Primary source

Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (1975)

This is the edition behind every chronicle citation on this site. It collects the Babylonian and Assyrian chronicle texts, numbers them in a scheme that has become standard — the ABC numbers used throughout this archive — and gives transliteration, translation, notes and bibliography for each.

Citing a chronicle without citing an edition is a common and consequential shortcut. Chronicle texts survive on broken tablets; readings are restored, and restorations are arguments. A translation copied from a website has usually lost the brackets that tell a reader which words are on the tablet and which are the editor’s reconstruction.

Why a printed edition is a source and not a convenience

The tablet is the primary object; the edition is where the tablet becomes readable by anyone who is not an Assyriologist. Both belong in a citation, and this site records both: the artefact by its CDLI P-number, the reading by its edition.

Where a later edition improves on this one — Glassner’s Chroniques mésopotamiennes is the usual comparison — the improvement belongs in the dossier that relies on the disputed passage, not in a blanket preference.

How it is cited here

By Internet Archive identifier, which resolves to the item record and returns the title. The scan is a lending copy of the printed edition, which is enough to check a page reference; it is not a substitute for the book.