Position in chronology
Adad-narari I 07
Written in modern English
The Step Gate of the temple of Aššur — standing opposite the Gate of the Oath of the God of the Land and the Gate of the Judges — had fallen into disrepair: it sagged and shook. Adad-narari cleared the site down to the foundation pit and rebuilt the gate with limestone and mortar quarried from the city Ubasê, then sealed a monumental inscription inside it. He asks any future ruler who finds the structure decayed to restore it and return his inscription and his name to their proper place; if he does, Aššur will hear his prayers. The work was completed on the twentieth day of the month Muḫur-ilāni, during the eponymy of Šulmānu-qarrād.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — scholar edition
RIAo(35) At that time, the Step Gate of the temple of the god Aššur, my lord, which is opposite the Gate of the Oath of the God of the Land and the Gate of the Judges, (and) which was built (some time) ago, had become dilapidated, sagged, and shook. I cleared that site (and) reached its foundation pit. I built (it) with limestone and mortar from the city Ubasê. I restored it. Moreover, I deposited my monumental inscription (therein). (45) In the future, may a future ruler, when that site becomes old and dilapidated, renovate its dilapidated section(s) (and) return my monumental inscription (and) my inscribed name to their (text “its”) places. The god Aššur will (then) listen to his prayers. (80) Muḫur-ilāni, twentieth day, eponymy of Šulmānu-qarrād.
Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online — scholar edition (ORACC / MOCCI).
Transliteration
e-nu-ma muš-la-la ša É daš-šur EN-ia / šá tar-ṣi ba-ab-né-eš-DINGIR-ma-ti / ù ba-ab dDI.KU₅.MEŠ / šá i-na pa-na ep-šu e-na-aḫ-ma / iḫ-ḫi-is ù i-nu-uš / áš-ra šá-a-tu ú-pe-ṭé-er / dan-na-su ak-šu-ud / it-ti pu-li ù ep-ri šá URU.ú-ba-se-e / e-pu-uš a-na aš-ri-šu ú-te-er / ù na-re-ia aš-ku-un / a-na ar-kat UD.MEŠ NUN ar-ku-ú / e-nu-ma áš-ru šu-ú / ú-šal-ba-ru-ma e-na-ḫu / an-ḫu-su lu-di-iš na-re-ia…
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 Q005744.
Attribution
Image: Based on A. Kirk Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Third and Second Millennia BC (to 1115 BC) (RIMA 1), Toronto, 1987. Adapted by Jamie Novotny (2015-16) and lemmatized and updated by Nathan Morello (2016) for the Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative (MOCCI), a corpus-building initiative funded by LMU Munich and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (through the establishment of the Alexander von Humboldt Chair for Ancient History of the Near and Middle East) and based 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/Q005744/..
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/Q005744/.
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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.