Position in chronology
SAA 01 160. Collecting Barley for Palace Consumption (ABL 0843)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 1(1) [To the king, my lord]: yo[ur servant] Tariba-Issar. [Good he]alth to the king, my lord! (4) [I] stood [alongside] the king's road, [in fron]t of the gardens, but the king did not pay attention to me, speaking as he was with Raṣappai. I went to the city of Adian and spoke with the rab mūgi officer, but nobody came to greet me so I became scared. (r 4) Now, I have collected 500 homers (= 100,000 litres) of barley in the city of Kilizi, and would like to deliver it. If the king my lord commands: "Collect barley for three palaces," I will collect it in Adian and Arbela as well. (e. 1) The barley has not been piled up; they [......], I [......] Ṣilli-Bel [......]
State Archives of Assyria, volume 1 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
[a-na LUGAL be-lí-ía] / [ARAD*]-⸢ka*⸣ mta-⸢ri-ba⸣—15 / [lu DI]-mu a-na MAN EN-ia / [ina UŠ] KASKAL ša LUGAL / [pa]-⸢an*⸣ GIŠ.SAR-MEŠ / [a]-ti-te-zi LUGAL / uz-nu la iš-ku-na / TAv mra-ṣa-pa-a.a / i-da-bu-ub / a-na URU.EN-an / a-ta-al-ka / pa-an LÚv.GAL—mu-gi / aq-ṭí-bi / me-me-ni / la ú-ṣi-a / DI-mu la i-qí*-bi*-a* / a-pa-ta-làḫ / an-nu-rig / 05 me ŠE.PAD-MEŠ / ina URU.kàl-zi / up-ta-ḫi-ir…
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 P334588.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P334588). 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/P334588/.
Related tablets
Related sources
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.
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.