The Process of Producing the Standard Inscription of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud/Kalḫu

Ashurnasirpal;Standard Inscription;production;scribe;orthostat;Northwest Palace;Nimrud;Kalḫu;Calah;palace;architecture;inscription;cuneiform;Assyria;Neo-Assyrian;mason;textual criticism;variation;manuscript;variant;draft;master copy;scholar;recension;intermediate copy;variant profile;scribal error;Near Eastern Studies

Howard, Jon CalebDelnero, Paul ;

Johns Hopkins University

关键词: Ashurnasirpal;    Standard Inscription;    production;    scribe;    orthostat;    Northwest Palace;    Nimrud;    Kalḫu;    Calah;    palace;    architecture;    inscription;    cuneiform;    Assyria;    Neo-Assyrian;    mason;    textual criticism;    variation;    manuscript;    variant;    draft;    master copy;    scholar;    recension;    intermediate copy;    variant profile;    scribal error;    Near Eastern Studies;   

Others  :  https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2/58664/HOWARD-DISSERTATION-2017.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: JOHNS HOPKINS DSpace Repository

【 摘 要 】

The thousands of royal inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian (934-612 BCE) kings have been studied by Assyriologists for the past one hundred fifty years, but much about how they were produced remains unknown.A relatively unexamined body of evidence, namely, textual variation between the manuscripts of individual compositions, provides new insights into the production of Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions.However, the study of textual variation in these manuscripts has previously been hampered by inadequate publication of the manuscripts, preventing analysis of such levels of textuality as format and script density, as well as paleographic, orthographic, grammatical, and lexical variants.With the help of the technological developments of the past two decades, especially the application of digital humanities to this corpus of texts, as well as through first-hand examination of manuscripts and better publication of them, it is now possible to investigate this aspect of the corpus of Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions, with a view to clarifying the scribal processes which produced them.This dissertation examines textual variation in manuscripts of a single composition, the Standard Inscription of Ashurnasirpal II from Nimrud (ancient Kalḫu), as well as evidence from other cuneiform documents as necessary, in order to reconstruct the process of producing the Standard Inscription.Two hundred thirty-one manuscripts of the Standard Inscription were transliterated and such information as their variants and formats were analyzed and cataloged, and patterns of shared variants were noted.In addition to these data, references to the production of Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions in Neo-Assyrian letters, as well as likely examples of drafts and master copies of Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions, were brought to bear.On the basis of these data, this dissertation argues that the Standard Inscription of Ashurnasirpal II from Nimrud was produced in three stages.First, a master copy was created, presumably being perfected through an unknown number of drafts, in a cooperative effort of the king and his counsellors, especially the royal scholars.Over time, the text of the Standard Inscription was edited, producing at least one more recension, which was represented in its own master copy.The use of the earlier recension was discontinued and the new recension replaced it.Second, a master copy was used to produce an unknown number of intermediate copies.Neither the master copies nor the intermediate copies are extant, but their existence is detected on the basis of patterns of shared variants in the extant manuscripts, which attest to these two previous stages.Third, these intermediate copies were used to transmit the text of the Standard Inscription to the extant manuscripts, which were mainly the faces of hundreds of stone orthostats that lined the walls of the Northwest Palace at Nimrud.This stage was likely accomplished through visual copying of exemplars, i.e., the intermediate copies.In this final stage, the inscriptions were incised into the stone orthostats of the Northwest Palace by stonemasons, who caused unique errors, which are illustrated in this dissertation.