SAA 01 183. Carchemish Under Assyrian Yoke (ABL 1287)

~715 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P334830

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 1

High confidence

(1) [To the king, my lord: your servant ...]. Good health to [the king, my lord]! (3) As to these people, [the king's] subjects, about whom the king my lord wrote to me, none of them are their servants. The king, my lord, should question these people who came: not a single man among them is a farmer, they are their litigants and creditors, relatives of the (king) of Carchemish. They will write down their report and communicate it to the Palace. (12) Now, people have got afraid at the king their lord's ilku duty [and grumbled]: "Why are they [persecuting] us month after month?" They keep…

State Archives of Assyria, volume 1 — scholar edition (ORACC).

Transliteration

[a-na LUGAL EN-ia ARAD-ka mx x x] / lu-u DI-mu : a-⸢na⸣ [LUGAL EN-ia] / ina UGU UN-MEŠ an-nu-ti LÚv*.ARAD-⸢MEŠ⸣ [ša LUGAL] / ša LUGAL be-lí iš-pur-⸢an⸣-[ni] / 01-en ina ŠÀ-bi LÚv.ARAD-MEŠ-šú-nu la*-[šú a-na] / UN-MEŠ an-nu-ti ša i-⸢li*-ku*⸣-[ni] / LUGAL be-lí : liš-al-⸢šú-nu LÚ⸣ 01-en [ina] ⸢ŠÀ-bi-šú⸣-[nu] / LÚv.ENGAR la-šú* UN-MEŠ : EN—ṣa*-si-šú-nu / ù EN—ḫa-bu-li-šú-nu : mám-ma-MEŠ-šú-nu / ša…

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 P334830.

Attribution

Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P334830). 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/P334830/.

Related tablets

Related sources

~3200 BCE

Proto-Cuneiform Account Tablet

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.

~2050 BCE

Drehem Cattle-Distribution Tablet

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.

~1340 BCE

Amarna Letter EA 153 — Abi-milku of Tyre

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.