Position in chronology
Ashurbanipal 054
Written in modern English
Ashurbanipal, king of the world and king of Assyria, declares that the god Aššur and the goddess Ištar had destined him for heroism. The god Palil, who goes before him, led him out triumphantly to hunt in the open steppe. There, in that wide and wild terrain, a pack of raging lions — fierce animals of the mountain breed — attacked him and surrounded his royal chariot. By the command of Aššur and Ištar, his great divine lords, he faced them with a single harnessed team — but the text breaks off here before the outcome is described.
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, for who[m] (the god) Aššur — the king of the gods — (and) the goddess Ištar — the lady of battle — determined a destiny of heroism, [...]: The god Palil, the one who goes before me, let me go triumphantly hunting in the steppe. For pleasure ... [...] I went out. (3b) In the steppe, a widespread place, rag[ing] lions, a ferocious mountain breed, attacked [me and] surrounded the chariot, the vehicle of my royal majesty. By the command of (the god) Aššur (and) the goddess [Ištar], the great gods, my lords, with a single team [harnes]sed to…
Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period, volume 5 — scholar edition (ORACC).
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Transliteration
a-na-ku mAN.ŠÁR-DÙ-A MAN ŠÚ MAN KUR AN.ŠÁR.KI šá AN.ŠÁR LUGAL DINGIR.⸢MEŠ d15⸣ be-let MÈ ši-mat qar-ra-du-ti i-ši-mu-⸢uš⸣ [...] / dIGI.DU a-lik maḫ-ri ba-ʾu-ú-ri ⸢ša⸣ EDIN šal-ṭiš ú-še-⸢piš⸣-an-ni ki-i mul-ta-ʾu-u-ti A SAL NAB [...] / ú-ṣi ina EDIN áš-ri rap-ši la-ab-bi na-ad-[ru-(u)]-ti i-lit-ti ḫur-šá-a-ni ḪUŠ.MEŠ it-bu-[nim-ma] / il-mu-u GIŠ.GIGIR ru-kub LUGAL-ti-ia ina ⸢qí-bit AN.ŠÁR u d⸣[15]…
Scholarly note
Royal inscription of Ashurbanipal or a late Sargonid successor, edited by Jamie Novotny & Joshua Jeffers (RINAP 5, 2018–). ORACC text Q003753.
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/Q003753/..
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/Q003753/.
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