Position in chronology
SAA 21 122. Nabû-bel-šumati Seized and Sent to Assyria (646-IV-26) (ABL 0879)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 21(1) A tablet of Ummanaldasu, king of Elam, to Assurbanipal, king of Assyria: good health to my brother. (3) From the beginning the Martenians have sinned against you. They brought Nabû-bel-šumati across the river, initiating the fights between [Assyria] and Elam. Then you wrote: "Send Nabû-bel-šumati here," and I seized Nabû-bel-šumati and sent him to you. The Marteanians, who had brought Nabû-bel-šumati to Elam in the first place,[rebell]ed against me. Certain people of mine li[ving] on the waterline got wind of it, and they went and slew them in Lahiru. (13) I shall now send people who live…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 21 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
IM mum-man-al-da-si LUGAL KUR.NIM.MA.KI / a-na mAN.ŠÁR—DÙ—A LUGAL KUR—AN.ŠÁR.KI lu-u DI-mu / a-na ŠEŠ-ia TAv SAG LÚ.mar-te-na-a.a / iḫ-ti-iṭ-ṭu-ú-nik-ka mdPA—EN—MU-MEŠ / a-na a-ḫu-la na-aṣ-ṣu-u-ni bir-ti [KUR—AN.ŠÁR].⸢KI⸣ / bir-ti KUR.NIM.MA.KI us-sa-an-ḫi-iṣ-[ṣu 0] / id—da-a-te at-ta tas-sap-ra ma-a mdPA—EN—MU-MEŠ / še-bi-la aṣ-ṣa-bat mdPA—EN—MU-MEŠ us-se-bil-ka / LÚ.mar-te-na-a.a ša TAv SAG…
Scholarly note
Royal correspondence under Assurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 21, 2018). ORACC text P393823.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from Simo Parpola, The Correspondence of Assurbanipal, 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/P393823/..
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/P393823/.
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.