Position in chronology
Adad-nerari III 06
Written in modern English
The inscription opens with an address to Adad, god of storms — canal inspector of heaven and the underworld, son of Anu, foremost among the Igīgū gods and warrior of the Anunnakū gods. Adad is described as robed in blazing light, riding the great storms, striking down evil, wielding a sacred whip, and hurling lightning. The dedication is made by Adad-nārārī III, who styles himself great king, strong king, king of the world, king of Assyria, peerless king, and exalted shepherd whose prayers and sacrifices find favor with the great gods — but the inscription breaks off here, and the rest of that line is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — scholar edition
RIAo(1) [To] the god Adad, canal inspector of heaven and netherworld, son of the god Anu, the perfectly splendid hero whose strength is mighty, foremost of all of the Igīgū gods, warrior of the Anunnakū gods, who is bedecked with luminosity, who rides the great storms (and) is clothed with fierce brilliance, who lays low the evil, who bears a holy whip, who makes the lightning flash, the great lord, his lord: (6) [Adad-nār]ārī (III), great king, strong king, king of the world, king of Assyria, unrivalled king, marvelous shepherd, the exalted vice-regent whose prayers (and) sacrifices the great…
Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online — scholar edition (ORACC / MOCCI).
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
[ana] ⸢d⸣IŠKUR gú-gal AN u ⸢KI-tim DUMU da-nim⸣ qar-du šar-⸢ḫu⸣ / ⸢gít⸣-ma-⸢lu ša⸣ pu-un-⸢gu⸣-lu ku-bu-uk-kuš a-šá-⸢red⸣ / ⸢d⸣í-gì-gì qar-rad dGÉŠ.U šá ḫi-it-lu-pu nam-ri-ri ra-kib / [UD].⸢MEŠ⸣ GAL.MEŠ ḫa-líp me-lam-me ez-⸢zu⸣-te mu-šam-qit ḪUL.MEŠ / [na-a]-⸢ši⸣ qí-na-⸢an⸣-zi KÙ-te mu-šab-riq NIM.GÍR EN GAL-e EN-šú / [m10-ERIM].⸢TÁḪ⸣ MAN GAL-ú MAN dan-nu MAN ŠÚ MAN KUR aš-šur MAN la šá-na-⸢an⸣…
Scholarly note
Royal inscription of an Assyrian king, published in the Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online project (RIAo). Translation reproduced from the ORACC edition. ORACC text Q004754.
Attribution
Image: Based on A. Kirk Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC II (858-745 BC) (RIMA 3), Toronto, 1996. Adapted by Jamie Novotny (2016) and lemmatized and updated by Nathan Morello (2016) for the Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative (MOCCI), a corpus-building initiative funded by LMU Munich and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (through the establishment of the Alexander von Humboldt Chair for Ancient History of the Near and Middle East) and based at the Historisches Seminar - Abteilung Alte Geschichte of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/riao/Q004754/..
Translation excerpted from Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online (RIAo), Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative (MOCCI), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; in association with the RINAP Project, University of Pennsylvania. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/riao/Q004754/.
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.
An early witness to systematic administrative notation at Kish. Its signs and numerals can be catalogued, but that does not establish a full translation or prove that it is the world's first writing.
An early surviving historical monument that joins named rulers, a territorial dispute and religious oaths. It shows how a city-state turned victory into a lasting public claim, without establishing that this was the first recorded conflict.