Position in chronology
Sennacherib 1023
Translation — scholar edition
RIAo(1) (The god) Aššur, the father of the gods, the one who [...], the bridle that controls [...]; the god Anu, the powerful, [... whose ...] cannot be alte[red, ...]; the god Ea, the wise, the lord [...] who casts [...] down on grassland, [...]; the god Enlil, the greatest lord, the foremost of [...]; the god Sîn, the pure god, the lord of the crown, the one who [...] the one who widens [...]; the god Šamaš, the exalted judge, ... [...]; the god Adad, the canal inspector of heaven and earth, the one who gi[ves ...] to the people ... [...] ... [...] ... [...]
Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online — scholar edition (ORACC / MOCCI).
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Why it matters
Invokes the Assyrian divine pantheon — Aššur, Anu, Ea, Enlil, Sîn, Šamaš, Adad — as legitimating witnesses to a royal act, attesting the theological scaffolding Sennacherib deployed to underwrite his authority c. 695 BCE.
Transliteration
AN.ŠÁR AD DINGIR.MEŠ ⸢mu?⸣-[...] / rap-pu la-ʾi-⸢iṭ⸣ [...] / da-nu geš-ru x [...] / la ú-nak-⸢ka⸣-[ru ...] / dé-a er-šú EN? [...] / ša ina A.GÀR na-du-[ú ...] / dEN.LÍL EN šur-bu-u a-⸢šá-red⸣ [...] / d30 DINGIR KÙ EN AGA mu-x-[...] / mu-šam-dil x [...] / dUTU DI.KU₅ ⸢ṣi?-i?-ru?⸣ x (traces) [...] / dIŠKUR GÚ.GAL AN-e ù KI-tim ⸢na?⸣-[din? ...] / ⸢a⸣-na UN.MEŠ x x [...] / [x] x [...] x x ina ṣi-x [...] / [...] x x (x) [...]
Scholarly note
Royal inscription of an Assyrian king, published in the Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online project (RIAo). Translation reproduced from the ORACC edition. ORACC text Q004079.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P452192). source
Translation excerpted from Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online (RIAo), Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative (MOCCI), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; in association with the RINAP Project, University of Pennsylvania. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/riao/Q004079/.
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.
An early witness to systematic administrative notation at Kish. Its signs and numerals can be catalogued, but that does not establish a full translation or prove that it is the world's first writing.
An early surviving historical monument that joins named rulers, a territorial dispute and religious oaths. It shows how a city-state turned victory into a lasting public claim, without establishing that this was the first recorded conflict.