Position in chronology
SAA 05 006. Transporting Logs (ABL 0732)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 5(1) [To the ki]ng, my lord: your [servant] Nashir-Bel. [Good] health to the king, my lord! (4) The land of the king [is well], the forts of the [king] a[re well]. The king, my lord, can [be glad]. (7) I have b[rought 1],200 [door-beams] and [1],200 roof-b[eams] to the river. [...] the king [...] (Break) (r 2) [...] the [...]s in the r[iver]. (r 3) [As soon as] I have bro[ught] an equ[al number] of troops [into the forts, I will promptly bring them to the ri[ver] bank; afterwards, the king, my lord, may do as pleases.
State Archives of Assyria, volume 5 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
[a-na] ⸢LUGAL⸣ EN-ia / [ARAD]-⸢ka⸣ mNIGIN—EN / [lu DI]-mu a-na LUGAL EN-ia / [DI-mu a]-na KUR šá LUGAL / [DI-mu a]-na ḪAL.ṢU-MEŠ ša [LUGAL] / [ŠÀ ša] LUGAL EN-ia lu [DÙG] / [x]-lim-02-me GIŠ.[ŠÚ?.A?-MEŠ] / [x]-lim-02-me GIŠ.⸢ÙR*⸣-[MEŠ] / [ina] UGU ÍD ⸢uq?⸣-[ṭa-rib] / [x x] LUGAL [x x x] / [x x]+⸢x⸣ šu bu [x x x x] / [x]-MEŠ ina ⸢ÍD?⸣ [x x x] / [ki-ma?] LÚv.ERIM-MEŠ ú-sa-an-[šil?] / [ina] ⸢URU*⸣.ḪAL.ṢU-MEŠ ú-se-⸢rib⸣ / ⸢la⸣-aḫ-ru-ub ina UGU ⸢ÍD⸣ / ⸢lu⸣-qa-rib ur-ki-ti / ⸢ki⸣-i šá LUGAL i-la-u-ni / ⸢le⸣-pu-uš
Scholarly note
Royal correspondence from Assyria's northern frontier under Sargon II, edited by Giovanni B. Lanfranchi & Simo Parpola (SAA 5, 1990). ORACC text P334521.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) ? — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P334521). 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/P334521/.
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.