All tablets.

Esarhaddon 2002

(1') [...] ... [...] that house [...] ..., the tomb of Ešar<ra>-ḫammat, his wife, ... [...].

Esarhaddon 2004

Lacuna? (1') [...] king [... Zakūtu/Naqīʾa ... wi]fe ... [... Sennach]erib, king of the world, [king of Assyria, daughter-in-law of Sargon (II), king of the world, k]ing of [Assyria, mother of Esar]haddon, king of the world (and) king of [Assyria]; (6') [the gods Aššur, Sîn], Šamaš, Nabû, and Marduk, Ištar of Nineveh, (and) [Ištar of Arbela] glad[ly placed Esarha]ddon, my offspring, upon the throne of his father, [... whose] good ... [...] they made pre-[eminent ...] who marched [... from the] Upper [Sea] to the Low[er] Sea (and) who does not [have] an equal (therein); (and) who flattened his…

Esarhaddon 2005

(1) To the goddess Bēlet-Ninūa, who resides in Emašm[aš], great queen, her lady: (2b) Naqīʾa, wife of Sennacherib, king of Assyria, daughter-in-law of Sargon (II), king of the world, king of Assyria, commissioned a pectoral of red gold, which was inlaid with precious stone(s) weighing 3 3/4 minas. (6) She presented and dedicated (this object) for the preservation of the life of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, her son, and for her own life, for the stability of her reign, (and for) the well-being of her offspring.

Esarhaddon 2006

(r 1) To the queen, the goddess Mullissu, who resides in Ešarra, great queen, her lady: (r 2) Zakūtu, wife of Sennacherib, king of the world, king of Assyria, daughter-in-law of Sargon (II), king of the world, king of Assyria, mother of Esarhaddon, king of the world (and) king of Assyria, commissioned a gold ... that was inlaid with obsidian, [...]-stone, carnelian, pappardilû-stone, papparminu-stone, [...]-stone, (and) lapis lazuli weighing 1 1/2 minas. (r 7b) She presented [and dedicated] (this object) for the preservation of (the life of) Esar[haddon, her son], and for her own life, for the…

Esarhaddon 2007

(1) To the god(dess) D[N]: (2) Zakūtu, wife of Sennacherib, king of Assyria, dedicated (this object) for the (long) )life of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, her son, and for her (long) life.

Esarhaddon 2008

(1) [To the goddess Bē]let-Bābili, her lady: (2) [N]aqīʾa, wife of Sennach[er]ib, king of Assyria, daughter-in-law of Sargon (II), king of Assyria, mother of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, presented (this object) for the preservation of the life of her son and for her (long) life.

Esarhaddon 2009

(1) Naqīʾa, wife of Senna[cherib (...)].

Esarhaddon 2010

(1') [They (the gods) entered the orch]ards, groves, ... [...] ... [... through the] craft of the sage [“the washing of] the mouth,” “the open[ing of the] mouth,” [“bathing,” (and) “pu]rifica[tion”] (were recited) before [the stars of] the night: the gods [Ea, Šamaš], Asallu[ḫi, Bēlet-ilī], Ku[su], and [Ni]ngirima. (11') I washed its mouth ... [...] exalted [...] ... [...] ... [...] Label on the gown of figure on the left: (1) Image of Naqīʾ[a ...]

Religion & Myth

Religion & MythAstronomy & Mathematics

SAA 08 001. Thunder in Ab, King Ill (RMA 257) [weather]

(1) If in Ab (month V) Adad thunders, the day becomes cloudy, it rains, (and) lightning flashes: the waters will decrease at the source. (4) If Adad shouts on a cloudless day: there will be darkness — variant: famine — in the land. (6) Concerning this ill health, the king, my lord, should not worry (lit. 'should not speak from his heart'). (8) It is a disease of the season; all the people who are sick will get well. (11) Moreover, the king, my lord, who is one who reveres the gods — day and night he prays to the gods … (The text continues but the remainder is not preserved in the given transli…

SAA 10 044. Timing a Journey of the King (ABL 1141+) [from astrologers]

(1) [To the king, our lord: your servants Balasî] [(and) Nabû-aḫḫe-eriba]. [Good health t]o the king, [our lord]! May [Nabû and] Mar[duk] bless the king, our lord! (7) Concerning the journey to the city of [...] about which the king, our lord, wrote to us: if the king (is) in this house(?), in Tašritu (VII) it is good to travel. Or else the king will say: "Not [......]," [they sa]id. (reverse) This month is a 'loose' month; it should be left alone. Let the king go in the month of (its) entering. Let him kiss the ground, and let them perform the sacrifices.

SAA 10 206. Prayers and Rituals against Retrograding Mars (ABL 1401) [from exorcists]

[Nabû and] Marduk [to the king], my lord, may [they] bless! [Concerning the planet] Mars, [about which the king, my lord] wrote to me: [the king, my lord] does not know [that ......] ... it is. [......]-mera it moves [within the constellation] Virgo. [An attack] of locusts [......] ... ... it bears [radi]ance; [......] evil for Subartu. [......] these we shall remove. [Namburbi rituals and] šu'illa-prayers [before Ma]rs [......] ... continually [we shall perform]. Fault [there is none]. May the heart [of the king], my lord, [be glad ......] ... nu

SAA 10 259. Who to Come out Next? (ABL 0364) [from exorcists]

To the king, our lord: your servants Adad-šumu-uṣur (and) Marduk-šakin-šumi. Good health to the king, our lord! May Nabû and Marduk bless the king, our lord! (8) Concerning the men of the king, our lord, about whom he wrote to us: "Will you not indicate which ones are to come out?" — (13) the others, who have not performed (the rites), should come out tomorrow and perform (them). (17) The king, our lord, knows which ones have performed and which ones have not performed. We — how should we know? (24) Under the protection of the king, may Bel and Nabû point (them) out; let them come out and…

~665 BCE·Neo-AssyrianOur engine

SAA 13 073. Complaint of Sickness (ABL 0203)

To the king, my lord: your servant Nergal-šarrani. Good health to the king, my lord! May Nabû and Marduk bless the king, my lord, most greatly! It is a month to this day since I fell ill. It is a stinging pain. Ever since it began stinging me, the ⸢...⸣ have been stinging (me) from ...... (They say:) "It is the Hand of Dilbat (Venus); you are ill." (And they say:) "It is on account of the circuit(?) of the towers." I am afraid. Without (the authorization of) the king I will not act. Now then I have written to the king, my lord. Let it fall from the king's mouth (i.e., let the king give th…

~655 BCE·Neo-AssyrianOur engine

Ashurbanipal 001

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.

Ashurbanipal 002

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.

Ashurbanipal 003

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.

Ashurbanipal 004

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.

Religion & MythWriting & Literature

Ashurbanipal 005

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.

Ashurbanipal 006

Claims Ashurbanipal completed Esarhaddon's unfinished temples — including Eḫursaggalkurkurra at Aššur — framing construction piety as dynastic continuity and divine sanction for his kingship.

Ashurbanipal 007

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.

Ashurbanipal 008

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.

Ashurbanipal 009

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.

Ashurbanipal 010

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.

Ashurbanipal 011

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.

Ashurbanipal 012

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.

Ashurbanipal 013

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.

Ashurbanipal 014

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.

Ashurbanipal 015

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.

Ashurbanipal 016

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.

Ashurbanipal 017

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.

Ashurbanipal 018

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.

Ashurbanipal 019

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.

Ashurbanipal 020

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.

Ashurbanipal 021

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.

Ashurbanipal 022

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.

Ashurbanipal 059

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.

Ashurbanipal 068

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.

Ashurbanipal 069

Attests Ashurbanipal's full titulary tracing legitimacy through Esarhaddon and Sennacherib — the dynastic chain the Sargonids used to anchor royal authority across three generations.

Ashurbanipal 072

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.

Ashurbanipal 073

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.

Ashurbanipal 074

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.

Ashurbanipal 075

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.

Ashurbanipal 076

Chronicles Ashurbanipal's recapture of Mannean-occupied cities — Paddiri, Arsiyaniš, Eristeyana — documenting Assyrian efforts to reassert the northeastern frontier against a rival highland power.

Ashurbanipal 077

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.

Ashurbanipal 078

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.

Ashurbanipal 079

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.

Ashurbanipal 080

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.

Ashurbanipal 081

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.

Ashurbanipal 082

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.

Ashurbanipal 083

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.