Position in chronology
Ashurnasirpal II 130
Translation — scholar edition
RIAo(1) Palace of Ashurnasirpal (II), king of the world, king of Assyria, son of Tukultī-Ninurta (II), king of the world, king of Assyria, son of Adad-nārārī (II), (who was) also king of the world (and) king of Assyria: property of the temple of the god Ninurta.
Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online — scholar edition (ORACC / MOCCI).
Why it matters
Marks the palace contents of Ashurnasirpal II as sacred property of the god Ninurta, documenting the deliberate entanglement of royal and temple authority at the Assyrian court circa 875 BCE.
Transliteration
É.GAL mAŠ-PAP-A MAN ŠÚ MAN KUR AŠ / A TUKUL-MAŠ MAN ŠÚ MAN KUR AŠ / A 10-ERIM.TÁḪ MAN ŠÚ MAN KUR AŠ-ma / NÍG.GA É dMAŠ
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 Q004584.
Attribution
Image: BM 136400 (British Museum, London, UK) — from Kalhu (mod. Nimrud) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P428497). source
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/Q004584/.
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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The earliest historical document in human history.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.