Position in chronology
SAA 05 223. Preparing for Battle with Urarṭian Troops (ABL 0596)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 5(Beginning destroyed) (1) as many as [...] remain in [......]... (4) "The Urarṭian troops advanced to the border; he went out to meet them in [...] of [......]" (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
ina [x x x x x] / mar [x x x x] / re-ḫe ú-⸢sa?-x⸣+[x x] / ma-a LÚv.e-mu-⸢qi⸣ / ša KUR.URI ina UGU / ta-ḫu-me / i-tal-ku-u-ni / ma-a i—ni-ir-ti-šú-nu / i-tú-⸢ṣi i⸣-ta-lak / a-na [x x x] / ša* [x x x x]
Scholarly note
Royal correspondence from Assyria's northern frontier under Sargon II, edited by Giovanni B. Lanfranchi & Simo Parpola (SAA 5, 1990). ORACC text P334410.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P334410). 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/P334410/.
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.