Position in chronology
SAA 17 043. Inspection of Work on Temples all over Babylonia (ABL 0516)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 17(1) To the king, my lord: your servant Bel-iddina: I would gladly die for the king, my lord! May Nabû and Marduk bless the king, my lord! Say to the king, my lord: (6) Concerning the writing-board of the temples, of which the king wrote to me: "Send the rest of the work and the [remain]ing writing-boards here through Šarru-amuranni!" — (12) I have now examined (all the temples) from Nemed-Laguda to Šasanaku and have written the writing-boards. As the king commanded, I shall send them to the king, my lord, via Šarru-amuranni. (17) After I had examined the (temples) from Zabban to Sippar in the…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 17 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
a-na LUGAL be-lí-ia ARAD-ka / mdEN—SUM-na a-na di-na-an / LUGAL be-lí-ia lul-lik dAG u dAMAR.UTU / a-na LUGAL be-lí-ia lik-ru-bu / um-ma-a a-na LUGAL be-lí-ia-a-ma / áš-⸢šú* GIŠ*.LE*.U₅*.UM*⸣ šá É.KUR-MEŠ / šá LUGAL iš-pu-ra um-ma ri-iḫ-ti / ⸢pa*⸣-aʾ-lu ù* GIŠ.LE.U₅.UM-MEŠ / ⸢ri⸣-[ḫe-e]-tu ina ŠU.2 m*LUGAL—a-mur-an-ni / šu-bi-la en-na a-du-ú ul-tu / UŠ*—dla-gu-du.KI a-di / ša-sa*-na-ku.KI…
Scholarly note
Babylonian-language letter to Sargon II or Sennacherib, edited by Manfried Dietrich (SAA 17, 2003). ORACC text P237075.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P237075). source
Translation excerpted from Dietrich, M. 2003. The Babylonian Correspondence of Sargon and Sennacherib. SAA 17. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa17/P237075/.
Related tablets
Related sources
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.