Position in chronology
SAA 13 158. Why Does the Crown Prince Torment Me So? (ABL 1149)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 13(1) [To the crown prince, my lord: your servant, NN.] [Good he]alth [to the crown prince, my lord. May Nabû and Marduk] bless [the crown prince, my lord]. (2) Concerning [what the crown prince, my lord, wrote to me, say]ing: "Why are you here? [Pas]s by and go on to the Inner City" — it is now the second time that the crown prince suddenly writes (like this), (when) it is not time for the sacrifices, and there is no ritual and nothing that would make them send for me hastily. (7) Why the same thing again? The crown prince should have come out so I could have seen his face and health; you…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 13 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
[lu-u šul]-mu [a-na DUMU—MAN EN-ia dPA dAMAR.UTU] / [a-na DUMU—MAN EN-ia] lik-ru-bu ina UGU [ša DUMU—MAN be-lí] / [iš-pur-a-ni] ⸢ma⸣-a a-na am—mì-ni an-na-ka at-ta / [ma-a] e-[ti]-⸢iq⸣ a-lik a-na URU.ŠÀ—URU an-nu-rig 02-šú / [a]-⸢na⸣ ár-ḫiš DUMU—MAN i-šap-pa-ra la-a si-mìn UDU.SISKUR-MEŠ / ⸢la*⸣-a dul-lu la me-me-e-ni ša ú-dal-làḫ-u-ni / i-šap-par-ú-ni-ni a-na am—mì-i-ni / is-se-niš tu-ú-ra…
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 P334756.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P334756). 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/P334756/.
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.