Position in chronology
Adad-narari I 16
Written in modern English
The palace in Aššur had originally been built by Aššur-nādin-ahhē II, one of Adad-narari's earlier predecessors. Inside it stood a chapel facing the terrace, and within that chapel was the dais where the god Aššur took up residence each year. The wall at the top of the chapel's doorway had fallen into disrepair, so Adad-narari cleared away the deteriorated sections, renovated the wall, and restored it. He then deposited a commemorative inscription within it.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — scholar edition
RIAo(33) At that time, (as for) the palace of my city, Aššur, which Aššur-nādin-ahhē (II), the choicest among my ancestors, a king who came before me, had previously built, the wall at the top of the door of the chapel that is opposite the terrace (and) that is inside that palace, inside of which the dais of the god Aššur, my lord, was built and annually the god Aššur, my lord, proceeds to that dais to take up residence, that wall had become dilapidated and I clear away its dilapidated section(s). I (then) renovated (and) restored it. Moreover, I deposited my commemorative inscription (therein).…
Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online — scholar edition (ORACC / MOCCI).
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
e-nu-ma É.GAL URU-ia daš-šur šá mdaš-šur-SUM-a-ḫi / ši-li-it-ti ab-be-ia LUGAL a-lik pa-ni-ia i-na pa-na / ⸢e⸣-pu-šu i-ga-ru šá re-eš₁₅ ba-a-be šá ⸢pa⸣-pa-ḫi / šá tar-ṣi tam-le-e šá qé-re-eb É.GAL-lim / šá-a-ti a-šar BÁRA šá daš-šur EN-ia / i-na qer-bi-šu ep-šu ù šá-at-ti-šá-am-ma / [d]aš-šur be-li a-na BÁRA šá-a-tu a-na a-ša-bi il-la-ku / i-ga-ru šu-ú e-na-aḫ-ma an-ḫu-su ú-né-ki-ir / ú-di-iš…
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 Q005753.
Attribution
Image: Based on A. Kirk Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Third and Second Millennia BC (to 1115 BC) (RIMA 1), Toronto, 1987. Adapted by Jamie Novotny (2015-16) and lemmatized and updated by Nathan Morello (2016) for the Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative (MOCCI), a corpus-building initiative funded by LMU Munich and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (through the establishment of the Alexander von Humboldt Chair for Ancient History of the Near and Middle East) and based at the Historisches Seminar - Abteilung Alte Geschichte of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/riao/Q005753/..
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/Q005753/.
Related tablets
Related sources
An early example of administrative writing from Uruk. Its fragmentary numerical entries and commodity signs document record-keeping during the formative period of writing.
An early witness to systematic administrative notation at Kish. Its signs and numerals can be catalogued, but that does not establish a full translation or prove that it is the world's first writing.
An early surviving historical monument that joins named rulers, a territorial dispute and religious oaths. It shows how a city-state turned victory into a lasting public claim, without establishing that this was the first recorded conflict.