Position in chronology
Adad-narari I 18
Translation — scholar edition
RIAo(1') I built that wall anew. I removed the weak (and) old beams, supports, and lashings (and) installed new beams, supports, and lashings. I made (them) reach between the wall [and] the door. I built the wall of the bakehouse from its foundations to its crenellations. [I] restored it. Moreover, I deposited my monumental inscription (therein). (11') In the future, may a future ruler, when he renovates that wall (when) it becomes dilapidated, return my monumental inscription and my inscribed name to its place. The god Aššur will (then) listen to his prayers. (15') (As for) the one who erases my inscribed name and writes his (own) name or discards my monumental inscription, may the god Aššur, the exalted god, the one who dwells in Eḫursagkurkurra, [...] ...
Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online — scholar edition (ORACC / MOCCI).
Transliteration
x x x x x x x ⸢i⸣-ga-⸢ra⸣ / šá-a-tu a-na eš₁₅-šu-ut-te ar-ṣi-ip / GIŠ.ÙR.MEŠ ši-ip-šá-te ù nap-de-e / ⸢an⸣-šu-te ù la-be-ru-te ú-né-⸢kir₆⸣ / ⸢GIŠ⸣.ÙR.MEŠ ši-ip-šá-te ù nap-de-e / ⸢GIBIL⸣.MEŠ ú-ki-in ⸢be?⸣-er-te i-ga-ri / [u] KÁ qa-ab-⸢li ú-te⸣-ṣi i-ga-ra / [ša] ⸢É⸣ LÚ.MUḪALDIM.MEŠ iš-tu uš-še-šu / [a-di] ⸢gaba⸣-dib-bi-šu e-pu-uš a-na aš-ri-šu / [ú]-te-er ù na-re-ia aš-ku*-un / [a]-⸢na⸣ ar-kat…
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 Q005755.
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/Q005755/..
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/Q005755/.
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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.