Position in chronology
SAA 19 129. Failed Efforts to Win Hearts and Minds in Babylon (CTN 5 p. 21)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 19(1) [To the king, my lord: your servant NN. Good health to the king, my lord!] (4) [Concerning what the king w]rote to me: "Write the names of all the citizens of Babylon who have come to my side in a letter and send it to me!" (r 1) Nobody has come.
State Archives of Assyria, volume 19 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[a-na LUGAL be-lí-ia] / [ARAD-ka mx x x] / [lu DI-mu a-na LUGAL EN-ia] / [ša LUGAL] ⸢iš⸣-pur-an-⸢ni⸣ / ⸢ma⸣-a LÚv.DUMU-MEŠ—TIN.⸢TIR⸣.KI / mar ina ir-ti-ía / il-li-ku-ni-ni / MU-MEŠ-šú-nu / ina ŠÀ-bi e-gír-ti / šu-ṭur / še-bi-la / mi-nim-mi-ni / la il-li-ka
Scholarly note
Royal correspondence from Kalḫu (Nimrud) under Tiglath-pileser III or Sargon II, edited by Mikko Luukko (SAA 19, 2012). ORACC text P393659.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Kalhu (mod. Nimrud) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P393659). source
Translation excerpted from Luukko, M. 2012. The Correspondence of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II from Calah/Nimrud. SAA 19. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa19/P393659/.
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.