Position in chronology
SAA 10 196. A King may not Stay in the Dark! (ABL 0005) [from exorcists]
Translation · reference
High confidence(1) To the king, my lord: your servant Adad-šumu-uṣur. Good health to the king, my lord! May Nabû and Marduk, and the great gods of heaven and earth bless the king, my lord, and give happiness and physical well-being to the king, my lord! (10) The charge of the 'Lady of Cults' is doing very well; the king, my lord, can be happy. (14) Why, today already for the second day, is the table not brought to the king, my lord? Who (now) stays in the dark much longer than Šamaš, the king of the gods; stays in the dark a whole day and night, and again two days? The king, the lord of the world, is the…
Source: Parpola, S. 1993. Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars. SAA 10. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa10/P333957/
Why it matters
Transliteration
a-na LUGAL be-lí-ia / ARAD-ka mdIM—MU—PAB / lu DI-mu a-na LUGAL EN-ía / dAG dAMAR.UTU DINGIR-MEŠ / GAL-MEŠ šá AN-e u KI.TIM / a-na LUGAL EN-ía lik-ru-bu / ṭu-ub ŠÀ-bi DÙG.GA UZU / a-na LUGAL be-lí-ia / li-di-nu / a-na pi-qit-ti ša dGAŠAN—GARZA / šul-mu a—dan-niš / lib-bu šá LUGAL be-lí-ia / a—dan-niš lu-u DÙG.GA / a-ta-a šá-ni-ú ina UD-mi / an-ni-e GIŠ.BANŠUR ina pa-an / LUGAL be-lí-ia la e-rab /…
Scholarly note
Letter from a scholar (astrologer, exorcist, physician, lamentation-priest) to Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 10, 1993). ORACC text P333957.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P333957). 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/P333957/.
Related tablets
Related sources
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.
Whatever its purpose, this single tablet shows that Babylonian mathematicians, working in base-60, had an arithmetic understanding of right triangles a millennium before Pythagoras was born.
The single most important literary discovery of the 19th century. It rewired the understanding of the Bible's literary context and proved that the Mesopotamian flood tradition is older. It is the oldest surviving epic poetry in human history.