Two Assyrian King Lists

Abstract

Khorsabad King List was found on the site of ancient Duir-Sarru-kin in the course of excavations conducted there in the season of 1932/33 by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. A photograph of the obverse of the tablet was reproduced in Gordon Loud and Charles B. Altman, Volume II (Oriental Institute Publications, Vol. XL [Chicago, 1938], P1. 57, No. 74), and in several editions of the Handbook published by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. photograph shows the shape of the tablet and its state of preservation, but, since it has been taken at an angle, it was not clear enough to allow scholars to read the inscription. A beautiful photograph of the reverse was published in the English illustrated periodical Sphere under the date of April 7, 1934. This is the photograph which was reproduced in an article by Ernst F. Weidner, Die Kdnigsliste aus Chorsibid, Archiv fiir Orientforschung, XIV (1941-44), 362-69. In the same article Weidner offered a partial transliteration of the Khorsabad King List, based on the photograph of the reverse. A discussion of the whole king list and a partial transliteration of individual passages were given by A. Poebel, The Assyrian King List from Khorsabad, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, I (1942), 247-306, 460-92; II (1943), 56-90. second king list published here came to light under circumstances so unusual as to be almost unbelievable. present owner of this tablet inherited it from a relative who had bought it from natives in Mosul before the first World War. Toward the end of 1953 the owner of the tablet brought it to Dr. Siegfried H. Horn, professor at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., and generously left it with the seminary on a permanent loan basis. As far as can be ascertained, the tablet had not been shown before to any competent scholar, nor had the value of its contents been recognized until Dr. Horn was given the opportunity to inspect the tablet. During the Christmas vacations of 1953 Dr. Horn brought the tablet to Chicago and intrusted it to the writer for publica-