These letters, queries, reports, and other materials were first published in the State Archives of Assyria series. They are reproduced here with the kind permission of the authors and the The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project [http://www.helsinki.fi/science/saa/] (NATCP). Copyright remains with the authors and the NATCP. They may not be reproduced for non-educational purposes, beyond fair use, without the permission of the authors and the NATCP.
Browse or search the letters, queries, and reports, etc.
| Abbreviations | Original Publication |
|---|---|
| SAA 3 (poetry) | A. Livingstone, Assyrian court poetry and literary miscellanea (State Archives of Assyria 3), Helsinki 1989 |
| SAA 4 (queries) | I. Starr, Queries to the Sungod: divination and politics in Sargonid Assyria (State Archives of Assyria 4), Helsinki 1990 |
| SAA 8 (reports) | H. Hunger, Astrological reports to Assyrian kings (State Archives of Assyria 8), Helsinki 1992, with the author's corrections and additions incorporated into this online publication |
| SAA 9 (prophecies) | S. Parpola, Assyrian prophecies (State Archives of Assyria 9), Helsinki 1997 |
| SAA 10 (scholarly letters) | S. Parpola, Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian scholars (State Archives of Assyria 10), Helsinki 1993 |
| SAA 13 (priestly letters) | S. Cole and P. Machinist, Letters from priests to kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal (State Archives of Assyria 13), Helsinki 1999 |
All six original publications were reviewed in specialist Assyriological journals. In general we have not taken those reviews into account in the online edition but strongly recommend that they be consulted when using this site as a resource for specialist Assyriological research.
Browse or search the letters, queries, and reports, etc.
You may find it helpful to print this page out for reference before you start to explore the letters, queries, and reports for the first time. If your browser has problems displaying all the special transliteration characters you may want to download Steve Tinney's Ungkam font [http://cdl.museum.upenn.edu/fonts.html] for Mac, Windows, or Linux.
The letters, queries, and reports are listed in publication order, grouped by volume and chapter, in the main part of the window. The chapter titles and text titles are those of the modern editors', not the ancient scribes'. The ancient scribes' names, where known, are given in the right-hand column of the list. Left and right arrows at the top and bottom of the page enable you to move through the listing. You can also jump to another page by typing the page number in the box at the top or bottom centre.
The "CDLI" button on the left-hand side of each entry takes you to the relevant entry in the Cuneiform Digitial Library Initiative's [http://cdli.ucla.edu] database (external link). The publication numbers (in blue) link to the item view, which displays the transliteration and translation of a single text (see Item View below).
The left-hand sidebar gives an outline view of the six SAA volumes, and allows you to select a single volume or chapter to browse by clicking on the appropriate link. Using the links in the blue zone at the top, you can also return to the Knowledge and Power home page, perform a search, or start again with a new browse or search.
The Item View shows the transliteration and translation of a single text, as first published in the SAA series. See the page on the cuneiform writing system for an explanation of transliteration conventions. The numbers and letters immediately above the transliteration and translation give technical information about the museum number and place of first publication.
The left-hand sidebar gives the following information:
In Item View you can hide or show the left-hand sidebar by clicking on [fullscreen] or [splitscreen] at the top of the window.
You can use the search box at top left of the Page View and Item View to search within the transliterations and/or within the catalogue data. Searching within the English translations is planned for later in the project.
To search within the transliterations, type the sequence of signs you want to find into the search box and click "Search". Click the [?] button at top left of the main frame for detailed help on searching transliterations.
To search within the catalogue data, type into the search box a comma and a space (i.e., ", ") followed by words or dates you want to find - e.g., ", venus". Then click "Select Texts" or press return. The search engine is not case-sensitive. Here are some hints for more efficient catalogue searching:
You can restrict your catalogue searches to the following fields, by entering the field name followed by a colon and then what you are searching for, with no space between:
When you print a page, either in Page View or in Item View, the left-hand sidebar containing the search box and catalogue data is omitted.
Content last modified: 29 Sep 2009.
