Position in chronology
SAA 05 250. Assembling Troops for War and Counting Rations (CT 53 047+)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 5(1) To the k[ing, my lord]: your servant [NN]. Good heal[th to the king, m]y [lord]! (4) [We ar]rived in [Kar-Aššur] on the 2nd day. The commander-in-chief, [the ..., the chie]f cupbearer, Taklak-ana-Be[l, Išmann]i-Aššur, and the governor[s of Si'imm]ê, Tillê, Guzan[a and Isa]na: these are the magnates w[ho] arrived [with u]s in Kar-Aššur. (11) As for the whole royal entourage and the ... of the magnates, none have arrived. We are readying the first contingent of Ne[rgal-e]ṭir which is arriving, just in case the king, my lord, should say: "Draw up the battle array and proceed against the…
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⸣ [be-lí-ia] / ARAD-ka [mx x x x x] / lu-u šul-⸢mu⸣ [a-na LUGAL be-lí]-⸢ia⸣ / UD 02-KAM ina ⸢URU⸣.[kar—daš-šur ni]-⸢iq*⸣-ṭi-rib / LÚ.tur-ta-nu [x x x LÚ].⸢GAL⸣—KAŠ*.LUL* / mtak-lak—a-na—⸢EN⸣ [mḪAL]-⸢ni*⸣—aš-šur / ù LÚ.EN.NAM-[MEŠ ša URU.si-ʾi-me]-e / URU.til-e URU.gu-za-⸢na⸣ [URU.i-sa]-na / an-nu-ti šú-nu LÚ.GAL-MEŠ ⸢ša⸣ [i]-⸢si*⸣-ni* / ina URU.kar—daš-šur iq-ri-bu-u-ni / ù…
Scholarly note
Royal correspondence from Assyria's northern frontier under Sargon II, edited by Giovanni B. Lanfranchi & Simo Parpola (SAA 5, 1990). ORACC text P313462.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P313462). 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/P313462/.
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.