Position in chronology
SAA 10 024. An Incident During Bel’s Return to Babylon (ABL 0032) [from astrologers]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 10(1) To the king, our lord: your servants Issar-šumu-ereš, Adad-šumu-uṣur and Marduk-šakin-šumi. Good health to the king, our lord! May Nabû and Marduk bless the king, our lord! (7) On the 18th day the god Bel, together with his divine escort, was in the city of Labbanat. Everything was just fine. (9) Bel-eriba and Nergal-šallim, servants of the household of the crown prince, under the jurisdiction of the governor of the city of Šamaš-naṣir, were attending, in Labbanat, to a strong horse harnessed in trappings of the land of Kush for the (ceremonial) entrance into the city (of Babylon).…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 10 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
a-na LUGAL be-li-ni / ARAD-MEŠ-ka m15—MU—KAM-eš / mdIM—MU—PAB mdAMAR.UTU—GAR—MU / lu šul-mu a-na LUGAL EN-ni / dAG u dAMAR.UTU / a-na LUGAL EN-ni lik-ru-bu / UD 18-KÁM dEN a-di DINGIR-MEŠ / ša is-se-šú ina URU.la-ab-ba-na-at / šul-mu a—dan-niš mEN—eri-ba / mdU.GUR—šal-lim LÚ.ARAD*-MEŠ / ša É DUMU—MAN ša ŠU.2 LÚ.EN.NAM / ša URU.dšá-maš—PAB-ir / ina UGU ANŠE.KUR.RA dan-ni / ša tal-lul-tú ša…
Scholarly note
Letter from a scholar (astrologer, exorcist, physician, lamentation-priest) to Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 10, 1993). ORACC text P333984.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P333984). 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/P333984/.
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.