Position in chronology
Ashurbanipal 055
Written in modern English
Ashurbanipal, king of the world and king of Assyria, describes a lion hunt conducted on foot as part of his princely sport. Handlers released a wild lion — born on the open steppe — from its cage, and Ashurbanipal shot it three times with arrows, yet the animal refused to die. He then drew his iron belt-dagger and, by the authority of Palil, god of the steppe, who had granted him strength and virility, drove the blade into the lion and killed it.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — scholar edition
RINAP 5(1) I, Ashurbanipal, king of the world, king of Assyria — while (carrying out) [my princely] spor[t], they had [a fi]erce [lion] that was born in the steppe (lit. “of its plain”) brought out of a cage and, while on foot, I pierced (it) three times with arrow(s) [(but)] its life did not come to an end. Through the command of the god Palil, the king of the steppe who had generously gr<anted> me power (and) vir[ilit]y, I subsequently stabbed it with my iron belt-dagger [(and)] it laid down (its) life.
Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period, volume 5 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
a-na-ku mAN.ŠÁR-DÙ-A MAN ŠÚ MAN KUR AN.ŠÁR.KI ina me-lul-⸢ti⸣ [NUN-ti-ia UR.MAḪ] ⸢ez⸣-zu šá EDIN-šú TA ŠÀ GIŠ.na-bar-ti / ú-še-ṣu-nim-ma ina GÌR.II-ia ina GIŠ.KAK.⸢TI 3-šú as-ḫul?⸣-[(ma?)] ⸢na-piš⸣-ta-šú ul iq-ti / ina qí-bit dIGI.DU LUGAL EDIN ša dun-nu zik-[ru]-⸢tu⸣ ú-šat-<li-ma>-⸢an-ni⸣1 / EGIR ina GÍR AN.BAR šib-bi-ia as-ḫul-šu-[(ma)] na-piš-tú iš-kun
Scholarly note
Royal inscription of Ashurbanipal or a late Sargonid successor, edited by Jamie Novotny & Joshua Jeffers (RINAP 5, 2018–). ORACC text Q003754.
Attribution
Image: Created by Jamie Novotny and Joshua Jeffers, 2015-18. Lemmatized by Jamie Novotny, 2015–16, 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/rinap/Q003754/..
Translation excerpted from Novotny, J. & Jeffers, J. 2018–. The Royal Inscriptions of Ashurbanipal (668–631 BC), Aššur-etel-ilāni (630–627 BC) and Sîn-šarra-iškun (626–612 BC), Kings of Assyria. RINAP 5. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap5/Q003754/.
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