Position in chronology
SAA 05 292. Building the City Wall of Dur-Šarruken (GPA 242)
Translation · reference
High confidence(1) [T]o the ki[ng], my lord: [yo]ur [servant] Šarru-e[mu]ranni. [Good] health to the king, my lord! (4) As to what the king, my lord, wrote to m[e]: "Šarru-emur[anni] keeps coming and tel[ling me] that the city wall of Du[r-Šarruken ...] (Break) (r 2) Marduk-remanni [...]. (r 3) I shall be there too and keep wa[tch] over Iqiša-Marduk and his associates, until the king inst[ructs me] otherwise. (r 7) I have heard that Šarru-emuranni [has] come; [he is] in [...], and is indeed do[ing] the work.
Source: 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/P336169/
Why it matters
Transliteration
[a]-⸢na LUGAL⸣ EN-ia / [ARAD]-⸢ka⸣ m⸢MAN*—IGI⸣.LAL-an-ni / [lu] ⸢DI⸣-mu a-na ⸢LUGAL⸣ EN-ia / ⸢ša LUGAL⸣ EN iš-pur-an-⸢ni⸣ / ma-a ma-ʾa-ad mMAN—IGI.LAL-[an-ni] / il-la-ka i-qa-[bi-a] / ma-a BÀD ša URU.⸢BÀD⸣—[MAN—GIN] / ⸢ú-x⸣+[x x x x x x x] / ⸢x⸣ [x x x x x x x x] / mdMES—rém-⸢ni x⸣+[x x x x] / ana-ku ina* ŠÀ*-ma ana-ku ma*-⸢ṣar*⸣-[tu] / ša mBA-šá—d⸢MES ù⸣ [o] / ša is-si-šú a-⸢na-ṣar* 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 P336169.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from Giovanni B. Lanfranchi and Simo Parpola, The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part II: Letters from the Northern and Northeastern Provinces (State Archives of Assyria, 5), 1990. Lemmatised by Mikko Luukko, 2009-11, as part of the AHRC-funded research project “Mechanisms of Communication in an Ancient Empire: The Correspondence between the King of Assyria and his Magnates in the 8th Century BC” (AH/F016581/1; University College London) directed by Karen Radner. The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/saao/P336169/..
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/P336169/.
Related tablets
Related sources
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.