Position in chronology
SAA 21 002. This No-Brother has Alienated You (Fs Grayson 227-234)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 21Beginning destroyed (1') [I have heard] the words [that th]is [no-br]oth[er] has concoct[ed], that he has spoken to you and that you have believed [him]. (3') I swear by Aššur (and) Marduk, my gods, that I did not know, nor have I said a word of what he has spoken to you, nor has anybody given me such advice! They are all but lies and vain words which he has invented and spoken for his own purposes. (7') And look at him now! After his revolt, as soon as I had robed (in purple) all the Babylonians who were captured at the first fighting and taken into my presence, and had tied a mina of silver…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 21 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
⸢dib*-bi*⸣ [šá] ⸢la—ŠEŠ⸣ [a]-⸢ga⸣-a ib-lu-⸢lu⸣ [al-te-me-šú-nu] / ki-i id-bu-⸢ba⸣-ku-nu-ši u at-tu-nu ⸢taq-qí-pa-šu⸣ / ina ŠÀ AN.ŠÁR dAMAR.UTU DINGIR-MEŠ-ía at-te-me ki-i mim-ma / ma-al id-bu-ba-ku-nu-ši a-mat ina ŠÀ-bi i-du-u / aq-bu-ú u mam-ma im-lik-an-ni al-la gab-bi pir-ṣa-a-te / ù šá-ra-a-te a-na ṣi-bu-ti-šú ⸢ik-kil⸣-am-ma id-bu-bu / ù šu-ú en-na-ma ul-tu ik-kìr LÚ.TIN.TIR.KI-MEŠ / ma-al šá…
Scholarly note
Royal correspondence under Assurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 21, 2018). ORACC text P394734.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P394734). source
Translation excerpted from Parpola, S. 2018. The Correspondence of Assurbanipal, Part I: Letters from Assyria, Central Babylonia, and Vassal States. SAA 21. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa21/P394734/.
Related tablets
Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.
Part of the earliest known body of international diplomatic correspondence. Akkadian, written in cuneiform on clay, was the lingua franca of Late Bronze Age statecraft — used between Egypt, the Hittites, Mitanni, Babylon, Assyria, and the Levantine vassals.