Position in chronology
SAA 05 084. The Mannean King Raids Urarṭian Cities (ABL 0381)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 5(1) To the king, my lord: your servant Aššur-reṣuwa. Good health to the king, my lord! (4) The Mannean has attacked the Urarṭian cities in the district along the lake shore but has left and gone up (the mountains). (9) Abaluqunu, the governor of Muṣaṣir, and Ṭunbaun, the governor of Kar-sipar[ri], have gone to the Mannean border, to guard (it). (r 4) The Urarṭian is in Ṭuruṣpâ, making his sacrifices. All the governors are with him.
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 maš-šur—re-ṣu-u-a / lu-u šul-mu a-na LUGAL EN-ía / KUR.man-a.a i-na ŠÀ URU-MEŠ-ni / ša KUR.URI-a.a / i—na-gi-e ša šid-di / ti-amat i-zu-qu-pu / i-ti-ši e-te-li / ma-ba*-lu-qu-nu LÚv.EN.NAM / ša URU.mu-ṣa-ṣi-ri / mṭu-un-ba*-un LÚv.EN.NAM / ša ⸢URU⸣.kar-si-par-[ri] / i-na UGU ta-ḫu-⸢me⸣ / ša KUR.man-a.a i-tal-ku / a-na ma-ṣar-te / KUR.URI-a.a / i-na URU.ṭu-ru-uš-pa-a šu-u / UDU.SISKUR-MEŠ-šú e-pa-áš / LÚv.EN.NAM-MEŠ gab-bu / i—pa-ni-šú šu-nu
Scholarly note
Royal correspondence from Assyria's northern frontier under Sargon II, edited by Giovanni B. Lanfranchi & Simo Parpola (SAA 5, 1990). ORACC text P334257.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P334257). 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/P334257/.
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.