Position in chronology
Shalmaneser I 17
Translation · reference
High confidence(1) Shalmaneser (I), appointee of the god Enlil, vice-regent of the god Aššur, strong king, king of Assyria, son of Adad-nārārī (I), king of Assyria, son of Arik-dīn-ili, (who was) also king of Assyria; conqueror of the land(s) Šubarû, Lullumê, and Qutû, subduer of the land Muṣri; the one who slew valiantly all of his enemies with the support of the goddess Ištar, his lady, brought about the defeat of his foes in battle, and made their barbarous [sheikhs] bow down at the feet of the goddess Ištar, his lady. (6b) At that time, (as for) the temple of the goddess Ištar, lady of Nineveh, my lady,…
Source: Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online (RIAo), Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative (MOCCI), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; in association with the RINAP Project, University of Pennsylvania. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/riao/Q005805/
Translation · AI engine
read from photoShalmaneser, appointee of Enlil, priest of Aššur, mighty king, king of the land of Aššur, / son of Adad-nērārī, king of the land of Aššur, son of Arik-dēn-ili, king of the land of Aššur: / conqueror of the land of Šubari, the Lullumu, and the Gutians, who brought the land of Muṣri into subjection, / who, by the support of Ištar his lady, [heroically?] slew all his enemies, / and established their defeat in the midst of battle, [and …] their [...].
7 uncertain terms ↓
- šā-ak-ni dEN.LÍL — Conventionally 'appointee / nominee of Enlil'; šāknu can also mean 'governor/viceroy' in administrative contexts, but in royal titulary 'appointee' is standard.
- eṭ-[li-iš? kúl]-la-at — Heavily broken; restoration eṭliš kullat 'heroically, all of' is supplied from parallel Shalmaneser I inscriptions (RIMA 1.A.0.77). Other restorations are possible.
- dIŠKUR-ERIM.TÁḪ — Logographic writing for Adad-nērārī (I); transliteration straightforward but the ERIM.TÁḪ = nērārī reading is well established.
- GÍD-DI-DINGIR — Logographic writing for Arik-dēn-ili; GÍD = arku/arik, DI = dīnu/dēnu, DINGIR = ili, hence 'Long is the justice of my god'. Conventional rendering retained.
- KUR.mu-uṣ-ri — Muṣri: debated whether this refers to a region in northern Mesopotamia/Anatolia distinct from Egypt (Miṣir), or occasionally equated with Egypt by some scholars. In Shalmaneser I context the former (northern Muṣri) is almost universally accepted.
- dáb-du za-e-ri-šu — dabdu zāʾirīšu, 'the defeat of his enemies'; dabdu is a technical term for 'rout/defeat in battle', sometimes rendered 'carnage'.
- [ma? ...]-gi-šu-nu — Completely broken; ending -gišunu is possibly a 3pl. possessive suffix on a noun, but restoration is speculative without parallel context.
Reasoning ↓
Photo examined: the object is a small, heavily worn lens-shaped clay tablet (bun-shaped, possibly a barrel cylinder or tablet fragment) photographed from six angles. The surface visible in the central obverse view shows two horizontal register lines and a band of cuneiform wedges between them, but at the resolution provided individual signs are almost entirely illegible — only the general presence of closely packed wedge impressions can be confirmed visually. The reverse/side views show additional weathered inscription traces but no signs can be individually read. Museum labels visible read '121137' and 'TH 1929 10 146', consistent with a field number from a Tigris-Euphrates region excavation. Because the cuneiform signs themselves cannot be read from the photo, I rely on the scholar-provided transliteration for Layer 2, flagging that this is transliteration-driven. The text is a standard Shalmaneser I (Shalmaneser I of Assyria, c. 1274–1245 BCE) royal titulary inscription; the formulaic structure — epithet chain, ancestry (Adad-nērārī I → Arik-dēn-ili → Shalmaneser I), conquest list (Šubari, Lullumu, Gutians, Muṣri), and battle narrative — matches well-known parallels in RIMA 1.A.0.77 (Grayson 1987). The lacunae in lines 4–5 prevent full translation; restorations follow the parallel RIMA texts.
Generated by claude-sonnet-4-6 · prompt 2026-05-11/v3-conventions · May 11, 2026 · 3269 in / 1129 out tokens
Why it matters
Credits Ištar of Nineveh — not Aššur alone — as the divine force behind Shalmaneser I's campaigns against Šubarû, Lullumê, and Qutû, documenting the goddess's role in mid-13th-century Assyrian royal ideology.
Transliteration
mdsál-ma-nu-SAG šá-ak-ni dEN.LÍL ŠID da-šur LUGAL dan-nu LUGAL ⸢KUR⸣ da-šur / DUMU dIŠKUR-ERIM.TÁḪ LUGAL KUR da-šur DUMU GÍD-DI-DINGIR LUGAL KUR da-šur-ma / ka-ši-id KUR.šu-ba-ri-i lu-ul-⸢lu⸣-mi-i ù qu-ti-i mu-še-ek-ni-iš KUR.mu-uṣ-ri / ša i-na tu-kúl-ti ⸢d⸣iš₈-tár NIN-šu ⸢eṭ⸣-[li-iš? kúl]-⸢la⸣-at na-ki-ri-šu i-na-ru-ma / dáb-du za-e-ri-šu i-na qé-reb ta-ḫa-zi il-ta-ka-⸢nu⸣-[ma? ...]-gi-šu-nu…
Scholarly note
Royal inscription of an Assyrian king, published in the Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online project (RIAo). Translation reproduced from the ORACC edition. ORACC text Q005805.
Attribution
Image: BM 121137 (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P422388). source
Translation excerpted from Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online (RIAo), Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative (MOCCI), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; in association with the RINAP Project, University of Pennsylvania. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/riao/Q005805/.
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