Position in chronology
SAA 10 316. Conspiracy Crushed - King Turned into a Misanthrope (CT 53 021) [from physicians]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 10(1) To the king, my lord: your servant Urad-Nanaya. The very best of health to the king, my lord! May Ninurta and Gula give happiness and physical well-being to the king, my lord! (7) The speech that the king, my lord, made to his servants about the former kings who had fallen ill: "How did their servants sit up with them all nights and carry them on litters! How (well) did they keep watch over them!" — (14) the king, my lord, made a speech about men, and all the ale[rt servant]s who have remembered their orders died of throbbing heart because of this speech of the king. (23) Aššur and 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 mARAD—dna-na-a / lu-u DI-mu ad—dan-niš ad—dan-niš / a-na LUGAL EN-ia dMAŠ u dgu-la / ṭu-ub ŠÀ-bi ṭu-ub UZU / a-na LUGAL EN-ia lid-di-nu / da-ba-bu ša LUGAL be-lí / TAv LÚv.ARAD-MEŠ-šú / id-bu-ub-u-ni ša LUGAL-MEŠ / maḫ-ru-ti ša im-ra-aṣ-ṣu-ni / ma-a LÚv.ARAD-MEŠ-šú-nu a-ke-e is-se-šú-nu / i-da-li-pu ina ŠÀ-bi GIŠ.NÁ-MEŠ / i-zab-bi-lu-šú-nu ma-ṣar-ta-šú-nu / a-ke-e…
Scholarly note
Letter from a scholar (astrologer, exorcist, physician, lamentation-priest) to Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 10, 1993). ORACC text P313436.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P313436). 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/P313436/.
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.