Position in chronology
SAA 13 064. It is Not Our Work (ABL 0495)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 13(1) To the king, my lord: your servant, Urdu-Nabû. Good health [to the king], my lord. May Aššur, Sin, Ša[maš, Bel], Zarp[anitu, Nabû], Ta[šmetu, Ištar of] Ni[neveh, and Ištar of Arbela — these great gods who love your kingship — allow the king, my lord, to live 100 years. May they grant the king, my lord, the satisfaction of old age, extreme old age]. (Break) (r 2) t[o .....] (r 3) not [......] (r 4) The 1st day we dr[opped it]. (r 5) It is not our work — (r 6) (it is) nothing. (r 7) The king, my lord, can be glad.
State Archives of Assyria, volume 13 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
a-na LUGAL EN-ía / ARAD-ka mARAD—dPA / lu-u šul-mu [a-na LUGAL] EN-ía / aš-šur d30 dUTU [dEN] / dzar-pa-[ni-tum dAG] / dtaš-[me-tum d15 ša] / URU.[NINA d15 ša URU.arba-ìl] / [DINGIR-MEŠ an-nu-te GAL-MEŠ] / [ra-i-mu-te ša LUGAL-ti-ka] / [01 me MU.AN.NA-MEŠ a-na LUGAL EN-ia] / [lu-bal-li-ṭu] / [ši-bu-tu lit-tu-tu] / [a-na LUGAL EN-ia] / [lu-šab-bi-ú] / ⸢x⸣+[x x x x x] / a-⸢na⸣ [x x x x x] / la [x x…
Scholarly note
Letter from a temple priest or ritual official to Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal, edited by Steven Cole & Peter Machinist (SAA 13, 1998). ORACC text P334342.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P334342). source
Translation excerpted from Cole, S.W. & Machinist, P. 1998. Letters from Priests to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal. SAA 13. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa13/P334342/.
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.