The best known of the officials of the crown prince are, of course, Kakkullanu, Kiṣir-Aššur, Luqu and Bel-duri with their own documents. Many more officials of the crown prince are, however, attested in these texts. Some are known as sellers or neighbours, like the cohort commander Ubru-Nabû, who owned neighbouring property in Bit-Abu-ila'i (no. 42), or Šarru-lu-dari, horse trainer of the chief eunuch of the crown prince, who sold his house in Nineveh to Kakkullanu (no. 40).
Most of the officials are only known as witnesses, in which case we only know their names and titles. Fortunately, some texts, such as no. 50, use lengthy titles from which one can see that many of the officials witnessing the documents belonged to the establishment of the crown prince. The officials of the crown prince attested in this volume, most of them military officials, are listed with their fullest titles in Table II.
Some of these officials can be identified as belonging either to the bodyguard, ša qurbūti (Kiṣir-Aššur, cohort commander of the bodyguard of the crown prince), or to the personal guard, ša šēpi (Arbailayu, horse trainer of the personal guard), but the titles are mostly not specific enough to allow the division of all the officials into these two categories.
Although little information can be deduced from the mere names and titles, they are an important part of the evidence confirming the existence of the military establishment of the crown prince.
The military establishments of the crown prince and also of the queen can be seen as a result of a military reform by Sennacherib.[[15]] The earliest attestations of the military officials of the crown prince and the queen date to the reign of Sennacherib and include Sama', (horse) raiser (murabbānu) of the crown prince in SAA 6 37 and 39, both dated 694, and in SAA 6 40, dated 693. Aplaya, third man of Arda-Mullissi, the crown prince, is attested in SAA 6 103, dated 694. In SAA 6 164 from the year 686, two cohort commanders and one third man of the queen appear as witnesses.
A later important group of texts featuring several military officials of the crown prince and the queen mother is SAA 7 5-12. These administrative texts date to the reign of Esarhaddon or Assurbanipal. The texts SAA 7 5-7 list names and titles of military officials and SAA 7 8-12 list officials according to their temporary lodgings (mūšubu), possibly during a major ceremony at Nineveh.[[16]]
By the post-canonical period, the crown prince had also his own chief eunuch. Šamaš-šarru-uṣur, chief eunuch of the crown prince is listed in SAA 7 4 (i 16) with several high officials and governors. This text can be dated between the years 644*-625* on prosopographical grounds.[[17]] The text mentions "the new corps of Sennacherib" and "49 high ranking magnates (LÚ.GAL.GAL.MEŠ) of the crown prince - all assigned to the crown prince" (r. ii 5f).[[18]]
The existence of a chief eunuch of the crown prince implies that the crown prince had not only personal qurubtu-forces consisting of ša qurbūti and ša šēpi, which are attested in the texts of this volume, but also palace forces, under the command of his chief eunuch.[[19]]
The other known chief eunuch of the crown prince, Aššur-remanni, was eponym of the year 617* but he is attested only in eponym dates.
15 As suggested by Dalley and Postgate in the introduction to CTN 3, 41: "The pattern of evidence may now be sufficient to support the suggestion that Sennacherib's military reforms, which are referred to in two administrative records and reflected in some terms for professions among witnesses on dated legal tablets, involved dividing the 'royal' units of the kiṣir šarrūti into two or three parts among leading members of the royal family."
16 For the date see Fales and Postgate, SAA 7, XIX. Despite the numerous officials mentioned, these texts are very difficult to date on prosopographical grounds. The fact that Ša-la-maše, cohort commander of the chief eunuch from SAA 7 5 ii 7, is also attested in SAA 7 30, which can now be dated to the year 656, may favour a date during the reign of Assurbanipal. For Ša-la-maše and the new dating of SAA 7 30, see R. Mattila, The King's Magnates. A Study of the Highest Officials of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (SAAS 11, Helsinki 2000), 72. For the interpretation of these texts, see Fales and Postgale, SAA 7, XVII-XIX. Table I on p. XVIII gives an overview of the names and professions of the people most frequently attested in this group of texts.
17 The text mentions an otherwise unknown chief eunuch [...]aia, who most probably follows Nabû-šarru-uṣur in this office. This combined with the other prosopographical data, especially the mention of the treasurer Aššur-gimillu-tere, dates this text between the years 644*-625*. For this dating, see Mattila, SAAS 11, 64. SAA 7 3 is of the same date.
18 Unfortunately, only the left part of this tablet has survived and at least one column of text is destroyed on both the obverse and the reverse. Thus, of the 49 high-ranking magnates, only 5 are known: Dari-šarru. overseer of [...]; Silim-Taqumu, chief of equipment; Šaši, chief of replacements; Gabbu-amur, chief confectioner; and Qurdi-lssar, chief of accounts. For the term (LÚ.GAL.GAL.MEŠ) in the Horse Lists, see Dalley and Postgate, CTN 3, 28.
19 See the discussion in Dalley and Postgate, CTN 3. 41 and my earlier comments in SAAS 11, 154.
Raija Mattila
Raija Mattila, 'The Officials of the Crown Prince', Legal Transactions of the Royal Court of Nineveh, Part II: Assurbanipal Through Sin-šarru-iškun, SAA 14. Original publication: Helsinki, Helsinki University Press, 2002; online contents: SAAo/SAA14 Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2021 [http://oracc.org/saao/saa14/CrownPrince'sEstablishment/OfficialsoftheCrownPrince/]