Position in chronology
Ashurbanipal 248
Translation — scholar edition
RINAP 5(1) For the god Marduk, his lord: Ashurbanipal, king of the world (and) king of Assyria, son of Esarhaddon, (5) king of the world, king of Assyria, (and) king of Babylon, had baked bricks made anew for Etemenanki.
Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period, volume 5 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
ana dAMAR.UTU UMUN-šú / mAN.ŠÁR-DÙ-A / MAN ŠÚ MAN KUR AŠ / A maš-šur-PAP-AŠ / MAN ŠÚ MAN KUR AŠ / MAN KÁ.DIŠ.KI / a-gur-ri / é-temen-an-ki / eš-šiš / ú-še-piš
Scholarly note
Royal inscription of Ashurbanipal or a late Sargonid successor, edited by Jamie Novotny & Joshua Jeffers (RINAP 5, 2018–). ORACC text Q008336.
Attribution
Image: Based on Grant Frame, Rulers of Babylonia: From the Second Dynasty of Isin to the End of Assyrian Domination (1157-612 BC) (RIMB 2; Toronto, 1995). Digitized, lemmatized, and updated by Alexa Bartelmus, 2015-16, 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/rinap/Q008336/..
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/Q008336/.
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The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.