Position in chronology
Arik-din-ili 8
Written in modern English
Several lines are missing at the start. What remains records that Arik-dīn-ili brought back 100 sheep and 100 oxen to his city, Aššur. Around the same time — though much of this passage is lost — 7,000 storage-containers were assembled on someone's orders, and a large battering-ram was built. Arik-dīn-ili then presented a gift to the goddess Ištar for his own life, the surrounding lines too damaged to read in full. Later, he seized the harvest of a man named Esini, killed Esini himself, and captured 33 chariots along with their crews. He then led away further chariot forces — the exact count is lost — and moved against the city of Arnuna in the land of Nigimḫi, described as a fortress; what he did there is broken off.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — scholar edition
RIAo(1') [...] ... he brought [...], 100 of their sheep, 100 of their oxen [...] to (his) city, Aššur. (4'b) At that time, [...] ... 7,000 storage-containers, in their mouths/by their command, in front of [...] ... a large battering-ram, he made. Arik-dīn-ili [...] … he gave his gift to the goddess Ištar [... for] his life [...]. (9') [...] powerful, Arik-dīn-ili carried off the harvest of Esini [...]. He killed Esini, 33 chariots of ... [...] with the .... Arik-dīn-ili led in [...] ... of his chariots. The chariots [... the city Ar]nuna of the land Nigimḫi, the fortress of the land ... [...] he…
Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online — scholar edition (ORACC / MOCCI).
Transliteration
[...] ki [...] / [...] ni? x x ⸢uru?⸣ [x] ke e a-di x x x [...] / [...] 100 ṣe-ni-šu-nu 1 ME GUD.MEŠ-šu-nu [...] / [...] a-na URU da-šur ub-la i-na u₄-mi-šu-ma [...] / [...] x-te 7 LIM PISAN i-na KA-ši-na a-na IGI ša [...] / [...] x ia-šu-ba GAL-ma e-pu-uš mGÍD-DI-DINGIR [...] / [...] x-na NÍG.BA-šu a-na diš₈-tár [...] / [...] x-ṭi-šu i-qiš [...] / [...] gap-šu mGÍD-DI-DINGIR BUR₁₄ ša me-si-ni…
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 Q005737.
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/Q005737/..
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/Q005737/.
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