Position in chronology
SAA 14 383. Fragment of a Conveyance Text (ADD 1265)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 14(Beginning destroyed) (1) [......] (2) [wh]ether [his] sons (or) [his grandsons, seeks] a lawsuit or li[tigation with ...], with his sons [(and) his grandsons] (r 1) [he shall place] one talent of [...] in the la[p of ...] (Rest destroyed)
State Archives of Assyria, volume 14 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[x x]+⸢x⸣ [x x x x x x x] / ⸢lu⸣-u DUMU-MEŠ-[šú DUMU—DUMU-MEŠ-šú] / ⸢ša⸣ de-e-nu ⸢DUG₄⸣.[DUG₄ TAv mx x x] / TAv DUMU-MEŠ-šú [DUMU—DUMU-MEŠ-šú] / de-e-nu ⸢DUG₄⸣.[DUG₄ ub-ta-u-ni] / 01* GÚ*.⸢UN*⸣ [x x x x] / ina* bur-[ki dx x x x x]
Scholarly note
Neo-Assyrian legal transaction at the royal court of Nineveh, edited by Raija Mattila (SAA 14, 2002). ORACC text P336025.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from Raija Mattila, Legal Transactions of the Royal Court of Nineveh, Part II: Assurbanipal Through Sin-šarru-iškun (State Archives of Assyria, 14), 2002. Lemmatised by Melanie Groß, 2010–2011, as part of the FWF-funded research project "Royal Institutional Households in First Millennium BC Mesopotamia" (S 10802-G18) directed by Heather D. Baker at the University of Vienna. The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/saao/P336025/..
Translation excerpted from Mattila, R. 2002. Legal Transactions of the Royal Court of Nineveh, Part II: Assurbanipal through Sin-šarru-iškun. SAA 14. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa14/P336025/.
Related tablets
Related sources
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.
The earliest historical document in human history.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.
The oldest surviving law code in human history. The principle that the state — not the wronged family — defines and enforces justice begins here.