Position in chronology
SAA 13 099. Ninety-five Horses and Mules Arrived Today (ABL 0538)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 13(1) To the king, [my lord]: your servant Nabû-šumu-iddina. The very best of health to the king, my lord! May Nabû and Marduk bless the king, my lord! (8) 41 Kushite [horse]s from [...]na; (11) 42 cavalry mounts, (12) 5 mules: (13) 47 in all from Si'immê; (r 1) 7 cavalry mounts from Dur-Šarruken: (r 3) a total of 41 Kushite horses and 49 cavalry mounts — (r 6) 90 horses and 5 mules altogether — (r 8) a grand total of 95 horses and mules have come in today.
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 [be-lí-ia] / ARAD-ka mdPA—MU—AŠ / lu DI-mu a-na LUGAL / be-lí-ia a—dan-niš a—dan-niš / dAG dAMAR.UTU / a-na LUGAL be-lí-ia / lik-ru-bu / 41 [ANŠE.KUR.RA]-MEŠ / KUR.ku-sa-a-a / ša URU.[x x]+⸢x⸣-na / 42 KUR-MEŠ ša BAD-ḪAL-li / 05 ANŠE.ku-din-MEŠ / PAB 47 URU.si-iʾ-me-e / 07 KUR-MEŠ ša BAD-ḪAL-li / ša URU.BÀD—MAN—GIN / PAB 41 ANŠE.KUR.RA-MEŠ / KUR.ku-sa-a-a / 49 KUR-MEŠ ša BAD-ḪAL-li / PAB 90 ANŠE.KUR.RA-MEŠ / 05 ANŠE.ku-din-MEŠ / PAB 95 KUR-MEŠ / ANŠE.ku-din-MEŠ / UD-mu an-ni-ú / e-tar-bu-ú-ni
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 P334368.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P334368). 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/P334368/.
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.