Assyrian Historiography by Olmstead, A. T. (Albert Ten Eyck)

For the period after the reign of Ashur bani apal, we have only the scantiest data. The fall of the empire was imminent and there were no glories for the scribe to chronicle. Some bricks from the south east palace at Kalhu, [Footnote: I R. 8, 3; Winckler, KB. II. 268f; Menant, 295.] some from Nippur, [Footnote: Hilprecht, ZA. IV. 164; _Explorations_, 310.] and some boundary inscriptions [Footnote: K. 6223, 6332; Winckler, AOF. II. 4f; Johns. PSBA. XX. 234.] are all that we have from Ashur itil ilani and from Sin shar ishkun only fragments of a cylinder dealing with building. [Footnote: K. 1662 and dupl. I R. 8, 6; Schrader, _SB. Berl. Gesell._ 1880, 1 ff.; Winckler, _Rev. Assyr._ II. 66 ff.; KB. II. 270 ff.; MDOG. XXXVIII. 28.] We have no contemporaneous Assyrian sources for the fall of the kingdom, our only certain knowledge being derived from a mutilated letter [Footnote: BM. 51082; Thompson, _Late Babylonian Letters_ 248.] and from a brief statement of the Babylonian king Nabu naid a generation later. [Footnote: Messerschmidt, _Mitth. Vorderas. Gesell._, 1896. I.]

CHAPTER VIII

THE BABYLONIAN CHRONICLE AND BEROSSUS

This concludes our detailed study of the "histories" of the reigns which were set forth with the official sanction. Before summing up our conclusions as to their general character, it will be well to devote a moment to the consideration of certain other sources for the Assyrian period. Many minor inscriptions have been passed by without notice, and a mere mention of the mass of business documents, letters, and appeals to the sun god will here be sufficient, though in a detailed history their help will be constantly invoked to fill in the sketch secured by the study of the official documents, and not infrequently to correct them. Of foreign sources, those of the Hebrews furnish too complicated a problem for study in this place, [Footnote: Cf. Olmstead, AJSL. XXX. Iff.; XXXI, 169 ff. for introduction to these new problems.] and the scanty documents of the other peoples who used the cuneiform characters hardly furnish source problems.

Even the Babylonians have furnished us with hardly a text which demands source study. To the end, as is shown so conspiciously in the case of Nebuchadnezzar, scores of long inscriptions could be devoted to the building activities of the ruler while a tiny fragment is all that is found of the Annals. Even his rock cut inscriptions in Syria, those in the Wadi Brissa and at the Nahr el Kelb, are almost exclusively devoted to architectural operations in far away Babylon! [Footnote: It may be noted that the Cornell Expedition secured squeezes of both these inscriptions.]