Position in chronology
Tiglath-pileser I 1009
About this tablet
A small fragment of a royal inscription of Tiglath-pileser I, king of Assyria around 1100 BCE. What survives is part of a building history: the king recalls earlier rulers — apparently the old king Ilu-šumma and his more recent predecessor Aššur-dān — who had worked on the same structure before him, and then records his own act of rebuilding it on firm foundations. Assyrian kings routinely traced a building's past caretakers this way, linking themselves to a chain of pious royal builders stretching back centuries.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Only scraps of this text remain. It once listed the previous kings who had maintained a building in Assur: one line names Ilu-šumma, vice-regent of the god Aššur; the next says that Aššur-dān, likewise vice-regent of Aššur, restored the structure to its former state. The final readable line has the current king declaring that he firmly re-established the building on solid foundations. Everything before, between, and around these phrases is broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Fragmentary; only parts of five lines survive) [...] ... [...] [...] ... [...] [... Ilu]-šumma, vice-regent of (the god) Aššur, [...] [... Aššur-dā]n, (who was) also vice-regent of (the god) Aššur, [restored (it)] to [its] place. [...] ... I firmly [established (it)] on a firm (foundation).
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
[...] x [...] / [...] x e? x [...] / [... DINGIR]-šúm-ma ŠID aš-⸢šur⸣ [...] / [... aš-šur-da-a]-⸢an⸣ ŠID aš-šur-ma a-na áš-⸢ri⸣-[šu (lu) ú-ter] / [...] x i-na KAL-te lu [ú-kin?]
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 Q005964.
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/Q005964/..
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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