SAA 05 004. Floating Logs down the River (CT 53 210)

~715 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P313625

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 5

High confidence

(Beginning destroyed) (6) carries [......] (7) brought out [......] (8) [aler]ted the forts. (9) [I sa]w him and retur[ned] (10) [......] (r 1) I went [t]o Ša-Aššur-dubb[u]; the ci[ty] was taken in [my] presence, and they brought garrison troop[s] into it. (r 5) [The tr]oops inside their country are mo[bilized and as]sembled. (r 6) As for me, I did throw the log[s] into the river. Downstream from Eziat, past [which] I float [the logs], there are tr[oops ...] (Rest destroyed)

State Archives of Assyria, volume 5 — scholar edition (ORACC).

Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.

Transliteration

⸢x⸣+[x x x x x x x x] / ⸢LÚv⸣.[x x x x x x x] / ⸢x⸣ [x x x x x x x] / ⸢ar⸣-[x x x x x x x] / LÚv.[x x x x x x x] / i-za-bil-<u>-ni [x x x x] / ú-se-ṣi [x x x x] / ⸢URU⸣.ḪAL.ṢU-MEŠ uḫ-⸢tar⸣-[rid] / [a-ta]-⸢mar⸣-šú a-⸢suḫ⸣-[ra] / [x x x] ⸢ta⸣ a [x x x] / [ina] ⸢UGU⸣ mšá—aš-šur—du-⸢bu⸣ / at-tal-ka ina pa-na-tú-u-[a?] / ⸢URU?⸣ ṣa-bit LÚv.ša—ḪAL.ṢU-[MEŠ] / ina ⸢ŠÀ-bi⸣ ú-se-ri-bu / [LÚv.e-mu]-⸢qi⸣ ŠÀ…

Scholarly note

Royal correspondence from Assyria's northern frontier under Sargon II, edited by Giovanni B. Lanfranchi & Simo Parpola (SAA 5, 1990). ORACC text P313625.

Attribution

Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P313625). source
Translation excerpted from Lanfranchi, G.B. & Parpola, S. 1990. The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part II: Letters from the Northern and Northeastern Provinces. SAA 5. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa05/P313625/.

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.