Letters from the time of Sennacherib

When Sennacherib unexpectedly came into power in 704, he had his official residence as Crown Prince in Dur-Šarrukin, the centre of power that his father had built. He left the new capital soon after his father's death and moved his residence to Nineveh.^[[12]] He also moved the voluminous correspondence that his father had compiled during the preceding years to Nineveh. This was the place where they were rediscovered in modern times. During the first months after Sargon's death, a presumably large number of letters to Sennacherib lamented that Merodach-Baladan had become active again and was trying with the help of insurgents to regain the kingdom which he had lost only a very few years earlier.^[[13]] Acting commanders and guards or civilians employed in the administration of temples, who depended on royal favour and were afraid to lose their prebend, were primarily the senders of such reports. While Sargon was still living, they were played down as a latent threat; but after his death they needed to be considered a clear and present danger.

Since the letters from the last years of Sargon show the same contents as those from the early reign of Sennacherib, it is problematic to assign them to either Sargon or Sennacherib. In contrast to his father, not a single letter is known so far that names Sennacherib as the addressee. In addition, the letters to Sennacherib are not formally different from those sent to his father; this is because the scribes who were already active during Sargon's reign continued their service under his son. For example, it is not possible to identify any new ways to address the ruler or new introductionary phrases in the letters to Sennacherib — only the letters to Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal show noticeable innovations. To conclude with these observations in mind that no or only very few letters to Sennacherib have come down to us would be jumping to conclusions. Moreover, it is known that they come from the same archive of Sennacherib that contained numerous juridical documents of his time.^[[14]] Because it bases its view that the stream of Kuyunjik letters had subsided for whatever reasons before Sargon's death on this rather rash decision,^[[15]] we should call the current school of thought into question.^[[16]]

Two groups of letters offer a starting point for the discussion of which NB letters belong into the time of Sennacherib:

1. Letters to the king that mention the father — son relationship between Sargon and Sennacherib: no. 83 r. 1 "the king, your father" - letter of an unknown sender from Borsippa; no. 94 r. 18 "the son of Sargon" - a letter of Lanšê of Gambulu.^[[17]]

2. Letters belonging to the correspondence of the viceroy of Babylon, Bel-ibni (703 to 700): The question of whether the exchange of written communication between the the viceroy and his superior really has come down to us has been divergently discussed. On the one hand, there is the opinion that the almost identical petitionary letters (nos. 52, 53 and 54 addressed to Sennacherib or one of his magistrates of the court by someone called Bel-ibni) really came from the viceroy.^[[18]] On the other hand, opposed to it is the opinion that assigns these letters to one of his numerous namesakes.^[[19]] Three observations support the assumption that the above named letters really were written at the order of the viceroy: first, the Elamite agitators might at best have supported the viceroy Bel-ibni's cause and not that of another less important namesake; second, the repeated depiction of the disadvantageous situation supports the sender's exalted reputation in the eyes not only of the King but also in the eyes of the court's magistrates; third, the ductus of the writing, style of language and the formulas used in the introduction of the letters support the assumption that the documents belong to the context of viceroy Bel-ibni. The proponents of the view that these letters of petition did not originate with viceroy Bel-ibni ought to prove these arguments wrong.

3. Letters whose contents suggest a date during the reign of Sennacherib, as for example nos. 120, 144 and 170:

no. 120, a letter of Nabû-šumu-lišir and Aqar-Bel-lumur to the king, refers to the conquest of Bit-Ha'iri in the region of the Assyrian-Elamite border, an event that occurred in 693.^[[20]]
no. 144, whose sender is unknown, originates fro m Uruk and speaks in 11. 3 and 5 of "Sargon," Hence the letter cannot be addressed to Sargon or one of his subordinates.
no. 170, a letter to the vizier, which can most probably be dated to the viceroy Mušezib-Marduk (692-689).

As is to be expected, these letters contain numerous linguistic and prosopographic clues, as well as clues concerning the contents which provide us with tools to uncover even more letters from the time of Sennacherib.^[[21]] As implied above we thus obtain a relatively large number of altogether (±) 65 letters, a number that might even increase further with more research.

A cursory reading of the letters that can be dated to the reign of Sennacherib with some certainty shows that messages about the whereabouts of Merodach-Baladan were important — those messages were mostly circumscribed as mār Jakīni "the jakinite" — ina Bābili šū "he is in Babylon."

12 E. Frahm, Sanherib (1997), 8.

13 Cf. E. Frahm, Sanherib (1997), 8; J. A. Brinkman, Prelude ( 1984) 54-57; W. Mayer, Politik (1995) 346-349 to this time one can probably date the majority of letters that contain the report "The Yakinite is in Babylon."

14 Cf. S. Parpola, ARINH (1981), 121, n. 3; Th. Kwasman - S. Parpola, SAA 6 (1991) xvi-xx.

15 Cf. for example the chronological approaches in the PNA volumes.

16 In the following I list a few iIlustrative comments about this issue: S. Parpola, Assyrian Royal Inscriptions (1981) 119: "There are no letters datable with any degree of confidence in the reigns of Shalmaneser V and Sennacherib"; cf., however, also n. 1: "This is possibly an overstatement. It is per se entirely thinkable that some letters ... assigned in this article to the reign of Sargon actually date from the beginning of the reign of Sennacherib"; cf. similar statements in SAA 1 (1987) xxiii-xxiv_ or in SAA 5 (1990) xxxi-xxxii — Parpola seems to have abandoned his original estimation in the meantime, cf. Fs. Dietrichch (2002), 559-580; J. A. Brinkman, Prelude (1984) 56 n. 261: "There are very few l_etters known from Sennacherib's reign ... "; E. Frahm, Sanherib (1997 ), 4-5: "Leider stehen Briefe ... als Quelle für die Zeit zwischen 705 und 68 1 praktisch nicht zur Verfügung."

17 Since nos. 95 and 94 are parallels, 95 was also authored by Lanšê and is addressed to Sennacherib's vizier; for dating it to the reign of Sargon, see comments to SAA 15 136:7.

18 Cf. M. Dietrich, AOAT 253 (1998), 83 (includes a bibliography concerning this question).

19 Cf. J. A. Brinkman, RA 77 (1984), 175-176.

20 Cf. S. Parpola, Fs. Dietrich (2002), 559-580.

21 See above; cf. M. Dietrich WO 4/1 (1967), 61-103. and WO 4/2 (1968), 183-206, with small divergences; S. Parpola, Fs. Dietrich (2002), 559-580.

Manfried Dietrich

Manfried Dietrich, 'Letters from the time of Sennacherib', The Neo-Babylonian Correspondence of Sargon and Sennacherib, SAA 17. Original publication: Helsinki, Helsinki University Press, 2003; online contents: SAAo/SAA17 Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2020 [http://oracc.org/saao/saa17/Neo-BabylonianLetters/Sennacherib/]