Position in chronology
SAA 10 249. (no title) (ABL 1075) [from exorcists]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 10(1) [To the king, my lord: your servant Marduk-šakin-šumi. Good health to the king, my lord]! May [Nabû and Marduk bless the king, my lord]! May [Aššur, Sin, Šamaš, Bel], Nabu, [Nergal, Ištar of Nineveh] and Ištar of Ar[bela] ordain very much [vigour], health, h[appiness, physical well-being] and long-lasting d[ays] for [the king, my lord! [May they sa]te the king, [my] lord, with [old age] and fullness of life! [May they keep firm] the foundations of the [royal] thr[one of the king, my lord, until far-off days]! (Break) (r 2) [Da]y after day, mo[nth after month], year after year, up to a hundred ye[ars], [may] good and hap[py] tidings [reach] the king, my lord! (Remainder destroyed or too fragmentary for translation)
State Archives of Assyria, volume 10 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
⸢lik⸣-[ru-bu aš-šur d30 dUTU dEN] / dPA ⸢d⸣[U.GUR d15 šá NINA.KI] / d15 šá ⸢arba⸣-[ìl.KI ba-la-ṭu] / šá-la-mu ⸢ṭu⸣-[ub ŠÀ-bi ṭu-ub UZU] / ù a-rak* ⸢UD⸣-[me] a*-⸢na*⸣ [LUGAL EN-ía] / dan-niš dan-[niš] liq-bi-ú [ši-bu-tú] / lit*-tu-[tu] a-na LUGAL EN-[ía] / [lu-šab]-⸢bi⸣-ú* iš-di GIŠ.⸢GU⸣.[ZA] / [x] us [x x x x x] / [UD]-mu ana UD-me ⸢ITI⸣ [ana ITI] / MU.AN.NA ana MU.⸢AN⸣.[NA] / ša a-di 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 P334719.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) ? — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P334719). 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/P334719/.
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.