Position in chronology
SAA 01 049. Mustering the Chariotry of the Magnates (CT 53 112)
Translation · reference
High confidence(1) [To the king, my lord: your servant Ṭab-šar-Aššur. Good heal]th to [the king, my lord!] (4) [As I wrote] to the ki[ng, my lord], I am [receiving] the chariots of the magnates on the afternoon of the 16th and they are giving them over to me — the Comm[ander-in-Chief], the Sartinnu, the Vizier, the Palace Herald, the Chief [Cupbearer], the Treasurer, and the governor of [Calah]; in all 1[00] chariots capable of carrying ...[...]. (12) The chariots of the C[hief Eunuch] and the governor of Nineveh [...] are missing; what does the king my lord say? (Rest destroyed or untranslatable)
Source: Parpola, S. 1987. The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part I: Letters from Assyria and the West. SAA 1. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa01/P313527/
Why it matters
Transliteration
[a-na LUGAL EN-ia] / [ARAD-ka mDÙG—IM—aš-šur] / [lu DI]-⸢mu a⸣-[na LUGAL EN-ia] / [ki-i] ⸢ša⸣ a-na ⸢LUGAL⸣ [EN-ia áš-pur-an-ni] / [UD] ⸢16⸣-KAM ina sa-ḫar [UD-me] / [GIŠ].GIGIR-MEŠ ša LÚv.GAL-MEŠ a-[ma-ḫar] / [i]-da-nu-u-ni LÚv.tur-[ta-nu] / [LÚv].⸢sar⸣-tin-nu LÚv.⸢SUKKAL⸣ / [LÚv].⸢NÍGIR⸣—É.GAL LÚv.⸢GAL⸣—[KAŠ.LUL] / LÚv.⸢IGI⸣.DUB LÚv.EN.NAM ⸢ša⸣ [URU.kal-ḫa?] / PAB 01 [me] GIŠ.GIGIR-MEŠ ša sal…
Scholarly note
Royal correspondence under Sargon II, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 1, 1987). Letter from a governor or high official to the king of Assyria. ORACC text P313527.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from Simo Parpola, The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part I: Letters from Assyria and the West (State Archives of Assyria, 1), 1987. Lemmatised by Mikko Luukko, 2009-11, as part of the AHRC-funded research project “Mechanisms of Communication in an Ancient Empire: The Correspondence between the King of Assyria and his Magnates in the 8th Century BC” (AH/F016581/1; University College London) directed by Karen Radner. The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/saao/P313527/..
Translation excerpted from Parpola, S. 1987. The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part I: Letters from Assyria and the West. SAA 1. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa01/P313527/.
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.