Position in chronology
SAA 05 152. Request for New Carts (ABL 0784)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 5(1) To the king, my lord: your servant Aššur-alik-pani. Good health to the king, my lord! (4) These words that the king, my lord, wrote me about Pihame, the deputy (governor), about the garrisons, about the reports, and about prompting the works — the king, my lord, did greatly ... his servant! (10) [...] the major-domo whom the king, [my lord] (11) [......] (12) [As to the Itu']eans [about whom the king, my lord, wrote] me, I shall appoint them to [...] the garrisons, to [the ... of] the village inspectors, t[o the ... o]f the towns, and t[o the fort]s. (18) [The king], my lord, can be glad…
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—a-lik—pa-ni / lu DI-mu a-na LUGAL EN-ia / di-ib-bi an-nu-ú-te ša LUGAL be-lí / ina UGU mpi-ḫa-me LÚv.02-e / UGU EN.NUN-MEŠ UGU ṭè-ma-a-ni / ina UGU ḫa-ar-du-ut-te ša dul-la-ni / iš-pur-an-ni LUGAL be-lí a-na ARAD-šú / [i]-sa*-ra-aṣ a—dan-niš / [x x]+⸢x⸣ LÚv.GAL—É ša LUGAL [be-lí] / [x x]+⸢x x x x x⸣ ma [x x] / [x x x x x x x]-a-a / ⸢x⸣+[x x x x x x]-⸢an⸣-ni /…
Scholarly note
Royal correspondence from Assyria's northern frontier under Sargon II, edited by Giovanni B. Lanfranchi & Simo Parpola (SAA 5, 1990). ORACC text P334555.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P334555). 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/P334555/.
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.