Position in chronology
Ashurnasirpal II 044
About this tablet
A badly broken fragment of a royal inscription of Ashurnasirpal II, the ninth-century BCE Assyrian king famous for his military campaigns and his new capital at Kalhu (Nimrud). The surviving scraps preserve pieces of his standard titulary — his descent from Adad-nārārī — and echoes of his campaign itinerary through the mountain lands, naming the region of Urume and the pass of Babitu, and mentioning fortresses. Too little survives to reconstruct the full narrative, but the phrases match the formulaic language of his annals.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Only shreds of this text survive. What can still be read sounds like the standard boilerplate of Ashurnasirpal II's inscriptions: a reference to 'all the mountains,' his royal pedigree as descendant of Adad-nārārī of Assyria, and campaign geography — the broad land of Urume, a stretch of territory 'from the city of Babitu as far as' some lost destination, and fortresses along the way. Near the end a verb meaning 'I returned' or 'I restored' survives, likely part of a claim about turning back with plunder or reorganizing conquered territory. Everything between these phrases is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(All lines fragmentary) [...] ... [...] [...] all the mount[ains ...] [... king of] Assyria, son of Adad-nārārī, [...] [... the] extensive [land of] Urume [...] [... from the city Ba]bitu as far as [...] [...] the fortresses [...] [...] great [...] which(?) [...] [... I re]turned/restored [...] [...] ... [...]
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
[...] ʾa x [...] / [...] ka-liš ḫur-[šá-ni ...] / [...] KUR aš-šur A 10-ERIM.[TÁḪ ...] / [... KUR].⸢ú⸣-ru-⸢me DAGAL⸣-[tú ...] / [... URU.ba]-bi-te EN [...] / [...] ⸢URU⸣.bi-ra-⸢te⸣ [...] / [...]-a GAL-tú ⸢šá?⸣ [...] / [... ú?]-ter [...] / [...] 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 Q004498.
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/Q004498/..
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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