Two damaged clay cylinders found at Nippur preserve part of an Akkadian inscription of Ashurbanipal. That text describes the restoration of the ziggurat (or possibly only just the temple on top of it) for the god Enlil, the patron of Nippur. The renovation of that same structure is recorded on a brick inscription (Asb. 260).
Access the composite text [/rinap/rinap5/Q008347/] of Ashurbanipal 258.
Ex. 1 has "an unusual conical shape, rather like a cone with the tip cut off" and ex. 2 would originally have been of similar size and shape (Gerardi, Studies Sjöberg p. 207). Ex. 1 was found by the University of Pennsylvania expedition to Nippur at the end of the nineteenth century and is on loan to the Penn Museum (Philadelphia) from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Ex. 2 was found by the Oriental Institute and the Penn Museum expedition to Nippur in 1951–52. Both copies of the text are written in contemporary Babylonian script. The line arrangement and master line follow ex. 1, but with help from ex. 2 for lines 6–8 and 15. The restoration at the end of line 2 follows an inscription dating to the reign of the Babylonian king Nabû-nāṣir (747–734); see Frame, RIMB 2 p. 128 B.6.15.2001 line 3. A score of the text is presented on Oracc and the minor (orthographic) variants are listed at the back of the book.
Because Šamaš-šuma-ukīn is not mentioned in the inscription and because Nippur was kept under direct Assyrian control after the 652–648 rebellion (that is, it was not placed under the authority of the new king of Babylon Kandalānu [647–627]), it is more likely that this inscription comes from the time after the beginning of the rebellion than before it. Only a few fragmentary Assyrian inscriptions give Ashurbanipal the title "king of the land of Sumer and Akkad," and this is the only one from Babylonia to do so (see Frame, Babylonia pp. 304–306). The attribution of this title to Ashurbanipal could suggest that the inscription dates to a time when there was no separate king of Babylon, or at least none acknowledged by the scribes at Nippur. This could point to the time of the rebellion itself as the date of composition for the text, but one might not expect restoration work to have been carried out while the land was in turmoil.
This is the first of three Sumerian brick inscriptions of Ashurbanipal from Nippur. It states that Ashurbanipal had Ekur ("House, Mountain"), the temple of the god Enlil in Nippur, (re)built. The text is found stamped sometimes on the face of the brick and sometimes on its side.
Access the composite text [/rinap/rinap5/Q008348/] of Ashurbanipal 259.
The British Museum purchased ex. 1 from H.C. Rawlinson. Collations for it and ex. 2 were kindly supplied by C.B.F. Walker. Ex. 3 is from the H. Weld Blundell collection. In 1923–24, S. Langdon acquired a brick with this inscription (ex. 4) and was told that it came from "Tal Laḫam," which some located "a short distance north-east of Afaj, and some south-east of Duraihim." He suggested that the name had been distorted and stood for "Tal Dulaihim, eleven miles south-east of Afaj" (Kish 1 p. 108). Ex. 5 was presented to the Bristol museum by Sir L. Woolley. H.V. Hilprecht states that other bricks with this inscription were found in the same structure as ex. 7 (BE 1/1 p. 52). He also notes that Ashurbanipal's inscribed bricks were "sometimes green (originally blue) enamelled on the edges" (Hilprecht, Explorations p. 376). Some of the bricks found by him are likely to be identified with exs. 6 and 8–20. Photographs and measurements of exs. 15–20 were kindly supplied by H. Galter. A cast of ex. 23 in the Oriental Institute, Chicago, was examined. With regard to bricks from Nippur attributed to Ashurbanipal, see Clayden and Schneider, Kaskal 12 (2015) pp. 349–382.
The inscription is sometimes stamped on the face of the brick (e.g., exs. 1–5, 7, 9–10, and 16–17) and sometimes on the edge (e.g., exs. 11–12); one brick has the inscriptions in both places (exs. 13–14). In some cases, it is uncertain where the inscription appears (e.g., if the piece is known only from a photograph or if the brick has been cut down in size in modern times). The stamped area measures 14.5–15×6.5–7.1 cm. The script is archaizing Babylonian, perhaps intended to look Sumerian. The last sign of line 10 (-ta) is placed at the very end of the line and as a result the final vertical wedge of the sign often appears either to be omitted because of a lack of space or to have been obscured by the edge of the stamp. No variants are attested and no score for this brick inscription is presented online.
The inscription was not assigned to Ashurbanipal by the first editors of the text because of the unusual writing of the ruler's name (line 4). This inscription was likely modelled upon one of the Kassite ruler Adad-šuma-uṣur (BE 1/1 no. 81, and duplicates), as noted by M. Streck (Asb. p. LXIV). An inscription of Aššur-etel-ilāni (Aei 5 in the present volume) appears to have been modelled upon the same inscription of Adad-šuma-uṣur.
A brick discovered at Nippur has a twelve-line Sumerian text inscribed on its edge. That inscription states that Ashurbanipal had the high temple (Egigunû) of the god Enlil's ziggurat rebuilt; the restoration of the same structure is recorded in text Asb. 258.
Access the composite text [/rinap/rinap5/Q008349/] of Ashurbanipal 260.
Two bricks intended to be used in a well bear a Sumerian text that records that Ashurbanipal had some structure built within Eḫursaggalama ("House, Skillfully-Built Mountain"), the cella of the god Enlil at Nippur.
Access the composite text [/rinap/rinap5/Q008350/] of Ashurbanipal 261.
Ex. 1 is a "well-head" brick housed among the Penn Museum's collection of bricks from Nippur and Ur. In view of its inscription, it probably comes from the former site. The inscription is found on the outer edge of the brick and is written in archaizing Babylonian script. Information about ex. 2 comes from J.A. Armstrong and R.D. Biggs; for provenance of this brick, see Armstrong's unpublished doctoral dissertation, The Archaeology of Nippur from the Decline of the Kassite Kingdom until the Rise of the Neo-Babylonian Empire (University of Chicago, 1989) p. 42, where it is described as an "Ashurbanipal Ekur brick." The edition presented in the present volume is based on ex. 1.
Eḫursaggalama ("House, Skillfully-Built Mountain" or "House, Stepped/Storied Mountain") was the cella of the god Enlil, which was located on the highest tier of the ziggurat; see George, House Most High pp. 100–101 no. 480; and Sjöberg, Temple Hymns p. 50 and the references cited there.
Grant Frame & Jamie Novotny
Grant Frame & Jamie Novotny, 'Inscriptions from Nippur (text nos. 258-261)', 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/nippurtexts258261/]