Position in chronology
SAA 10 265. Giving the Best Possible Advice to the King (CT 53 152) [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 [bles]s the king, my lord! (5) Concerning what the king, my lord, [wrote] to me: "Is this the [tru]th?" — may Bel and Nabû, [your gods], call to account [the one] who is [not honest] with the king, his lord! [...] recently [......; I] was confused. I did not see his [...], (but) perhaps the king, my lord, saw. What can I say? (15) In any case, I guarantee under oath: it shall be a great success. (r 1) If the king, my lord, had not attained his desire and i[f] he had not gone…
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 md]AMAR.UTU—GAR—⸢MU⸣ / [lu-u DI-mu] ⸢a⸣-na LUGAL EN-ia / [dPA u] ⸢d⸣AMAR.UTU a-na LUGAL EN-ia / [lik-ru]-⸢bu⸣ ina ⸢UGU⸣ ša LUGAL be-lí / [iš-pur]-⸢an⸣-ni ⸢ma⸣-a an-ni-tu-u ši-i / [ket]-⸢tu⸣ ša TAv LUGAL EN-šú / [la ke-nu-u]-ni dEN u dPA / [DINGIR-MEŠ-ka ina] ŠU.2-šú lu-ba-ʾi-iu-u / [x x x is]-su ḫa-ra-am-me / [x x x ad]-da-la-aḫ / [x x x x]+⸢x⸣-ti-šú la a-mur /…
Scholarly note
Letter from a scholar (astrologer, exorcist, physician, lamentation-priest) to Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 10, 1993). ORACC text P313567.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P313567). 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/P313567/.
Related tablets
Related sources
An early example of administrative writing from Uruk. Its fragmentary numerical entries and commodity signs document record-keeping during the formative period of writing.
A surviving administrative record of named people and livestock in the Ur III period. Together with other archives, such accounts reveal the work of managing animals, deliveries and institutional responsibility.
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.