Position in chronology
Sennacherib 205
Translation — scholar edition
RINAP 3(1) Sennacherib, king of the world, king of Assyria, the one who fashioned image(s) of (the god) Aššur and the great gods, I: I built a house for Aššur-nādin-šumi, my eldest son, and laid its foundation(s) with limestone, stone from the mountains. I had (it) made with the craft of the god Kulla and I raised (it) as high as a mountain.
Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period, volume 3 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
md30-PAP.⸢MEŠ⸣-SU MAN ŠÚ MAN KUR aš-šur / e-piš ⸢ṣa⸣-lam AN.ŠÁR u DINGIR.MEŠ GAL.MEŠ ana-ku / É a-⸢na⸣ maš-šur-MU-⸢MU⸣ GAL DUMU-ia / DÙ-ma ina NA₄.pi-i-⸢li⸣ NA₄ KUR-i / UŠ₈-šú ad-di ina ši-pir dkulla / ⸢ú⸣-še-piš-ma / ú-zaq-qi-ir ḫur-šá-niš
Scholarly note
Royal inscription of Sennacherib, edited by A. Kirk Grayson & Jamie Novotny (RINAP 3, 2012–2014). ORACC text Q004010.
Attribution
Image: Created by A. Kirk Grayson, Jamie Novotny, and the Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period (RINAP) Project, 2014. Lemmatized by Jamie Novotny, 2013. The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/rinap/Q004010/..
Translation excerpted from Grayson, A.K. & Novotny, J. 2012–2014. The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib, King of Assyria (704–681 BC). RINAP 3. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap3/Q004010/.
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.