Assyrian Historiography: A Source Study

e official sanction. Before summing up our conclusions as to their general character, it will b

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

d 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 Na

ve but the Eponym Lists, the so called Assyrian Chronicle, and the so called Synchronous History. The last has already been discussed, and we have seen how little it deserved the title of a real history, yet it marks the greatest advance the Assyrians made along this line. The Eponym lists are merely lists of the officials who dated each year in rotation, and they seem to have been compiled for practical calendar purposes. The so called Assyrian Chronicle is in reality nothing b

e end of the work would be brought down close to the time when the Assyrian Empire fell (608). It is a tempting conjecture, though nothing more, that it was the fall of Assyria and the interest in the relations between the now dominant Babylonia and its former mistress, excited by this event, which led to the composition of the work. Be that as it may, the author is remarkably fair, with no apparent prejudice for or against any of the nations or persons named. The events chosen are naturally almost exclusively of a military or political nature, but within these limits he seems to have chosen wisely. In general, he confines himself to those events which have an immediate bearing on Babylonian history, but at times, as, for example, in his narration of the Egyptian expeditions, he shows a rather surprising range

of their predecessors in the rule of Babylonia. The book was characteristically Babylonian in that only the last of the three books into which it was divided, that beginning with the time of Nabonassar, can be considered historical in the strictest sense, and even of this only the merest fragments, abstracts, or traces, have come down to us. And the most important of these fragments have come down through a tradition almost without parallel. Today we must consult a modern Latin translation of an Armenian translation of the lost Greek original of the Chronicle of Eusebius, [Footnote: A, Schoene, "Eusebii Chronicorum libri duo, 1866 ff.; cf. Rogers, Parallels, 347 ff.; J. Karst, Eusebius We

ar source, comes the Babylonian part of the list of Kings known as the Canon of Ptolemy, which begins, as does the Babylonian Chronicle, with the accession of Nabonassar. [Footnote: The most convenient edition Wachsmuth, Einleitung in das Studium der alten Geschichte, 304 ff.; cf. Rogers, 239.] Though directly of Egyptian origin, as is shown by the system of dating, it undoubtedly goes back to a first class Babylonian source, as do the astronomical data in the Almagest of the same author, though here too the Egyptian calendar is used. [Footnote: Cf. Olmstead, Sargo

d. The Annals inscriptions, then, represent the height of Assyrian historical writing. From the literary point of view, they are often most striking with their bold similes, and that great care was devoted to their production can frequently be proved. But in their utilization, two principles must constantly be kept in mind. One is that the typical annals inscription went through a series of editions, that these later editions not only omitted important facts but "corrected" the earlier recitals for the greater glory of the ruler, real or nominal, and that accordingly only the ear

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