Position in chronology
Ashurbanipal 186
Translation · reference
High confidence(1') [... I allowed ... to dw]ell (as safely) as if on a meadow [... te]rror in the steppe [...] ... well-being (5´) [... who] constantly [a]chieves his heart’s wish [...]s, birds, and fish. 7 lines that have been erased and smoothed over with traces of signs (1) I, Ashurbanipal, great king, strong k[ing], king of the world, king of Assyria, king of the four quarters (of the world); offspring of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, governor of Babylon, king of the land of Sumer and Akkad; descendant of Sennacherib, great king, strong king, king of the world, (who was) also king of Assyria — (4) (The…
Source: Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online (RIAo), Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative (MOCCI), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; in association with the RINAP Project, University of Pennsylvania. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/riao/Q007594/
Why it matters
Preserves Ashurbanipal's full titulature — 'king of the world, king of the four quarters' — within a royal inscription that also records deliberate erasure, attesting the scribal practice of revising official commemorative texts.
Transliteration
(erased line with traces of signs) / [... ú-šar]-⸢bi⸣-ṣa (erasure) par*-ga*-niš*(over ersaures)1 / [...] ⸢ḫur⸣-ba-ša ina EDIN / [...] x x šul-me2 / [...] ⸢it-ta⸣-na-al-⸢la⸣-ku bi-bil ŠÀ-šú / [...] x.MEŠ (erasure) MUŠEN.MEŠ u KU₆.MEŠ / a-na-ku mAN.ŠÁR-DÙ-A ⸢LUGAL GAL LUGAL⸣ dan-nu LUGAL ŠÚ LUGAL KUR AN.ŠÁR.KI LUGAL kib-rat LÍMMU-tim3 / È lìb-bi mAN.ŠÁR-PAP-AŠ LUGAL KUR ⸢AN.ŠÁR⸣.KI GÌR.NÍTA…
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 Q007594.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P394724). source
Translation excerpted from Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online (RIAo), Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative (MOCCI), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; in association with the RINAP Project, University of Pennsylvania. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/riao/Q007594/.
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