Position in chronology
SAA 13 173. We Are Rebuilding Babylon (ABL 0501)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 13(1) [To the king, my lord]: your servant, Rašil. May [Marduk and Zarpan]itu bless the king, my lord. (3) I [was a dead dog], but the king, my lord, revived me. He helped me conquer [my famine and h]unger. [Now if] I had not written [to] the king, my lord, concerning the house of my lords [and ...], they would not have sought [... from] my [hands, and the king, my lord], would not have stretched out [his hand towar]d me. (9) [And because the]y saw [that we ourselves] are rebuilding Babylon, they too complained. [Just now], when I heard, I wrote [to the king, my lord]. (Break) (r 2) [......] land of the king (r 3) (Break) (r 8) [...... s]ent (r 9) [The king should d]o [as he] deems best.
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 mTUK-ši—DINGIR / [dAMAR.UTU dzar-pa]-ni-tum a-na LUGAL EN-ía lik-ru-bu / [kal-bi me-e-te a]-⸢na⸣-ku LUGAL EN-a ub-ta-liṭ-a-ni / [su-un-qí ù bu]-bu-ti ul-tak-šid-an-ni / [a-du-ú ki-i] a-na UGU É—EN-MEŠ-e-a / [ù x x x a-na] LUGAL EN-ía la al-tap-ra / [x x x x ina ŠU.2]-ía ul ú-ba-ʾu-ú / [LUGAL be-lí ŠU-su a-na] ⸢UGU⸣-ia ul ú-ta-ri-ṣi / [ù ki-i i]-mu-ru-ma TIN.TIR.KI /…
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 P237672.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P237672). 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/P237672/.
Related tablets
Related sources
An early example of administrative writing from Uruk. Its fragmentary numerical entries and commodity signs document record-keeping during the formative period of writing.
A surviving administrative record of named people and livestock in the Ur III period. Together with other archives, such accounts reveal the work of managing animals, deliveries and institutional responsibility.
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.