A fragment of a clay cylinder now in the British Museum preserves a small portion of Akkadian inscription referring to a temple of the goddess Ištar, as well as to the goddess Ištar of Agade (Akkad). Although the name of the king in whose name the text was written is no longer preserved, the inscription should probably be attributed to Ashurbanipal because the wording of the text is similar to that found in other (Babylonian) inscriptions of his.
Access the composite text [/rinap/rinap5/Q008341/] of Ashurbanipal 252.
The fragment is part of the British Museum's Kuyunjik collection and, thus, it might come from that site, although some pieces from other places (for example, Borsippa) have been mistakenly placed in that collection. The piece is shown on British Museum photograph 230549. The inscription is in contemporary Babylonian script and has been edited from the original.
The wording of the inscription is similar to that found on several other clay cylinder inscriptions of Ashurbanipal from Babylonia, in particular his text recording work on the city wall of Babylon (Asb. 241 lines 23–28; see also Asb. 253 lines 23–27 and Asb. 262 lines 23–28), although the placement of some phrases is different in this inscription; the proposed restorations are based on Asb. 241 and 253. M. Streck (Asb. pp. XLI–XLII) included this fragment among his exemplars for the inscription of Ashurbanipal describing the restoration of the Ebabbar temple at Sippar (Asb. 262), but it is clear that he had not actually seen the piece and that he placed it there because of a comment by H. Winckler (OLZ 1 [1898] col. 76).
Since the name of the deity whose temple was built or restored is normally the deity mentioned in the curse formula, it is likely that it was a temple of the goddess Ištar of Agade (often called Bēlet-Agade) which was of concern in the text. Nabonidus records that Ashurbanipal had carried out work on Eulmaš, the temple of Ištar of Agade at Agade (Weiershäuser and Novotny, RINBE 2 p. 137 Nabonidus 27 ii 37–45), thus this fragment might very well describe the restoration of that (still-undiscovered) temple. With regard to the history of the Eulmaš temple at Agade, see, for example, Frame, Mesopotamia 28 (1993) pp. 21–50. However, there was also a temple of Ištar of Agade in the Ka-dingirra district of Babylon, Emašdari ("House of Animal Offerings"), and in view of Ashurbanipal's other work at that city, it is likely that this inscription refers to that temple, rather than the one at Agade.
Grant Frame & Jamie Novotny
Grant Frame & Jamie Novotny, 'Inscriptions from Agade (text no. 252)', 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/rinap53textintroductions/ashurbanipal/agadetext252/]