Position in chronology
Tiglath-pileser I 1007
About this tablet
A fragmentary building inscription of Tiglath-pileser I, king of Assyria around 1100 BCE. In the surviving lines the king records that he deposited his own foundation inscriptions and respectfully returned to their place the older foundation documents of his predecessors — earlier vice-regents of the god Aššur, apparently including Aššur-dān. The text ends with a precise date by the Assyrian eponym calendar, naming the year-official Aššur-kēna-šallim. Such texts were buried in temple or palace foundations so that future kings would find and honour them — exactly the chain of memory this fragment describes.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives says roughly this: 'I laid down my own foundation records here. I found the old inscriptions of earlier rulers who served as Aššur's vice-regents — among them one whose name ends in Ilu-šumma, and Aššur-dān, likewise vice-regent of Aššur — and I put them back where they belonged. Dated the 18th day of the month Kalmartu, in the year of the eponym official Aššur-kēna-šallim, son of Aššur-išmanni.' The beginning of the text and the ends of several lines are broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[... I] deposited my [foundation inscription]s [...] [...] ... Ilu-šumma, vice-regent [of (the god) Aššur ...] [...] Aššur-dān, (who was) also vice-regent of (the god) Aššur — [I restored (them)] to [their place]. Month Kalmartu, eighteenth day, [(...)] eponymy of Aššur-kēna-šallim, [(...)] son of Aššur-išmanni [(...)]
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
[... tem-me-ni]-⸢ia⸣ áš-ku-⸢un⸣ [...] / [...] x x DINGIR-šúm-ma ⸢ŠID⸣ [aš-šur ...] / [...] aš-šur-da-a-an ŠID aš-šur-ma a-⸢na⸣ [áš-ri-šu (lu) ú-ter] / ⸢ITI⸣.kal-mar-tu UD.18.KÁM [(...)] / ⸢li⸣-mu maš-šur-ke-na-šal-lim [(...)] / ⸢DUMU⸣ aš-šur-iš-ma-ni [(...)]
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 Q005962.
Attribution
Image: Based on A. Kirk Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC I (1114-859 BC) (RIMA 2), Toronto, 1991. Adapted by Jamie Novotny (2015-16) and lemmatized and updated by Nathan Morello (2016-17) for the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation-funded OIMEA Project 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/Q005962/..
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.