Position in chronology
SAA 14 407. Purchase of a Vacant Lot
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 14(Beginning destroyed) (1) That [...] and va[cant] lot are purc[hased] and acquired. Any re[vocation], lawsuit, or li[tigation is v]oid. (r 1) Whoev[er in the future, at any t]ime, [...] (Rest destroyed)
State Archives of Assyria, volume 14 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
⸢x x⸣ [x x x x] / kaq-qi-ri pu-[ṣe-e] / šu-a-te za-⸢ar⸣-[pu] / laq-qi-u tú-[a-ru] / de-e-nu ⸢DUG₄⸣.[DUG₄] / ⸢la⸣-áš-šú man-⸢nu⸣ [ša ina ur-kiš] / [ina] ⸢ma⸣-ti-ma [x x x]
Scholarly note
Neo-Assyrian legal transaction at the royal court of Nineveh, edited by Raija Mattila (SAA 14, 2002). ORACC text P336751.
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/P336751/..
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/P336751/.
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The earliest historical document in human history.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.