Position in chronology
SAA 21 007. God has Commanded the Destruction of the Land of Akkad (ABL 1165)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 21Beginning destroyed (1) your [...]s have been seized and despised in my name, your houses have been destroyed for my sake. (4) We did not know (about it, and so) did not overwhelm (them); wie had been asleep (but) we woke up and caused the army to attack. (6) From the beginning, why and for what reason did he do what he did? And the rebels who devised this plot, what fortune did they gain for themselves? Perhaps God himself has commanded the destruction of the Land of Akkad. What can we say? [...] before God. (r 4) [I shall do] as Aššur, Marduk and my [gods] enable me (to do). (r 6) Truly, he who [...s] on my behalf knows that[...] before my gods Rest destroyed
State Archives of Assyria, volume 21 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[x]-MEŠ-ku-nu ⸢x⸣ [x x x x x] / ina UGU MU-ía ṣab-tu ù se-lu-[ú] / É-MEŠ-ku-nu ina UGU-ḫi-ía ḫe-pa-a / a-ni-ni ul ni-di ul ni-is-ḫu*-pa* / ú-tu-la-ni nit-te-ba-a is-ḫu / nu-ul-te-eš-ḫi-ṭa ul-tu / re-eš-su šá i-pu-šú ina UGU mì-ni-i / ina UGU a.a-i-tú a-mat i-pu-uš-ma / u e-pi-šá-nu-tú šá nik-lu / a-ga-a ik-ki-lu mi-nu-u / SIG₅ ina IGI ra-ma-ni-šú-nu / iš-ku-nu mìn-de-ma DINGIR šu-u / ḫa-pu-ú šá…
Scholarly note
Royal correspondence under Assurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 21, 2018). ORACC text P237638.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from Simo Parpola, The Correspondence of Ashurbanipal, Part I: Letters from Assyria, Babylonia, and Vassal States (State Archives of Assyria, 21), 2018. Adapted by Jamie Novotny and lemmatised by Mikko Luukko, 2018, as part of the research programme of the Alexander von Humboldt Chair in the Ancient History of the Near and Middle East at LMU Munich (Karen Radner, Humboldt Professorship 2015). The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/saao/P237638/..
Translation excerpted from Parpola, S. 2018. The Correspondence of Assurbanipal, Part I: Letters from Assyria, Central Babylonia, and Vassal States. SAA 21. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa21/P237638/.
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Part of the earliest known body of international diplomatic correspondence. Akkadian, written in cuneiform on clay, was the lingua franca of Late Bronze Age statecraft — used between Egypt, the Hittites, Mitanni, Babylon, Assyria, and the Levantine vassals.