Position in chronology
SAA 12 067. Fragment of Aššur-etel-ilani Type Land Grant?
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 12(Beginning destroyed) (2) [...... x] vine[yards, ......] (3) [......] in ...[...; ......] (4) [......] 1 [vine]yard [......] (5) [...... x viney]ar[ds ......] (Rest destroyed)
State Archives of Assyria, volume 12 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[x x x]+⸢x x⸣+[x x x] / [x x x]+⸢x⸣ GIŠ.til-lit [x x x] / [x x x] ina Ú.⸢x⸣+[x x x] / [x x x] 01 GIŠ.⸢SAR⸣ [x x x] / [x x x x] ⸢GIŠ?.SAR?⸣ [x x x]
Scholarly note
Royal grant, decree or gift inscription of the Neo-Assyrian period, edited by Laura Kataja & Robert Whiting (SAA 12, 1995). ORACC text P336731.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P336731). source
Translation excerpted from Kataja, L. & Whiting, R. 1995. Grants, Decrees and Gifts of the Neo-Assyrian Period. SAA 12. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa12/P336731/.
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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.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.