Position in chronology
SAA 01 052. Collecting, Weighing, and Distributing Gold (ABL 1458)
Translation · reference
High confidence(1) To the king, my lord: your servant Ṭab-šar-Aššur. Good health to the king, my lord! (4) As to this gold of which the king wrote to me: "Why did you give it? [......] of [......]," (6) this [......] 11 talents [......] alone [......] to the king [...... (Break) (r 1) of the king [......] one shekel from the išk[āru] dues [......]. They have weighed it in my presence but have not yet received it. (r 4) We have not [yet] received the rest of the gold [from PN]. He has returned one mina of the yield of wool (retrieved) from the son of [Kenî], but [... minas] of the gold is still [outstanding]. (r 7) Half a mina of silver [......] without [...]; the son of Kenî told me: "[.......]; nobody should [...... (Rest broken 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/P334918/
Why it matters
Transliteration
a-na LUGAL be-[lí-ia] / ARAD-ka mDÙG.GA—IM—d[aš-šur] / lu DI-mu a-na LUGAL be-lí-[ia] / ina UGU KUG.GI an-ni-e ša LUGAL be*-⸢lí*⸣ [iš-pur-an-ni] / ma-a a-ta-a ta-ad-din* ⸢ma⸣-a* ⸢ša*⸣ [x x x x x] / an-ni-ú [x x x x x x x x x x x x] / 11 GÚ.UN [x x x x x x x x x x x x] / ú-di-šú [x x x x x x x x x x x x] / ina UGU LUGAL [x x x x x x x x x] / ša ⸢LUGAL⸣ [x x x x x x x x x x x x x] / 01 GÍN TAv ŠÀ…
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 P334918.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P334918). source
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/P334918/.
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.