Position in chronology
Ashurbanipal 023
Written in modern English
This text opens with a dedication to the goddess Mullissu — supreme ruler, the foremost among the Igīgū and Anunnakū gods, and the most splendid of all goddesses. She is queen of queens, a form of Ištar worthy of every praise, endowed with sexual charm and clothed in awe-inspiring radiance. Her lordly majesty surpasses all other gods across every human settlement, and she holds dominion over everything in heaven and the underworld, grasping the bond that holds the bright firmament in place. The passage breaks off before her dwelling is named.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — scholar edition
RINAP 5(1) [For the goddess Mul]lis[s]u, exalted ruler, the pre-eminent one among the Igīgū and Anunnakū gods, the most splendid of goddesses, the que[en of que]ens, the Ištar worthy of praise, who is endo[w]ed with sexual charm (and) filled with awe-inspiring radiance, the supreme lady whose lordly majesty is the most outstanding (and) whose divinity is the greatest among the gods of [a]ll settlements, the very competent one, the lady of all things that (are found) in the whole (lit. “territory”) of heav[e]n and netherworld, [the one who holds] the bond of the bright firmament, who[se] place is…
Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period, volume 5 — scholar edition (ORACC).
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Transliteration
[a-na d]⸢NIN.LÍL⸣ ru-ba-tu ṣir-tu e-tel-lat dí-gì-gì u dGÉŠ.U šá-ru-uḫ-tum i-lá-a-ti šar-⸢rat⸣ [šar-ra]-⸢a⸣-ti / diš-tar ta-na-da-a-ti šá ku-uz-bu za-aʾ-⸢nat⸣ ma-lat nam-ri-ri be-el-tu šur-bu-tú ša ina DINGIR.MEŠ / ⸢kul?⸣-lat? da-ád-me šu-tu-qát be-lut-sa šur-ba-a-ta DINGIR-⸢us-sa⸣ dZÍB be-let DÙ mim-ma šum-šú šá ina paṭ šá-ma-⸢me⸣ u qaq-qa-ri1 / [ṣa-bi-ta-at?] ⸢mar⸣-kas bu-ru-um-me KÙ.MEŠ šá ina…
Scholarly note
Royal inscription of Ashurbanipal or a late Sargonid successor, edited by Jamie Novotny & Joshua Jeffers (RINAP 5, 2018–). ORACC text Q003722.
Attribution
Image: Created by Jamie Novotny and Joshua Jeffers, 2015-18. Lemmatized by Jamie Novotny, 2015–16, 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/rinap/Q003722/..
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/Q003722/.
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