Ashurbanipal's Building Activities in Babylonia and the East Tigris Region

Numerous texts describe Ashurbanipal's many building activities in Babylonia. In the prologues of some of his annalistic texts and building inscriptions written on multi-faceted clay prisms, the king provides a vague overview of his (temple) building activities, stating:

(As for) the sanctua[ries of A]ssyria (and) the land Akkad whose foundation(s) Esarh[addon], king of Assyria, the father who had engendered me, had laid, but whose construction he had not finished, I myself now completed their work by the command of the great gods, my lords.^[85]

I built (and) completed the sanctuaries of Assyria (and) the land Akkad in their en[ti]rety. I made every type of temple appurtenance there is from silver (and) gold, (and) I a[d]ded (them) to those of the kings, my ancestors. I made the great gods who support me reside in their exalted inner sanctums. I offered sumptuous offerings before them (and) presented (them) with my gif[ts]. I made regular offerings (and) contributions more plenti[ful] than those of distant [day]s.^[86]

From the textual and archaeological records, it is known that Ashurbanipal had sponsored building programs in at least ten Babylonian cities: Agade, Babylon, Borsippa, Cutha, Dūr-Kurigalzu, Mê-Turān, Nippur, Sippar, Ur, and Uruk. He also carried out construction in the East Tigris region, at Dēr. Full details about Ashurbanipal's building activities in Assyria are given in the introduction of Jeffers and Novotny, RINAP 5/2 (pp. 11–25). For general studies, see in particular Frame, RIMB 2 pp. 194–195 and 261; and Grayson, CAH2 3/2 pp. 155–158. Ashurbanipal's Babylonian and East-Tigridian building projects will be discussed alphabetically by city.

Notes

[85] Novotny and Jeffers, RINAP 5/1 p. 111 Asb. 6 (Prism C) i 5´–10´.

[86] Novotny and Jeffers, RINAP 5/1 p. 218 Asb. 10 (Prism T) iii 35b–49a.

Jamie Novotny

Jamie Novotny, 'Ashurbanipal's Building Activities in Babylonia and the East Tigris Region', 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/buildinginbabylonia/]

The RINAP 5 sub-project of the University of Pennsylvania-based RINAP Project, 2015–23. The contents of RINAP 5 are prepared in cooperation with the Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative (MOCCI), which is based at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Historisches Seminar (LMU Munich, History Department) - Alexander von Humboldt Chair for Ancient History of the Near and Middle East. Content released under a CC BY-SA 3.0 [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/] license, 2007–23.
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