Position in chronology
Ashurbanipal 121
Translation — scholar edition
RIAo(1') [... Ummana]ppa, (and) Tammar[ītu ... Parr]û — the son of Ummana[ldašu (Ḫumban-ḫaltaš II) ...] countless arc[hers ... T]eumman, the king of the land Elam, the brother of the[ir] father [...]. (5') [... Tanutamo]n, the son of the sister of Taharqa, the king of E[gypt, ...]. (7') [...] ... [...]
Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online — scholar edition (ORACC / MOCCI).
Why it matters
Names Elamite dynasts Ḫumban-ḫaltaš II and Teumman alongside the Kushite pharaoh Tanutamon, placing Assyria's simultaneous western and eastern military pressures within a single royal record.
Transliteration
[... mum-man]-⸢ap?-pa mtam-ma-ri⸣-[tu ...] / [... mpa-ru]-ú DUMU mum-man-⸢al⸣-[da-še ...] / [...] ⸢ina⸣ la mì-ni LÚ.ERIM.MEŠ GIŠ.[PAN ...] / [... m]⸢te⸣-um-man LUGAL KUR.e-lam-ti ŠEŠ AD-šú-[nu ...] / [... mUR-da-ma-né]-e DUMU NIN₉-šú šá mtar-qu-u LUGAL KUR.⸢mu⸣-[ṣur ...] / [...] (blank) [...] / [...] TI ŠÁ [...]
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 Q003820.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P396333). source
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/Q003820/.
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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.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history.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.