Ashurbanipal 1014

~655 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·Q009282

Written in modern English

Only fragments of this inscription survive. It invokes the god Aššur and speaks of one who holds both god and king, acting on commands from the gods Shamash and Adad and unifying the four quarters of the world, in connection with kingship over Assyria. A passage describes someone escaping danger through a cunning move to save his own life, relying on the will of a great god. Another fragment mentions the border of the city Harran and a protective divine aegis extended over the king's son. The rest of the text is too broken to translate, with only scattered traces of a sign or two surviving across roughly a dozen more lines.

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

Translation — scholar edition

RINAP 5

High confidence

(A 1') [...] (the god) Aššur ... [...] the one who holds god and king [..., ...], his [..., ...] in the assembly of [..., ...] the command(s) of [the god Š]amaš and the god Adad ... [... (A 5´) ..., who ...] the four quarters (of the world) as on[e, ..., the one who] ... [the kin]gship of Assyria [...]. (A 7') [...] his furious [...] in a cr[afty] maneuver [...] to save his (own) life, to [..., he ... the w]ill of his great divinity [... (A 10´) ... the bo]rder of the city Ḫarrān ... [...] his benevolent [protecti]on (and) [his beneficent] aegis [...] the son of the king, who(m)ever [...]. (A 13') (No translation possible) (Traces of 1 or 2 signs in 9 lines)

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

Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.

Transliteration

[...] ⸢aš?-šur IB/LU⸣ x x [...] / [...] BA? mu?-kil? DINGIR u LUGAL [...] / [...] x-nu-šu? i-na pu-ḫur x [...] / [... d?]⸢UTU?⸣ u ⸢dIŠKUR pi?⸣-i-šú-nu i-x [...] / [...] ⸢kib⸣-rat LÍMMU-ti ki-i iš-⸢tén?⸣ [...] / [...] ⸢LUGAL⸣-ú-tu KUR aš-šur.KI e-x [...] / [...]-šú ez-zu-te i-na KIN ni-⸢kil⸣-[ti ...] / [...] ⸢e⸣-ṭè-er na-piš-ti-šú a-⸢na⸣ [...] / [...] ⸢ṭè?⸣-em DINGIR-ti-šú GAL-ti x [...] / [...]…

Scholarly note

Royal inscription of Ashurbanipal or a late Sargonid successor, edited by Jamie Novotny & Joshua Jeffers (RINAP 5, 2018–). ORACC text Q009282.

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/Q009282/..
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/Q009282/.

Related tablets

Related sources

~2450 BCE

Stele of the Vultures

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.

~2100 BCE

Code of Ur-Nammu

Among the oldest surviving written law collections. It provides an early witness to royal justice and specified compensation, rather than a starting date for law itself.

~1754 BCE

Code of Hammurabi (stele)

A major surviving ancient law collection, carved on a basalt stela over two meters tall. Royal authority and legal decisions become a monument; this is not a code in the modern sense.