus of inscriptions of Ashurbanipal, Aššur-etel-ilāni, and Sîn-šarra-iškun into three parts was the most viable option for publishing this large group of texts. Thus, RINAP 5 once again became a three-part volume.
Part 3 contains all of the certainly-identifiable and positively-attributable inscriptions of Ashurbanipal discovered in Babylonia (mostly from Babylon), in the East Tigris Region (Dēr), and outside of the Assyrian Empire, mostly at the Persian capital Persepolis, together with some texts that have been tentatively attributed to Ashurbanipal (the 1000-number texts, as defined in the Editorial Notes), inscriptions of some members of Ashurbanipal's family — his wife Libbāli-šarrat, as well as his sons and successors Aššur-etel-ilāni and Sîn-šarra-iškun [7] — and loyal officials (namely Sîn-balāssu-iqbi, governor of Ur). In total, 106 inscriptions are edited in the present volume. The contents of these texts fall into three broad categories: (1) building and display inscriptions, (2) dedicatory inscriptions, and (3) proprietary labels. Other subgenres of royal compositions (for example, historical-literary texts, colophons, and land grants in the form of dedications) are excluded entirely from RINAP 5; see below for details.
Most of the inscriptions included in Part 3 are composed in the Standard Babylonian dialect of Akkadian (with Assyrianisms). A handful of inscriptions, mostly written or stamped on bricks, were composed in Sumerian. The texts from Assyria are written in Neo-Assyrian script, while those from Babylonia are usually, but not always, in contemporary or archaizing Neo-Babylonian script.
[7] The inscriptions of Ashurbanipal's older brother Šamaš-šuma-ukīn are not edited in RINAP 5. For editions of the inscriptions of that king of Babylon, see Frame, RIMB 2 pp. 248–259 B.6.33.1–2001.
Jamie Novotny
Jamie Novotny, 'Texts Included in Part 3', RINAP 5: The Royal Inscriptions of Ashurbanipal, Aššur-etel-ilāni, and Sîn-šarra-iškun, The RINAP/RINAP 5 Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2023 [http://oracc.org/rinap/rinap5/RINAP53Introduction/TextsIncludedinPart3/]