Position in chronology
Puzur-Aššur III 1001
About this tablet
A fragmentary building inscription of Puzur-Aššur III, an Assyrian ruler of the 15th century BCE, from the city of Aššur. Like his better-preserved cone inscriptions, it commemorates the renovation of a city structure — probably a wall — that had fallen into disrepair, undertaken 'for his life and the well-being of his city.' It ends with the standard appeal to future rulers: whoever restores the work when it again decays, and returns the foundation cones to their place, will have his prayers heard by the gods Aššur and Adad. Such deposits were messages across generations, binding future kings to maintain the city.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Only scraps of this text survive, but its shape is clear. It names the god Aššur and speaks of a structure — one his forefathers had built — that had fallen into ruin. For the sake of his own life and the safety of his city, the ruler rebuilt it and buried inscribed clay cones in the foundations to mark the deed. The closing lines address whoever rules later: when these walls crumble again, rebuild them, and the gods Aššur and Adad will hear your prayers — and put the clay cones back where you found them. The rest of the text is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(1) [... A]ššur [...] (2) [...] of his god [...] (3) [... which/when ...] became dilapidated, and (4) [for his life and] the well-being of [his] city (5) [...] his forefathers (6) [... I] deposited [my clay co]nes. (7) [... w]hen (8) [... th]ose [walls (?)] become dilapidated, (9) [(and he rebuilds them), the gods Aššur and] Adad (10) [will listen to his prayers]. (11) [May he re]tu[rn the clay cones to their place].
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
[... a]-⸢šùr⸣ [...] / [...] ⸢ša⸣ DINGIR-šu-⸢ma⸣ / [...] x-du e-nu-ḫu-⸢ma⸣ / [a-na ba-lá-ṭí-šu ù] ⸢ša⸣-lá-am a-li-[šu] / [...] ⸢ab⸣-ba-e-šu / [... sí-kà]-⸢ti⸣ aš-ku-un / [... i]-nu-me / [... ša]-⸢tu⸣-nu e-nu-ḫu / [... da-šùr ù] dIŠKUR / [ik-ri-bi-šu i-ša-me]-ú / [sí-kà-ti a-na aš-ri-ša lu]-⸢te⸣-[er]
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 Q005701.
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/Q005701/..
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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