Position in chronology
SAA 10 002. The Substitute King Reveals a Conspiracy (ABL 0223) [from astrologers]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 10(1) To the 'farmer,' my lord: your servant Nabû-zeru-lešir. Good health to my lord! May Nabû and Marduk bless my lord for many years! (6) I wrote down whatever signs there were, be they celestial, terrestrial or of malformed births, and had them recited in front of Šamaš, one after the other. They (the substitute king and queen) were treated with wine, washed with water and anointed with oil; I had those birds cooked and made them eat them. The substitute king of the land of Akkad took the signs on himself. (14) He cried out: "Because of what ominous sign have you enthroned a substitute…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 10 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
a-na LÚ.ENGAR EN-ia / ARAD-ka mdPA—NUMUN—SI.SÁ / lu DI-mu a-na EN-ia / dAG u dAMAR.UTU a-na EN-ia / MU.AN.NA-MEŠ ma-aʾ-da-te lik-ru-bu / GISKIM-MEŠ lu-u šá AN-e lu šá KI.TIM / lu-u ša BE—iz-bi am—mar ši-na-ni / a-sa-ṭar ina ba-at-ta-ta-a.a / ma-ḫar dUTU ú-sa-ad-bi-ib-šú-nu / ina GEŠTIN NAG-ú ina A-MEŠ TU₅ / ina Ì-MEŠ ŠÉŠ-MEŠ-šú MUŠEN-MEŠ am-mu-te / ú-sa-ab-ši-il ú-sa-kil-šú-nu / LUGAL pu-u-ḫi šá…
Scholarly note
Letter from a scholar (astrologer, exorcist, physician, lamentation-priest) to Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 10, 1993). ORACC text P334164.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P334164). source
Translation excerpted from Parpola, S. 1993. Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars. SAA 10. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa10/P334164/.
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.