Position in chronology
SAA 21 082. Copy of a Letter (646) (ABL 1142)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 21Beginning destroyed (r 1) [...] concerning it (r 2) they impressed [...] upon them. (blank space of three lines, then in smaller script:) (r 4) [Archival c]opy of the reply to the [l]ater letter. (r 6) [Month .... x]th [day], eponym year of Nabû-šar-ahhešu (646) . (rest uninscribed)
State Archives of Assyria, volume 21 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[x] ⸢x⸣ ina UGU-ḫi-i-ni / [bir]-ti IGI*.2-MEŠ-šú-nu / [0] ⸢un⸣-ta-ad-di-du / [ur]-⸢su⸣-tú šá gab-ri e-gír-te / [ur]-ki*-i-ti / [ITI.x UD x]-KÁM lim-me mdPA—MAN—PAB-MEŠ-šú
Scholarly note
Royal correspondence under Assurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 21, 2018). ORACC text P452647.
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/P452647/..
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/P452647/.
Related tablets
Related sources
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.
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.