Position in chronology
SAA 10 343. (no title) (ABL 0028) [from lamentation priests]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 10(1) To the king, my lord: your servant Urad-Ea. Good health to the king, my lord! May Nabû, Marduk, Sin, Nikkal and Nusku bless the king, my lord! (9) The Moon god (and his consort) Nik[kal ......] (Break) (r 1) [......] have b[lessed the king, my lord], and given a life of distant days to the king, my lord! (r 6) I pray day and night for the life of the king, my lord.
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 EN-ía / ARAD-ka mARAD—dÉ.A / lu-u DI-mu / a-na LUGAL EN-ia / dAG dAMAR.UTU d30 / dNIN.GAL dPA.TÚG / a-na LUGAL EN-ia / lik-ru-bu / d30 dNIN.[GAL] / ⸢ik⸣-[tar-bu ba-laṭ] / na-piš-⸢ti⸣ [ša UD-me] / ru-qu-ú-ti / a-na LUGAL EN-ia / it-tan-nu / ana-ku UD-me mu-šú / ina UGU-ḫi ZI-MEŠ / ša EN-ia / ú-ṣal-la
Scholarly note
Letter from a scholar (astrologer, exorcist, physician, lamentation-priest) to Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 10, 1993). ORACC text P333980.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P333980). 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/P333980/.
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.