Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

Ashurbanipal 062

~655 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·Q003761

Written in modern English

A prayer addressed to a great lord — powerful and splendid, foremost among the Igīgū and Anunnakū gods — whose name and full titles are lost where the tablet is damaged. Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria, identifies himself as the one who is devoted to the god's shrines, who reveres his great divinity day and night, and who guides gods and humanity. The reverse opens with Ashurbanipal calling himself son of the king of the gods, and fragments mention good health and shepherdship, but the surface breaks off before the closing petition to Marduk is complete.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — scholar edition

RINAP 5
High confidence
(1) T[o the gre]at [lord, ...], powerful, sple[n]­di[d, ...], foremost among the Igīgū and Anunnakū gods, lord of [...], unrivalled king, my lord, ... [...]: (5) I, Ashurbanipal, king of [Assyria, ...] ... [... the one who] is assiduous towards [your] place[s (of worship), ...] who day and night ... [...], the one who reveres your gre[at] divinity [...] ... [...] the one who directs gods and hum[anity ...], the one who prolongs (my) days, [...], I, Ashurba[nipal, ...], (rev. 1) son of the king of the gods [...] in his good physical health [...], shepherdship ... [...] (r 4) You (Marduk), be…

Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period, volume 5 — scholar edition (ORACC).

Transliteration

a-⸢na⸣ [EN] ⸢GAL-i⸣ [...] / gaš-⸢ru šit-ra-ḫu⸣ [...] / a-⸢šá⸣-red d⸢í-gì-gì⸣ u ⸢dGÉŠ.U EN⸣ [...] / ⸢LUGAL⸣ la ⸢šá⸣-na-an EN-⸢ía KU⸣ x [...] / ⸢ana?-ku?⸣ [m]⸢AN⸣.ŠÁR-DÙ-A MAN ⸢KUR⸣ [AN.ŠÁR.KI ...] / x-bu-u-⸢ti⸣ x x [...] / ⸢muš⸣-te-eʾ-u aš-⸢ri⸣-[ka? ...] / ⸢šá?⸣ ur-ru u GI₆ DIŠ IM x [...] / pa-liḫ DINGIR-ti-ka ⸢GAL⸣-[ti ...] / um?-ma-ma DIŠ AN x [...] / a-šir DINGIR.MEŠ u ⸢LÚ?⸣ [...] / mu-rik…

Scholarly note

Royal inscription of Ashurbanipal or a late Sargonid successor, edited by Jamie Novotny & Joshua Jeffers (RINAP 5, 2018–). ORACC text Q003761.

Attribution

Image: Created by Jamie Novotny and Joshua Jeffers, 2015-18. Lemmatized by Jamie Novotny, 2017, 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/Q003761/..
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/Q003761/.

Related tablets

Related sources