Bilingual Chronicle Fragments

Abstract

Chronicle 18, the so-called Dynastic Chronicle, has most recently been edited in full in Grayson Chronicles 139-44, with important remarks on what is known of the beginning section from K.11261+ by W. G. Lambert in Lambert-Millard Atrahasis 15-21, and especially in Symbolae Bihl 27175. Two partially overlapping but still incomplete sources for the beginning of Chronicle 18 have now been identified by the writer. The first, BM 35572 = Sp.III, 80, is published here on p. 76; the second, BM 40565 = 80-11-12, 1088, on p. 77. Both are registered as coming from Babylon. BM 35572 (here source A) is a one-sided fragment in small, neat script. As far as can be judged, the first preserved line in A is the first line of the composition, that is, the Akkadian half of the first bilingual couplet. BM 40565 (here source B) is partly preserved on both sides, and comes from near the top of the tablet. In terms of depth it probably represents about one third of the original tablet. Between them, sources A and B fill up much of the gap that remains in the crucial beginning section of Chronicle 18, and they show that fifteen lines are missing before the first line given in Grayson Chronicles 140. Source A provides lines 1-10, and source B lines 4-16. The beginning of Chronicle 18 may now be summarized as follows. Lines 1-2 set the scene by describing rather succinctly the organization that followed the creation. By line 3 the institution of kingship is already in progress: its descent from Heaven is conventionally described in lines 8-9, while the names of the first two kings of Eridu must be restored in lines 1013, since kingship began in that city.2 Kingship then passed from Eridu to