Position in chronology
SAA 10 098. Wine Masters on Strike (ABL 0042) [from astrologers]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 10(1) To the king, my lord: your servant Akkullanu. Good health to the king, my lord! May Nabû and Marduk bless the king, my lord! (6) Yesterday, on the 3rd, Aššur and Mullissu went out in peace and re-entered (Ešarra) safely; all the gods who went out with Aššur took up their residence in peace. The king, my lord, can be happy. [May] Ašš[ur and Mullissu keep the king, my lord, alive] for a hundred years. (17) The king, my lord, did not question (the officials) who, in [...] and in the [... te]mple, fill the vats [in fr]ont of the king's table, (but) are now on strike, about whom I wrote to the…
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-lí-ia / ARAD-ka mak-kul-la-nu / lu-u šul-mu a-na LUGAL / be-lí-ía dAG u dAMAR.UTU / a-na LUGAL EN-ía lik-ru-bu / i—ti-ma-li UD 03-KÁM / aš-šur dNIN.LÍL ina šul-me / it-tu-ṣi-ú ina šá-li-in-ti / e-tar-bu-u-ni / DINGIR-MEŠ-ni gab-bu am—mar / TAv aš-šur ú-ṣu-u-ni / ina šul-me ina šub-ti-šú-nu / ⸢it⸣-[tu]-uš-bu / ŠÀ-[bu ša] LUGAL EN-ía lu [DÙG].⸢GA⸣ / aš-⸢šur⸣ [dNIN.LÍL] 01-me…
Scholarly note
Letter from a scholar (astrologer, exorcist, physician, lamentation-priest) to Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 10, 1993). ORACC text P333994.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P333994). 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/P333994/.
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.