Position in chronology
Ashurbanipal 035
Written in modern English
Ashurbanipal, king of the world and king of Assyria, declares that with the backing of the god Aššur and the goddess Ištar he defeated his enemies and got what he wanted. Rusâ, king of Urarṭu, heard of Aššur's power, was seized by terror of Ashurbanipal's majesty, and sent envoys all the way to Arbela to pay their respects. Ashurbanipal then made two Elamite envoys — Nabû-damiq and Umbadarâ — stand before the Urarṭian delegation holding writing boards inscribed with insolent messages.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — scholar edition
RINAP 5(1) I, Ashurbanipal, king of the world, king of Assyria, [who] with the support of (the god) Aššur and the goddess Ištar, my lords, conquered my [enemies] (and) achieved my heart’s desire. (3b) Rusâ, the king of the land Urarṭu, heard about the mi[gh]t of (the god) Ašš[ur], my [lo]rd, and fear of my royal majesty overwhelmed him and he (then) sent his envoys to me in Arbela, to inquire about my well-being. I made Nabû-damiq (and) Umbadarâ, envoys of the land Elam, stand before them with writing boards (inscribed with) insolent m[es]sages.
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
[a]-⸢na⸣-ku mAN.ŠÁR-DÙ-A LUGAL ŠÚ LUGAL KUR AN.⸢ŠÁR⸣.[KI] / [šá] ina tukul-ti AN.ŠÁR u d⸢15⸣ EN.MEŠ-ia LÚ.[KÚR.MEŠ]-⸢ia?⸣ / ak-šú-du am-ṣu ma-la ⸢lìb⸣-bi-⸢ia⸣ m⸢ru-sa⸣-a / LUGAL KUR.ur-ar-⸢ṭa⸣ da-⸢na-an⸣ AN.⸢ŠÁR EN⸣-ia iš-me-ma / pu-luḫ-tú LUGAL-ti-ia is-ḫu-⸢up-šú-ma⸣ LÚ.MAḪ.MEŠ-šú / a-na šá-ʾa-al šul-⸢mì⸣-ia ⸢iš⸣-pu-ra ana qé-reb LÍMMU-DINGIR.KI / mdMUATI-SIG₅ mum-ba-da-ra-a LÚ.MAḪ.MEŠ šá KUR.ELAM.MA.KI / it-ti GIŠ.ZU.MEŠ ⸢ši⸣-pir me-re-eḫ-tú ul-ziz ina maḫ-ri-šú-un
Scholarly note
Royal inscription of Ashurbanipal or a late Sargonid successor, edited by Jamie Novotny & Joshua Jeffers (RINAP 5, 2018–). ORACC text Q003734.
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/Q003734/..
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/Q003734/.
Related tablets
Related sources
An early example of administrative writing from Uruk. Its fragmentary numerical entries and commodity signs document record-keeping during the formative period of writing.
An early witness to systematic administrative notation at Kish. Its signs and numerals can be catalogued, but that does not establish a full translation or prove that it is the world's first writing.
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.