Position in chronology
Aššur-bel-kala 05
Translation — scholar edition
RIAo(1') (Too broken for translation) (2') [In my accession year (and in my first regnal year) after I sat on the thron]e of (my) ro[yal majesty in a grandiose manner, with the exalted strength of (the god) Aššur, my lord, who goes before me, with the ...] of the god Ninu[rta, who goes at my right hand, with the martial spirit of the god Adad, who goes at] my left hand, [I mustered my] chariots [and troops. Difficult roads ... which for the] passage of my chariots and troops [were not suitable, routes which were impassable, whose barriers even the] winged birds of the sky [could not pass, the…
Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online — scholar edition (ORACC / MOCCI).
Transliteration
[...] x [...] / [i-na šur-ru MAN-ti-ia (i-na maḫ-re-e BALA-ia) ša i-na] GIŠ.GU.ZA ⸢LUGAL⸣-[te ra-bi-iš ú-ši-bu] / [i-na e-mu-qe ṣi-ra-a-te ša da-šur EN-ia a-lik pa-ni-ia i-na? ...]-x ša dnin-⸢urta⸣ [a-lik im-ni-ia?] / [i-na lìb-be qar-di ša dIŠKUR a-lik? šu-me]-⸢li⸣-ia GIŠ.GIGIR.[MEŠ ù ERIM.ḪI.A.MEŠ-ia ad-ke] / [ger-ri.MEŠ pa-áš-qu-te? ... ša a-na me]-⸢tiq⸣ GIŠ.GIGIR.MEŠ ù ERIM.[ḪI.A.MEŠ la…
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 Q005986.
Attribution
Image: Based on A. Kirk Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC I (1114-859 BC) (RIMA 2), Toronto, 1991. Adapted by Jamie Novotny (2015-16) and lemmatized and updated by Nathan Morello (2016-17) for the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation-funded OIMEA Project 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/Q005986/..
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/Q005986/.
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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.