Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

Ashurbanipal 1012

~655 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·Q009280

Written in modern English

The broken opening lines describe someone sent out and back, then turn to a named ruler along with his brothers, his family, and the whole line of his father's house. One of Ashurbanipal's own eunuchs had been sent to check on this man's welfare, but he'd been thrown in prison. The text ends with a grim image: they crawled naked on their bellies. Everything before and after is too damaged to fill in.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — scholar edition

RINAP 5
High confidence
(1') [...] ... [...] I sent to him and [...]. (3') [RN, (...,) his brothers], his [fa]mily, (and) the seed of hi[s] father’s house [... the eun]uch of mine whom [I had sent] to inquire abo[ut his well-being ... (5´) ..., whom ...] ... had confined [in prison, ... they] cra[wled naked upon] their [belli]es [and ...].

Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period, volume 5 — scholar edition (ORACC).

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Transliteration

[...] x x [...] / [...] ⸢ú⸣-še-bil-šu-ma [...] / [...] ⸢qin⸣-nu-šú NUMUN É AD-⸢šú⸣ [...] / [... LÚ.šu-ut] ⸢SAG⸣-ia ša a-na šá-ʾa-⸢al⸣ [šul-mì-šú ...] / [...]-⸢i⸣-BI ik-lu-⸢ú⸣ [...]1 / [... mi-ra-nu-uš-šú-un? ina? UGU?] ⸢ŠÀ?-šú⸣-nu ip-⸢ši⸣-[lu-nim-ma? ...]

Scholarly note

Royal inscription of Ashurbanipal or a late Sargonid successor, edited by Jamie Novotny & Joshua Jeffers (RINAP 5, 2018–). ORACC text Q009280.

Attribution

Image: Created by Jamie Novotny and Joshua Jeffers, 2015-22. Lemmatized by Joshua Jeffers, 2018-19, for the NEH-funded RINAP Project at the University of Pennsylvania. The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0.. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/rinap/Q009280/..
Translation excerpted from Novotny, J. & Jeffers, J. 2018–. The Royal Inscriptions of Ashurbanipal (668–631 BC), Aššur-etel-ilāni (630–627 BC) and Sîn-šarra-iškun (626–612 BC), Kings of Assyria. RINAP 5. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap5/Q009280/.

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