Position in chronology
Ashurnasirpal II 003
Translation — scholar edition
RIAo(1) To the god Ninurta, the strong, the almighty, the exalted, foremost among the gods, the splendid (and) perfect warrior whose attack in battle is unequalled, the eldest son who commands battle (skills), offspring of the god Nudimmud, warrior of the Igīgū gods, the capable, ruler of the gods, offspring of Ekur, the one who holds the bond of heaven (and) netherworld, the one who opens springs, the one who walks the wide netherworld, the god without whom no decisions are taken in heaven and netherworld, the swift, the ferocious, the one whose command is unalterable, foremost in the (four)…
Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online — scholar edition (ORACC / MOCCI).
Transliteration
ana dMAŠ geš-ri dan-dan-ni MAḪ SAG.KAL DINGIR.MEŠ qar-du / šar-ḫu gít-ma-lu šá ina MÈ la-a iš-šá-na-nu ti-bu-šú / IBILA reš-tu-ú ḫa-mim tuq-ma-te bu-kur dnu-dím-mud UR.SAG / dí-gì-gì Á.GÁL ma-lik DINGIR.MEŠ i-lit-ti é-kur mu-kil mar-kas / AN-e KI-ti pe-tu-ú nag-be ka-bi-si KI-tim DAGAL-ti / DINGIR šá ina ba-lu-šú EŠ.BAR AN-e u KI-tim NU KUD-su mu-nàr-bu / ek-du šá la-a e-nu-ú qí-bit KA-šú SAG.KAL…
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 Q004457.
Attribution
Image: Based on A. Kirk Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC I (1114-859 BC) (RIMA 2), Toronto, 1991. Adapted by Jamie Novotny (2015-16) and lemmatized and updated by Nathan Morello (2016-17) for the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation-funded OIMEA Project 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/Q004457/..
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/Q004457/.
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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.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.