Middle Assyrian Calendrics (with Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum). In: State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 19...

State Archives of AssyriaBulletin

ISSN 1120-4699

Volume XIX

2011–2012

State Archives of Assyria BulletinVolume XIX, 2011–2012

─────────────

EditorsFrederick Mario Fales, Giovanni-Battista Lanfranchi, Simonetta Ponchia

Published byS.A.R.G.O.N. Editrice e Libreria — Via Induno 18/A — I-35134 Padova (Italy)

Distributed byCasalini Libri S.p.A. — Via Faentina 169/15 — I-50010 Caldine (FI) (Italy) — www.casalini.it

Arbor Sapientiae s.r.l. — via Bernardo Barbiellini Amidei 80 — I-00168 Roma (Italy) — www.arborsapientiae.com

Eisenbrauns — POB 275 Winona Lake, IN 46590-0275 (USA) — https://www.eisenbrauns.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1–27 JAMIE NOVOTNY, The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser III and Shalmaneser V: AnAt-a-glance Akkadian Glossary of the RINAP 1 Corpus

29–86 JAMIE NOVOTNY, The Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon: An At-a-glance AkkadianGlossary of the RINAP 4 Corpus

87–152 EVA CANCIK-KIRSCHBAUM, J. CALE JOHNSON, Middle Assyrian Calendrics

153–174 NATALIE M. MAY, The Comeback of talīmu: A Case of the Invention of A Word-meaningby Neo-Assyrian Scribes

175–202 FABRICE DE BACKER, Scale-Armours in the Neo-Assyrian Period: A Survey

203–237 NICOLAS GILLMANN, Les bas-reliefs neo-assyriens : une nouvelle tentative d’interpretation

239–265 NATHAN MORELLO, Public and Private Archives from Fort Shalmaneser

267–278 STEFAN ZAWADZKI, Ummān-manda Revisited

279–328 SALVATORE GASPA, A Bibliography of Neo-Assyrian Studies (2007–2012)

Editore: S.A.R.G.O.N. Editrice e Libreria — Via Induno 18/A — I-35134 Padova (Italy)Stampa: Copisteria Stecchini — Via Santa Sofia 58–62 — I-35121 Padova (Italy)

Direttore responsabile: Prof. Dr. Ines ThomasFinito di stampare il 15.09.2013

State Archives of Assyria Bulletin

Volume XIX (2011‒2012)

MIDDLE ASSYRIAN CALENDRICS

Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum and J. Cale Johnson*

We moderns tend to assume that our own Gregorian calendar, introduced in 1582 and subsequently adopted as the civil calendar nearly everywhere in the world, is unitary and uncontroversial. It should be kept in mind, however, that the actual calendars that hang on a wall or hover on a computer screen often incorporate all manner of seasonal and astronomical information, religious and national holidays (not to mention birthdays, anniversaries and travel plans inscribed by individual users). Strictly speaking, there-fore, an actual desktop calendar integrates a number of different calendars (astronomi-cal, political and religious) within a single object.

The unreflective naturalness with which we use calendars today makes it easy to forget that a calendar is an exceedingly complex cultural technology, a machine that has emerged through a long and involved history. This history must be concerned not only with the mechanical aspects of this machine (if we extend the metaphor further), but also its reception within society. The mutual agreement within a given society on an or-dering of time represents one of its most important acts of synthesis and integration.1

In Mesopotamia the demarcation and configuration of temporal units as well as the transformation and calibration of existing chronometric systems (calendrics) has a long history. In the written documentation, time-keeping (and its role in the early storage economies in Mesopotamia) is apparent from the very beginning of the textual record,

* This paper originated as a talk by Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum under the aegis of the DFG-funded

research group “Bild-Schrift-Zahl” at the Humboldt-University in Berlin in 2001. On the basis of J. Cale Johnson’s work on Middle-Assyrian Archive M6 funded by the TOPOI research cluster (groups B.2.1 and B.3.3), the authors joined forces so as to present their findings on Middle Assyrian calendrics. We would like to thank Thomas Macho, Helmut Freydank, Wolfgang Röllig, Stefan Maul, Hartmut Kühne, Jaume Llop, Yigal Bloch among others, for comments and suggestions at various points; we alone are responsible for any remaining errors.

1. We limit ourselves here to a reference to Norbert Elias’ seminal essay on time “Über die Zeit” (Elias 1984, now included as volume 9 in his Gesammelte Schrift [2004]).

88 EVA CANCIK-KIRSCHBAUM — J. CALE JOHNSON

i.e. in the Uruk-IV/III-texts in the late fourth millennium BCE.2 The primary techniques for managing time such as different types of year-names, month-names, numerals as-signed to single days, fixed periods and time-spans, etc., can be observed in all their va-riety in different periods of Mesopotamian history. Chronometry also plays an important part in the correlation of different social norms, particularly those controlled by state authorities. Although imagined today as a purely mechanical, “natural” phenomenon, calendars in the ancient Near East were, like so many other normed components of social practice, under the direct authority of the crown and liable to manipulation by the authorities to serve the purposes of governance.

This paper is concerned with the calendrical state of affairs in Late Bronze Age As-syria, in particular with the still only partly understood Middle Assyrian calendar. The first section (1) introduces the general problems of Middle Assyrian calendrics, provides a brief overview of the textual sources available for its investigation, and describes the methodology of this paper; the second section (2) is focused on the structure and orien-tation of the Middle Assyrian administrative calendar, while the third section (3) looks at how the administrative calendar was aligned with the seasonal year through the use of intercalations as well as with the Middle Assyrian cultic calendar. 1 Introduction In this introductory section, we first summarize the administrative and legal materials that we focus on in this paper (1.1), we review the history of research into Middle As-syrian calendrics (1.2) and finally consider how the size and availability of the adminis-trative corpus (as opposed to the Old Assyrian materials, for example) affects the reli-ability of our conclusions (1.3). 1.1 Status quaestionis The Assyrian Empire comes into being in the second half of the second millennium BCE in northern Mesopotamia. The political center of this empire, which would ulti-mately include all of Upper Mesopotamia and eventually even parts of Babylonia in the thirteenth century, was the old commercial and cultic center of Assur. It is from this urban center that the vast majority of the textual sources that are available to us today

2. The evidence for calendrical notations from the Uruk IV period are extremely limited, but do not

contradict the evidence from the subsequent Uruk III period; see Englund 1988: 131, n. 9. A decade later in his 1998 synthesis, Englund writes that “the unevenness of a 29 1/2-day lunar cycle was probably corrected well before the Uruk III period, when calculations in accounts can be shown to be based on a 30-day month, and a 360-day year” (Englund 1998: 121).

MIDDLE ASSYRIAN CALENDRICS 89

derive. The archives and libraries that have been excavated from the palaces, temples and private residences of Assur offer us a glimpse into the different sectors of their cul-ture and society. In addition to the materials from Assur, however, texts from the Middle Assyrian strata at sites like Tulul-al-Aqr (ancient Kār-Tukultī-Ninurta), Tell Chuēra (ancient Ḫarbe), Tell Šēḫ Ḥamad (ancient Dūr-Katlimmu), Tell Sabi Abyad (ancient name still unknown), Tell Rimāh (ancient Qaṭāra), Tell Tabān (ancient Ṭābēte) or Giriçano (ancient Dunnu-ša-Uzībi) to name only some, have emerged from excavations carried out over the last couple decades.

On-going work on these textual sources increasingly discloses the complexity and superb organization of the Middle Assyrian imperial administration, an administrative practice that had to manage an ever expanding imperial territory. Such an administrative system necessarily required efficient means of planning and an elaborate set of control mechanisms, including a functioning bookkeeping system. Clearly a mature system of calendric and dating practice would have formed one of the essential components of such a system.

We have no theoretical tractates or learned discussions stemming from the Middle Assyrian period that deal with calendars or their alignment and calibration. Second-order reflections on time-keeping and calendrics are often embedded in mythological narratives, and similar materials were in circulation in Assur as in the rest of Mesopota-mia.3 Up to now we have no evidence for such materials in Assur. Investigations of Middle Assyrian calendrical practice must base themselves on the empirical evidence of the various types of textual material — from administrative documents to royal inscrip-tions — that have been excavated from Assyrian sites. Therefore, in the following we systematically privilege calendrical evidence that emerges from habitual, largely uncon-scious administrative practice. 1.2 Research history The investigation of the Middle Assyrian calendar begins in earnest in 1920 with the publication of Hans Ehelolf and Benno Landsberger’s “Der altassyrische Kalender.”4

3. This type of second-order reflection can be found in etiological myths from the Old Babylonian pe-

riod: see, for example, Wilcke 1993; Cooper 2001; Cancik-Kirschbaum 2005; Cooley 2008. Another interesting passage is the settlement of the heavenly bodies as explained in Enūma Eliš V. This text certainly provides us with a sophisticated explanation of the 360-day year and other metrological rules concerning divine time-keeping. It is no accident that the composer of Enūma Eliš inserted this long and somewhat “odd” scientific passage into a literary text (Cancik-Kirschbaum 2009: 37–40; cf. Horowitz 2007).

4. Ehelolf & Landsberger 1920: 216–219. The designation “altassyrisch” used by Ehelolf and Lands-berger nowadays refers to the nineteenth through seventeenth centuries BCE, but as used in their


Ernst Weidner offered several additions and corrections in a half-page Kleine Mitteilung that was published in 1929.5 The ideas introduced in this small note were then elabo-rated in 1936 in one of Weidner’s most important micro-historical studies: Aus den Ta-gen eines assyrisches Schattenkönigs.6 It was clear from the materials assembled in these early contributions that an independent and autochthonous calendrical system was in use in Assyria up to the end of the second millennium BCE, a native calendrics that is first attested in the commercial documents that were produced in the Old Assyrian trad-ing posts in southern and central Anatolia.7

It was in the context of this autonomous calendrical system that a thesis was devel-oped which argued that — unlike the calendrical systems in neighboring Babylonia — the Assyrian calendar was purely lunar and was not corrected against a solar calendar (the tropical year) or the heliacal rising of particular fixed stars (the sidereal year). On the basis of an ideal lunar year of 354 days (with six months of 29 days as well as six months of 30 days), this would yield a difference of approximately 11 days per year in contrast to the ideal solar year of 365 days. According to such a scheme, after three years the sequence of lunar months would have shifted by one month, yielding a lunar calendar approximately one month behind a corresponding lunisolar calendar. In the course of 33 years, the sequence of months would then gradually move through an en-tire year, bringing the calendar full circle but also resulting in a one year chronological difference between the non-intercalated lunar and intercalated lunisolar calendars. Ac-cording to these early hypotheses, it was only towards the end of the second millennium BCE that the use of intercalation as practiced in the Babylonian calendar would be adopted by the Assyrians. Weidner’s proposals were subsequently adopted in Hermann Hunger’s article “Kalender” in the Reallexikon der Assyriologie. There Hunger writes as follows:

No intercalary months are attested in the Old Assyrian texts, but a comparison between lunar and solar years must have been carried out in some way, since the naming of the eponym regularly took place in the same season of the cal-endar year. How precisely this comparison was carried out remains unknown. Already in the texts from Kültepe level Ib, however, this alignment between lunar and solar years is obviously lacking, a situation that would also corre-spond to the Middle Assyrian period. Intercalary months are not attested in

work, it refers to what we would now call Middle Assyrian materials, dating from the fourteenth to the twelfth centuries BCE.

5. Weidner 1929. 6. Weidner 1936. 7. Larsen 1976: 193 and n. 5.


the Middle Assyrian period (up to the time of Tiglath-Pileser I), and conse-quently the months of the lunar year gradually wandered through the seasons. As can be seen in legal records and administrative documents, various differ-ent months occur at the beginning of the year in the same season and the New Year therefore wandered from one month to the next.8 (our translation)

Hunger’s argumentation is unsatisfying, however: while he assumes a comparison be-tween lunar and solar years in the early Old Assyrian period, a practice that is still not clearly attested in the textual sources, Hunger denies this possibility for both the later Old Assyrian (level Ib) and the Middle Assyrian periods, even though the institution of the eponym year was carried out continuously throughout these periods. Likewise, Hun-ger’s presumption — on the basis of legal records and administrative documents — that the new year could occur in various different months of the calendar year and conse-quently that we must take into account an Assyrian Wandeljahr can be shown on the basis of a new analysis of the textual sources to be questionable.

Except for Koch’s discussion of Weidner’s model in 1989 and a short description of the phenomenon known as Doppeldatierung, “double dating”, that was published by Helmut Freydank in 1991, the calendrics of the Middle Assyrian period have not been the object of any sustained investigation in the following years.9 The proposal that there was no intercalary month in Assyria and that the months of the lunar year “wandered” (relative to a seasonally fixed lunisolar year) has acquired the status of a scientifically demonstrated fact, even though doubts have occasionally been expressed.10 The impor-tance of Assyrian calendrics (and the implications of a premature adoption of the “stan-dard theory” of a wandering lunar year) becomes particularly clear if we turn to the dif-ficulties that have arisen in discussions of the absolute chronology of the second millen-nium. Their consideration of this “retarding” factor led Gasche and his co-workers, among others, to offer a “general” correction of the absolute chronology of the second millennium as follows:

This absence of evidence for intercalation does not prove that the Assyrian calendar was based on a lunar cycle before 1114, but we believe — with

8. Hunger 1980: 299 with reference to Larsen 1976: 193. 9. Koch 1989: 132–141 (apud Veenhof 2000) and Freydank 1991: 81–88. We return to Veenhof’s dis-

cussion of ša qāti notations in Old Assyrian texts dating to “month XII” below. 10. Veenhof has argued for the presence of intercalation in both Old and Middle Assyrian periods sev-

eral times, most recently Veenhof 2000: 141–147. Koch also argues explicitly for some form of in-tercalation (Koch 1989: 132–141).


Weidner and Larsen — that it is likely. This means that we have to subtract one year every 33 years, before the reign of Tiglathpileser I.11

This research history has been summarized fairly well in Pruzsinszky’s recent hand-book.12 And while Pruzsinszky expresses justifiable caution in approaching the Middle Assyrian calendar, it is somewhat more troubling that Bloch’s recent work on eponym sequences simply presupposes an uncorrected lunar year, while deferring the arguments surrounding his presupposition to a future paper.13 1.3 The Textual Situation In the ensuing years, approximately 1500 Middle Assyrian texts stemming from admin-istrative and legal contexts have either been published in hand-copy or edited in some fashion. For the most part these texts are dated and cover a period of approximately 250 years, although the density of this coverage obviously differs throughout that period. In the balance of the paper we offer a reanalysis of the references to the calendrical system that can be extracted from the available Middle Assyrian documentary record. By far the most fruitful sources for dating practice and consequently the best evidence for cal-endrical practice in the Middle Assyrian period are the legal records and administrative documents (Urkunden) and we will, for the most part, limit ourselves here to an investi-gation of these materials.14

It should be kept in mind that the textual situation of the Middle Assyrian materials differs substantially from that of the Old Assyrian archives, and this has important con-sequences for how we approach the history of northern Mesopotamian calendars in the later second millennium BCE. Given that the Middle Assyrian administrative materials are not so numerous (approximately 1500), and are now to a great extent published at least in hand-copy, we can approach these materials from a more comparative (even theoretical) point of view.15 This state of affairs contrasts sharply with the Old Assyrian materials: Veenhof estimates that there are approximately 23,000 tablets that have been excavated from Karum Kanesh, while the best corpus of these materials (the Old Assyr-

11. Gasche et al. 1998: 50; for an explicit critique, see Charpin 2002: 74. 12. Pruzsinszky 2009: 106–108. 13. Bloch 2010a; 2010b; 2010c. 14. We should not forget that the so-called literary texts are sometimes dated as well, at least as far as

colophons integrate this feature. However, with respect to the period under consideration here, the positive evidence is rather limited and of no help to the general argumentation.

15. For a survey of chronological issues, see Freydank 1991, while Jakob 2003 offers an overview of ad-ministrative matters generally.


ian Text Project corpus) includes roughly 6,000 in transliteration.16 These translitera-tions consequently amount to slightly more than one-fifth of the known textual materials and it is clear from Veenhof’s recent handbook on Old Assyrian studies that we can ex-pect quite a number of surprises from the unpublished Old Assyrian materials.17 The problem that we face in Late Bronze Age Assyria is the large number of texts that are presumably still in the ground, awaiting excavation. Overall, therefore, our conclusions are based on an extremely small set of data and therefore must be considered prelimi-nary. 2 The Middle Assyrian Calendar In this section we rehearse a number of basic facts pertaining to the Middle Assyrian calendar, including the length of the months (2.1), the names of the months (2.2) and their relative (2.3) and ordinal (2.4) sequence, and lastly the location of the ordinal se-quence in the seasonal or agricultural year (2.5). Questions of intercalation schema and the so-called Doppeldatierung texts are deferred till section 3. 2.1 The length of the months Research on Assyrian calendrics takes as its point of departure a calendar that is based on the phases of the moon. From Kugler (1912) and Landsberger (1915) down to a number of important synthetic statements in the last couple decades (Englund 1988, Co-hen 1993, Sallaberger 1993, and the papers collected in Steele 2007), the periodicities and calibration of these lunar phases with other phenomena and events, both natural and profoundly cultural, has served as the point of departure for all subsequent discussions. The average lunar cycle, consisting of 29.53 days, yields 354.37 days over the course of twelve months, months that in practical terms show a very rough alternation between 29 and 30 days per month. Given that the solar year consists of 365.25 days, the difference between the lunar and solar years comes to 10.88 days per year.18 The numerous prob-lems that stem from this difference are well known: year after year the uncorrected lunar months continue to shift by 10.88 days per year in relation to a given natural anchor such as the heliacal rising of known stars. For most purposes — even long-term time calculations — the use of an uncorrected lunar calendar would not represent a real im-pediment as long as its users kept in mind or documented the actual number of days in a given month for each year through time. The present-day Islamic or Hijri calendar —

16. Accessed January 11, 2012. 17. Veenhof 2008. 18. Brack-Bernsen 2007: 83.


the only lunar calendar in widespread use that is not seasonally aligned in some way — has served as a reliable means of dating events, as we write in late 2011, for no less than 1433 years.19

On the basis of the need for a straightforward means of comparing past perform-ance to future requirements, even the earliest documented administrative systems (such as the barley-ration systems used in Late Uruk administration) calculated agricultural production, worker rations and so forth on the basis of a schematic 360-day administra-tive year, viz. with four or five epagomenal days per year.20 It is clear that a cultic calen-dar of twelve lunar months, whose length could vary between 29 and 30 days, was used in conjunction with an administrative year of 360 days (12 months each with 30 days) in both the Early Dynastic IIIb (ca. 2470–2323 BCE) and the Ur III (ca. 2110–2003 BCE) periods.21 Thus it is particularly important to isolate evidence for the length of the month in the Middle Assyrian documentation, since it may indicate which type or types of calendar were being used in the administrative documentation.

Information on the actual number of days within a given month can be derived from two different types of data: first, there is what we might call implicit evidence, i.e. time-spans which pass from one month to the next, but do not explicitly record the length of the period of time (2.1.1), and second, explicit evidence in the form of date formulae that refer to a period of time (2.1.2). We then turn to evidence for a schematic 30-day month (2.1.3). 2.1.1 Time-spans Time-spans in the Middle Assyrian documentation are based on inclusive counting: a statement like iš-tu U4 2.KÁM a-di U4 4.KÁM 3 U4.MEŠ, “from day 2 to day 4, (total:) 3

19. It should be emphasized, however, that the avoidance of intercalation in the (lunar) Hijri calendar

does not represent an arbitrary “design” choice of one calendrical system over another, but rather is a direct result of a Koranic prohibition: Sura 9 (Al-Tawba), ayat 36–37, see Moberg 1933 as well as the updated entry sub nasīʾ in the Encyclopedia of Islam (Moberg 2012), cf. Fleming 2000: 216; Reade 2001: 2.

20. We should not let the dispute between Wayne Horowitz and Johannes Koch (Horowitz 1996; Koch 1997; Horowitz 1998b; Koch 1998; see now Ben Dov 2008: 161–167 and 182–183) over whether or not a 364 day lunar year (354 days plus one-third of a 30 day month intercalated on average every three years) is presupposed in the Neo-Assyrian version of MUL.APIN II ii 11–12 distract us from the simple fact that a more or less irregularly intercalated lunar calendar was used in combination with an ideal 360 day administrative year throughout much of Mesopotamian history (Brack-Bernsen 2007). On the connections between Mesopotamian astronomy and the Enochic materials at Qumran, see now Ben Dov 2008 and Drawnel 2011.

21. Sallaberger & Schrakamp forthcoming.


days” shows that both the starting day and the ending day are included in the total, viz. the time runs from the start of day 2 till the end of day 4. Similar methods of counting days can be found in other cultural contexts.22 We list a few simple time-spans (all within a single eponym) in the following table.

Document Text Start End Total

MARV 4, 57, 5 ša 4 U4.MEŠ ša iš-tu ITI.dSîn U4 15.KÁM a-di U4 18.KÁM day 15 day 18 4 days

MARV 4, 57, 11 ša 9 U4.MEŠ ša iš-tu U4 19.KÁM a-di U4 27.KÁM day 19 day 27 9 days

MARV 4, 57, 17–18 [ša] 5 U4.MEŠ-te ša iš-tu U4 2[8].KÁM a-di U4 2.KÁM day 28 day 2 5 days

Fig. 1. Simple time-spans.

While all three examples demonstrate inclusive counting, this principle forces us to in-terpret the last of these three examples (all from the same text) as a time-span that runs from the last three days of a 30-day month through the first two days of a following month. The following examples show that similar information can also be gleaned from time spans that cross from one month to the next:

MARV 4, 57, 23–24: ša 18 U4.MEŠ ša iš-tu U4 15.KÁM a-di ITI.ku-zal-lu U4 2.KÁM-te “for 18 days from day 15 to the month of Kuzallu, day 2”

Since the time span in this entry passes from one month to the next and names the fol-lowing month (with the eponym named later in the text), we can infer that the month prior to Kuzallu in one of the Abattu eponymates, i.e. the month of Sîn, consisted of 30 days (with the 18 days in question consisting of 16 days in the month of Sîn plus 2 days in the month of Kuzallu). If we turn to another roughly analogous example, however, things look somewhat different.

MARV 2, 14, 11ʹ: iš-tu iti.dSîn U4 21.KÁM a-di ITI.ku-zal-li ˹U4 1.KÁM 10˺ U4.MEŠ “from the month of Sîn, day 21, to the month of Kuzallu, ˹day 1, (total:) 10˺ days”

It is clear in this example that the “same” month, namely Sîn (IV), in the eponymate of Ātamar-dēn-Aššur, consisted of only 29 days (9 days in the month of Sîn plus the first

22. Lehoux notes, in connection with ancient Roman practice, that “[t]he nundial day is the market-day

for a given Italian town, which occurred, from archaic times onward, every ninth day on the Roman reckoning (every eighth day counted as we would do)” (Lehoux 2007: 12, n. 29). The “Roman reck-oning” in question is inclusive, including the day of the last market-day and the next, while our usage of “every x days” only includes one market-day in each period.


day of Kuzallu). If the month of Sîn had been a 30-day month, inclusive counting would have led to 11 days as the total instead of 10.23 Even from these few examples, there-fore, it is clear that the number of days assigned to an individual month was not fixed but varied from year to year. This variation presumably results from lunar observation, i.e. the length of the month was fixed ad quem. We return to this argument below. 2.1.2 Explicit numerical datings The number of datings from Assur that explicitly refer to a 30-day month are, up to now, relatively few.24

Document Eponymate Day Month

MARV 4, 42 (VAT 18099), 17f. (indirect) ? (TN?) (30th) Ṣippu (I)

MARV 4, 57 (VAT 18103), 17f., 23f. (indirect) Abattu (TN) (30th) Sîn (IV)

MARV 6, 18 (VAT 19939), 1 Ippitte (Tp) 30th Kuzallu (V)

KAJ 74 (VAT 8615), 11f. Ēriš-kube (EAd/Aub) 30th Allanātu (VI)

KAM 9, 9 (VAT 18074), rev. 7'f. Usāt-Marduk (Sa) 30th Ša-sarrāte (VIII)

MARV 4, 27 (VAT 18058), 28‒30 (indirect) ? (TN?) (30th) Abu-šarrāni (XI)

MARV 7, 86 (VAT 19983), 18 Ninuāiu 30th Abu-šarrāni (XI)

MARV 1, 17 (VAT 18007+), 67 (indirect) ? (30th) Abu-šarrāni (XI)

MARV 7, 77 (VAT 20002), 1 Mudammeq-bēl (Tp) 30th Ḫībur (XII)

Fig. 2. Descriptions of temporal periods that allow one to infer a 30 day month; indirect examples in parentheses, e.g. (30th).

The examples of 30-day months from Assur collected in figure 2 stem from the 14th‒ 12th centuries BCE, so in principle we can assume the existence of 30 day months throughout the Middle Assyrian period. Since 30-day months necessarily contain a 29th day (but not vice versa), time-spans are the only solid evidence for a 29-day month, viz. a simple reference to the 29th day of a month does not mean that the month had only 29 days; it could still easily have consisted of 30 days. MARV 1, 5 (VAT 18004), Jakob

23. Certain seemingly exceptional cases such as MARV 6, 14, can simply be emended: lines 1–7 should

be read as iš-tu ITI.˹ša!-sa!-ra!˺-te / U4 1!.KÁM ˹li˺-me / IdMAŠ–SAG / a-di ITI.mu-ḫur-ilāni(DINGIR.MEŠ)

/ U4 13.KÁM li-me / an-ni-e-ma / 2 ITI 13 U4.MEŠ-˹te˺ / Ì.MEŠ / a-na É.GAL-lim / ta-bi-ik, i.e. months VIII (Ša-sarrāte) and IX (Ša-kēnāte) in their entirety as well as the first thirteen days of month X (Muḫur-ilāni).

24. For attestations, see Freydank 1991: 81.


2009, no. 38 (90.G.002), MARV 9, 26 (VAT 20182), MARV 9, 78 (VAT 20245), and MARV 10, 26 (VAT 20182), for instance, are all dated to the 29th day of their respec-tive months, but this fact in itself cannot be used to confirm the actual length of those months. Examples of 29-day months that can be demonstrated using time spans are col-lected below:

Document Eponymate Day Month

KAJ 306a (VAT 9674) ? (29th) Qarrātu (II)

MARV 2, 14 (VAT 18065), 7′ ? (29th) Kalmartu (III)

MARV 2, 14 (VAT 18065), 11′ ? (29th) Allanātu (VI)

MARV 9, 107 (VAT 13082), 3–4 ? (29th) Muḫur-ilāni (X)

MARV 9, 19 (VAT 20232), 5–6 Daʾʾānī-Ninurta (29th) Abu šarrāni (XI)

Figure 3: Time-spans demonstrating 29-day months.

In principle, if a non-intercalated lunar calendar were actually being used for adminis-trative purposes, as the “standard theory” presumes, it has occasionally been suggested that certain months were regularly assigned 30 days, while other months were regularly assigned 29 days. However, it has been shown that there is no regular alternation be-tween 29 and 30 day months in Ur III Drehem or Old Babylonian Larsa,25 and the same is certainly true for the Middle Assyrian period as well. And while a comparison be-tween the two charts above show a certain degree of complementary distribution, at least two months (Muḫur-ilāni [X] and Abu-šarrāni [XI]) seem to occur with both 29-day and 30-day months. In our view, this evidence is not particularly strong, but it does suggest that month lengths were not artificially fixed or standardized over extended periods of time.26

2.1.3 A schematic 30-day month If the lunar calendar was not standardized so as to make it more useful as an administra-tive tool, did the Middle Assyrian administrators use a schematic 360-day year as had so many others over the preceding two millennia? Helmut Freydank has pointed out that in the larger administrative documents from Kār-Tukultī-Ninurta 30-day months were used

25. Sigrist 1977: 380 apud Greengus 1987: 214, n. 21. 26. E.g. Muḫur-ilāni: VAT 13082 [MARV 9, 107] (29-day month), VAT 19978 [MARV 7, 2] (30-day

month); Abu-šarrāni: VAT 20245 [MARV 9, 78] (29-day month), VAT 19983 [MARV 7, 86] (30-day month).


in calculations that involved large numbers of months, citing this as evidence for the “rounding” of month lengths in VAT 18007 (MARV 2, 17), and elsewhere in the Middle Assyrian record.27 We should recognize, however, that the schematic use of 30-day months in these texts represents ipso facto a clear application of a 360-day administrative year. Given the long history of the use of schematic or idealized 360-day years in Meso-potamian administration, it is somewhat misleading to speak of these procedures as ad hoc “rounding” of all months to 30-day months in certain administrative contexts.28

To summarize: (1) month-lengths of both 29 and 30 days seem to have been as-signed to particular months according to lunar observation, not a fixed scheme. (2) Whereas dated texts always refer to the actual number of days in a given month, some types of second-order accounting texts do perform calculations on the basis of a schematic 30-day month.

2.2 The Names of the Months The month names in use among the Assyrians in the second half of the second millen-nium BCE are — with one exception — already found in the commercial records stem-ming from the Old Assyrian colonies and trading posts excavated in Anatolia.29 These twelve month names are quite different from the contemporary and earlier month names that were used in southern Mesopotamia as well as the earlier calendars found in north-ern Mesopotamia and Syria, viz. the calendars of Mari and Shamshi-Adad.30 Even though Assur was part of the Ur III Empire, the calendar that was used in southern Mesopotamia never seems to have been adopted in Assur.31

Up to now the meaning of the individual month names can only be determined in part. They are names drawn from the colloquial language rather than from a foreign cal-endrical system or dead language, but the degree to which the names of the months can be connected to actual events embedded within, say, an agricultural or religious year in the second half of the second millennium remains unclear.32 We list them here in their Old Assyrian sequence.

27. Freydank 1991: 81: “der Monat [galt] in der Praxis schlechthin als 30tägig”. 28. On the schematic 360-day year, see Englund 1988 and Brack-Bernsen 2007. 29. Larsen 1976: 193; Weidner 1936: 27–29. 30. The Shamshi-Adad calendar was used in Mari for a period of time: Charpin & Ziegler 2003: 155–159. 31. For an overview of other “local” calendars in northern Mesopotamia and Syria prior to the Middle

Assyrian period, see Charpin 1985; Cohen 1993: 248–294; Lacambre 2002; Charpin & Ziegler 2003: 155–156; Pruzsinszky 2009: 108–109 as well as Shibata 2010.

32. The speculative proposals for the significance of the month names found in Lewy 1939 are not cata-logued or substantially taken into consideration here. On month names generally see Hirsch 1961: 53–55 and Cohen 1993: 241–247.


Bēlet ekalle “The lady of the palace” may possibly refer to a cultic festival.33 Old Assyrian shows significant variations in form, including sandhi orthographies (be-el-té-kà-lim, bé-el-té-kà-lim, bé-el-té-kà-li-im, be-el-té-kà-lum, be-el-té-kà-lu-um, be-el-té-É.GAL-lim, d

NIN‒ É.GAL, cf. Hirsch 1961: 54, n. 279), but in Middle Assyrian it is consistently written dNIN-É.GAL-lim. On the variation between the nominative and the genitive form of

ekallum, which also occurs with other genitive phrases in month names, see below. Ša sarrāte This month name clearly represents an abbreviation of the Old Assyrian month name ITI narmak Aššur ša sarrātim. The full form of the name is not attested in the Middle Assyrian documentation, but it is also not attested in the Old Assyrian materials pub-lished so far. The short form of the month name in the Old Assyrian only shows varia-tion between ša sá(DI)-ra-tim and ša sà(ZA)-ra-tim, while the Middle Assyrian version varies between ITI.ša-sa-ra-te and ITI.ša-sa-ra-ti; a handful of examples explicitly mark the penultimate long vowel: ša-sa-ra-a-te (MARV 1, 5; MARV 4, 151; MARV 9, 95, Ismail & Postgate 2008, no. 3, and no. 19). The first part of the month name, narmaku, can be easily explained since it deals with a relatively rare terminus technicus for the ritual bath of a cult statue (see AHw 747 s.v. 1 and CAD N/1 361 3b). The second part of the name, ša sarrāte/im is more problematic, however, and the dictionaries connect the word with the root sarāru, “to lie”: CAD S 180 lists the month name under sarrātu, “lies, falseness, fraud” (2ʹ), but without offering either translation or explanation (“in the Assyrian month name”). AHw (1030 s.v. sarru 1f) likewise offers us no explanation of the month name other than “illegitim?” Hirsch translates the phrase as “Monat der Waschung des Aššur mit trügerischen (??) (Opfern verbunden)”, viz. month of the washing of Aššur in connection with false (offerings).34 Ša kēnāte Like the preceding month, Ša-kēnāte represents an abbreviation of a full form of the month name that is also only attested in the Old Assyrian period: ITI.narmaku Aššur ša kenātim. Both the full form of the name (na-ar-ma-ak a-šùr ša-ke-na-tim, na-ar-ma-ak a-šur ša-ke-na-tim, na-ar-ma-kà-a-šùr ša ke-na-tim) and its abbreviation (ša ke-na-tim) appear in Old Assyrian.35 The Old Assyrian form is consistently written ša ke-na-tim, while the primary variation in the spelling of the month name in the Middle Assyrian

33. See the references collected in Hirsch 1961: 54, n. 279, including some connections between d

NIN–É.GAL and the Babylonian month of Tašrītu (VII).

34. Hirsch 1961: 51, n. 281. 35. Hirsch 1961: 54, n. 281.


period is between TE and TI as the final syllabic element: ITI.ša-ke-na-te vs. ITI.ša-ke-na-ti; there are also a few instances in which the penultimate long vowel is explicitly marked as in ITI.ša-ke-na-a-te in MARV 9, 108 or Ismail & Postgate 2008, no. 4. The second part of the name is listed in CAD K 383f. s.v. kīnātu (b): “for the Assyrian month name narmak Aššur ša kīnātim (beside ša sarrātim, possibly meaning ‘regular’ or ‘real’ in contrast to sarru ‘pseudo-’.” AHw (481 s.v. kīnu 7c) translates the same word as “le-gitim” in MN “neben ša sarrātim ‘der Illegitimen’?” There are, consequently, two dis-tinct interpretations: the CAD distinguishes between “the month of the pseudo-bath of the cultic image” and “the month of the actual bath of the cultic image”, while AHw offers a more literal translation: “the month of the bath of the Aššur (cult image) of the illegitimate” (narmaku Aššur ša sarrātim) as opposed to “the month of the bath of the Aššur (cult image) of the legitimate” (narmaku Aššur ša kēnātim), while Hirsch takes the qualification as applying to offerings connected with the ritual.

As the only two month names that are largely the same (and only secondarily dis-tinguished by the contrast between ša sarrāte versus ša kēnāte), the possibility that one of two months represents an archaic intercalary month that is already normalized as a regular month in the Old Assyrian period should be given some consideration. When the month name is spelled out in the Old Assyrian texts (na-ar-ma-ak a-šur plus variant forms), in many cases no distinction is made between ša sarrāte and ša kēnāte. It may well be that the correct month could be identified by contrasting the month with the so-called week eponyms, viz. ḫamuštum, but a reanalysis of the Old Assyrian month names can only be undertaken once the Old Assyrian corpus is more fully published.36 Muḫur ilāni The Old Assyrian form shows relatively little variation (ma-ḫu-ur-ì-lí, ma-ḫu-ur-DINGIR, ma-ḫu-ri!-li), while the Middle Assyrian form is again heavily standardized: mu-ḫur-DINGIR.MEŠ, with the occasional addition of NI as a phonetic gloss as in mu-ḫur-ilāni (DINGIR.MEŠ-ni). Some investigators have read this NI as né in line with standard as-sumptions about the form of the Assyrian genitive case, yielding mu-ḫur-ilāne(DINGIR. MEŠ-né), but it is noteworthy that in the Middle Assyrian administrative corpus NI is only used as a phonological diacritic for words that end with *-āni/e (this month name and the next) or *-ānī (personal names formed with daʾʾānī, “my judge”). Since there is no positive evidence for *-āne, the comparable use of NI to gloss daʾʾānī favors a simi-lar interpretation for Muḫur-ilāni and the following month name, Abu-šarrāni; we there-

36. In the Old Assyrian Text Project corpus (via CDLI), as of January 2012, there are five attestations of

narmak Aššur without a following distinction between ša sarrāte and ša kēnāte: AMMY 1992, 58–59, taf. 4, obv. 7 (P361235); CCT 6, 9, BM 115044 obv. 5 (P359051); ICK 1, 118 obv. 5 (P359515); KTS 1, 9a obv. 12 (P360015); TCL 4, 75 ln. 7 (P357410).


fore maintain the conventional rendering. The chief difference between the Old and Middle Assyrian forms is the harmoniza-

tion of the vowels in the first term: Old Assyrian maḫur shifting to Middle Assyrian muḫur.37 CAD M/2 176, following a line of argument outlined by Hirsch (1961: 54f.), lists this month name under muḫḫuru (3), “meeting” as in for example “meeting of the gods”, but nonetheless also alludes to the fact that a Middle Assyrian variant clearly has muḫru, i.e. “prayer, appeal” as in “appeal to the gods”. In this latter case, we must be dealing with some kind of secondary etymology. Since the standard orthography for the first word of the name in Old Assyrian is regularly maḫur, which shifts to muḫur under the influence of Assyrian vowel harmony, muḫḫuru can be excluded as a possible form, however: vowel harmony only takes place in open syllables and a doubled /ḫ/ would have closed the relevant syllable and prevented vowel harmony from taking place. Ac-cording to CAD (see above) there is also the possibility that the entire expression de-rives from a Hurrian word, namely *mu(ḫ)urillu, although, as far as we can judge, this word remains unattested. AHw (582) offers neither translation nor commentary. There is a similar month name in use in the sometimes independent region of Ṭābetu, namely miḫru, which Shibata associates with miḫru offerings in Mari: “This supposition is rein-forced by the similar month names Tamḫīru (of the so-called Amorite calendar) and Muḫur-ilāni (of the calendar of Aššur)”.38 Abu šarrāni The Old Assyrian forms seem to vary only in case: áb ša-ra-ni vs. áb ša-ra-nu, while the Middle Assyrian orthography shows substantial variation in both its choice of logo-gram (a-bu LUGAL.MEŠ vs. a-bu‒MAN.MEŠ, from the 12th century onwards), and the case-marking indicated by glosses (a-bu‒šarrāni [LUGAL.MEŠ-ni], a-bu‒šarrāni [LUGAL. MEŠ-a-ni], a-bu‒šarrānu [LUGAL.MEŠ-nu], a-bu-šarrānu [LUGAL.MEŠ-a-nu]; the first element, however, is consistently written syllabically, viz. a-bu.39 Ignoring the gramma-tical issues, we might expect a continuity in meaning between Old and Middle Assyrian and some connection to the royal ancestors cult. We know, for example, of a cultic site that was called the bīt šarrāni, lit. “house of the kings”, that presumably refers to a mor-tuary site for dead kings.

37. Hirsch 1961: 54f., n. 281. 38. Shibata 2010: 219 and 223, quotation on p. 223. Shibata cites a use of the term to denote a ritual

practice in Old Babylonian Mari (Durand 2000: 122f. apud Shibata 2010: 222). On the role of miḫru, “Unheilsträger” in ritual practice, see Maul 2004: 86 as well as the ritual texts from Mari in Durand & Guichard 1997.

39. We might expect ab-bu as the pl. cstr. of abu, however, there is no evidence for this orthographic convention in Middle Assyrian.


V. Donbaz published a text that, in his view, stems from the archive of Ninurta-tu-kul-Aššur (A. 842) and that describes offerings for the bīt šarrāni. It includes a location designated as abu that is mentioned in the line that immediately precedes the term bīt šarrāni (lines 15–16): 2 SÌLA Ì 2 SÌLA LÀL a-na a-bi / a-na É LUGAL.MEŠ ta-a-din, “two liters of oil, two liters of honey were delivered (to be poured) into the libation hole(s) for the ‘House of Kings’ ” (translation Donbaz).40 On the basis of this collocation Don-baz goes on to argue that abu in this month name actually refers to the “ritual pit” (abu B in CAD and AHw 62 s.v. apu(m) 2) that derives from Hurrian and is found in a wide variety of sites in northern Mesopotamia and Syria. It can be shown however, that the text actually belongs to the reign of Ninurta-apil-Ekur and can be grouped with two other Middle Assyrian texts that mention the ina tuār ili ritual, which regularly occurs in the month of Abu-šarrāni.41 Shibata also suggests the possibility that the month names Malikāʾu at Ṭābetu and Malkānum at Mari may be related to offerings and the mortuary cult of ancestral kings, kispum ša šarrāni in Mari.

The existence of a royal kispum ritual in Assur can still only be postulated and the term itself (kispum) is not documented in the texts,42 but there are a couple of docu-ments that seem to refer to provisions that were delivered to royal tombs in the reigns of Erība-Adad I (MARV 1, 49) and Shalmaneser I (MARV 7, 4), even if they do not include the term kispum. Ḫībur The Old Assyrian month name is consistently written ḫu-bur or ḫu-bu-ur, while the Middle Assyrian equivalent is usually written ḫi-bur (a handful of exceptions listed in Mayer 1971:16 retain the Old Assyrian form). The meaning of this month name remains unclear, however. It has traditionally been associated with the Ḫubur, the river of the netherworld, viz. as a way of referring to the underworld itself (see CAD Ḫ 219). Since it is during Ḫībur that the harvest is completed in the Middle Assyrian period, it is tempting to associate Ḫībur with the last month of the Mari calendar, namely Ebūru. The Mari month name Ebūru is precisely the term for “harvest” in Middle Assyrian as well, so if Ḫībur had actually meant “harvest”, it is difficult to see why it would not have been replaced by Ebūru.

The only other term in Middle Assyrian that must be connected to Ḫībur in some way is the term ḫiburnu, which was a part of the palace in which staple crops were measured and perhaps stored (bīt ḫiburni), a usage that also shows up as a qualification of a spe-

40. Donbaz 1992: 119f. As Cohen points out, this seems to be the same ritual described in KAR 146

(Cohen 1993: 260). 41. Cancik-Kirschbaum 2012. 42. Shibata 2010: 221 and n. 22, citing Jacquet 2002 and Tsukimoto 1985: 65 and nn. 254 and 255.


cific unit for measuring grain, sūtu (GIŠ.BÁN) šá ḫi-bur-ni or sūtu (GIŠ.BÁN) šá bīt (É) ḫi-bur-ni, “the sutu-measure of the Ḫiburnu-house”, in Middle Assyrian administrative documents. Ṣippu The Old Assyrian form varies between the broken spellings ṣí-ip-um and ṣí-ip-e-em and the ordinary spellings ṣí-pí-im and ṣí-pì(BAD)-im, but most investigators take the bro-ken spellings as evidence of a glottal stop following /p/, hence ṣipʾum or ṣipʾim. The Middle Assyrian orthographies show a great deal of variation, but no broken spellings: ṣi-pu, ṣi-ip-pu, ṣip-pu, ṣi-pi, ṣi-ip-pi, ṣip-pi. This month name still lacks any clear expla-nation; see AHw 1104 s.v. ṣipʾu/ṣipu and CAD Ṣ 205 s.v. ṣippu A.43 There is another month name used in the Old Assyrian period, which Veenhof renders as zibiba/urum and sees as a short-lived name for an intercalated month. In BIN 4, 207, for instance, the tablet has ITI.ṣí-bi bé-ri-im, while the envelope seems to add a gloss: ITI.ṣí-bi bébe-ri-im.44 Were it not for the difference in the sibilant, the Ṭābetu month name Sabūtu might also be of relevance here, particularly since Sabūtu derives from the word for “seven” and Ṣippu is the seventh month in the Old Assyrian calendar.45 Qarrātu The Old Assyrian forms vary substantially (qar-ra-tim vs. qá-ra-a-tim and the nomina-tive form qá-ra-a-tum), and the Middle Assyrian texts show much the same variation (qa-ra-tu, qar-ra-tu, qar-ra-a-tu, qar-ra-tu4, qar-ra-te, qar-ra-a-te), although qar-ra-tu and qar-ra-a-tu are the most common forms. There is also no explanation for this month name other than a Neo-Assyrian festival that bore the same designation, cf. AHw 905 s.v. Qarrātu 2) and CAD Q 144. Kalmartu Regularly kal-mar-tu / kal-mar-te in Middle Assyrian (but at least once kal-mar-tu4: KAJ 135 r. 6´), but its orthography in the Old Assyrian period shows a great deal of variation

43. The Biblical month of Ziv (written zb, 1Kgs 6.1: 37), also found as a Phoenician/Punic month name,

is translated in the Septuagint with “Niso or Nisan, thus identifying the Punic-Hebrew name with Ni-sannu, the first month of the Neo-Babylonian spring year” (Stieglitz 1998: 214). As we argue below, Ṣippu is also the first month in the Middle Assyrian calendar, though the difference between the sibi-lants remains problematic. We do not deal with the Nuzi calendar in this paper, but the Punic and Nuzi calendars do seem to have month names in common; see also the older studies Gordon 1935; Gordon & Lacheman 1938.

44. Veenhof 2000: 142. On the office of bīrum in the Old Assyrian period, see Dercksen 2004: 73. 45. Shibata 2010: 219 and passim.


(kán-bar-ta, kán-mar-ta, kán-wa-ar-ta, kà-an-wa-ar-ta).46 This is one of only two months from the Middle Assyrian calendar that is also used in the Middle Assyrian period docu-ments from Ṭābetu, the other is the month of Sîn (see below), and also one of the few month names that may be of Anatolian origin.47

Sîn The only Middle Assyrian month name that is totally different from its Old Assyrian predecessor, the month of Sîn is named after the Mesopotamian moon god Sîn; the same position in the Old Assyrian calendar was occupied by Teʾinātum (with variations be-tween té-i-na-tim and ti-i-na-tum). The god’s name is mostly written in the Middle As-syrian materials with the number 30,48 which is the standard number-cipher of the moon-god, since the ideal lunar month consisted of 30 days. Sîn is also attested in Ṭābe-tu, but like Kalmartu, it is only attested once and Shibata suggests that these occur-rences represent the use of the Middle Assyrian calendar in Ṭābetu rather than the in-clusion of these two month names within the local calendar.49

Kuzallu The Old Assyrian materials show some inconsequential variation (ku-zal-lu, ku-zal-lim, ku-zal-li), but the Middle Assyrian texts only show variation between nominative (ku-zallu) and genitive case (ku-zal-li). AHw 517 s.v. and CAD K 613 correctly refer this month name to k/guzallu “shepherd”, hence “the month of the shepherds”.

Allanātu Except for mimation, the orthographic form of this month name is largely the same in the Old Assyrian (a-lá-na-tim, a-la-na-tim) and Middle Assyrian (al-la-na-tu, al-la-na-tu4, al-la-na-a-tu, al-la-na-te) periods; the only important difference is the doubling of the /l/ in the Middle Assyrian form and the occasional indications of long /a/. Both of these variants, however, correspond nicely to the plural form of allānu (AHw 37 s.v. al-lānu(m) and CAD 354), hence “the month of the oaks”.

With the exception of Kalmartu and the still uncertain origin of Muḫur-ilāni, all of the other month names (even the still elusive Ṣippu and Qarrātu) are Akkadian in form. The Hittite or more generally Anatolian origin of the Old Assyrian calendar that was

46. See generally Donbaz 1971 and 1984 as well as Deller 1986. Examples from Old Assyrian materials:

kán-wa-ar-ta (AKT 3, 59 obv. 13´ [P360668]), kà-an-wa-ar-ta (CS 24, 1–2, 24–25 line 17 [P361265]), kán-bar-ta (AKT 1, 54, line 6 [P360513]), kán-mar-ta (AKT 2, 6 rev. 25 [P360548]).

47. Shibata 2010: 219 and passim. 48. But see e.g. KAJ 57, 30; 65:28 and 70:25 where it is written ITI.SU.EN. 49. Shibata summarizes the situation in Ṭābetu as follows: “Thus overall we are faced not with a variant

of the Assyrian calendar, but with an entirely different local calendar” (2010: 219).


postulated by Ernst Weidner hardly seems plausible at this point.50 This can be con-trasted with a site like Emar, which was under Hittite rule for a time and whose calendar is substantially affected by the Hittite festival tradition.51

The occasional variation between nominative and genitive case of the month names that consist of a single word must be seen as resulting from the grammatical context of each occurrence: essentially, the genitive forms follow prepositions (ina ITI.Qarrāte), while the nominative forms are used elsewhere (Qarrātu). The month names that consist of a construct phrase, however, namely Abu šarrāni, Muḫur ilāni and Bēlet ekalle as well as the abbreviated forms Ša sarrāte and Ša kēnāte, should not show any case variation, since the word that bears the case marker is the second term in a construct phrase (nomen rec-tum) and should always be in the genitive case. Nonetheless, the phonetic glosses that are occasionally added to Abu šarrāni show clear variation between nominative and ge-nitive case on the second term of the construct phrase, viz. šarrānu vs. šarrāni. There are three occurrences of a-bu-šarrānu (LUGAL.MEŠ-a-nu) from Dur-Katlimmu (DeZ 2517, 6; DeZ 3386, 15; DeZ 3816, 17), which might lead us to suspect the scribal skills of those outside of Assur, yet we find similar forms in Assur itself: a-bu-šarrānu (LUGAL. MEŠ-nu) in KAJ 162 [VAT 8245], 29, and MARV 9, 107 [VAT 13082], 4, as well as three occurrences of this orthography from Dūr-katlimmu: DeZ 3841, 17, DeZ 2499, 6; DeZ 2523, 18.52

The rarity of exceptions to the basic rule for single-word month names (genitive forms following prepositions with nominative forms elsewhere) shows that the determinative ITI is not being treated as a separate noun in construct with the following month name, but rather simply functions as a semantic classifier.53 The few exceptional forms, clearly attested only in Dūr-katlimmu, must result from scribes seeing the construct phrase Abu šarrāni as a single word that can appear in either the nominative or the genitive case de-pending on its grammatical context, hence the variation between Abu-šarrānu and Abu-šarrāni. These forms clearly point to a secondary re-analysis of Abu-šarrānu as a single word much like certain Old Babylonian occurrences of mār-šiprûm. It should be noted,

50. Weidner 1912, already rejected by Klauber & Landsberger 1914. 51. See Fleming 2000, passim, as well as the references to Fleming’s work in Veenhof 2008: 235–245. 52. Both forms from Assur are problematic: Ebeling’s copy of KAJ 162 has […] ŠE ER NU, which can

reasonably be amended to [a-bu]-˹šarrānu(LUGAL!)˺-nu, and MARV 9, 107 also has an unusual form,

namely a-bu-šarrānu(MAN)-nu. In both examples the MEŠ sign is missing from the logogram, and we cannot exclude a simple confusion of MEŠ and NU.

53. MARV 1, 51, rev. 3' has a-na mDINGIR–da-li-a ITI.al-la-na-te U4 ˹10+˺.[KÁM], where the month name should be in the nominative case.


however, that one of the questionable nominative forms in šarrānu from Assur (MARV 9, 107) follows a preposition and must be seen as a scribal mistake.54 2.3 The Relative Sequence of the Months The relative sequence of the months could already be ascertained in the 1920’s with the help of textual materials that described the relation between individual months. Weid-ner’s discussion of Assur 13058 kl in his 1929 article (subsequently published by Frey-dank as MARV 2, 19 [= VAT 19193]) presented the decisive evidence for the relative sequence of the months.

The text in Fig. 4 is a list of hides from sacrificed sheep, which were headed for the tanner. For each month various types of sheep are entered into the table, which covers two sequential years in the eponymates of Usāt-Marduk and Ellil-ašarēd.55 On the basis of these eponyms the text can be dated to the time of Shalmaneser I. This is the oldest Middle Assyrian text, therefore, that gives us an uninterrupted sequence of months that cover the entire calendar year.

Even if we ignore, for the moment, the ordinal sequence of the months (see section 2.4 below), their relative sequence is particularly clear in this text. The first calendar year in obv. 3‒14 has the following sequence: Ṣippu, Qarrātu, Kalmartu, Sîn, Kuzallu, Alla-nātu, Bēlat ekalle, Ša sarrāte, Ša kēnāte, Muḫur-ilāni, Abu-šarrāni, Ḫībur. Line 15 then gives the grand totals and the corresponding eponym of Usāt-Marduk, and consequently this eponymate includes twelve months running from Ṣippu to Ḫībur. The second calen-dar year, corresponding to the eponymate of Ellil-ašarēd, is recorded in obv. 16–rev. 8', which has (with the exception of some damaged lines at the beginning of the reverse) an identical sequence: Ṣippu, Qarrātu, Kalmartu, Sîn, Kuzallu, Allanātu, Bēlat ekalle, Ša sarrāte, Ša kenāte, Muḫur-ilāni, Abu-šarrāni, Ḫībur.56

With subsequent work on the Old Assyrian materials, it is now clear that the rela-tive sequence of months is maintained between the Old Assyrian and Middle Assyrian periods, but the fixed sequence of months within the calendar year shifted between the Old and Middle Assyrian periods. We now turn to the ordinal position of this sequence within the calendar year.

54. Of the approximately 600 attestations of month names that we have surveyed, we have logged only

five other exceptions to this rule: KAJ 11, 24 (ITI.ṣi-ip-pí); KAJ 306a, 12 (iš-tu ITI.qar-ra-tu), 13 (a-di ITI.kal-mar-tu) and 15 (iš-tu ITI.kal-mar-tu); and MARV 1, 17+,89 (a-di ITI.kal-mar-tu).

55. On sequences of eponyms see Cancik-Kirschbaum forthcoming a and forthcoming b. 56. The copy in MARV 2 represents the space at the beginning of the reverse as smaller than it actually

is.


line KUŠ UDU.NÍTA.MEŠ KUŠ

UDU.NÍTA.MEŠPAR-ga-ni-ú-tu

KUŠ UDU.UŠ.MEŠ

KUŠ MÁŠ.MEŠ

KUŠ UDU.MEŠ

3 1 ME 21 ITI.Ṣi-pu

4 1 ME 91 ITI.Qar-ra-tu

5 1 ME 55 šu-ši 1 1 ITI.Kal-mar-tu

6 2 ME 9 ITI.d30

7 2 ME 55 2 ITI.Ku-zal-lu

8 […] 1 ME 57 3 ITI.Al-la-na-tu

9 […] ME 73 3 ITI..dNIN.É.GALLIM

10 […] ME 30+4+x? 1 ITI.Šá-sa-ra-te

11 […] ME 9 6 (or 7) ITI.Šá-ke-na-te

12 […] 49 x+2 3 ITI.Mu-ḫur‒DINGIR.MEŠ

13 [ ] 38 6 ITI.A-bu‒LUGAL.MEŠ

14 [ ]+20 7 x+3 ITI.Ḫi-bur

15 [ŠU.NIGIN x]+11 1 šu-ši (+1 16 ? li-mu m˹Ú-sa-at˺‒dAM[AR.UTU]

16 [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] ITI.Si-pu

17 [ ]x [ ]

r.1 [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] ITI.Ku-zal-l[u]

2 [ ]1 šu-ši (+1 10+x+1 ITI.Al-la-n[a-tu]

3 [ ]+1 ME 1 šu-ši (+4 10+x+3 ITI..dNIN‒É.[GALLIM]

4 [ ]+2 ME 58 1/60 ITI.Ša-sa-ra-te

5 [ ]+4 ME 1/60? 8 ITI.Šá-ke-na-t[e]

6 3 ME 80[+x] [x]+1 3 ITI.Mu-ḫur‒DINGIR.MEŠ

7 [ ]+1 ME +40+[ 5 x+3 ITI.A-bu‒LUGAL.MEŠ

8 [ ]+1 ME šu-ši 6 ITI.Ḫi-bur

9 [ŠU.NIGIN šu]-ši+4 ME 78 1 šu-ši +7 19 1 šu-ši +1 li-mu mdEN.LÍL‒SAG

10 ŠU.NIGIN 4 LIM 9 ME 49 1 ME 28 35 89 KUŠ UDU.MEŠ

Fig. 4. VAT 19193 = MARV 2, 19. 2.4 The Ordinal Sequence of the Months While there has been widespread agreement as to the relative sequence of months for upwards of ninety years, the ordinal sequence of the months — namely the location of the new year within the relative sequence — has been a subject of constant debate through-


out that time. VAT 19193 (see above 2.3) not only confirms the standard sequence of months within a Middle Assyrian calendar year, but it also follows from this text that, at least as early as the reign of Shalmaneser I, the month of Ṣippu was the first month of the administrative year: thus the change from one eponym to the next clearly took place at the beginning of the month of Ṣippu. This is made all the more clear by the fact that VAT 19193 is a second-order document, summarizing two calendar years, so it is no surprise that it exhibits the Middle Assyrian calendrical norm.57 Thus, what had origi-nally been the first month (Bēlat ekallim) in the Old Assyrian period shifted to the sev-enth month of the Middle Assyrian calendar year with the rest of the months then fol-lowing in sequence. Likewise, what had originally been the seventh month in the Old Assyrian calendar (Ṣippu) became the first month of the calendar year in the Middle As-syrian period.58

VAT 9909 (KAV 155) was the key tablet that was used by Ehelolf and Landsberger in 1920 to argue for a wandering lunar year. They inferred that the tablet was concerned with the ritual calendar of the Assyrian temple: “Apparently as a commentary on the se-quence of months of this calendar, the series of Old Assyrian [viz. Middle Assyrian] month names were listed in lines 3–10 along with the Babylonian and then Old Assyrian logograms for months as well as a few other signs that consist of only a few, unreadable wedges.”59

57. The importance of this tablet is also emphasized by Koch (1989: 136). 58. It has been suggested that the shift from the Old Assyrian to the Middle Assyrian calendar might al-

ready have taken place in Old Assyrian strata Ib at Karum Kanesh. Pruzsinszky writes as follows: “A modified Old Assyrian calendar is first attested during the eponymy of Habil-kēnu (= KEL G 110 during Kültepe level Ib according to GÜNBATTI [2008] 128): COHEN (1993) 238–239 referred to it as the ‘Restored Assyrian Calendar’. This ‘Restored Assyrian Calendar’ offers the order of Assyrian months: it did not coincide with the eponym year starting around the autumnal equinox as the calen-dar did during the early 2nd millennium (Kārum Kaniš level II texts)”. This hypothesis should be re-examined in light of Eidem’s recent book (2011), but we do not revisit these materials in this paper; see Veenhof 1988 and Charpin 1990 for the original argumentation.

59. Ehelolf & Landsberger 1920: 216f. The original is as follows: “Anscheinend als Kommentar zu der Monatsfolge dieses Kalendars wird in Z. 3–10 die Reihe der altassyrischen Monate mit den baby-lonischen bzw. spätassyrischen Monatsideogrammen und weiteren jedoch nur in undeutbaren Zei-chenresten erhaltenen Charakterisierungen verzeichnet”.


KAV 155 (VAT 9909) Obverse —————————————————————————————————— —————————————————————————————————— 1. [… ištu] ˹ITI˺qar-ra-te U4 ˹1+˺.[KÁM …] 2. [… x]‒d

NIN.URTA [x] AGRIG […] —————————————————————————————————— 3. [… ana] ˹ITI˺.qar-ra-a-˹tu˺ […] [x] ˹x˺ […] 4. [… ana] ˹ITI˺.kal-mar-te […] [x] ITI.BÁRA […] 5. [… ana] ˹ITI˺.ku-zal-li […] [x] ITI.˹x˺ […] KUR.kat-˹mu?˺-[ḫu? …] 6. ana ITI.dNIN.É.GAL […] ˹x˺ ˹KIN

?˺ [x] ˹x˺ […] 7. ˹ana˺ ITI.ša-ke-na-te […] ˹ITI˺.DU6 URU.aš-šur […] 8. [ana] ˹ITI˺.a-bu šarrāni(MAN.MEŠ)-˹ni˺ ˹ITI.GAN˺ […] 9. [ana ITI].ḫi-bur ITI.˹AB

?˺ […] 10. [ana ITI.ṣi]-pi ITI.zíz […] —————————————————————————————————— (…)

This fragmentarily preserved tablet starts with a dating formula (though the eponym’s name is missing), and continues in line 3 with an enumeration of eight Assyrian month names in a single column. The listing follows the ordinal sequence, but shows two pecu-liarities: the sequence runs from month 2 to month 1 (in the following year), and four month names are left out, namely months 4, 6, 8 and 10. Parallel entries in the second column give corresponding Babylonian month names, and as we will suggest later on in the paper, there was also a third column enumerating particular provincial centers and the order in which they were responsible for provisioning the so-called gināʾu offerings to the Temple of Aššur. Unlike the key text VAT 19193 (MARV 2, 19, see section 2.3 above), which links two sequences from Ṣippu to Ḫībur to two specific eponymates, KAV 155 does not preserve the name of an eponym and does not repeat an ordinal sequence that is assigned to two successive eponymates, so it is of rather limited use in defining the ordinal sequence of the Middle Assyrian months. In the absence of other evidence KAV 155 could even represent an ad hoc list drawn up so as to document an arbitrary twelve-month period extending from Qarrātu to the beginning of Qarrātu one year later. Due to the fact that KAV 155 is formally unique, heavily damaged (with no pre-served eponym) and poorly understood, it should not be used as a key piece of evidence for the ordinal sequence of the months, although we return to its interpretation in section 3 below.


The other tablets that Ehelolf and Landsberger used in their argumentation in 1920 (VAT 8695 and VAT 9674) were subsequently published in 1927 as KAJ 182 (VAT 8695) and KAJ 306a (VAT 9674), and while they do demonstrate the sequence of months out-lined above, they cannot in our view be used to argue for a wandering lunar calendar in the Middle Assyrian period.60 KAJ 182 (VAT 8695) is a receipt concerning daily milk deliveries to the palace from the 18th of Ša-kēnāte (IX) to the 24th of Abu-šarrāni (XI). The text is dated to the period of Shalmaneser I, and merely demonstrates the sequence of Ša-kēnāte immediately followed by Abu-šarrāni.

Obverse 1. iš-tu ITI.ša-ke-na-te 2. U4 18.KÁM li-me 3. mda-šur‒ke-ti‒i-de 4. a-di ITI.a-bu-šarrāni(LUGAL.MEŠ) 5. U4 24.KÁM li-me 6. an-ni-e-ma Bottom Edge 7. U4-um 1 mar-sa-tu 8. ša GA Reverse 9. ša ŠU mUṣur(PAP)-bēl(d

EN)-šarre(LUGAL) 10. bēl(EN) pa-ḫe-te 11. a-na É.GAL-lim

12. ra-ke-es “From the Month of Ša-kēnāte, day 18, of the eponym Aššur-ketti-ide, to the month of Abu-šarrāni, day 24, of the same eponym, daily 1 marsatu-vessel of milk, the responsi-bility of Uṣur-namkur-šarre, the district governor, is assigned to the palace”.

Likewise, KAJ 306a independently demonstrates the sequence of Qarrātu (II) and Kal-martu (III):

60. VAT 10319, described by Ehelolf and Landsberger as an “Opferkalender” (1920: 217) cannot be lo-

cated in the museum and it is not clear from their brief description which tablet they actually had in mind.


12. iš-tu ITI.qar-ra-tu U4 27.KÁM 13. a-di ITI.kal-mar-tu U4 14.KÁM 17 U4.MEŠ

!

“From the month of Qarrātu, day 27, to the month of Kalmartu, day 14. Total: 17 days”.

We see no reason, however, why KAJ 306a (VAT 9674) should be seen as evidence that Qarrātu was the first month of the year, as suggested by Ehelolf and Landsberger. They argue that Qarrātu must be the first month of the year in question, “since, as it explicitly emerges from this text, the same eponym operated in the month of Qarrātu as well as in the month of Tanmarte [viz. Kalmartu]”.61 But, simply put, temporal spans that refer to periods of time within a single eponym provide no evidence for the ordinal position of the Middle Assyrian months.

The most promising evidence for locating the ordinal sequence of the Middle As-syrian months consists of temporal spans that pass from one eponym to a following epo-nym. In MARV 1, 17+ (envelope) lines 90–91 below, the new (eponym) year and con-sequently the first ordinal month must be located between month XI (Abu-šarrāni) and month II (Qarrātu). MARV 1, 17+ (envelope) 90–91 90. ˹iš-tu ITI.mu-ḫur˺-ilāni(DINGIR.MEŠ) U4.˹27?˺.KÁM li-me m˹a˺-bi-ili(DINGIR) ˹a-di

ITI.qar˺-ra-te U4.˹20+˺.[KÁM] 91. [li]-˹me mdšùl(SILIM)-ma-nu‒šuma(MU)‒uṣur(PAP) 3 ITI 23 U4.MEŠ …

“From Muḫur-ilāni, day 27(?), eponym of Abī-ilī, to Qarrāte, day 20(?), eponym of Sal-mānu-šuma-uṣur: 3 months and 23 days …”

There are at least two other temporal spans within the same document, but a tabular overview may be more helpful than simply rehearsing all of the relevant documents. Up to now, we have managed to locate five examples of temporal spans that cross from one eponym year to a subsequent eponym year; they are listed below:

61. The original German reads “da, wie aus dieser Urkunde ausdrücklich hervorgeht, im Monat Qarrāte

der gleiche Eponym fungiert wie im Monat Tanmarte”, Ehelolf & Landsberger 1920: 217. Ehelolf and Landsberger may have been misled by the occurrence of a līmu designation following iš-tu ITI. kal-mar-tu in line 15 of KAJ 306a, but the end date of a temporal span can be designated as li-me an-ni-e-ma, “eponym: this (same) one”, so the mere presence of a līmu notation following the start date of a temporal span does tell us anything about its location in the calendar year. In other examples, the līmu designation follows the start date and no līmu qualification follows the end date, as in MARV 2, 18, rev. lines 4–5.


Location From To Time-span

MARV 1, 17+ (tablet), 78–79 Muḫur-ilāni (X),

day 29?, of Abī-ilī

Ṣippu (I), day 9?,

of Salmānu-šuma-uṣur 2 months 11 days

MARV 1, 17+ (envelope) 86–87 Muḫur-ilāni (X),

day 27, Abī-ilī

Kalmartu (III), day 16,

Salmānu-šuma-uṣur 4 months, 20 days

MARV 1, 17+ (envelope) 90–91 Muḫur-ilāni (X), day

27?, of Abī-ilī

Qarrātu (II), day 20?,

Salmānu-šuma-uṣur 3 months, 23 days

MARV 1, 51, 10'–11' Ṣippu (I), day 16,

of Ātamar-dēn-Aššur

Allanātu (VI), day 26,

of Adad-mušabši

not specified

(expected: 15 months,

10 days)

MARV 7, 2, 3–5 Muḫur-ilāni (X),

day 30, Ina-ilīya-allak

Ša-sarrāte (VIII), day

24?, Šadnāyu

9! months, 6 days

(expected: 10 months

minus 6 days)

Fig. 5. Time-spans that pass from one eponym to the next. As the table makes clear, two distinct eponym years are only mentioned in connection with a temporal span, when that temporal span crosses the beginning of the eponym year in Ṣippu (I). The one example that seems to start in Ṣippu (I) and end in Allanātu (VI) must cover a period of more than 15 months, although the length of the temporal span is not preserved in MARV 1, 51. If we may be permitted a counterfactual argument, the fact that — to return to the argument of Ehelolf and Landsberger — the two months Qarrātu (II) and Kalmartu (III) never actually occur as the last month of year N and the first month of year N+1 respectively, argues against the notion of a wandering lunar year. If the beginning of the Middle Assyrian year regularly moved through the seasonal year (as Ehelolf, Landsberger and Weidner, among others, have argued), we would expect at least a few occurrences of temporal spans in which the start date occurred in a month like Qarrātu (II), year N, and the end date occurred in Kalmartu (III), year N+1, with the time-span only amounting to one month or so. An informal survey of the temporal spans in the Middle Assyrian documentation shows that starting points are spread throughout the year:

Starting Month I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII

Number of time spans 3 3 1 2 2 3 1 4 2 11 7 1

Fig. 6. Distribution of time-spans (according to starting month) in the Middle Assyrian corpus.


The large number of starting points in Muḫur-ilāni (X) results from the numerous time-spans from a single document (MARV 1, 17+), but the attested time-spans are otherwise relatively well distributed throughout the twelve months of the year. Other than the spans that pass from one eponym to a following eponym listed above, however, none of the other 35 time-spans listed here pass from one eponym to the next. The non-existence of certain kinds of temporal spans (viz. spans that would locate the ordinal first month in any month other than Ṣippu) blocks any possibility of a wandering lunar calendar. In positive terms: only time spans that cross Ṣippu mention more than one eponym and al-though this evidence might seem less than conclusive to some, we find it convincing.

Building on the paper of Ehelolf and Landsberger, Weidner would make a some-what different argument for a lunar calendar moving through the seasons in his brief note published in 1929, likewise titled Der altassyrische Kalender. Weidner was the first to recognize the importance of Assur 13058 kl (= VAT 19193 = MARV 2, 19), the tablet that we looked at a moment ago in which two years, each beginning with Ṣippu (I), follow in sequence. In spite of the evidence of Assur 13058 kl, Weidner accepted the presupposition of Ehelolf and Landsberger that three different months were attested as the beginning of the calendar year (Qarrātu, Kalmartu and Sîn) and simply added Assur 13058 kl (with Ṣippu as the first month) to the other three alignments of the cal-endar. With seemingly good evidence for four different months as the start of the year, Weidner went on to argue that

since we now have four monthly series, but still not any trace of an intercalary month, I think there is only one way of solving this problem. The Assyrians have calculated their year according to a lunar year of 354 days, and every 3 or even 2 years therefore they had to compare the lunar year with the solar year (365 days). They had no knowledge of an intercalary month. They there-fore considered the month that was next in the sequence as an intercalary month and could then begin the new year with the month after that. In this way, over a period of approximately 33 years, the sequence of months [viz. the begin-ning of the year] would move completely through the entire year once. Each of the twelve months would have formed the beginning of the year once [viz. over the period of roughly 33 years]. 62

62. Weidner 1929: 185. The original reads: “Da nunmehr vier Monatsreihen vorliegen, andererseits aber

weiter jeder Spur eines Schaltmonats fehlt, so scheint mir nur noch ein Ausweg möglich. Die Assy-rer haben nach einem Mondjahr zu 354 Tagen gerechnet; alle 3 oder auch 2 Jahre musste daher ein Ausgleich mit dem Sonnenjahr (365 Tage) erfolgen. Einen besonderen Schaltmonat kannten sie nicht. Sie betrachteten daher den Monat, der gerade an der Reihe war, als ‘Schaltmonat’ und liessen das neue Jahr mit dem nächstfolgenden Monat beginnen. Auf diese Weise durchlief in etwa 33 Jah-


And it is this argument of Weidner’s that has been maintained in the secondary litera-ture up to the present, in spite of occasional objections. Like Ehelolf and Landsberger before him, Weidner is conflating administrative documents with later scholastic texts like V R 43, a Neo-Assyrian list that correlates six different calendars, only one of which is Assyrian. Scholastic texts like this are important evidence and we return to V R 43 in section 3 below, but we must privilege contemporary Urkunden over later attempts at retrospective synchronization or alignment. Moreover, as we will see below, Ehelolf and Landsberger’s evidence for Sîn (IV) as the start of the year stems from a royal in-scription that bears a Doppeldatierung, namely KAH II, 73 (VAT 9557 + VAT 9489). Thus we are left with just two possible months for the start of a new year in the Middle Assyrian calendar: the usual first month Ṣippu which is clearly the first month in all of the administrative documentation, and a single occurrence of Qarrātu in a unique and heavily damaged table of calendrical correlations (KAV 155).

The foregoing evidence therefore allows us to be quite certain that the ordinal sequence of the Middle Assyrian calendar ran from Ṣippu (I) to Ḫībur (XII), but in speaking of the calendar’s ordinal sequence we are still only describing its internal structure. In the next sec-tion we present evidence that links this ordinal structure to the seasonal or agricultural year, and in doing so posit the existence of a stationary calendar in the Middle Assyrian period. 2.5 Locating the Calendar in the Seasonal Year Unfortunately we have no information from the handful of Old Assyrian tablets from Assur on the particular months in which certain types of agricultural work (seeding and harvest, for example) took place. The extensive corpus of Old Assyrian materials from Karum Kanesh do provide numerous references to agricultural practices in Anatolia, linking the beginning of the Old Assyrian year in Bēlat ekallim with the beginning of the agricultural cycle and locating the harvest in the tenth month (Teʾinātum/Suen), but do not necessarily represent the correct seasonal placement of months in and around Assur itself.

The seasonal expressions found in loan documents from Karum Kanesh line up fairly well with the older consensus that “the Old Assyrian calendar must have started be-tween the time of the autumnal equinox (Sept. 23) and the time of the winter solstice (Dec. 21)”,63 but they do not line up very well with what we know about Middle Assyr-

ren die gesamte Monatsreihe einmal das Jahr. Jeder der zwölf Monate hatte inzwischen einmal den Jahresanfang gebildet”.

63. Veenhof 2008: 238. This assumption was already the basis for Landsberger’s groundbreaking work on the seasons (1949a and 1949b) and also figures centrally in Veenhof’s framework for linking these designations to other cultic and temporal schemata (2008: 235–245).


ian agricultural practice in northern Mesopotamia and the Jazirah: notably the Anatolian seasonal expressions place the harvest in Teʾinātum/Suen rather than Ḫībur. These is-sues will have to be revisited by specialists in Old Assyrian and we do not attempt to harmonize the Anatolia seasonal expressions with Middle Assyrian practices here.64

Old Assyrian Seasonal expressions

in Karum Kanesh texts Middle Assyrian

I Bēlat ekallim erāšum, “ploughing (and seeding)” Bēlat-ekalle VII

II Ša-sarrātim serdum, “(the time of) the olives” Ša-sarrāte VIII

III Ša-kēnātim Ša-kēnāte IX

IV Maḫur-ilī Muḫur-ilāni X

V Ab-šarrāni Abu-šarrāni XI

VI Ḫubur dašʾū, “spring” Ḫībur XII

VII Ṣīpʾum Ṣippu I

VIII Qarrātum Qarrātu II

IX Kanwarta ḫarpū, “summer” Kalmartu III

X Teṭinātum/Suen ṣibit niggallim, “time of the sickle” /

eṣādum, “harvesting” / ebūrum “harvest” Sîn IV

XI Kuzallu adrum, “threshing floor” Kuzallu V

XII Allanātum qitip kerānim, “the picking of the grapes” Allanātu VI

Fig. 7. The Old and Middle Assyrian Month Names and their location in the sequence of month names and corresponding agricultural/seasonal expressions from Karum Kanesh

Recent work by Dercksen provides evidence that the first new moon following the win-ter solstice was the beginning of the Old Assyrian year.65 If Dercksen’s hypothesis is correct, it would locate the first month of the Old Assyrian New Year (Bēlat ekallim) in December/January.

As long as there was a communis opinio that the Middle Assyrian months were not stationary and not tied to a seasonal or agricultural year, researchers naturally avoided the necessary implications of a stationary calendar. If, however, as we argue here, the Middle Assyrian calendar was a stationary calendar and remained so even in the Middle Assyrian period, Dercksen’s placement of the first month of the Old Assyrian calendar

64. There is no reason to assume that the Anatolian agricultural regime is similar to Assyrian agricultural

practice, for which we have no substantial evidence before the Middle Assyrian period: Dercksen 2008 only deals with agricultural practices in Old Assyrian Kanesh.

65. Dercksen 2011.


in December/January is particularly appealing, since it would locate the first month of the Middle Assyrian calendar (Ṣippu, I) in June/July, and the agricultural accounts drawn up on the 20th of Ḫībur (XII) then fall squarely into May/June, which is in fact precisely when cereal crop harvesting must have taken place in and around Assur. In other words, we would like to suggest that the seasonal placement of the months remained unchanged in both the Old and Middle Assyrian calendars: only the location of the ordinal first month shifts between the Old Assyrian calendar (with Bēlet-ekallim in December/January as first month) and the Middle Assyrian calendar (with Ṣippu in June/July as the first month).

Old Assyrian Modern (Gregorian) Year Middle Assyrian

I Bēlat ekallim Dec-Jan (Winter Solstice [= December 21]) Bēlet-ekalle VII

II Ša-sarrātim Jan-Feb Ša-sarrāte VIII

III Ša-kēnātim Feb-Mar Ša-kēnāte IX

IV Maḫur-ilī Mar-Apr Muḫur-ilāni X

V Ab-šarrāni Apr-May Abu-šarrāni XI

VI Ḫubur May-June Ḫībur XII

VII Ṣīpʾum June-July (Summer Solstice [= June 21]) Ṣippu I

VIII Qarrātum July-Aug Qarrātu II

IX Kanwarta Aug-Sept Kalmartu III

X Teṭinātum/Suen Sept-Oct Sîn IV

XI Kuzallu Oct-Nov Kuzallu V

XII Alanātum Nov-Dec (Winter Solstice [= December 21]) Allanātu VI

Fig. 8. The Old and Middle Assyrian Month Names and their approximate location in a seasonal year.

Although a certain amount of variation in the placement of the growing seasons for cereal crops — the key factor for linking administrative to cultic calendars in the ancient Near East — can be observed in the secondary literature, the most reliable authorities are in agreement and place the growing season for barley between November/December (sowing) and May/June (harvest).66 Just as in southern Mesopotamia, barley was a win-

66. Charles 1990: 55, apud Beld 2002: 113, describes the harvest in the south as follows: “The barley

crop ripens first and was generally harvested two weeks before the wheat, i.e. barley was cut from mid April through to May, whereas the wheat crop was ready from early May onwards and the har-vest could continue into June”. See already Landsberger 1949a, 1949b; for the Jazirah, see Streck 2002; for an overview of rainfall and irrigation in northern Mesopotamia and the Jazirah, see the pa-pers in Jas 2000.


ter crop, planted in the fall, typically after a rainfall had softened the ground, and harvested before the intense heat of the summer.67 In his new synthesis of the Middle Assyrian agricultural documentation, Reculeau reaches much the same conclusion:

… the most regular months in terms of rainfall are the first and last months of the pluviometric year: mid-november on the one hand, april-may on the other. They coincide with the two original periods of the agricultural cycle: sowing in autumn and ear-formation in spring.”68

Whiting notes that there is a slight difference in the harvesting time of barley with the harvest coming slightly later as one moves north in Mesopotamia, but with “at most a 3-4 week difference between harvest time in the north and the south”.69 Reculeau and others have also pointed out, however, that sowing was often postponed for up to a month so as to wait for the first rains or other temporary climatic factors, so local climatic variability easily absorbs any substantial difference in the planting season between southern Meso-potamia and the Jazirah. If we take the period between November/December (sowing) and May/June (harvest) as a good approximation, then the seasonal alignment that we propose here fits quite well: the twelfth month Ḫībur, given the ample evidence of the pišerti karūʾe harvest accounts, takes place in May/June, at the time of the harvest. Al-ready in his edition of these texts, W. Röllig had already pointed out that

in view of the numerous attestations for the accounting of barley during the month of Hibur, in which the harvest is concluded and the fiscal year came to an end, it may be suggested however that the months were fixed in relation to a lunisolar year. As far as we know, this cannot be identified in the calendrical system.70 (our translation)

Nearly a dozen Middle Assyrian documents, all private antithetic loans meant to provide agricultural labor at harvest in place of interest payments, include the word turēzi, which

67. Wirth 1971: 194. Wirth is describing the agricultural practice prior to the introduction of pump-

driven water supplies and other modern techniques. Thanks to Hartmut Kühne for this reference. 68. Reculeau 2011: 15, citing Sanlaville 1990: 6. Sanlaville 1990 is not available to us at present, but

this statement accords well with other authorities. 69. Whiting 1979: 23, alluding to the data presented in Adams 1981, but prior to publication and without

page reference, so it is unclear to us which data Whiting has in mind. Whiting is referring to northern Mesopotamia (viz. the region between Nippur/Adab and Kish/Babylon) rather than the Jazira per se, but since Wirth locates the barley harvest in May/June as well, there is probably no significant dif-ference between the growing season in northern Mesopotamia and the Jazira.

70. See Röllig 2008 (quotation on p. 4); Freydank 2009; Reculeau 2011.


has generally been taken to mean “harvest” in the secondary literature. The word is attested in Nuzi and the Middle Assyrian materials, but in the Middle Assyrian materials only in a limited number of idiomatic formulations that describe going out to harvest crops i+na tu-re-zi. As already recognized by Landsberger, the term presumably repre-sents a temporal period within the harvest season and therefore might offer an independ-ent line of evidence for the seasonal aligment of the Middle Assyrian calendar.71 As part of his corpus of private legal documents, Saporetti offers transliterations of nearly all of the relevant documents (KAJ 11, KAJ 29, Tell Billa no. 1,72 KAJ 62, KAJ 81, TR 3014, TR 3015, TR 3022, TR 112, KAJ 101, KAJ 99), but does not dwell at length on the questions we are investigating here.73 One additional contract from Tell Amuda was subsequently published by Machinist (no. 1 = YBC 12860) and this kind of contract may be discussed in a letter from Tell Chuēra that was published in 2009 (no. 29 = 92. G.090).74 The ten witnesses that are certain examples (excluding Tell Billa no. 1 and the letter from Tell Chuēra) and include a month name (TR 112 does not) are spread over nearly the entire year: I (KAJ 11 and KAJ 62), II (KAJ 99 and TR 3015), V (YBC 12860), VI (TR 3022), VII (KAJ 50), IX (TR 3014 and KAJ 101), XI (KAJ 81). Only the questionable example from Tell Billa occurs in the month of Ḫībur (XII), when the agricultural accounts of the crown land (pišerti karūʾe) were normally settled. The clus-tering of these private contracts in the months leading up to Ḫībur and the months im-mediately following it (but not Ḫībur itself) suggests that the private agricultural sector set up antichretic obligations throughout the year, but not in the month in which harvest-ing normally took place, when they were discharged.

The herding records from Tell Ali published by Ismail and Postgate also seem to provide support for locating the last month of the Middle Assyrian Calendar (Ḫībur) in May/June. Ismail and Postgate report five documents from Tell Ali that record the com-

71. Landsberger 1949b: 291–293; see also von Soden 1987. 72. Finkelstein 1953: 122 and 148. This attestation is reconstructed by Saporetti on the basis of a single

sign (tú(UD)-[re-zi]), but corresponds to neither the Middle Assyrian (tu-re-zi) nor the Nuzi orthogra-phy (tù(DU)/tu-ra-ši).

73. Saporetti 1979b: 60f.; 1981: 20–23; for the legal significance of these materials, see Koschaker 1928: 109f.; Lafont 2003: 550–552; for analogous materials from other times and places, see Eichler 1973: 48–101 and Garfinkle 2004.

74. Machinist 1982: 3, and Jakob 2009: 69f. and pl. 14, respectively. Jakob’s edition of 92.G.090 infers that stocks should be diminished in anticipation of the coming harvest (“Angesichts der (bevorste-henden) Erntezeit soll man die Vorräte verringern!” = (4) i+na UGU ˹tu˺-[re-zi] x (5) su-ḫu-pa-˹te˺ [x x x] (6) lu-na-ḫi-tu), but there is nothing in the Akkadian that argues for the coming (“bevorste-hend”) harvest rather than the harvest completed a few months before. If we locate Sîn in September-October, as we suggest here, the tu-re-zu in question would likely correspond to the preceding har-vest in May-June.


position of flocks, and if this accounting was carried out during annual shearing, as they suggest, these censuses may also provide evidence for the seasonality of certain activities. The relevant tablets date to Bēlet ekalle (VII) through Ša-kēnāte (IX) as well as Abu-šarrāni (XI).75 This roughly corresponds to late winter and spring, and since we might expect shearing to take place in the spring, before the heat of the summer, the range from months VII–XI (corresponding to January through May) seems to fit into the seasonal alignment that we propose here quite well. Even if we broaden our view to in-clude all the texts from Tell Ali, the dated tablets only cover the months between Kuzal-lu (V) and Abu-šarrāni (XI) and are concentrated in the winter and the spring. Note that unlike the shepherds at Tell Ali, the accounts dealing with bovine and equid herds such as the texts published by Deller and Tsukimoto (1985) as well as Röllig (2008) are regularly carried out on the twentieth day of Ḫībur (XII), the same day on which agri-cultural accounts were settled. Kleinvieh (sheep and goats) were included in the end-of-year livestock census, but the focus of these accounts is clearly on cattle and equids, presumably due to their role as traction animals in agricultural work.76 Taken together these bits of evidence point to a calendrical system that kept the location of the individual months more or less stable within the seasonal year. Once we accept the existence of a stationary calendar in the Middle Assyrian administrative sector, even if only as a work-ing hypothesis, this raises a host of questions that we take up below. 3 Intercalation, Doppeldatierung and Coordination This section turns to questions of coordination: the Middle Assyrian administrative cal-endar had to be brought into correlation not only with the seasonal year through some form of intercalation, but also with (as we suggest below) the Middle Assyrian cultic calendar. These acts of coordination were the responsibility of the crown, and we first describe the place of calendrical manipulations within the political sphere (3.1). We then suggest a model for intercalation in the Middle Assyrian administrative calendar (3.2), revisit the phenomenon of Doppeldatierung itself (3.3) and conclude with a discussion of the role of Doppeldatierung in orchestrating the gināʾu offerings to the Temple of Aššur (3.4).

75. Ismail & Postgate 2008: 152. They go on to note that “if the annual stock-take was always in spring

time, we would expect it to fall ‘earlier’ in the calendar year each successive year, but the variation of months is too great to be accounted for in this way”.

76. Deller & Tsukimoto 1985: 326. Deller and Tsukimoto also call into question Hunger’s conclusions about the Middle Assyrian calendar, but without elaborating on the problem in depth. For the calcu-lation of fertility rates, which may also have motivated the end-of-year livestock census, see Frey-dank 2010.


3.1 The Political Sphere and the Normierung of the Calendrical System Intercalation was an important royal duty and implied a high degree of symbolism, showing the king as master of time (although he is never actually called that in the an-cient Near East, since there is no word for “time” in the relevant languages). The code of Ur-Namma and later Old Babylonian edicts demonstrate that the ordering of metrical and calendrical norms was always and exclusively in the hands of the crown. This fits into the broader task of the king as the actor responsible for the integration of the politi-cal sphere with administrative and cultic cycles. The existence of a similar concept can — we believe — be demonstrated in the Middle Assyrian period, although we do not take up the matter here in detail. We do return to the difference between administrative and cultic calendars briefly in our concluding section.

Here we look at the relation of the king to year-enumeration in general (3.1.1) and to what we actually know about the procedures related to the naming of the eponym in the Middle Assyrian documentation (3.1.2). 3.1.1 The Naming of the Year as A Political Act In Assyria, at least as initially developed in the eponymate system as practiced in the Old Assyrian period, the change from one ruler to the next played no role in the chrono-logical system. The eponym lists from Kültepe group the eponyms according to the reigns of individual kings, but the accession of the primus inter pares was not visibly present in the Old Assyrian practice of the eponymate. Whereas in the Old Assyrian pe-riod the calculation of calendrical periods of time was simply unaffected by changes on the throne, we observe a crucial change in the Middle Assyrian period, with the king regularly named as the first eponymate after his accession.77 The linkage between the offices of king and eponym has led to an extensive discussion in the literature and re-mained a point of discussion down into first millennium Assyrian sources, where (i) the period of time between accession and the new year investiture rites and (ii) the first full year of rule following investiture were carefully distinguished.78

New ways of designating regnal years (and eponym years in Assur) arise at roughly the same time in Kassite Babylon and Assur, at least in Babylon replacing the old, inherited chronological system in which named events from the preceding year were used as year designations.79 Under the Kassite kings of the 14th century, a distinctive form of event-based year name came into being in the south, a system that had occasionally

77. Cancik-Kirschbaum in preparation. 78. Tadmor 1958: 26–30; Machinist 1995; Galter 2008: 660–663. 79. Tadmor already refers to this state of affairs (1958: 27).


been used earlier: each year was enumerated according to the regnal year of the cur-rently ruling king.80 The transition seems to have taken place during the rule of Kadaš-man-Enlil I (1369‒1355) or Burnaburiaš II (1354‒1328), for it is during these reigns that both types of year name as well as mixed forms (event-based and regnal year) are attested.81 The first full year of reign therefore corresponded to first regnal year of a given ruler. However, the particular conditions under which this change in practice actually took place remain unclear. Brinkman, for example, points to two year dates be-longing to the period of Burnaburiaš II and Nazi-maruttaš (1302‒1277), which may document the actual transitions between the event-based system and the later use of regnal years.82 According to Brinkman’s interpretation, the traditional mu ús.sa dat-ings “year, following on (that)” can be reinterpreted: it should no longer be seen as signifying the first full regnal year of the new king but rather “the year after (the old king)” (i.e. that part of the year remaining after the old king’s death). The remaining part of a calendar year, which was no longer under the authority of the old (usually de-ceased) king, but rather under the rule of the new holder of the throne, was designated with the mu ús.sa year name, which has the added benefit of designating a change on the throne in a relatively neutral way and allowing the first full regnal year to bear the name of the new ruler.83

Under Kadašman-Enlil II (1258‒1250) another new type of year name is intro-duced, namely the mu saĝ nam.lugal.la <royal name> type. Since the rulers that use this new type of year name also make use of the mu 1.kam <royal name> type, the ex-pression in this new type must refer to the accession year of the ruler, and this new year name type would eventually come to replace the mu ús.sa type.84 This distinction be-tween year of accession (šurrât šarrūti / rēš šarrūti) and first full year regnal year (palû) survives into first millennium Assyrian documents, but as Tadmor already noted some

80. Similar methods are already attested in pre-Sargonic Mari and were also in use among the rulers of

the Old Babylonian period; however, these systems were never able to fully prevail against the older, event-oriented systems from which they originally arose. The so-called mu-i t i texts, which cover the reigns of the governor of Umma, could be seen as an experiment in naming years according to “office-years”. See Hallo 1988 for an overview.

81. Brinkman 1976: 402–406 as well as the more detailed argumentation in 448–451. 82. Brinkman 1976: 451. Brinkman argues in greater detail (1974: 154f.) as follows: “(…) mu ús-sa

RN (…) interpreted as that portion of the year which remained after the death of a king (…) simply a different way of saying ‘accession year’ — by which the interval between the death of one king and the beginning of the first regnal year of his successor was designated in terms of the old rather than the new reign”.

83. The mu ús.sa years in a given period of time therefore only cover the remaining part of already named year.

84. Brinkman (1976: 403) writes: “After the introduction of the MU.SAG.NAM.LUGAL.LA in the early thir-teenth century, only orthographic variants are attested until the end of the dynasty”.


years ago:

It is rather significant that only a few years before Tukulti-Ninurta I the dating by MU SAG.LUGAL.LA “the year of the beginning of kingship” as distinguished from MU.1.KÁM “year 1” starts to appear in the administrative documents of the Kassite kings of Babylon.85

Such a system, presumably introduced sometime in the Middle Assyrian period, would also have allowed the first full regnal year and the eponym year of the king to coincide. Thus it is likely that throughout the Middle Assyrian period elements of Babylonian Herrschaftswissen (including calendrics) were gradually introduced into Assyrian prac-tice. The adoption of the Babylonian calendar for certain purposes was only one part of this broader process, reaching its culmination with the final abandonment of the Assyr-ian calendar during the reign of Tiglath-Pileser I.

3.1.2 The Synchronization of the Political Year As long as the crown and the office of the eponym were institutionally distinct, the logic of selecting the eponym by lot was fairly transparent: the random choice of a member of one of the leading families as eponym each year led to restraint, since one year’s epo-nym would be next year’s petitioner or debtor. With the merger of the two offices in the first regnal year, the randomness disappears and first millennium sources suggest that particular officers subordinate to the crown were assigned to the eponymate in a more or less regular way.86 Although it is unlikely that the office of eponym was ever conferred during the annual investiture rites, where the ruler and his subordinates were entrusted with their offices for the coming year, the incorporation of the office of eponym into the cursus honorum for high officials makes it unlikely that a distinct eponymic year could be maintained in the Middle Assyrian period. If the regnal and eponymic years were equated in some way, it would have made the ša qāti method of marking intercalary months far more difficult to recognize. In the Old Assyrian materials from Karum Ka-nesh the intercalary month seems to have been assigned to the last month of the con-cluding “regnal” year and the first month of the newly installed eponym (hence līmu ša qāti PN, “the eponym after [the current eponym] PN”).87 But if the regnal and eponymic years were equated in the Middle Assyrian period — due to the integration of the office

85. Tadmor 1958: 27. 86. Finkel & Reade 1995: 167–170; for an overview of the phenomenon, see Millard 1994: 9–11. 87. Admittedly there is no way to clearly distinguish regnal and administrative years in the Karum Ka-

nesh materials, hence the scare quotes around “regnal”.


of eponym into the royal offices — the discrepancy between them could no longer be used to indirectly mark the intercalated month. The intercalary twelfth month would simply be the last month in both the eponymic and regnal year, and any administrative dis-tinction between month XIIa and month XIIb must have been encoded through storage of the records in separate archives or some other form of curation. 3.2 Intercalation in the Middle Assyrian Period From the analysis so far we can summarize our findings as follows: — time spans and concrete dates show that the actual length of any given month was

based on lunar observation and administrative texts that date actual events refer to this observational system;

— administrative documents concerned with future-oriented or recursive calculations could make use of a schematic 30-day/month-system, with 12 months in an admin-istrative year (viz. the 360-day schematic year), but the actual dating of tablets uses the administrative calendar (a lunar calendar based on observation with occasional intercalations);

— the relative sequence of the month names was unchanged between the Old and Mid-dle Assyrian periods and the placement of this relative sequence within the seasonal year also remained stable between these two periods;

— the ordinal sequence of these 12 months, however, begins after the harvest in the summer (Ṣippu, May/June) in the Middle Assyrian period rather than in mid-winter (Bēlet-ekallim, December/January) as it had in the Old Assyrian period. In other words, the beginning of the ordinal sequence shifts from the winter solstice to the summer solstice (sometime in June 20–22) as its cardinal point prior to the Middle Assyrian period.

But if so, we also need to identify some way of synchronizing the solar and the lunar years. 3.2.1 Comparative Evidence As far back as the third millennium BCE in Mesopotamia various auxiliary methods of calibrating the lunar and the solar year are attested.88 The most common of these meth-ods was the addition of an occasional intercalary month to the calendar or the indication of an intercalation through a shift in the correlational schema of two distinction calen-

88. Britton 2007.


drical notational systems. Englund has emphasized the irregularity of intercalations in the materials from the later third millennium:

The hard evidence pointing to a normal 3-year intercalation must be weighed against the puzzling fact that for instance in Drehem up to 4 intercalary years (Amar-Zuʾen 9 through Šu-Sin 3) seem to be attested in succession. The three attested presargonic Lagash intercalations date, similarly, to the successive years UruKAgina (lugal) 4–5.89

Particularly in the case of the Ur III intercalations that Englund mentions, Amar-Suen’s ninth year is also his last and it is fairly clear that the sequence of intercalations during Šu-Sîn’s first few years in office were meant to correct for a large discrepancy that had arisen in the Drehem calendar. Sallaberger has emphasized, however, that the more or less regular cycle of intercalations in particular Ur III city-states basically corresponds to the late first millennium Metonic Cycle, at least in terms of the average number of intercalations over time, if not the precise distribution of seven intercalations within every nineteen year period.90

Prior to the Ur III period we have no evidence for explicitly noted intercalary months. The frequent mention of the intercalation in the ED IIIb period (epitomized by the quo-tation from Englund above) actually refers to an intercalation that is visible only through correlating two separate calendrical schema: the regnal year and a schema for monthly rations. In the fourth year of Uru-inim-gina/Eri-KA-gina’s reign as king (Ukg. L. 4) several texts attest to a thirteenth monthly ration that was delivered in the month of še gu7 dnanše.ka, which normally occurred as the first month of the calendar year. These few occurrences of a thirteenth monthly ration in a month that normally occupies the initial position in a largely cultic calendar indicate that an otherwise unmarked intercalary month had been introduced into the administrative calendar, while this additional month was still equated with the first month of the “cultic” calendar.91

Something quite similar may have been at work in the Old Assyrian calendrical sys-tem, particularly visible in the distribution of so-called ša qāti eponym datings. In the Old Assyrian texts from Karum Kanesh certain months are qualified as belonging to the eponym following the most recent eponym through the use of the ša qāti notation, hence līmu PN (year N), but līmu ša qāti PN (year N+1). It therefore comes as little

89. Englund 1988: 124, n. 3, as well as 144, n. 17. 90. Sallaberger 1993: 11; the same point is also made by Whiting 1979; for the first millennium practice,

see Hunger & Reiner 1975; Brack-Bernsen 2005. 91. Selz 2011. Beld’s Ration and Month Sequence table (Table 3-1) suggests how this type of intercala-

tion may have operated (Beld 2002: 199).


surprise that this type of eponym is normally only found in the first six months of the Old Assyrian year, viz. the period of time during the winter when caravans were not traveling between Assur and Karum Kanesh and the new eponym was not yet known in Karum Kanesh. The surprising feature of this system is that, as Veenhof has shown, the twelfth month of the Old Assyrian Calendar (Allanātu) is often designated as a ša qāti eponym as well. Once we recognize the possibility of using the calibration between two notational systems as a way of indicating the presence of an intercalary month (rather than an explicit notation as was used in the Ur III period), it suggests that the marking of a twelfth month with the ša qāti notation may have functioned as a straightforward, if implicit, indication of an intercalary month. Since the ša qāti month necessarily belongs to the “next” eponym (and the usual twelfth month would ultimately be designated with the actual name of the appropriate eponym rather than a ša qāti notation), it would have been the ideal way of indicating that a second twelfth month had been introduced into the calendar in order to bring the lunar calendar into alignment with the seasonal year.

The situation that we face in the Middle Assyrian period is also not unique in the second half of the second millennium BCE. Daniel Fleming has investigated the more or less contemporary materials from Tell Meskene/Emar, and as in Assur, there is no explicit notation or other inscriptional evidence for intercalary months. Yet at the same time particular festivals and cultic events — particularly the Emar ritual complex that is anchored to phases of the moon in the month of Abî — regularly occur within the same season. Fleming postulates a kind of invisible intercalation: the additional month was simply indicated through the repetition of a standard month name without any indication that it was actually the second occurrence of the month within a single calendar year, viz. using MIN, II, or šanû, and he finds much the same state of affairs in numerous con-temporary societies.

Cohen argues at some length that the Nuzi calendars must have been adjusted to the seasons, though more than three hundred dates occur without any men-tion of intercalary months. Alalaḫ, Ugarit, and even biblical Israel attest to no intercalation, again without evidence for a free-floating lunar calendar … In a region already inclined to resolve the calendar tension by intercalation, an-other explanation [besides total reorganizations that would violate the regular sequence of cultic events] is more plausible: intercalation without written dis-tinction of the extra month.92

92. Fleming (2000: 217) turns to much older materials from Ebla, however in practical terms any direct

connection between mid-third millennium Ebla and later second millennium Emar is hardly plausible.


Given the two models of implicitly marked intercalary months briefly described here (the thirteenth ration in ED IIIb Lagash and the ša qāti notations in the Old Assyrian texts from Karum Kanesh), we would like to suggest that a similar mechanism was in operation in the Middle Assyrian period. And although we do not have an auxiliary no-tation such as the ša qāti system in the Middle Assyrian period, we do have secondary indications that such a system of “intercalation without written distinction” was in place for most of the Middle Assyrian period. 3.2.2 A Suggestion for the Middle Assyrian Period Up to now no clear attestations of intercalary months or other explicit notational tech-niques have been found in the Middle Assyrian period. Nonetheless, the texts from sites such as Dūr-Katlimmu show that administrative practices that dealt with particular as-pects of the agricultural cycle were often tied to a given month, e.g. calculations of agri-cultural productivity (pišerti karūʾe) regularly occurred in Ḫībur (XII), the last month of the calendar year in May/June. Most of these accounts are actually drawn up on a single day, the twentieth day of the last month of the year (Ḫībur), while other texts that re-solve outstanding problems in the agricultural sector seem to be dated to the immedi-ately preceding day, although the evidence for this is less secure.93 The regularity with which agricultural accounting documents appear in the last few months of the calendar strongly supports some degree of alignment between the agricultural cycle and the ad-ministrative year and speaks against the idea of a wandering lunar year.94 If the calendar was stationary, however, some method of intercalation must have been in use.

By far the best evidence for an unmarked, “second” twelfth month is the archive of Ninurta-tukul-Aššur (Pedersen’s archive M6). As Weidner first recognized many years ago, the presence of a few texts from the twelfth month (Ḫībur) in the eponym of Aššur-šēzibanni along with the remainder of the tablets, all of which stem from the eponym of

93. On the pišerti karūʾe generally, see Rollig 2008 and Reculeau 2011. The resolution of secondary

issues that might affect the agricultural sector on the nineteenth of Ḫībur (XII) is fairly clear in the cancellation of outstanding obligations (ri-ik-sa-nu) summarized in VAT 20313 (MARV 4, 115; Freydank 2009: 73f.), but may also be true of Aššur-iddin’s statement of innocence in opposition to charges of the misuse of crown agricultural labor (A. 2994, Brinkman & Donbaz 1985: 84–86; Frey-dank 1991: 221; Lafont 2003: 526; Johnson forthcoming).

94. Reculeau (2011:187f.) argues that there was no alignment of the agricultural cycle and the adminis-trative year and that, consequently, the more or less regular drawing up of pišerti karūʾe on the twentieth of Ḫībur (the last month of the year) was an arbitrarily chosen date on the administrative calendar and not linked to harvest activities. Since the pišerti karūʾe accounts include summaries of both past production as well as future production costs and surpluses (with quantities of grain classified and stored at different sites on the basis of these calculations), we find Reculeau’s view untenable.


Sînšēya, must have something to do with Middle Assyrian calendrics.95 Of course for Weidner, committed to the idea that the beginning of the Middle Assyrian year would gradually move through each of the months in turn, this provided clear evidence that in the calendar year covered by the archive the year had begun in the twelfth month (Ḫī-bur) and concluded in the eleventh month (Abu-šarrāni). In our view, however, the ad-ditional Ḫībur from the eponym of Aššur-šēzibanni is a second, intercalated Ḫībur that has been grouped with the other documents in this archive precisely because it was seen as an intercalary month that belonged, in all other respects, to the material from the calendar year of Sînšēya.

Unlike the ša qāti eponym dating from Karum Kanesh, which necessarily distin-guishes between the usual twelfth month (with an ordinary eponym) and the intercalary twelfth month (with a ša qāti eponym), the unmarked intercalary month in the Middle Assyrian archives seems to be distinguished through document curation rather than a distinct notation. As suggested by the archive of Ninurta-tukul-Aššur (M6), Urkunden dated to the twelfth month (XIIa) of a given eponym, say Aššur-šēzibanni, were ar-chived and curated with other documents from his eponymate, while the intercalary twelfth month (XIIb) was seen as the first month of a thirteen month intercalary year under the eponymate of his successor, viz. Sînšeya. In line with Old Assyrian practice, archival documents dated to the intercalary twelfth month (XIIb) were archived with the materials of the newly appointed eponym (here Sînšeya). Old Assyrian documents from Karum Kanesh that were dated to the intercalary month regularly carried the ša qāti notation, but in Assur itself (where the name of the eponym would have been known immediately) presumably no distinct notation was used, and the month XIIb documents would only have been distinguished through curation. We have no in situ Assur archives from the Old Assyrian period, but if ša qāti notations were not used in Assur itself, the use of curation (rather than notation) to distinguish month XIIa from month XIIb would represent a traditional feature of Assyrian administration.

The only change between the Old and Middle Assyrian practice would be the as-signment of the intercalary month to the recently completed eponym year (Aššur-šēzi-banni) rather than the new eponym year (Sînšēya). This follows quite naturally from the conflation of regnal and eponymic years in the Middle Assyrian period. Such a use of curation to distinguish between ordinary and intercalary months may lie in the background of other occurrences of “intercalation without written distinction”, but this supposition requires further justification from additional in situ archives.96

95. Archive M6 was found in situ ensconced in a single clay pot, so we can be confident that it repre-

sents a single archive in antiquity. 96. Credit must be given to Koch for recognizing both the need for intercalation (if only to align the


3.3 Doppeldatierungen The practice of juxtaposing Assyrian and Babylonian month names within a single document, known as Doppeldatierung, was characteristic of a relatively limited period of time in the twelfth century BCE. Given the centrality of the political considerations in manipulations of the calendar, it is not so surprising that it even occurs in royal in-scriptions, demonstrating the pronounced influence of Babylonian culture from the time of Tukultī-Ninurta I down through the reign of Tiglath-Pileser I. Examples of Doppel-datierung have been linked to the calibration of two different calendrical schemata from the very beginning: under the traditional assumption that the Assyrian lunar year was uncorrected in contrast to the solar year (due to the supposed non-existence of interca-lary months), the introduction of Babylonian month names alongside the traditional As-syrian ones was considered a first indirect attempt to arrive at a calibration of the As-syrian calendrical system with the astronomical and solar year.97 But if the primary role of Doppeldatierung was not to align the Assyrian calendar with the seasonal year (rep-resented by the intercalated Babylonian calendar), then its use must be motivated in some other way (see below). 3.3.1 The History of Doppeldatierung and Its Implementation in the Middle

Assyrian Period The long-maintained working hypothesis that Doppeldatierung was introduced during the reign of Tiglath-pileser I was already questioned in the work of Saporetti and Frey-dank.98 Freydank, for instance, pointed to the likelihood that AfO 16, pl. 13, stems from the time of Aššur-rēša-iši I (ca. 1132–1115 BCE) and consequently before the time of

calendar with the heliacal rising of particular constellations) and many of the formal structures that play a role in Middle Assyrian intercalation. Koch argues that the naming and enumeration of the in-tercalary months were independent from each other (Koch 1989: 139–141), or in Veenhof’s sum-mary: “the added month, though counted as the first month of the new calendar year, was given the same name as the last month of the previous year. This secured a more or less stable position of the named months in the solar year, while in the calendric year, where months were counted, they gradu-ally moved backwards” (Veenhof 2000: 141f.). Koch’s proposal clearly anticipates certain aspects of our proposal, while maintaining Weidner’s notion of a wandering enumeration of twelve-month periods of time. This would require an additional calendrical schema for tracking enumerated (viz. “counted”) twelve-month periods of time, however. There was an auxiliary system for tracking ex-tended periods of time, the so-called Distanzangaben, but these seem to have been calculated on the basis of eponym lists, not arbitrary twelve month periods of time; see Pruzsinszky 2009: 133–150 for an overview. We know of no evidence for wandering twelve-month periods of the time that were distinguished from eponym or regnal years, as Koch’s hypothesis would require.

97. Freydank 1991: 81. 98. Saporetti 1979a: 150; Freydank 1991: 78 and 86.


Tiglath-pileser I. Whatever their calendrical details, the advent of Doppeldatierung in Assur as well as the simple adoption of the Babylonian calendar in Giriçano and the re-assertion of a traditional local calendar in Ṭābētu all point to an erosion of the traditional calendrical system near the end of the Middle Assyrian empire. The resistance to this change in the capital Assur with a period of Doppeldatierung preceding the adoption of the Babylonian calendar wholesale, point to the steadfast resistance of traditional au-thorities to the adoption of the Babylonian calendar. It should be remembered that the Babylonian calendar had already been adopted in nearly every peripheral center in Me-sopotamia by the middle of the second millennium, and that the Middle Assyrian calen-dar was the last holdout, maintaining at least some of its methods and traditions down into the reign of Tiglath-Pileser I. 3.3.2 Doppeldatierung in the Administrative Materials The problems surrounding Doppeldatierung in the Middle Assyrian administrative documentation are treated at length in Freydank’s seminal work on Middle Assyrian chronology, but we should bear in mind that Freydank himself emphasized the tenuous character of his initial working hypothesis.99 The twenty known Doppeldatierungen in the Middle Assyrian administrative corpus — already recognized in Freydank’s dis-cussion of the Doppeldatierung but now all available in hand-copy thanks to Freydank’s publication of these materials in the MARV series — are listed below:

Document Babylonian Assyrian Day / Year

1 Rm 2, 101:21' (AfO 16, pl. XII) DU6 = Tašrītu (bVII) <Qar>-rātu (aII) U4 20.KÁM Ištu-Aššur-ašāmšu

2 VAT 20005 (MARV 7, 46) KIN = Ulūlu (bVI) Ṣippu (aI) U4 15.KÁM Ištu-Aššur-ašāmšu

3 VAT 19924 (MARV 5, 57) KIN = Ulūlu (bVI) Ṣippu (aI) U4 11.KÁM Ištu-Aššur-ašāmšu

4 VAT 20264 (MARV 8, 50) BÁRA = Nisannu (bI) Ša-sarrāte ša tarṣi (aVIII) U4 n.KÁM Ištu-Aššur-ašāmšu

5 VAT 15468 (MARV 5, 42) SIG4 = Simānu (bIII) Abu-šarrāni (ša tarṣi) (aXI) U4 24.KÁM Ḫiyašāyu

6 VAT 13084 (MARV 1, 62) BÁRA = Nisannu(bI) Ša-kēnāte (aIX) U4 6.KÁM Ḫiyašāyu

7 VAT 20118 (MARV 9, 16) ŠU = Duʾuzu (bIV) Abu-šarrāni (ša tarṣi) (aXI) U4 26.KÁM Ḫiyašāyu

8 VAT 16394 (MARV 2, 2) ŠU = Duʾuzu (bIV) Muḫur-ilāni (aX) U4 n.KÁM Tukultī-apil-Ešarra

9 VAT 16400 (MARV 1, 73) NE = Abu (bV) Ḫībur (aXII) U4 20.KÁM Tukultī-apil-Ešarra

10 VAT 20159 (MARV 9, 42) NE = Abu (bV) Ḫībur (aXII) U4 n.KÁM Tukultī-apil-Ešarra

11 VAT 9662+ (MARV 3,

36+84) SIG4 = Simānu (bIII) Abu-šarrāni (aXI) U4 1.KÁM Ina-ilīya-allak

12 VAT 19979 (AfO 10, 29f.) ZÍZ = Šabāṭu (bXI) Bēlat-ekalle ša tarṣi (aVII) U4 25.KÁM Ina-ilīya-allak

13 VAT 20171 (MARV 7, 50) NE = Abu (bV) Ḫībur (aXII) U4 21.KÁM Šamaš-apla-ēriš

99. Freydank 1991: 81‒86.


Document Babylonian Assyrian Day / Year

14 VAT 15581 (MARV 6, 86) AB = Kanūnu (bX) Kuzallu (aV) U4 25.KÁM Šamaš-apla-ēriš

15 VAT 13073 (MARV 5, 6) GAN = Kislīmu (bIX) Kuzallu (aV) U4 11.KÁM Šadnāya

16 VAT 9557+ (KAH 2, 73) GAN = Kišlīmu (bIX) Ḫībur ša tarṣi (aXII) U4 18.KÁM Taklak-ana-Aššur

17 VAT 16389 (MARV 1, 25) BÁRA = Nisannu (bI) Qarrātu (aII) U4 18.KÁM Ninurta-aḫa-iddina

18 VAT 17921 (MARV 5, 43) BÁRA = Nisannu (bI) Kalmartu (aIII) U4 17.KÁM Aššur-šuma-ēriš

19 VAT 15466 (MARV 6, 90) AB = Kanūnu (bX) Abu-šarrāni (aXI) Aplīya

20 VAT 13798 (AfO 16, pl. 13) APIN = Araḫsamna

(bVIII) Ṣippu (aI) U4 2.KÁM

Fig. 9. The attested examples of doubly dated (Assyrian and Babylonian) Middle Assyrian administrative documents; those assigned to the eponym of Tiglath-Pileser are in bold.

Freydank took as his point of departure several Doppeldatierungen that are dated to the first regnal year of Tiglath-Pileser I (Tukultī-apil-Ešarra), when as expected he also held the office of eponym: no. 8 (VAT 16394 = MARV 2, 2, viz. VS 21, 2) and no. 9 (VAT 16400 = MARV 1, 73, viz. VS 19, 73); the Doppeldatierung tablets dating to Tiglath-Pileser’s eponym year are registered in bold above. On the basis of these particular Doppeldatie-rung Freydank then outlines the following alignment schema:100

Assyrian month Babylonian month I. Ṣippu Ulūlu (KIN), month VI II. Qarrātu Tašrītu (DU4), month VII III. Kalmartu Araḫsamna (APIN), month VIII IV. Sîn Kislīmu (GAN), month IX V. Kuzallu Kanūnu (AB), month X VI. Allānātu Šabāṭu (ZÍZ), month XI VII. Bēlat-ekalli Addāru (ŠE), month XII VIII. Ša-sarrāte Nisannu (BÁRA), month I IX. Ša-kēnāte Ayyāru (GU4), month II X. Muḫur-ilāni Šimānu (SIG4), month III XI. Abu-šarrāni Duʾūzu (ŠU), month IV XII. Ḫibur Abu (NE), month V

Figure 10: Freydank’s alignment schema. It should be noted, first of all, that this schema does not correspond to any of the first millennium efforts to coordinate older calendars such as V R 43, which we return to be-low. The only basis for this alignment schema is the evidence from the Doppeldatierung

100. Freydank 1991: 84.


tablets themselves. Based on this schema, Freydank goes on to develop a suggestion of Weidner’s that the discrepancy between the two calendars (Assyrian and Babylonian) might be used as a means of locating particular eponyms within poorly documented reigns such as Tiglath-Pileser’s.101 Needless to say, if we are correct in arguing for a seasonally fixed Middle Assyrian calendar, any conclusions based upon the idea that the discrep-ancy between the two dates in a Doppeldatierung can be used to locate the relative posi-tion of an eponymate will have to be revisited.

Although we do not attempt a full re-evaluation of the Doppeldatierung tablets here, there are certain formal properties of this small subcorpus that are noteworthy. Nearly half (9/20) the Doppeldatierung tablets “match” Freydank’s scheme, and interestingly enough most of these nine correspondences date to either the beginning or the end of the Assyrian calendar year (months XI, XII (x3), I (x2), II, V and VIII). The matching Dop-peldatierung tablets are ordered according to Assyrian month in the following table.

N° Assyrian Month Babylonian Equivalent Eponym

7 Abu-šarrāni (aXI) Duʾūzu (ŠU, bIV) Ḫiyašayu

9 Ḫībur (aXII) Abu (NE, bV) Tukultī-apla-ešarra

10 Ḫībur (aXII) Abu (NE, bV) Tukultī-apla-ešarra

13 Ḫībur (aXII) Abu (NE, bV) dŠamaš-apla-ēriš

2 Ṣippu (aI) Ulūlu (KIN, bVI) Ištu-Aššur-ašāmšu

3 Ṣippu (aI) Ulūlu (KIN, bVI) Ištu-Aššur-ašāmšu

1 Qarrātu (aII) Tašrītu (DU6, bVII) Ištu-Aššur-ašāmšu

14 Kuzallu (aV) Kanūnu (AB, bX) dŠamaš-apla-ēriš

4 Ša-šarrāte (aVIII) Nisannu (BÁRA, bI) Ištu-Aššur-ašāmšu

Fig. 11. “Matching” Doppeldatierung tablets (N° refers to the numeration in Fig. 9). A second group of Doppeldatierung tablets (roughly 1/3 of the subcorpus) differ from Freydank’s schema by only a single month and, except for no. 8, in all examples the As-syrian month is one month ahead of the Babylonian calendar, as we might expect of a lunar calendar prior to intercalation.102 It is also noteworthy that none of these corre-

101. Weidner notes that: “Wenn einmal das Material grösser ist und unsere Erklärung sich bewährt, so

wird es vielleicht auf Grund von Monatsangaben möglich sein, Eponymen-Reihen für die ältere as-syrische Zeit aufzustellen” (Weidner 1929: 185, n. 4).

102. It is precisely for this exceptional case (no. 8) that Freydank suggests a correction to Muḫur-ilāni (X) = Simānu (III), a correction that would eliminate the only example of a one month discrepancy in the “wrong” direction, viz. with a Babylonian month that is later (IV) rather than earlier (II) than its expected equivalent (III). Koch uses the discrepancy in the Doppeldatierung between no. 8 (VAT 16394 = VS 21, 2) and no. 9 (VAT 16400 = VS 19, 73) as evidence for an otherwise unmarked


spondences date to the first or last months of the Middle Assyrian year; they are only attested for Assyrian months V through XI. Again they are arranged by Assyrian month in the following table. N° Assyrian month Babylonian equivalent Expected equivalent Eponym

15 Kuzallu (aV) Kislīmu (GAN, bIX) Kanūnu (AB, bX) Šadnāya

12 Bēlat-ekalli (aVII) Šabāṭu (ZÍZ, bXI) Addāru (ŠE, bXII) Ina-ilīja-illak

6 Ša-kēnāte (aIX) Nisannu (BÁRA, bI) Ayyāru (GU4, bII) Ḫiajašāju

8 Muḫur-ilāni (aX) Duʾūzu (ŠU, bIV) Simānu (SIG4, bIII) Tukulti-apil-Ešarra

11 Abu-šarrāni (aXI) Simānu (SIG4, bIII) Duʾūzu (ŠU, bIV) Ina-ilīja-allak

5 Abu-šarrāni (aXI) Simānu (SIG4, bIII) Duʾūzu (ŠU, bIV) Ḫiajašaju

Fig. 12. Doppeldatierung tablets with a one month discrepancy. Five remaining Doppeldatierung tablets differ from Freydank’s schema by more than one month: 2 months in no. 20, four months in no. 16, five months in no. 18 and six months in nos. 17 and 19.

N° Assyrian Month Babylonian Equivalent Expected Equivalent Months

off Eponym

20 Ṣippu (I) Araḫsamna (APIN, VIII) Abu (NE, V) 2 ?

17 Qarrātu (II) Nisannu (BÁRA, I) Tašrītu (DU6, VII) 6 Ninurta-aḫa-iddina

18 Kalmartu (III) Nisannu (BÁRA, I) Araḫsamna (APIN, VIII) 5 Aššur-šuma-eriš

19 Abu-šarrāni (XI) Kanūnu (AB, X) Duʾūzu (ŠU, IV) 6 Aplīja

16 Ḫībur (XII) Kislīmu (GAN, IX) Abu (NE, V) 4 Taklak-ana-Aššur

Fig. 13. Doppeldatierung tablets with a discrepancy of more than one month. As we have noted above, it is not uncommon for the lunar calendar to be several months out of synch with the seasonal year for limited periods of time, particularly during peri-ods of weak central rule. This is presumably the situation behind the introduction of four intercalary years in Drehem during the first four years of Šu-Sîn’s rule (Amar-Suen

intercalation in the first year of Tiglath-pileser’s reign (Koch 1989: 140), but until the mechanism for intercalation in the Assyrian cultic calendar is clarified, we cannot be sure of the import of this phe-nomenon, which we might call “Koch’s Discrepancy”, as a neutral designation. Koch’s Discrepancy may also be involved in the possible absence of a first month from Ukg. 5 in the Early Dynastic period (see n. 106) as well as the fact that KAV 155 runs from month II to month I (see section 3.4), but we do not take up the matter here.


9 through Šu-Sîn 3). If Amar-Suen had not maintained the calibration of the calendar properly, Šu-Sîn would have been forced to institute a series of successive intercalations in order to recalibrate the calendar.

We might imagine a similar situation as the background for the six month discrep-ancy at the beginning of Tiglath-Pileser’s reign, but the paucity of data for the correct ordering of the eponyms during Tiglath-Pileser’s reign limits us here to a few general observations. The relative sequence of the eponyms during the reign of Tiglath-pileser is, according to Freydank’s reconstruction, as follows: Tukultī-apil-Ešarra (year 1), Ištu-Aššur-ašāmšu (year 2+(0–4), Ina-ilīya-allak (year 6), Ḫayašāyu (ca. year 6), Šadanāyu (ca. year 6), Aplīya (year 16–18), Ninurta-aḫa-iddina (year 16–18), Aššur-šuma-ēriš (ca. year 20), Taklak-ana-Aššur (ca. year 22). If we group texts according to the most prob-able sequence of eponyms, the following pattern emerges:

Babylonian Month

I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII

(1) Tukultī-apil-Ešarra 8 9 ? Mi/10 Ḫ/12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Ištu-Aššur-ašāmšu Šs/8 9 10 11 12 Ṣ/1 Q/2 3 4 5 6 7

(6) Ina-ilīya-allak 9 10 Aš/11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 Be/7 8

Ḫīyašāyu Šk/9 10 Aš/11 Aš/11 ? 1?

Šadanāyu 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 K/5 6 7 8

Aplīya 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Aš/11 12 1

ca. 10 years

(16f.) Šamaš-apla-ēriš 8 9 10 11 Ḫ/12 1 2 3 4 K/5 6 7

Ninurta-aḫa-iddina Q/2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1

(20) Aššur-šuma-ēriš Ka/3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2

(20) Aššur-šuma-ēriš 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Ḫ/12 1 2 3

(22) Taklak-ana-Aššur

Eponym broken 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Ṣ/1 2 3 4 5

Fig. 14. Table of month correspondences during the reign of Tiglath-pileser I. (Šs = Ša-sarrāte, Ṣ = Ṣippu, Q = Qarrātu, Aš = Abu-šarrāni, Šk = Ša-kēnāte, Mi = Muḫur-ilāni, Ḫ = Ḫībur, Be = Bēlat-ekalle, K = Kuzallu, Ka = Kalmartu). ša tarṣi dates in bold; dates that are

reconstructed under the assumption that sequence of months did not change are underlined. The tabular format of these Doppeldatierung correspondences clearly shows that (dur-ing the first 16 or 17 years of Tiglath-Pileser’s reign), the first month (I) of the Assyrian calendar (Ṣippu) corresponded in a relatively stable way to months five (V) or six (VI) of the “Babylonian” calendar. However, in the second half of Tiglath-Pileser’s reign, the


correspondences between the two calendars show a lot of variability, with what looks like a series of intercalations in years 20–22 (Aššur-šuma-ēriš to Taklak-ana-Aššur). Moreover, the six month shift from 1/VI to 1/XII that took place between the epony-mate of Šamaš-apla-ēriš and that of Ninurta-aḫa-iddina — a period of time that could not have been more than three years — cannot be explained on the basis of the gradual movement of an uncorrected Assyrian calendar out of alignment with an intercalated Babylonian calendar. The heterogeneity of this data points to one or more ad hoc mani-pulations of the calendar (using Doppeldatierung as a common notational device), al-though without a finer grained chronology of Tiglath-Pileser’s reign it is difficult to know what form these “reforms” took.

If the Doppeldatierung was not primarily motivated by the need to fix a wandering Assyrian calendar within a seasonal year, then it is reasonable to ask what purpose such an ungainly notational system might have served. What we would like to suggest, as a working hypothesis, is that Doppeldatierung may have arisen as a means of calibrating the administrative and cultic calendars of the Middle Assyrian state. 3.4 Orchestrating the gināʾu Amphictyony It is sometimes suggested that intercalation and other adjustments for variation in climate were the only important correlations that the ruler had to take into consideration in his norming of the calendrical system. Calendrical systems in the ancient Near East, however, were not simply meant to provide a framework for agricultural accounting; they were also tasked with organizing contributions from various provincial centers to the central cultic practices of the state and scheduling festivals, processions and rituals at appropriate points in the agricultural / seasonal year. In this final section of the paper, we return to KAV 155 (3.4.1) and argue that it represents a text stemming from the Doppeldatierung period that was composed so as to stipulate which group of provincial centers were responsible for supplying the Temple of Aššur with its so-called gināʾu, “regular”, offerings (barley, oil, honey and fruit) in a given month (3.4.2). We then conclude with a description of parallels between KAV 155 and the first millennium scholastic text V R 43 as well as the implica-tions of these parallels for the long-term durability of Assyrian cultic practice (3.4.3). First, we repeat a somewhat fuller transliteration of KAV 155 (see 2.4, above) for the reader’s convenience.


3.4.1 The text KAV 155 (VAT 9909) Obverse ————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————— 1. [… iš-tu] ˹ITI˺.qar-ra-te U4 ˹1+˺.[KÁM …] 2. [… x]-dNIN.URTA [x] AGRIG […] ———————————————————————————————————— (II) 3. [… ana] ˹ITI˺.qar-ra-a-˹tu˺ […] [x] ˹x˺ […] (III) 4. [… ana] ˹ITI˺.kal-mar-te […] [x] ITI.BÁRA […] (V) 5. [… ana] ˹ITI˺.ku-zal-li […] [x] ITI.˹x˺ […] KUR.kat-˹mu?˺-[ḫu? …] (VII) 6. ana ITI..dNIN.É.GAL […] ˹x˺ ˹KIN?˺ [x] ˹x˺ […] (IX) 7. ˹ana˺ ITI.ša-ke-na-te […] ˹ITI˺.DU6

uruaš-šur […] (XI) 8. [ana] ˹ITI˺.a-bu šarrāni(MAN.MEŠ)-˹ni˺ ˹ITI.GAN˺ […] (XII) 9. [ana ITI.]ḫi-bur ITI.˹AB?˺ […] (I) 10. [ana ITI.ṣi]-pi ITI.ZÍZ […] ———————————————————————————————————— 11. […] ˹2+˺.KÁM (or ˹ITI˺.GAN) a- […] 12. […] ad-da-[rík? …] 13. […] ˹x˺ […] (broken) Reverse several lines missing 1'. […] DUMU ˹x˺ […] ————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————— 2'. […] ITI […] rest blank The presence of Doppeldatierung and the qualification of the personal name in line 1 as AGRIG both indicate that the text derives from the twelfth century archive of the rab gināʾe, “chief of the regular offerings”, which is otherwise known to be located in ar-chive M4 in Pedersen’s survey of the Middle Assyrian archives.103

Although the layout of the tablet is difficult to reconstruct due to extensive damage, the main body of the document seems to include three different pieces of information on each line, an Assyrian month name on the left, the logogram for a Babylonian month

103. On the rab gināʾe generally, see Jakob 2003: 175–185.


name in the middle and the name of a provincial capital on the right. The city name is only preserved in two lines, however: lines 5 and 7 read KUR.kat-˹x˺ […] and URU.aš-šur […] respectively. If we infer that KUR.kat-˹x˺ in line 5 can be restored as KUR.kat-˹mu?˺-[ḫu] (since Katmūḫu is the only relatively important place name that uses the KUR determinative and begins with kat-), it is possible to partially correlate KAV 155 with the well-known gināʾu offering summary tables such as MARV 5, 1 (VAT 15491), which locates KUR.kat-mu-ḫu in line 9 and URU.aš-šur in line 14, or MARV 5, 2 (VAT 15492), which has Katmūḫu in line 10 and Assur in line 15. D. F. Rosa has emphasized that the geographical names in these lists tend to occur in relatively stable clusters and remain within a particular section, even if their exact position does vary.104 MARV 5, 2 is particularly intriguing in that it has Katmūḫu as a separate entry (followed by a hori-zontal ruling), then a group of four cities (Šudu, Tāidu, Amasaku and Kulišḫinaš) and after another ruling Aššur itself. In fact, if we line up the ruled sections of MARV 5, 2 with the months listed in KAV 155, there is a nearly complete correspondence:

MARV 5, 2

Line Section Geographical names Corresponding month in KAV 155

3–4 1 Arbaʾil Ø (= I Ṣippu)

5–7 2 Kilizu, Ḫalaḫḫu, II Qarrātu (line 3)

8–9 3 Talmuššu, Idu III Kalmartu (line 4)

10 4 Katmūḫu V Kuzallu (line 5)

11–14 5 Šudu, Tāidu, Amasaku, Kulišḫinaš VII Bēlat ekalle (line 6)

15–17 6 Aššur, Šuadikanu, Uššukanu IX Ša-kēnāte (line 7)

18 7 Pāḫutu KI.TA XI Abu-šarrāni (line 8)

19–22 8 Ninua, Addarig, Ḫišutu, Apku XII Ḫībur (line 9)

23–24 9 Kalḫu I Ṣippu (line 10)

25 10 Ḫusanānu ?

Fig. 15. Corresponding textual sections in KAV 155 and MARV 5, 2 (ordered according to sections in MARV 5, 2).

Although the correspondence between the Assyrian and Babylonian months in KAV 155 (Kalmartu [aIII] = Nisannu [bI]) is only known from one of the Doppeldatierung tablets (VAT 17921 = MARV 5, 43, viz. no. 18 in Fig. 9), it does suggest the possibility that KAV 155 was composed in the same eponym year as VAT 17921, namely the eponymate of

104. Rosa 2010. As Rosa puts it, “toponyms that change places in the sequence through time … do not

alter their position in a remarkable way: they are always recorded in the same ‘section’ ” (Rosa 2010: 330).


Aššur-šuma-ēriš. Freydank locates this eponym in the twentieth regnal year of Tiglath-Pileser I,105 and it is fairly clear from Fig. 9 that Aššur-šuma-ēriš held the eponymate during one of the intercalated years at the beginning of Tiglath-Pileser’s third decade of rule.106 If the dating of KAV 155 to the eponym of Aššur-šuma-ēriš is correct, then the correspondences between KAV 155 and the two gināʾu tables (MARV 5, 2, and MARV 5, 14) also provide a temporal anchor for those gināʾu tables that are undated. This has important implications for understanding the history of the provincial system during Tiglath-Pileser’s reign, but we will take up this matter in another venue. 3.4.2 The Sequence of Cities in the Offering Lists While KAV 155 and MARV 5, 2 do not align perfectly, the relative position of Katmū-ḫu and Assur in sections 4 and 6 in MARV 5, 2, and lines 5 and 7 in KAV 155 is sug-gestive.107 The only other gināʾu table that is organized in a similar way, namely MARV 5, 14, also locates Katmūḫu and Assur in sections 4 and 6 respectively, even though Assur follows Kulišḫinaš in section 6 of MARV 5, 14.108 The months that occur in this schedule of deliveries to the temple of Assur (II, III, V, VII, IX, XI, XII, I) also line up fairly well with the better known ritual calendars of Sippar and Mari, in which major festivals occur in months I, II, V, IX, XI and XII in Sippar and months I, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, XI, XII in Mari.

105. Freydank 1991: 87. 106. Selz reminds us that there do not seem to be any documents dating to the first month of Ukg. L 5 in

the Early Dynastic IIIb period, which follows a year in which an intercalary month may have been included (if the thirteenth ration in Ukg. L 4 is a legitimate indication of an otherwise unmarked inter-calary month). If the absence of a first month in Ukg. L 5 is not a chimera, it would represent a for-mal analogy for KAV 155, which was also presumably drawn up in a sequence of years with inter-calations; see the discussion of Koch’s Discrepancy in n. 102.

107. The number of provincial centers listed in the gināʾu lists varied over time (see Freydank 1997 and Llop 2012), and KAV 155 was written in correspondence to a single year, so except for the gināʾu table from the year in which KAV 155 was written, we would not expect a perfect correlation, only a rough structural alignment.

108. It should also be noted that Kulišḫinaš appears in the preceding section 5 in MARV 5, 2, but appears in section 6 before Assur in MARV 5, 14. Two other gināʾu lists organize the provincial city names into either four or five sections rather than the ten or so that appear in MARV 5, 2, and MARV 5, 14: MARV 5, 67 (VAT 15487) consists of four sections with Arbaʾil and Kilizu in section one and Assur in section 2 (Katmūḫu is not included), while MARV 9, 12 (VAT 19206) has five sections with Ar-baʾil and Kilizu in section 1, Katmūḫu in section 2, Assur in section 3 (line 13), Pāḫutu KI.TA through Apku in section 4 (but not Nineveh), and Šimi, Kalḫu and Šumēla in section 5. Thus only the five sections in MARV 9, 12, are roughly analogous to the ten (or eleven) sections in MARV 5, 2, and MARV 5, 14.


Line Entry number in calendric

section Assyrian month

Babylonianmonth

Corresponding entriesin MARV 5, 2

(section number)

Corresponding entries in MARV 5, 14

(section number)

3 1 Qarrātu (II) [ŠE] (XII) Kilizu, Ḫalaḫḫu (ii) Kilizu, Ḫalaḫḫu (ii)

4 2 Kalmartu (III) BÁRA (I) Talmušu, Idu (iii) Talmušu, Idu (iii)

5 3 Kuzallu (V) [SIG4] (III) Katmūḫu (iv) Katmūḫu, Šudu (iv)

6 4 Bēlet-ekalle (VII) ˹NE?˺ (V)

Šudu, Tāidu, Amasaku, Kulišḫinaš

Tāidu, Amasaku (v)

7 5 Ša-kēnāte (IX) DU6 (VII) Aššur, Šuadikanu, Uššukanu (vi)

Kulišḫinaš, Aššur (vi)

8 6 Abu-šarrāni (XI) ˹GAN˺ (IX) Pāḫutu KI.TA (vii) Pāḫutu AN.TA, Pāḫutu KI.TA ( ii)

9 7 Ḫībur (XII) ˹AB˺ (X) Ninua, Addarig, Ḫišutu, Apku (viii)

Turšan, Ninua (viii)

10 8 Ṣippu (I) ZÍZ (XI) Kalḫu (ix) Addarig, Ḫiššutu (ix)

Fig. 16. Correspondences between KAV 155 and the gināʾu tables (organized according to entries in KAV 155).

For our purposes here, however, the key observation is that if there is a real correspon-dence between these two gināʾu offering tables and KAV 155, then it suggests that the first section of these gināʾu tables would normally correspond to the first month in the Middle Assyrian calendar, namely Ṣippu. Since the first entry in KAV 155 refers to the second month of the Assyrian calendar and corresponds to the second ruled section in both MARV 5, 2, and MARV 5, 14, we can reasonably infer that under normal circum-stances the first entry in a correlational table like KAV 155 would have referred to the first month of the Assyrian year and corresponded to the first entry in the gināʾu tables. It is no accident of course that the first city listed in the gināʾu tables is, without excep-tion, Arbaʾil. These inferences yield a “standard” correlational matrix (Fig. 17, below).

The absence of Assyrian months 4, 6, 8 and 10 (corresponding to the “Babylonian” months 2, 4, 6 and 8) in this general schema is to be expected, since these months rarely include important religious festivals in any of the major Mesopotamian cultic calendars. The interesting thing about this reconstructed “standard” schema is that the three most important cultic sites in the Assyrian empire occupy key points within the list: Arbaʾil occurs at the beginning (entry 1), Aššur occurs roughly in the middle of the list (entry 6), while Nineveh (Ninua) occurs in final position (entry 8).109 These three cities (Arbaʾil,

109. The inclusion of Addarig, Ḫiššutu and Apku in entry 8 in MARV 5, 2, upsets this pattern, but we

have no way of knowing whether they would have been included in a correlation table like KAV 155, presumably not. If not, then Nineveh would have been the last city in the list.


Entry

number in

calendric

section

Assyrian

month

Babylonian

month

Corresponding entries

in MARV 5, 2

(section number)

Corresponding entries

in MARV 5, 14

(section number)

1 Ṣippu (I) ZÍZ (XI) Arbaʾil (i) Arbaʾil (i)

2 Qarrātu (II) ŠE (XII) Kilizu, Ḫalaḫḫu (ii) Kilizu, Ḫalaḫḫu (ii)

3 Kalmartu (III) BÁRA (I) Talmūšu, Idu (iii) Talmūšu, Idu (iii)

4 Kuzallu (V) SIG4 (III) Katmūḫu (iv) Katmūḫu, Šudu (iv)

5 Bēlet-ekalle (VII) NE (V) Šudu, Tāidu, Amasaku,

Kulišḫinaš (v) Taidu, Amasaku (v)

6 Ša-kēnāte (IX) DU6 (VII) Aššur, Šuadikanu,

Uššukanu (vi) Kulišḫinaš, Aššur (vi)

7 Abu-šarrāni (XI) GAN (IX) Pāḫutu KI.TA (vii) Pāḫutu AN.TA, Pāḫutu KI.TA (vii)

8 Ḫībur (XII) AB (X) Ninua (viii) Turšan, Ninua (viii)

Fig. 17. The “standard” correlational matrix, viz. KAV 155 with Ṣippu in initial position. Aššur and Nineveh) formed the circuit for the Assyrian New Year festivals in first-mil-lennium Assur: (i) procession from Assur to Milqia, near Arbaʾil, for the Akītu of Ishtar of Arbaʾil, (ii) procession back to Assur for the Akītu of Aššur, and finally (iii) the pro-cession to Nineveh.110 Although there is no evidence for an Akītu festival per se in the Middle Assyrian period, the first millennium practice seems to have superimposed key Babylonian elements on a native Assyrian schema that presumably reaches back into the Middle Assyrian period. The gināʾu system represents the endoskeleton, as it were, of the administrative practice that underlies these cultic scenarios, regardless of their external form.111 It therefore comes as little surprise that the sequence of cities listed between

110. Weissert’s reconstruction is based on the royal triumph following Ashurbanipal’s victory over Elam;

see Weissert 1997 and Tadmor 2004 as well as the discussion of the cultic texts in Maul 2000; for a synthetic presentation of the Babylonian Akītu and its longue durée context, see Zgoll 2006 as well as Pongratz-Leisten 1994; Lambert 1997; and Pongratz-Leisten 1997.

111. On the paucity of evidence for the Akītu in Assur prior to Sennacherib, see Frahm 2000; Pongratz-Lei-sten 2001. Further evidence for the otherwise reasonable assumption that the Akītu was superim-posed on an older Tag des Stadtgottes does not seem to have emerged since Weidner’s original paper (Weidner 1944; Maul 2000: 389). George sees the description of the parak šīmāte in the Middle As-syrian ritual text published by Köcher as a description of the Babylonian Akītu rather than as evi-dence for its adoption in Assur (Köcher 1952; George 1989; 2000: 262f., n. 17; Pongratz-Leisten 1997: 18), but these issues are revisited in Cancik-Kirschbaum’s Habilitationsschrift (in preparation) and not taken up here in detail.


Arbaʾil and Nineveh in the Middle Assyrian gināʾu lists is the most stable sequence in these lists and undoubtedly forms both the ideological and practical “core” of the Assyr-ian provincial system.

The eight sections in the “standard” correlational matrix in Fig. 17 may also corre-spond to the eight radial sections of the well-known planisphere tablet K 8538 (CT 33, 10), which has inspired a great deal of informal discussion, but as far as we can tell only one serious attempt at interpretation, namely Koch’s extensive discussion of the tablet in Neue Untersuchungen zur Topographie des babylonischen Fixsternhimmels.112 In the sixth section of the planisphere according to Koch’s numeration, we actually have the place name Assur (aš-šur) clearly written and Assur occurs in the sixth section of the “standard” correlation matrix that we have reconstructed in Fig. 17.113 This correlation only makes sense, however, if we assume section 1 (MUL.AŠ.GÁN) corresponds to the first month of the Assyrian administrative calendar (Ṣippu) and so on. The alignment between “stars” and months in Astrolabe B and related traditions is complicated and we cannot pursue a detailed investigation of the planisphere here. If we can be permitted one suggestive example, however, it is noteworthy that the first section of the planisphere is assigned to MUL.AŠ.GÁN, whose heliacal rising often took place in the month of Šabāṭu (XI) or Addaru (XII) in the Neo-Assyrian period,114 a correspondence that makes good sense if the first section of the planisphere corresponds to the first section of the “stan-dard” correlational matrix. We should at least acknowledge the real possibility that As-trolabe B, one of the earliest technical treatises on calendrics and astronomy in Mesopo-tamian history, was the result of a collaboration between native Assyrian astronomers and the small family of Babylonian scribes that took up residence in Assur during the reign of Ninurta-apil-ekur (1181–1169 BCE).115 The written text of Astrolabe B itself is

112. Koch 1989: 57–113. It was Koch’s investigation of the planisphere K 8358 that seems to have in-

spired his discussion of Middle Assyrian calendrics, so it is somehow appropriate that the eight-fold subdivision of the “standard” correlational matrix aligns to some degree with the planisphere.

113. Koch argues that the “correct” orientation of the planisphere is with the diagrammatic representation of g ig .s i . sa2 on the bottom (sector zero) and the remaining sections numbered counterclockwise 1–7 (Koch 1989: 112). This puts section 0 at 6:00, section 4 (containing the “Zeigerstab”) at 12:00, and the section 6 (containing the word aš-šur) at roughly 9:30 (Koch 1989: 56). In the original publica-tion in CT 33, 10, section 0 is at 2:00, section 4 at 8:00 and section 6 at 5:00. According to MUL.APIN I ii 42–43 (Hunger & Pingree 1989: 41), the heliacal rising of gag.s i . sa2 (section 0 = section 8) is at the summer solstice (with Ṣippu beginning with the next new moon), and the rising of gag.s i .sa2 is also used to orient an ideal year of 360 days in MUL.APIN I iii 35–47 (note the typo [I iii 34–48] in Horowitz 1998: 188; Hunger & Pingree 1989: 53–56).

114. Koch 1989: 95. 115. This small family of Babylonian scribes has recently become the focus of a number of studies by K.

Wagensonner (2007; 2008; 2011; see as well Bloch 2010d), but it should be kept in mind that the


clearly a product of the atelier of Ninurta-uballisu and his sons, but often in the history of cultural transmission and adaptation it is the interaction between two distinct tradi-tions that leads to new insights and reformulations. Moreover, Astrolabe B does not serve as a straightforward model for later technical handbooks such as MUL.APIN, so we should not simply assume that it is a finished product of purely Babylonian invention, exported to the benighted Assyrians.116

3.4.3 Consequences for the Synchronization of Cultic and Administrative Calendars Given the centrality of the gināʾu offerings within both the political and cultic regimes of the Assyrian state, it is not surprising that the geographical and temporal structure within which they were delivered to the Aššur Temple may have served as a model for other integrative practices such as the New Year festivals. And as we might have ex-pected, the correlation between the Assyrian and Babylonian months that we have re-constructed in the “standard” correlational matrix above (Fig. 19) also survives down into well-known first millennium calendrical compendia. The first three Babylonian months listed in the “standard” correlational matrix, namely ZÍZ (Šabāṭu, XI), ŠE (Addaru, XII) and BÁRA (Nisannu, I), correspond precisely to the months during which the Assyrian New Year festivals were carried out in the first millennium BCE. Moreover, the first millennium calendar text V R 43 preserves exactly the same set of correspondences be-tween Assyrian and Babylonian months that we find in KAV 155 and the “standard” correlational matrix that is derived from KAV 155. These correlations are repeated below.

importation of Babylonian scribes presumably represents a latter phase in a long-term pattern of behavior (see Wiggermann 2008) rather than its point of initiation.

116. Hunger & Pingree (1999: 59–62) provide a chart of the parallel star lists in Astrolabe B and MUL. APIN, but as they emphasize the historical relationship between these two compendia is far from clear. Horowitz has offered several arguments for the Babylonian origin of parts of Astrolabe B, foremost among these the presence of nēberu, the star of Marduk, as the last of the series of stars known as the Path of Anu in KAV 218 B ii 32 and KAV 218 C 12 (Horowitz 1998a: 159) and the existence of Middle Babylonian forerunners for two of the subsections in Astrolabe B (Horowitz 2007; 2010). As Horowitz admits, however, “it is this shorter version in VAT 17081 [viz. the Middle Babylonian forerunner] without month-stars, rather than the more mature version in Astrolabe B, that forms the basis for versions of the menology found in Assumed Enūma Anu Enlil 51” (Horowitz 2010: 184) and that much of Astrolabe B was probably composed in the atelier of Ninurta-uballissu and his sons (Horowitz 2007: 108).


V R 43

Line number

administrative / “Assyrian” month names

cultic / “Babylonian” month names

Position in Fig. 17

Obv. 2 [ITI.kal-mar-tu] (III) BÁRA (Nisannu, I) 3

8 [ITI.].˹d˺sîn(30) (IV) GU4 (Ayyāru, II)

14 ITI.ku-zal-li (V) SIG4 (Simānu, III) 4

20 ITI.al-la-na-a-˹ti˺ (VI) ŠU (Duʾūzu, IV)

26 ITI..[d]˹NIN˺.É.GAL (VII) NE (Abu, V) 5

32 ITI.ša-sa-ra-a-ti (VIII) KIN (Ulūlu, VI)

38 ITI.ša!(LI)-ke-˹na˺-ti (IX) DU6 (Tašrītu, VII) 6

44 ITI.[mu-ḫur-ilāni(DINGIR.MEŠ)] (X) APIN (Araḫsamna, VIII)

50 [ITI.a-bu-šarrāni(MAN.MEŠ)] (XI) GAN (Kislīmu, IX) 7

56 [ITI.ḫi-bur] (XII) AB (Kanūnu, X) 8

r. 6 ITI.<ṣi>-pu (I) ZÍZ (Šabāṭu, XI) 1

12 ITI.qar-˹ra!˺-a-ti (II) ŠE (Addāru, XII) 2

Fig. 18. Parallels between V R 43 and the “standard” correlational matrix (here with abbreviated Babylonian month names replacing the full names found in V R 43;

the five other intervening calendars are omitted here). The abbreviated cultic (“Babylonian”) month names and their corresponding entry in the “standard” correlational matrix in Fig. 17 are in bold in Fig. 18. It is noteworthy that the obverse of V R 43 begins with the first month of the Babylonian calendar (Nisannu, corresponding to Kalmartu [III] in the Assyrian calendar), while the reverse begins with the first month of the Assyrian calendar (Ṣippu, corresponding to Šabāṭu [XI] in the Babylonian calendar). Moreover, the textual structure of V R 43 (with the “obverse” ordered with respect to the cultic or “Babylonian” month names, while the “reverse” is ordered with respect to the administrative or “Assyrian” month names) allows it to func-tion as a correlational table in either direction: from cultic to administrative (reading from obverse to reverse) or from administrative to cultic (reading from reverse to ob-verse). Thus, V R 43, particularly as read from the beginning of the reverse (Ṣippu [I] = Šabāṭu [XI]) represents a more or less transparent descendant of the “standard” correlational matrix in Fig. 17. The key point, however, is that the same correspon-dences that we find in the “standard” correlational matrix, which are based ultimately on the parallels between Middle Assyrian sources such as KAV 155 and the gināʾu tables, also show up in the first millennium calendar text V R 43. This demonstrates a substantial continuity in the cultic calendar between the Middle and Neo-Assyrian periods, while at the same time confirming the reality of the “standard” correlational matrix outlined above.


It must be emphasized that we do not see the Babylonian month names in KAV 155 or the “standard” correlational matrix as referring to the actual Babylonian calendar in use in southern Mesopotamia in the later second millennium BCE. In other words, the use of the Babylonian month names in correlational tables like KAV 155 was not meant to correlate the Assyrian administrative calendar with a functioning calendar in southern Mesopotamia, but rather should be seen as an adaptation of the Babylonian month names and their sequence to serve as a distinct cultic calendar in Assur. The third administra-tive month (Kalmartu), for example, which would normally have occurred in August/ September, corresponds to the first month Nisannu (BÁRA) in the Assyrian cultic calen-dar, but Nisannu in the original Babylonian calendar is generally located in March/April following the spring equinox. Thus even though the original Babylonian calendar and the Assyrian cultic calendar that we postulate here made use of the same sequence of month names, the placement of each of these calendars within the seasonal year was very dif-ferent: Nisannu falls in March/April in the Babylonian calendar, but in August/Sep-tember in the Middle Assyrian cultic calendar.

The two month discrepancy between the administrative (“Assyrian”) and the cultic (“Babylonian”) calendars may seem somewhat arbitrary, but it would have facilitated the management of the cultic regime in Assur and the other cultic centers in the Assyr-ian empire. The first month in the Middle Assyrian administrative calendar (Ṣippu) would have corresponded to the first of the three months during which the Assyrian New Year was celebrated in the first millennium, namely ZÍZ = Šabāṭu (month XI in the cultic cal-endar). Moreover, if a circuit of New Year festivals (running from Assur to Arbaʾil, back to Assur, then to Nineveh) like the first millennium circuit also existed in some form in the Middle Assyrian period, the first major cultic event in the administrative year may well have taken place in Arbaʾil.117 This would have provided a logical point of orientation for the “standard” correlational matrix outlined here, since the provincial center responsible for the gināʾu offering in the first month of the administrative year (Arbaʾil) would also be the site of the first major cultic event within the administrative year.118

117. That the Akītu of Ishtar of Arbaʾil was celebrated in months XII and VI in the first millennium (Pon-

gratz-Leisten 1997: 246), in each case the month preceding one of the two New Year festivals in Ni-sannu (I) and Tešrītu (VII), suggests that a visit to Arbaʾil regularly preceded New Year festivities in Assur.

118. We must defer to specialists in the first millennium cult, since there are several lines of evidence: for the cultic texts associated with the New Year in Assur, see Maul 2000, while the arguments of Weis-sert 1997 derive from late royal inscriptions. The texts in Maul 2000 extend over the three months mentioned above (Šabāṭu through Nisannu), but make no reference to the procession to Arbaʾil, while Weissert speaks very generally of the procession to Arbaʾil taking place in mid-Addaru (XII). In the absence of clear Middle Assyrian evidence, therefore, we cannot simply infer that a precursor


Given the presumably bipolar nature of the Assyrian cultic calendar (with a New Year festival in both Nisannu [I], corresponding to the administrative month of Kalmartu [III] in August/September, and Tašrītu [VII], lining up with Ša-kēnāte [IX] in February/ March), it is not surprising that Assur itself is responsible for the gināʾu offerings in cultic month VII (Tašrītu), viz. administrative month IX (Ša-kēnāte). Nisannu and Taš-rītu in the Middle Assyrian cultic calendar are then only a month or so out of synch with the equinoxes that anchor the Nisannu and Tašrītu in the Babylonian calendar.119

The important point, however, is that Assur is required to provide the gināʾu offer-ings in the same month in which the second New Year festival was celebrated in the city of Assur. Likewise, the first millennium cultic calendar of Nineveh includes an Akītu festival for Ishtar of Nineveh on the 16th of Ṭebētu (the tenth month in the first millen-nium Babylonian calendar), and as we might now expect, Nineveh is assigned to pro-vide gināʾu offerings in the twelfth month of the Middle Assyrian administrative calen-dar (Ḫībur), which corresponds to the tenth month in the cultic calendar, presumably designated as Kanūnu in the late second millennium.120 Thus there seems to be an align-ment between the position of the major cultic centers (e.g. Arbaʾil, Assur and Nineveh) in the “standard” correlational matrix, their geographical location in the first millennium curcuit of New Year festivals and the month in which an Akītu festival was celebrated in that cultic center. It must be reiterated, however, that there is no Middle Assyrian evi-dence for Akītu festivals per se, and it is possible that the first millennium Akītu festivals

of the Akītu of Ishtar of Arbaʾil occurred in the administrative month of Ṣippu, and we can only iden-tify very rough correlations between the gināʾu cycle and the Akītu festivals in the first millennium.

119. The native tradition was well aware of a one month difference in the alignment of equinoxes and sol-stices: this is particularly clear in the opposition between Astrolabe B and similar texts, in which the equinoxes and solstices fall in months III, VI, IX and XII, and the MUL.APIN tradition, in which they fall in months I, IV, VII and X (Hunger & Pingree 1999: 50 and 61; Horowitz 1998a: 157f.). We also find the following statement in an astronomical report from the astronomer Aššur-šarrāni in the second quarter of the seventh century BCE: “Adaru (XII) and Elulu (VI) can be the beginning of the year, just as Nissan (I) and Tišre (VII) can occur at the beginning of the year” (K 775, RMA 16, SAA VIII 165; Weidner 1914: 4). We do not go into the motivations behind the placement of the Middle Assyrian cultic calendar roughly a half-year out of synch with the Babylonian calendar, but the oc-currence of Tašrītu (including its possible investiture or re-investiture rites, see Ambos 2008 for the Babylonian practice) in the ninth month of the Assyrian administrative calendar (Ša-kēnāte) may well have been significant for older forms of the native Assyrian cult, particularly if Ša-sarrāte and Ša-kēnāte represented a highpoint within the Old Assyrian cult.

120. Pongratz-Leisten 1997: 249; 2001: 296; Frahm 2000; Da Riva & Frahm 2000: 170, n. 75. There do not seem to be any syllabic orthographies attested for Ṭebētu outside of the lexicographic sources (MSL V 25, line 230), and it is used here as the name of the tenth month (rather than Kanūnu) merely as a convention. The fact that all Reichsaramäisch month names seem to derive from the Babylonian cal-endar speaks in favor of Ṭebētu, but Kanūnu does survive in Syriac and other minor Aramaic dialects.


in Assyria were directly modeled on the temporal and geographical ramifications of the gināʾu system rather than an analogous Middle Assyrian practice.

Envoi Although the evidence assembled here does speak to questions of late second millen-nium chronology (the so-called lunar reduction, for example, no longer seems to be tenable), in our view, the most important aspect of this paper is that it locates changes in the calendrical regime as a single element in a broader series of interactions between Assyria and Babylonia. The changes in the Middle Assyrian calendar were not carried out in one fell swoop and were not focused on calibrating the Assyrian calendar with an anachronistic “natural year” in the form of the Babylonian intercalated lunisolar calen-dar. Instead, we argue that Doppeldatierung was meant to code two distinct Assyrian calendrical schema (administrative and cultic) within a single notation. This allowed for repeated adjustments to the administrative calendar, without losing track of the corre-sponding cultic month in which gināʾu offerings were due to the temple. It is important to see these changes as only one element of a long sequence of innovations in which Babylonian ideas, practices and notations were adapted for use by the Assyrians. The Assyrians have often been portrayed as expert only in the importation of Babylonian cultural practices. To what degree this argument is indebted to a still implicit, yet opera-tive pattern in which the Assyrians are seen as culturally “backward” vis-à-vis the Babylonians, reains to be seen, but we have assumed here that Babylonian practices and techniques were adapted so as to fit into Assyrian schema rather than simply adopted as hermetically sealed technical devices.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R. Adams 1981, Heartland of Cities, Chicago. C. Ambos 2008, “Das ‘Neujahrs’-Fest zur Jahresmitte und die Investitur des Königs im Gefän-

gnis”, in D. Prechel (ed.), Fest und Eid: Instrumente der Herrschaftssicherung im Alten Orient, Würzburg, 1–12.

P.-A. Beaulieu 1993, “The Impact of Month-lengths on the Neo-Babylonian Cultic Calendar”, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 83, 66–87.

S. Beld 2002, The Queen of Lagash: Ritual Economy in a Sumerian State, PhD Diss. University of Michigan.

J. Ben-Dov 2008, Head of All Years: Astronomy and Calendars at Qumran in their Ancient Context, Leiden.

Y. Bloch 2010a, “The Order of the Eponyms in the Reign of Tukulti-Ninurta I”, Orientalia 79, 1–35.


—— 2010b, “Solving the Problems of the Assyrian King List: Toward a Precise Reconstruction of Middle Assyrian Chronology [Part I and Part II]”, Journal of Ancient Civilisations 25, 21–87.

—— 2010c, “The Order of the Eponyms in the Reign of Shalmaneser I”, Ugarit-Forschungen 40, 143–178.

—— 2010d, “The Period of the Activity of the Scribal Family of the Sons of Ninurta-uballisu in Assur”, NABU no. 35, 43–44.

L. Brack-Bernsen 2005, “The ‘days in excess’ from MUL.APIN: on the ‘first intercalation’ and ‘water clock’ schemes form MUL.APIN”, Centaurus 47, 1–29.

—— 2007, “The 360-Day Year in Mesopotamia”, in J. M. Steele (ed.), Calendars and Years: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient Near East, Oxford, 83–100.

J. A. Brinkman 1974, “The Monarchy in the Time of the Kassite Dynasty”, in P. Garelli (ed.), Le Palais et la Royauté, Paris, 395–408.

—— 1976, Materials and Studies for Kassite History, vol. I, Chicago. J. A. Brinkman & V. Donbaz 1985, “Two Middle Assyrian Texts from Assur”, Zeitschrift für

Assyriologie 75, 78–86. J. P. Britton 2007, “Calendars, Intercalations and Year Lengths in Mesopotamian Astronomy”,

in J. M. Steele (ed.), Calendars and Years: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient Near East, Oxford, 115–132.

E. Cancik-Kirschbaum 2005, “Rundzahlen und Idealrhythmen. Beispiele aus dem Alten Orient”, in B. Naumann (ed.), Rhythmus. Spuren eines Wechselspiels in Künsten und Wissen-schaften, Würzburg, 71–91.

—— 2009, “Zeit und Ewigkeit: ein Versuch zu altorientalischen Konzeptionen”, in R. G. Kratz, H. Spiekermann (eds.), Zeit und Ewigkeit als Raum göttlichen Handelns. Religionsgeschicht-liche, theologische und philosophische Perspektiven (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttesta-mentliche Wissenschaft 390), Berlin, New York, 29–51.

—— 2012, “Verwaltungstechnische Aspekte königlicher Repräsentation: Zwei Urkunden über den Kult der verstorbenen Könige im mittelassyrischen Assur”, in G. Wilhelm (ed.), Organi-zation, Representation, and Symbols of Power in the Ancient Near East. Proceedings of the 54th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale at Würzburg 20-25 July 2008, Winona Lake, IN, 33–49.

—— forthcoming a, “Überlegungen zur Systematik administrativen Schriftguts der mittelassyri-schen Zeit in Dūr-Katlimmu” (to appear in Berichte der Ausgrabungen Tall Šeh Hamad/Dür-Katlimmu 12).

—— forthcoming b, “Edition of administrative materials from Dūr-Katlimmu” (to appear as Be-richte der Ausgrabungen Tall Šeh Hamad/Dür-Katlimmu 10).

—— in preparation, “Der König von Assur: Politische Theologie und die Organisation von Herrschaft in Assyrien”.

M. P. Charles 1990, “Traditional crop husbandry in Southern Iraq 1900–1960 A. D.”, Bulletin of Sumerian Agriculture 5, 47–64.

D. Charpin 1985, “Les archives d’epoque ‘assyrienne’ dans le palais de Mari”, Mari. Annales de Recherches interdisciplinaires 4, 243–268.

—— 2002, “Chroniques du Moyen-Euphrate. 1. Le ‘royaume de Hana’: Textes et Histoire”, Revue d'assyriologie et d'archéologie orientale 96, 61–92.

D. Charpin & N. Ziegler 2003, Mari et le proch-orient à l’époque amorrite: Essai d’histoire po-litique (Memoires de NABU 6), Paris.

M. E. Cohen 1993, The Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East, Bethesda.


J. Cooley 2008, “Early Mesopotamian Astral Science and Divination in the Myth of Inana and Šukaletuda”, Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 8, 75–98.

J. Cooper 2001, “Literature and History: The Historical and Political Referents of Sumerian Literary Texts”, in T. Abusch et al. (eds.), Historiography in the Cuneiform World, Vol. 1 (Rencontre Assiriologique Internationale 45), Bethesda, 131–147.

R. Da Riva & E. Frahm 1999–2000, “Šamaš-šumu-ukīn, die Herrin von Ninive und das baby-lonischen Königssiegel”, Archiv für Orientforschung 46–47, 156–182.

K. Deller 1986, “Old Assyrian kanwarta, Middle Assyrian kalmarte and Neo-Assyrian gar-marte”, Jaarbericht van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Genootschap Ex Oriente Lux 25, 43–49.

K. Deller & A. Tsukimoto 1985, “Ein mittelassyrisches Protokoll über eine Rinder- und Esel-musterung”, Baghdader Mitteilungen 16, 317–326.

J. G. Dercksen 2004, Old Assyrian Institutions (Uitgaven van het Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten te Leiden 98 = MOS Studies 4), Leiden 2004.

—— 2008, “Observations on Land Use and Agriculture in Kanesh”, in C. Michel (ed.), Old Assyrian Studies in Memory of Paul Garelli (Old Assyrian Archives: Studies 4 = Uitgaven van het Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten te Leiden 112), Leiden, 139–157.

—— 2011, “The Beginning of the Old Assyrian Year”, NABU, no. 4. V. Donbaz 1971, “The Old Assyrian Month Name Kanwarta”, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 24,

24–28. —— 1984, “New Evidence on the Reading of the Old Assyrian Month-Name Kanwarta (with

An Edition of the Memorandum kt c/k 839)”, Jaarbericht van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Genootschap Ex Oriente Lux 28, 3–9.

—— 1992, “The ‘House of the Kings’ in the city of Aššur”, in H. Otten, E. Akurgal, H. Ertem, A. Süel (eds.), Hittite and Other Anatolian and Near Eastern Studies in Honor of Sedat Alp (Anadolu Medeniyetlerini Araştırma ve Tanıtma Vakfı yayınları 1), Ankara, 119–125.

H. Drawnel 2011, The Aramaic Astronomical Book (4Q208-4Q211) from Qumran: Text, Tran-slation, and Commentary Oxford.

J.-M. Durand 1984, “Trois études sur Mari”, Mari. Annales de Recherches interdisciplinaires 3, 127–180.

—— 2000, Documents épistolaires du palais de Mari. Tome III (Littératures anciennes du Proche-Orient 18), Paris.

H. Ehelolf & B. Landsberger 1920, “Der altassyrische Kalendar”, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 74, 216–219.

B. L. Eichler 1973, Indenture at Nuzi: The Personal Tidennūtu Contract and its Mesopotamian Analogues (Yale Near Eastern Researches 5), New Haven.

J. Eidem 2011, The Royal Archives from Tell Leilan: Old Babylonian Letters and Treaties from Lower Town Palace East (Uitgaven van het Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten te Leiden 117), Leiden.

N. Elias 1988, Über die Zeit. Arbeiten zur Wissenssoziologie II (Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch Wis-senschaft 756), Frankfurt am Main.

—— 2004, Gesammelte Schriften, Frankfurt am Main. R. K. Englund 1988, “Administrative Timekeeping in Ancient Mesopotamia”, Journal of the

Economic and Social History of the Orient 31, 121–185. —— 1998, “Texts from the Late Uruk Period”, in P. Attinger, M. Wäfler (eds.), Späturuk-Zeit

und Frühdynastische Zeit (W. Sallaberger, A. Westenholz eds., Mesopotamien, Annäherun-gen 3), Göttingen, 15–233.


I. L. Finkel & J. Reade 1995, “Lots of Eponyms”, Iraq 57, 162–172. —— 1998, “Assyrian Eponyms, 893–649 BC”, Orientalia NS 67, 248–265. J. J. Finkelstein 1953, “Cuneiform Texts from Tell Billa”, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 7, 111–

176. D. E. Fleming 2000, Time at Emar: The Cultic Calendar and the Rituals from the Diviner’s Ar-

chive (Mesopotamian Civilizations 11), Winona Lake. E. Frahm 2000, “Die Akitu-Häuser von Ninive”, NABU, no. 66. H. Freydank 1991, Beiträge zur mittelassyrischen Chronologie und Geschichte (Schriften zur

Geschichte und Kultur des Alten Orients 21), Berlin. —— 1997, “Mittelassyrische Opferlisten aus Assur”, in H. Waetzoldt, H. Hauptmann (eds.), As-

syrien im Wandel der Zeiten. XXXIXe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Heidelberg, 6.-10. Juli 1992 (Heidelberger Studien zum Alten Orient 6), Heidelberg, 47–52.

—— 2009, “Kār-Tukultī-Ninurta als Agrarprovinz”, Altorientalische Forschungen 36, 16–84. —— 2010, “Betrachtungen zur Weidewirtschaft in Dūr-Katlimmu”, in H. Kühne (ed.), Dūr-

Katlimmu 2008 and Beyond (Studia Chaburensia 1 ), Wiesbaden, 87–100. H. D. Galter 2008, “ ‘eine Zeit um zu herrschen…’. Das Verhältnis von Zeit und Macht in Me-

sopotamien”, in P. Mauritsch et al. (eds.), Antike Lebenswelten: Konstanz — Wandel — Wirkung. Festschrift für Ingomar Weiler zum 70. Geburtstag, Wiesbaden, 653–666.

S. Garfinkle 2004, “Shepherds, Merchants, and Credit: Some Observations on Lending Practices in Ur III Mespotamia”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 47, 1–30.

H. Gasche, J. A. Armstrong, S. W. Cole & V. G. Gurzadyan (eds.) 1998, Dating the Fall of Ba-bylon: A Reappraisal of Second-Millennium Chronology (Mesopotamian History and En-vironment 2), Chicago.

A. George 1989, Review of S. Parpola, The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part I: Letters from Assyria and the West (State Archives of Assyria 1), Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 52, 118–120.

—— 2000, “Four Temple Rituals from Babylon”, in A. R. George & I. L. Finkel (eds.), Wis-dom, Gods and Literature: Studies in Assyriology in Honour of W. G. Lambert, Winona Lake, 259–299.

C. H. Gordon 1935, “The Names of the Months of the Nuzi Calendar”, Rivista degli Studi Orientali 15, 253–257.

C. H. Gordon & E. R. Lacheman 1938, “The Nuzu Menology”, Archiv Orientální 10, 51–64. S. Greengus 1987, “The Akkadian Calendar at Sippar”, Journal of the American Oriental So-

ciety 107, 209–229. —— 2001, “New Evidence on the Old Babylonian Calendar and Real Estate Documents from

Sippar”, Journal of the American Oriental Society 121, 257–267. W. W. Hallo 1984–1985, “The Concept of Eras from Nabonassar to Seleucus”, Journal of the

Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University 16–17, 143–151. —— 1988, “The Nabonassar Era and other Epochs in Mesopotamian Chronology and Chrono-

graphy”, in E. Leichty et al. (eds.), A Scientific Humanist: Studies in Memory of Abraham Sachs (Occasional Publications of the Samuel Noah Kramer Fund 9), Philadelphia, 175–190.

H. Hirsch 1961, Untersuchungen zur altassyrischen Religion (Archiv für Orientforschung Bei-heft 13/14), Wien.

W. Horowitz 1996, “The 360 and 364 Day Year in Ancient Mesopotamia”, Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University, 35–44.

—— 1998a, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (Mesopotamian Civilizations 8), Winona Lake. —— 1998b, “The 364 Day Year in Mesopotamia, Again”, NABU, no. 49.


—— 2007, “The Astrolabes: Astronomy, Theology and Chronology”, in J. M. Steele (ed.), Ca-lendars and Years: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient Near East, Oxford, 101–113.

—— 2010, “VAT 17081: A Forerunner to the Menology of Astrolabe B”, in S. Dönmez (ed.), Veysel Donbaz’a Sunulan Yazilar DUB.SAR É.DUB.BA.A: Studies Presented in Honour of Veysel Donbaz, Istanbul, 183–187.

H. Hunger 1980, “Kalender”, in Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäo-logie, Bd. V, Berlin, New York 1980, 297–302.

H. Hunger & D. Pingree 1989, MUL.APIN: An Astronomical Compendium in Cuneiform (Archiv für Orientforschung Beiheft 24), Horn.

—— 1999, Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia (Handbuch der Orientalistik 44), Leiden. H. Hunger & E. Reiner 1975, “A Scheme for Intercalary Months from Babylonia”, Wiener Zeit-

schrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 67, 21–28. B. Kh. Ismail & J. N. Postgate 2008, “A Middle Assyrian Flock-Master's Archive from Tell

Ali”, Iraq 70, 147–178. A. Jacquet 2002, “Lugal-meš et malikum: nouvel examen du kispum à Mari”, in D. Charpin &

J.-M. Durand (eds.), Receuil d'études à la memoire d'André Parrot (Florilegium Marianum 6), Paris, 51–68.

S. Jakob 2003, Mittelassyrische Verwaltung und Sozialstruktur: Untersuchungen (Cuneiform Monographs 29), Leiden.

—— 2009, Die mittelassyrischen Texte aus Tell Chuēra in Nordost-Syrien (Ausgrabungen in Tell Chuēra in Nordost-Syrien 3 = Vorderasiatische Forschungen der Max-Freiherr-von-Oppenheim-Stiftung 2,3) Wiesbaden.

R. M. Jas (ed.) 2000, Rainfall and Agriculture in Northern Mesopotamia (MOS Studies 3), Lei-den.

J. C. Johnson forthcoming, “Contractual Formalism and Zukunftsbewältigung in Middle Assyr-ian Agricultural Accounting”, in L. Feliu, J. Llop, A. Millet & J. Sanmartín (eds.), Time and History in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the 56th Rencontre Assyriologique Interna-tionale, Barcelona, Winona Lake.

E. Klauber & B. Landsberger 1914, “Chetiter und Zetaioi”, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vor-derasiatische Archäologie 23, 61–66.

J. Koch 1989, Neue Untersuchungen zur Topographie des babylonischen Fixsternhimmels, Wiesbaden.

—— 1997, “Kannte man in Mesopotamien das 364 Tage-Jahr wirklich seit dem 7. Jahrhundert v. Chr?”, NABU, no. 119.

—— 1998, “Ein für einmal: Das antike Mesopotamien kannte kein 364 Tage-Jahr”, NABU, no. 121.

F. Köcher 1952, “Ein mittelassyrisches Ritualfragment zum Neujahrsfest”, Zeitschrift für Assy-riologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie 50, 192–202.

P. Koschaker 1928, Neue keilschriftliche Rechtsurkunden aus der El-Amarna-Zeit (Abhandlun-gen der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig / Philologisch-historische Klasse 39, 5), Leipzig.

F. X. Kugler 1912, Sternenkunde und Sternendiens in Babel. Assyriologische, astronomische und astralmythologische Untersuchungen. II. Buch. Astronomische Zeitordnung und ältere Himmelskunde, II. Teil, Münster, 205–223.

D. Lacambre 2002, “Niggallum, lecture akkadienne du mois ŠE-KIN-KU5 dans le calendrier dit ‘de Samsî-Addu’ ”, in D. Charpin & J.-M. Durand (eds.), Recueil d’études à la memoire d’André Parrot (Florilegium Marianum 6), Paris, 505–511.


S. Lafont 2003, “Middle Assyrian Period”, in R. Westbrook (ed.), A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law, Leiden, 521–563.

W. G. Lambert 1997, “Processions to the Akitu House”, Revue d'assyriologie et d'archéologie orientale 91, 49–80.

B. Landsberger 1949a, “Jahreszeiten im Sumerischen-Akkadischen”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 8, 248–272.

—— 1949b, “Jahreszeiten im Sumerischen-Akkadischen (Concluded)”, Journal of Near East-ern Studies 8, 273–297.

M. T. Larsen 1974, “Unusual Eponymy-Datings from Mari and Assyria”, Revue d'assyriologie et d'archéologie orientale 68, 15–24.

—— 1976, The Old Assyrian City-State and Its Colonies (Mesopotamia 4), Copenhagen. D. Lehoux 2007, Astronomy, Weather, and Calendars in the Ancient World: Parapegmata and

Related Texts in Classical and Near Eastern Societies, Cambridge. J. Lewy 1939, The Assyrian Calendar, Archiv Orientálni 11, 1939, 35–46. J. Llop 2012, “The Creation of the Middle Assyrian Provinces”, Journal of the American Orien-

tal Society 131, 2011 (appeared in 2012), 591–603. P. Machinist 1982, “Provincial Governance in Middle Assyria and Some New Texts from Yale”,

Assur 3, 1–41. —— 1995, “The Transfer of Kingship: A Divine Turning”, in A. B. Beck et al. (eds.), Fortunate

the Eyes That See: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of his Seventieth Birthday, Grand Rapids, 105–120.

S. Maul 2000, “Die Frühjahrsfeierlichkeiten in Aššur”, in A. R. George & I. L. Finkel (eds.), Wisdom, Gods and Literature: Studies in Assyriology in Honour of W. G. Lambert, Winona Lake, 389–420.

—— 2004, “Die ‘Lösung vom Bann’: Überlegungen zu altorientalischen Konzeptionen von Krankheit und Heilkunst”, in H. Horstmanshoff & M. Stol (eds.), Magic and Rationality in Ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman Medicine (Studies in Ancient Medicine 27), Lei-den, 79–95.

W. Mayer 1971, Untersuchungen zur Grammatik des Mittelassyrischen (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 2), Kevelaer.

C. Michel 2010, “The Day Unit Within the Old Assyrian Calendar”, in S. Dönmez (ed.), Veysel Donbaz’a Sunulan Yazilar DUB.SAR É.DUB.BA.A: Studies Presented in Honour of Veysel Donbaz, Istanbul, 217–224.

A. Millard 1994, The Eponyms of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, 910-612 BC (State Archives of As-syria 2), Helsinki.

A. Moberg 1933, An-nasīʾ (Koran 9:37) in der islāmischen Tradition (Lunds Universitets års-skrift 1 = Teologie, juridik och humanistiska ämnen. Ny följd 27, 1), Leipzig.

—— 2012, “Nasīʾ”, Encyclopedia of Islam, second edition, accessed January 3, 2012. B. Pongratz-Leisten 1994, ina šulmi īrub. Die kulttopographische und ideologische Program-

matik der akītu-Prozession in Babylonien und Assyrien im I. Jahrtausend v. Chr. (Baghdader Forschungen 16), Mainz am Rhein.

—— 1997, “The Interplay of Military Strategy and Cultic Practice in Assyrian Politics”, in S. Parpola & R. Whiting (eds.), Assyria 1995, Helsinki, 245–252.

—— 2001, “Neujahr(sfest). B. Nach akkadischen Quellen”, Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 9, Leipzig, Berlin, New York, 294–298.

R. Pruzsinszky 2009, Mesopotamian Chronology of the 2nd Millennium B.C.: An Introduction to the Textual Evidence and Related Chronological Issues, Wien.


J. Reade 2000, “Absolute Dates and Assyrian Calendars”, Akkadica 119–120, 151–153. —— 2001, “Assyrian King-Lists, the Royal Tombs of Ur, and Indus Origins”, Journal of Near

Eastern Studies 60, 1–29. H. Reculeau 2011, Climate, Environment and Agriculture in Assyria, Wiesbaden. W. Röllig 2008, Land- und Viehwirtschaft am unteren Ḫābūr in mittelassyrischer Zeit, Wies-

baden. D. F. Rosa 2010, “Middle Assyrian ginaʾu Offerings Lists: Geographical Implications”, in M.

G. Biga & M. Liverani (eds.), ana turri gimilli: studi dedicati al Padre Werner R. Mayer, S. J., da amici e allievi, Roma, 327–342.

W. Sallaberger 1993, Der kultische Kalendar der Ur III-Zeit, Berlin. W. Sallaberger & I. Schrakamp forthcoming, “Philological Data for a Historical Chronology of

Mesopotamia in the Third Millennium B.C.”, in W. Sallaberger & I. Schrakamp (eds.), Asso-ciated Regional Chronologies for the Ancient Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean: History and Philology.

P. Sanlaville 1990, “Milieu naturel et irrigation”, in B. Geyer (ed.), Techniques et pratiques hydro-agricoles traditionaelles en domaine irrigué, Damascus, 3–19.

C. Saporetti 1979a, Gli eponimi medio-assiri, Malibu. —— 1979b, “Il prestito nei documenti privati dell’Assiria del XIV e XIII secolo: Parte I, L’ana-

lisi dei testi”, Mesopotamia 13–14, 1978–79, 5–90. —— 1982, “Il prestito nei documenti privati dell’Assiria del XIV e XIII secolo: Parte II, I testi

in Trascrizione”, Mesopotamia 16, 5–41. G. Selz 2011, “Zum Problem spätfrühdynastischer Schaltmonate in Lagas-Girsu”, NABU, no. 71. D. Shibata 2010, “Continuity and Local Tradition in the Middle Habur Region in the 2nd

millennium B.C.”, in H. Kühne (ed.), Dūr-Katlimmu 2008 and Beyond (Studia Chaburensia 1), Wiesbaden, 217–239.

M. Sigrist 1977, “Les fêtes ès-ès à l’époque néo-sumérienne”, Revue biblique 84, 375–392. J. M. Steele (ed.) 2007, Calendars and Years: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient Near East,

Oxford. R. Stieglitz 1998, “The Phoenician-Punic Menology”, in M. Lubetski, C. Gottlieb & S. Keller

(eds.), Boundaries of the Ancient Near Eastern World: A Tribute to Cyrus H. Gordon, Sheffield, 211–221.

M. Streck 2002, “Zwischen Weide, Dorf und Stadt: Sozio-ökonomische Strukturen des amurri-tischen Nomadismus am Mittleren Euphrat”, Baghdader Mitteilungen 33, 155–209.

H. Tadmor 1958, “The Campaigns of Sargon II of Assur: A Chronological-Historical Study”, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 12, 22–40, 77–100.

—— 2004, “An Assyrian Victory Chant and Related Matters”, in G. Frame (ed.), From the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea: Studies on the History of Assyria and Babylonia in Honour of A. K. Grayson, Leiden, 269–276.

K. R. Veenhof 2000, “Old Assyrian Chronology”, Akkadica 119–120, 137–150. —— 2008, “The Old Assyrian Period”, in M. Wäfler (ed.), Mesopotamia: The Old Assyrian

Period (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 160/5), Göttingen, 13–264. W. von Soden 1987, “Kleine Bemerkungen zu Urkunden und Ritualen aus Emar”, NABU, no.

46, 25. K. Wagensonner 2007, “Götterreise oder Herrscherreise oder vielleicht beides?”, Wiener Zeit-

schrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 97, 541–559. —— 2008, “Nin-Isina(k)s Journey to Nippur Reconsidered”, Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde

des Morgenlandes 98, 277–294.


—— 2011, “A Scribal Family and its Orthographic Peculiarities: On the Scientific Work of a Royal Scribe and his Sons”, in G. J. Selz & K. Wagensonner (eds.), The Empirical Dimen-sion of Ancient Near Eastern Studies / Die empirische Dimension altorientalischer For-schungen (Wiener Offene Orientalistik 6), Wien, 645–701.

E. F. Weidner 1912, “Studien zum Kalender der Hethiter und Babylonier”, Babyloniaca 6, 164–181.

—— 1914, “Die Entdeckung der Präzession: Eine geistestat babylonischer Astronomen”, Baby-loniaca 7, 1–19.

—— 1929, “Der altassyrische Kalender”, Archiv für Orientforschung 5, 184–185. —— 1936, “Aus den Tagen eines assyrischen Schattenkönigs”, Archiv für Orientforschung 10,

1–52. —— 1944, “Der Tag des Stadtgottes”, Archiv für Orientforschung 14, 340–342. E. Weissert 1997, “Royal Hunt and Royal Triumph in a Prism Fragment of Ashurbanipal (82-5-

22,2)”, in S. Parpola & R. M. Whiting (eds.), Assyria 1995, Helsinki, 339–358. R. Whiting 1979, “Some Observations on the Drehem Calendar”, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie

und vorderasiatische Archäologie. 69, 6–33. F. Wiggermann 2008, “A Babylonian Scholar in Assur”, in R. J. van der Spek (ed.), Studies in

Ancient Near Eastern World View and Society: Presented to Marten Stol on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, 10 November 2005, and His Retirement from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Bethesda, 203–234.

C. Wilcke 1993, “Politik im Spiegel der Literatur, Literatur als Mittel der Politik im älteren Ba-bylonien”, in K. Raaflaub (ed.), Anfänge politischen Denkens in der Antike, Munich, 29–75.

E. Wirth 1971, Syrien: Eine geographische Landeskunde, Darmstadt. A. Zgoll 2006, “Königslauf und Götterrat: Struktur und Deutung des babylonischen Neujahr-

festes”, in E. Blum & R. Lux (eds.), Festtraditionen in Israel und im Alten Orient, München, 11–80.

Middle Assyrian Calendrics (with Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum). In: State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 19...

Documents

Transcript of Middle Assyrian Calendrics (with Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum). In: State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 19...