Examples of such evident unreliability, deliberate or otherwise, could be multiplied many times over. The compilers of tribute lists were not above listing a vassal king as paying tribute even though other records showed him to be dead at the time. George Smith, after citing an instance where the same tribute list of Esar-haddon is credited to his son Ashurbanipal 13 years later, says that this later list is “most probably a literal copy of the earlier document, without any attempt to ascertain if these kings were still reigning, and if they really paid tribute.”—The Assyrian Eponym Canon, London, 1875, p. 179.
Insight On the Scriptures-Volume I. 1988 p. 451