Reading the tablets…
Reading the tablets…
The corpus
Every tablet in the corpus — sortable by date, title or period; filterable by theme and period. Use the controls below or change the URL parameters directly.
10301–10350 of 11131
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Beginning destroyed (1') [... who] s[inned] against my treaty; [I did not] ordain [them to die]. But y[ou …] (3') [...I] have not d[one a favour for] you [...] (4') a favour for you (pl.) [......] (5') From th[is] day on [you will ...] (6') and you will see [......] (7') I rejoi[ce]d [......] (8') seed [......] (9') in y[our] (pl.) presence [......] (10') do not [ ...] (11') I[f ......] (12') not [......] (13') and [......] (four lines broken away) (r 1) [sa]ying: "Re[port ......] (r 2) [w]hom they assign[ed ......] (r 3) and Elam [......] (r 4) came to p[ass] by my hands [...] (r 5) mutually…
Daily LifeEconomy(1) The king's word to Hunda[ru, king of Dilmun]: I am well, you [can be] gl[ad]. (3) Concerning what [you wrote] through [your] emissaries: (4) "Nabû-bel-šumati did not send [...] (5) within [...] (6) against the king [......] (7) who in [......] (8) against [......] (9) "Sen[d ......] (10) because he cam[e ......] (11) ... [......] (12) [......] (13) [......] (14) [...] I do not s[ee ......] (15) [...] ... [......] (16) will [no]t rea[ch ......] (17) "Y[ou .....] (18) [w]hy [......] (19) [...] rain to [......] (20) [...] not [......] (21) wind [......] (22) [I] have heard that [......] (23)…
Daily Life(Beginning destroyed) (4') [......] their [...] status. (5') [...] I will consolidate their [privil]eged status, and [...]. (6') You, who are my protégés, will be exempt [by order of ...], my god. (8') [As to what] you wrote, “The men (9') [of NN] and the offspring of Dummuqu (10') [... h]ave returned there,” you (11') [...] the house of D[ummu]qu (12') [...] ... [...] (rest broken away) (beginning broken away) (r 1') [......] ... (r 2') [...... W]hen you said, (r 3') “I will give [the ...]s to the king,” (r 4') [......] when (r 5') [......] your fixed-time messenger (r 6f') [......] I have…
Daily LifeEconomy(Beginning destroyed) (1') [D]N-nada, Ibnâ, Barik-ilu son of Marduk, Nergal-ipuš son of Nur-ili, Arit-abini son of Mušezib-ilu, Kudurru son of Ša-Nabû-šû, Mušezib-ilu, Ṭabihu, [servant of the] major-domo, [Na]bû-gamil son of Nabû-ušallim, [Mar]duk son of Kidin-Ea, Nabû-eriba son of Ayakki-ibni, in total, 11 (men): (r 5) arrest these men — not one of them may be missing — and [pla]ce them in his custody. [He should ta]ke them into my presence. (Rest destroyed)
Daily LifeEconomy(beginning broken away) (1') [The king’s word to NN], to [...], the people of Kar-Nergal [...] and Bit-Da[kkuri], old and young, every one [of my servants: I am well], you can be [glad]. (6') You [......] (7') [...] yourselv[es ...] (8') [...] Akkadians [...] (9') [...] ... [......] (rest broken away) (beginning broken away) (r 1') [......] ... [...] (r 2') [...] one boy [servant (and) ...] (r 3') [... were at]tacked, thereby [......] (r 4') They are [de]ad [......]. (r 5') May the foxes not [......]! (r 6') Now righten [......], (r 7') uproot [......] (r 8') [h]orse[s ......] (r 9') [...] ...…
Daily LifeEconomy(Beginning destroyed) (1') [...]s to [......] (2') [...] the circumference [......] (3') [...] them ...[......] (4') [...] my corn until [......] (5') you have placed [...]. Now [......] (6') [...] I’m wa[iting] for their defeat [......] (7') [...] And he must no he[ar ......] (r 1) [... t]o the da[y ......] (r 2) [... u]pon [...... ...] (r 3) [...] ... [...... ...] (r 4) [...] the top of [......] (r 5) [...] ... [......] *ABL 1253 (Rest destroyed)
Daily LifeEconomy(Beginning destroyed) (3') [...... s]inned (4') [......] placed (5') [... the Nabat]eans (6') [... w]rote (pl.) to you (7') [...... t]heir [...] (8') [...... re]turned [...]. (9') [As to (...) what you wro]te (10') [......] ... (11') [...... as]ked (12') [......] (13') [......] ... (14') [......] Ninurta (15') [......] you (16') [...... cur]ses (Rest destroyed)
Daily LifeEconomy(Beginning destroyed) (1') [......] servants (2') [......] when/if (3') [......] does not know [whether] they are [in] Assyria, and [the ...] of the king of Babylon [......] does not know whether they are [in Ela]m. (8') [...... t]ogether (9') [......] that with us (10') [...... you d]id (11') [......] (b.e. 16') [..... to G]N (r 1) [... I sen]t them (r 2) [... g]oes [...], oxen (r 3) [...] ... good sense (r 4) [... are sa]ying, ”[...] has advised [the king of] Assyria,” [and ... are sa]ying, ”he has advised [the king of Ela]m.” (r 8) [...] their [del]iberations (r 9) [... Now i]f you (r 10) […
Daily LifeEconomy(1) A tablet of Šamaš-šumu-ukin to the king, my brother: Good health to my brother! May Marduk, Zarpanitu, Nabû, Tašmetu and Nanaya bless my brother. (7) Concerning the ships of that emissary about which I wrote to my brother, saying, “I have ordered that they be released” — (10) since I had repeatedly written to my brother without getting an answer, I became afraid. (14) The king knows that Ummanigaš, that crown prince, is hot-headed. I thought, “Perhaps he will put something in the sacks holding this grain and cause poisoning.” (r 3) The king also knows that we — any of us — are not able to…
Daily Life(Beginning destroyed) (1') a[s ...... (2') [...... (3') [not] ye[t ...... (4') work [...... (5') with you [...... ... (6') in heaven [...... ... (7') the Elam[ites ...... (8') like servants [...... (9') to the land of Ak[kad ..... (10') does not agr[ee ...... (11') As soon as one [...... (12') from H[idalu...... (13') the town Alu-š[arri...... ... (14') the town Sam'u[na...... (15') ... and Bit-K[isiya ...... (16') of the town Kišadihubu [...... (17') Susa together with the town [...... (Break) (r 2') As to his servant Nabû-bel-[šumati ...... (r 3') we [...] a canvas in [...... (r 4') “Catch…
Daily Life(Beginning destroyed) (1') I went [to] my [......] (and) ap[pealed] to Assurbanipal, my lord, [for ...]. He released [the town Til-šikari] t[o me] as a [g]rant, [in the ...]th year, in the outskirts of [GN]. (5') [..., Ahi-d]uri came to me. I gave him [a field], saying: “It may not come out [...] from the presence of Ištar; Ištar [will ...] where you [...].” (8') [No]w Ahi-duri has [taken] a farm outside Til-šikari (and) sent me 25 souls of 3 orchards, saying: “See what I have given to my son!” (11') [I told him]: “You must cultivate 1,200 homers of seed. Why did you give possession of [the…
Daily Life(Beginning destroyed) (2') the king [......] (3') opened [and ......] (4') did not go [......] (5') to Zabban [......] (6') ... [......] (Break) (r 2) [...] the archers [whom the king, my lord, s]ent, have not a[rrived ...] (r 4) And the dais [...] (r 5) which is behind [...], (r 6) those with the king of Babylo[n ...] (r 7) Bit-A[m]ukani messa[ge ...] (Break) (l.e. 1) [...] Natan, the brother o[f NN] (l.e. 2) [...] who [...]
Daily LifeEconomy(1) A tablet of the magnates of Assurbani[pal to the ...], who [take] care of the pebbles [......]: (3) What are these words of yours [...] (4) [...] the leftovers fro[m ...] (5) [... the l]oss that yo[u ...] (6) [......] ... [......] (Rest destroyed)
Daily Life
Documents Ashurbanipal's forced resettlement of conquered populations into Egypt and the Levantine town of Qirbit — a concrete case of Assyrian demographic engineering as an instrument of imperial control.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Lists nine deities who legitimise Ashurbanipal's rule, each sponsoring a different royal quality — a snapshot of the theological machinery the Neo-Assyrian court used to underwrite imperial authority.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Claims divine sanction for Ashurbanipal's literacy — the gods granted him 'a broad mind' to master the scribal arts — embedding scholarly kingship ideology at the heart of Assyrian royal self-presentation.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Claims divine sanction not just for Ashurbanipal's military power but for his scribal learning — one of the clearest royal assertions that literacy itself was a gift of the gods and a mark of legitimate kingship.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Claims divine sanction for Ashurbanipal's legendary scribal literacy — a rare royal boast that a king personally mastered cuneiform learning, framing intellectual mastery as a god-given mark of legitimate rule.
Religion & MythWriting & Literature
Claims Ashurbanipal completed Esarhaddon's unfinished temples — including Eḫursaggalkurkurra at Aššur — framing construction piety as dynastic continuity and divine sanction for his kingship.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Records Ashurbanipal's restoration of Marduk's chariot and shrine roof, linking Assyrian royal piety toward Babylon's chief god to the ideological balancing act of ruling both Assyria and Babylonia simultaneously.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Documents Ashurbanipal's restoration of Sîn and Nusku to their temples and his refurbishment of sanctuaries across Assyria and Akkad, anchoring the king's legitimacy in cultic patronage rather than military conquest.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Attests the Sargonid practice of legitimating a crown prince through divine pre-election — Sîn's nomination in the womb — positioning Ashurbanipal's rule as cosmically ordained before Esarhaddon's formal designation.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Ashurbanipal's titulature — king of Assyria, Babylon, Sumer, and Akkad simultaneously — encapsulates the ideological claim that one ruler could hold the entire Mesopotamian world-order, north and south, under a single divine mandate.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Declares Ashurbanipal's kingship divinely foreordained from the womb by Aššur, Sîn, Šamaš, Adad, and Ištar — anchoring Sargonid legitimacy theology in a chain of gods stretching from conception to coronation.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Records Ashurbanipal's lavish furnishing of Ezida at Borsippa — an ebony bed for Marduk, silver wild-bull guardians, and 83 talents of zaḫalû-metal — documenting Assyrian royal patronage of the great Babylonian sanctuaries.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Preserves Ashurbanipal's own account of his divine mandate, naming seven patron deities across Assyrian and Babylonian pantheons — evidence of deliberate theological synthesis at the height of Sargonid imperial ideology.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Fuses two registers of Sargonid kingship in a single text: the lone-archer lion hunt staged as cosmic spectacle, and the Addaru akītu-festival linking royal legitimacy to the queen of the gods.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Ashurbanipal claims the wisdom of the antediluvian sage Adapa as personal divine endowment — coupling scribal mastery with military might to justify one king's embodiment of both priestly and warrior ideals.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Chronicles the chaotic succession crisis in Elam after Urtaku's death — rival claimants dying of mouse-bite and dropsy before the demon-like Teumman seized the throne — framing Assyrian intervention as cosmic necessity.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Records Elamite court violence — the killing of Indabibi and enthronement of Ḫumban-ḫaltaš III — framed as divinely ordained Assyrian dominance, linking Sargonid royal ideology directly to datable Elamite dynastic upheaval c. 655 BCE.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Preserves Ashurbanipal's account of Elamite vassal Indabibi's submission — fragmentary but direct evidence of how Assyrian royal inscriptions legitimised dominance over post-Teumman Elam.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Documents Assyrian military operations against Elamite royal survivors after the fall of Teumman, then records a diplomatic rupture: Ummanigaš detained Ashurbanipal's envoy and broke off communication — a prelude to renewed Assyrian-Elamite war.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Records Ashurbanipal's desecration of Elamite royal tombs and the repatriation of Nanāya's cult statue to Uruk after 1,635 years — anchoring a precise, self-serving Assyrian chronology of divine abandonment and imperial restoration.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Lists cult centers and temple furnishings restored by Ashurbanipal — including Emeslam at Cuthah, seat of Nergal — documenting the king's systematic program of sanctuary patronage across Assyria and Babylonia.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Records Ashurbanipal's furnishing of Marduk's sanctuary at Babylon — an ebony bed clad in gold, silver pirkus weighing six talents each — charting the Assyrian king's calculated piety toward the Babylonian god after decades of fraught Assyro-Babylonian conflict.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Credits Nabû's divine command for Ashurbanipal's defeat of four successive Elamite kings — including Teumman's beheading at the Battle of Til-Tuba — and their humiliation as carriage-pullers, linking Assyrian military conquest explicitly to scribal-god patronage.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
One of the standard royal titulary inscriptions of Ashurbanipal (RINAP 5, Q003767), attesting the Sargonid formula — great king, strong king, king of the world — as a fixed ideological claim to universal sovereignty.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Attests Ashurbanipal's full titulary tracing legitimacy through Esarhaddon and Sennacherib — the dynastic chain the Sargonids used to anchor royal authority across three generations.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Attests Esarhaddon's conquest of Egypt and Kush as refracted through Ashurbanipal's own royal ideology: the renaming of cities and installation of vassal kings recorded here illuminates how Assyria consolidated its briefest, most audacious imperial overreach.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Chronicles Ashurbanipal's first campaign against Taharqa of Egypt and Kush, picking up directly from Esarhaddon's earlier conquest and documenting Assyria's sustained military pressure on the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Records a Lydian king's dream-oracle in which a deity commands him to grasp Ashurbanipal's feet, linking Assyrian royal power to Gyges of Lydia's campaigns against the Cimmerians — one of the few cuneiform texts to name a Lydian ruler.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Names eleven divine sponsors of Ashurbanipal's Mannean campaign and records a night ambush routed across three leagues of steppe — pinning Assyrian theology of divinely mandated conquest to a specific military engagement.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Chronicles Ashurbanipal's recapture of Mannean-occupied cities — Paddiri, Arsiyaniš, Eristeyana — documenting Assyrian efforts to reassert the northeastern frontier against a rival highland power.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Records an Arab chieftain sending his daughter as housekeeper and reinstating lapsed tribute payments to Ashurbanipal — direct evidence of how the Assyrian court enforced loyalty through dynastic hostage-taking and fiscal obligation.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Records Ashurbanipal's reimposition of tribute on the Median ruler Uallî — including thirty additional horses — and his simultaneous campaigns against Median city-rulers who had defected, documenting Assyrian methods of coercion and reward on the empire's eastern frontier.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Records Assyria's grain relief to famine-struck Elam and the repatriation of Elamite refugees — then frames Urtaku's subsequent aggression as ingratitude, revealing how Sargonid kings cast humanitarian acts as instruments of political obligation.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Records Urtaku of Elam's unprovoked invasion of Babylonia despite Ashurbanipal's prior goodwill — a rare Assyrian royal account of the diplomatic breakdown that triggered the Assyro-Elamite wars of the 650s BCE.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Records Ashurbanipal's justification for invading Elam: Teumman's persecution of the royal Elamite refugees gave the Assyrian king a dynastic-legitimacy pretext rather than a naked conquest.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Names five Elamite kings — Ummanigaš, Ummanappi, Tammarītu, Kudurru, and Parrû — abandoned their thrones rather than face Assyrian arms, supplying a rare royal-inscription checklist of the dynastic chaos that consumed Elam after 653 BCE.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth
Ashurbanipal justifies refusing extradition of Elamite royal refugees to Teumman — framing the rejection as divine command — before narrating the campaign that ended at the Battle of the Ulaya River, 653 BCE.
Writing & LiteratureReligion & Myth