Position in chronology
Adad-narari I 39
Written in modern English
This brick belonged to the facing of the quay wall at the mouth of the palace canal — made for Adad-nārārī I, king of the world and son of Arik-dīn-ili, king of Assyria.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — scholar edition
RIAo(1) Palace of Adad-nārārī (I), king of the world, son of Arik-dīn-ili, king of Assyria: (brick) belonging to the facing (of the quay wall) at the mouth of the canal of the palace complex.
Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online — scholar edition (ORACC / MOCCI).
Why it matters
Marks Adad-nārārī I's construction of a quay wall at the palace canal: physical evidence of royal infrastructure investment at Aššur in the early Middle Assyrian period.
Transliteration
É.GAL m10-ERIM.TÁḪ MAN KIŠ / A GÍD-DI-DINGIR MAN KUR aš-šur / šá ki-si-ir-ti / šá KA-i na-ar-ti / šá É.GAL-la-ti
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 Q005776.
Attribution
Image: BM 090265 (British Museum, London, UK) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P427893). 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/Q005776/.
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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The earliest historical document in human history.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.