Position in chronology
SAA 05 225. Not All Reap What They Sow (CT 53 079)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 5(1) [To the king, my lord: your servant Adad-issiya. Good health to] the king, [my] lo[rd]! (4) [As to] the seed corn [about wh]ich the king, my lord, wr[ote me]: "Nabû-[...] must cultivate 1,000 (homers of) seed, Mannu-ki-Adad must cultivate [1],000, and you too must cultivate [1],000 (homers of) seed corn" — [wh]ere? I cannot do it! (10) [I] cultivate corn in the face of harsh [...]. They, by contrast, having planted their seed, [e]at from it, feed [their] horses [fr]om it, and (even) cultiva[te s]eed fro[m it]. (16) [They] have seized [...] from the Med[es ......] (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
[a-na LUGAL EN-ia] / [ARAD-ka mdIM—KI—ia] / [lu DI-mu a-na] LUGAL ⸢EN⸣-[ia] / [ina UGU] ŠE.NUMUN ⸢ša⸣ LUGAL EN iš-⸢pur⸣-[an-ni] / [ma-a md]AG—⸢x⸣ 01 lim ŠE.⸢NUMUN⸣ / ⸢le⸣-ru-⸢uš⸣ ma-a mman-nu—ki—⸢d?IM?⸣ / [01?] ⸢lim⸣ le-ru-uš ma-a ⸢at-ta⸣ / [01?]-⸢lim⸣-ma ⸢a⸣-ru-uš / ⸢ia?⸣-a-ka ⸢la mu⸣-qa-a.a pu-ut / [x x]+⸢x⸣-MEŠ-te ⸢dan⸣-na-te a-na-ku / [e]-ra-áš šu-nu ŠE.NUMUN / [e]-ta-ár-šú TAv ŠÀ-bi…
Scholarly note
Royal correspondence from Assyria's northern frontier under Sargon II, edited by Giovanni B. Lanfranchi & Simo Parpola (SAA 5, 1990). ORACC text P313494.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P313494). 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/P313494/.
Related tablets
Related sources
An early example of administrative writing from Uruk. Its fragmentary numerical entries and commodity signs document record-keeping during the formative period of writing.
A surviving administrative record of named people and livestock in the Ur III period. Together with other archives, such accounts reveal the work of managing animals, deliveries and institutional responsibility.
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.