Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

Ashurnasirpal II 061

~875 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·Q004515

About this tablet

A badly damaged fragment of a royal inscription of Ashurnasirpal II (reigned 883–859 BCE), one of the most powerful early Neo-Assyrian kings. The surviving phrases — references to a border of 'my land,' the region of Zaban (a district in the central Tigris valley), tribute, and a city whose name may be Dūr-Lullumê — are the stock vocabulary of Assyrian royal annals recording military campaigns and the reorganisation of conquered territories. The tablet is broken into several pieces and is missing large portions, making a connected reading impossible, but the fragments belong to the extensive body of annalistic texts in which Ashurnasirpal II catalogued his conquests. Such inscriptions were deposited in temples and palaces to glorify the king before gods and future rulers.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Translation · reference

Low confidence
[...] ... [...] [...] and? they set(?) ... [...] [...] my ...-s ... [...] [... the city] Dūr-Lullumê(?) [...] [...] above/beyond the land of Zaban ... [...] [...] the border of my land I counted/reckoned ... [...] [...] ... tribute ... [...] [...] its corvée-labour/toil ... [...] [...] he/I comple[ted? ...] [...] ... [...]

Source: engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-12/v4-interpretation)

Translation · AI engine

read from photo
Low confidence
[...] ... [...] [...] and? they set(?) ... [...] [...] my ...-s ... [...] [... the city] Dūr-Lullumê(?) [...] [...] above/beyond the land of Zaban ... [...] [...] the border of my land I counted/reckoned ... [...] [...] ... tribute ... [...] [...] its corvée-labour/toil ... [...] [...] he/I comple[ted? ...] [...] ... [...]
7 uncertain terms
  • GAR-nu-ta-aUncertain verb form; possibly šakānu-derived ('they established/set'), but the reading of the signs after GAR is unclear in both photo and transliteration.
  • URU.BÀD-lu-lu-ma-a-aTentatively read as the city name Dūr-Lullumê ('Fort of the Lullumu'), a settlement in the Zaban region attested in Neo-Assyrian annals; BÀD sign is marked as uncertain with a half-bracket in the transliteration.
  • el-la-an KUR.za-ban'Above/beyond the land of Zaban' — Zaban is a known geographical designation for territory along the Lower Zab river; 'elān' ('above, beyond') is a common directional marker in Assyrian royal geography.
  • mi-ṣir KUR-ia am-nu'The border of my land I reckoned/assigned' — miṣiru ('border, boundary') with manû ('to count, assign') is standard annalistic phrasing for demarcating conquered territory.
  • an-ḫu-suLikely anḫu ('toil, exhaustion, corvée-labour') with a 3rd-person singular suffix; could refer to the burden/tax imposed on a population or the hardship of a campaign.
  • ú-ša-ak-lilTentative Š-stem of kalālu or šuklulu ('to complete, to finish, to make perfect'); restoration in the transliteration is uncertain (marked with ?).
  • ma-da-tuStandard Akkadian for 'tribute' (madattu); well attested in Neo-Assyrian annals but the surrounding context is broken and the sign reading carries a half-bracket.
Reasoning ↓

The photograph shows a clay tablet broken into at least four or five joining and non-joining fragments, with museum accession labels visible on the reverse of one piece (BM 121135, TH 1929 10-12 144, indicating a British Museum acquisition from a 1929 Telul al-Hayyat or similar excavation lot). The obverse face (the large central fragment) displays multiple horizontal lines of cuneiform wedges; the surface is worn and partially eroded, with the upper left corner and right edge missing. Individual wedge-groups are visible but at this resolution I can confirm only the general presence of multi-sign sequences consistent with Neo-Assyrian script — I cannot independently read specific signs to cross-check the transliteration sign by sign. The scholarly transliteration's heavy use of brackets and half-brackets (⸢ ⸣) is consistent with the visible surface damage. The terms KUR (land), MEŠ (plural marker), and what may be a place-name sequence in the fourth line are plausible from the sign clusters visible under magnification, but cannot be verified with certainty from the photo alone. The thematic tags 'law' and 'mythology' in the catalog metadata appear anomalous for what reads as a typical annalistic fragment; this may reflect broad ORACC genre tagging or a cataloging error.

Generated by claude-sonnet-4-6 · prompt 2026-05-12/v4-interpretation · May 12, 2026 · 3552 in / 1150 out tokens

Why it matters

One of the surviving royal inscriptions of Ashurnasirpal II, whose annals collectively document the territorial expansion and brutal suppression campaigns that defined early Neo-Assyrian imperial statecraft.

Transliteration

[...] x [...] / [...] u? GAR-nu-ta-a x [...] / [...] x.MEŠ-ia ú-x [...] / [... URU].⸢BÀD?⸣-lu-lu-ma-a-a [...] / [...] el-<la>-an KUR.za-⸢ban⸣ x [...] / [... mi]-⸢ṣir⸣ KUR-ia ⸢am⸣-nu x [...] / [...] x ma-⸢da⸣-tu x [...] / [... an]-ḫu-su x [...] / [... ú]-⸢ša⸣-ak-[lil? ...] / [...] x [...]

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 Q004515.

Attribution

Image: BM 121135 (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P422386). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-12/v4-interpretation).

Related tablets

Related sources