The purpose of the “Ancient Records Series” was to make the historical documents of ancient Near East accessible in English. The written records left us by the ancient Egyptians, Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians furnish the only means for arranging and studying the events in the life of the people of the ancient world in their chronological sequence. In Egypt most of the records were engraved upon steles, obelisks, and temple walls; in Babylonia and Assyria, upon memorial tablets, prisms and cylinders of clay or alabaster, upon obelisks and steles, or upon the walls of palaces and temples.

The two volumes comprising the Ancient Records of Assyria, presented for the first time in a single compact edition the entire body of the Assyrian historical records in a Western language, may form not only a monument to the careful scholarship of Professor Luckenbill, but also a valuable contribution to historical knowledge. This volume is the first of the Ancient Records Series that covers the translations of written records in Assyria from the earliest times to Sargon.