Year names and keeping track of them
Fig. 1 - Hand drawing of a list of year names (British Museum, BM 92702), Samsu-iluna’s 38-year long reign on the left. Each year name starts with the sign MU “year”. Line 30 gives the total number of year names: 38 MU sa-am-su-i-lu-na LUGAL (=king). “38” is written with three triangles and 8 horizontal dashes - T.G. Pinches, 1898, Cuneiform Texts from the British Museum Part 6, plate 10
At the beginning of each year the Babylonian king gathered his advisors to decide on the name of the new year. Often years were named after a military event (a battle won or city conquered), building projects (the digging of large irrigation canals, the construction of fortresses), or religious events (the offering of a precious statue, weapon or throne to a deity). Once the event was decided upon, the scribes wrote in an elaborate and poetic way the name of the new year. In its full form it was essentially a royal inscription praising the king and his deeds. The royal scribes then wrote at least several dozen tablets like LB 800, before sending them to other royal officials in cities throughout the realm; they in turn made sure that every scribe in Babylonia would know the new year name.
For day to day writing of administrative documents it was not practical to always write down the full year name, as it was far too long for such purposes. This is why the scribes abbreviated it. The year name on LB 800, Samsu-iluna’s 24th year was shortened as: “Year: the city walls of Kish”. We find this abbreviated version on many cuneiform tablets dated to Samsu-iluna year 24.
But how would a Babylonian scribe a century later know that this was Samsu-iluna year 24, or how would the scribe know King Hammurabi’s 10th year? For this, ancient scribes would collect the shortened year names in a chronological order in long lists. If a scribe were to read on an old contract the date “Year: the army of Larsa was defeated”, he or she (many women knew how to read and write) consulted a list of year names and would find that this was Hammurabi’s 31st year (ca. 1759 BCE). Such lists are also very informative for modern day scholars because they provide the year-by-year framework for writing Babylonian history.
Texts like LB 800, called “promulgation documents”, are unique, as they provide us with the full version of the year name. Without it, we would only know the abbreviated version, giving us much less information about events in that year. Currently about twenty of such promulgation documents are known throughout the world.