Position in chronology
SAA 13 008. No Deliveries from Talmusu on the 5th of Kanunu (ABL 1023)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 13(1) [To the king, my lord: your servant, Marduk-šallim-ahhe, the one who blesses you. Good health to the king, my lord. May Aššur, Bel, Nabû, Sin, Šamaš, Ištar of Nineveh, and Ištar of Arbela very g]reatly bless [the king, my] lord. May they give to the king, my lord, lon[g days] and years of physical well-being. (15) This 5th day of Kanun (X) belongs to Talmusu. Nothing has been brought; no one came. Nevertheless for the sake of the life of the king, my lord, [I have performed and p]resented every sac[rifice] before Aššur [and the gods of] the king, my lord. (r 5) (Rest destroyed)
State Archives of Assyria, volume 13 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[a-na LUGAL be-lí-ia] / [ARAD-ka mdAMAR.UTU—DI—PAB-MEŠ] / [ka-ri-ib-ka] / [lu DI-mu a-na LUGAL be-lí-ia] / [daš-šur dEN dAG] / [d30 dUTU] / [d15 ša URU.NINA] / [d15 ša URU.arba-ìl] / [a-na LUGAL] be-lí-[ia] / [a—dan-niš a]—dan-niš lik-ru-bu / [UD-MEŠ] ⸢ar*⸣-ku-ú-ti / MU.AN.NA-MEŠ ⸢ṭu*-ub*⸣ UZU / a-na LUGAL be-lí-ia / lid-di-nu / UD 05-KAM an-ni-ú šá ITI.AB / ša URU.tal-mu-si šu-ú / me-me-ni la…
Scholarly note
Letter from a temple priest or ritual official to Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal, edited by Steven Cole & Peter Machinist (SAA 13, 1998). ORACC text P334682.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from Steven W Cole, Peter Machinist, Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Priests to Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal (State Archives of Assyria, 13), 1998. Lemmatised by Mikko Luukko and Silvie Zamazalová, 2011-13, as part of the AHRC-funded research project “Mechanisms of Communication in an Ancient Empire: The Correspondence between the King of Assyria and his Magnates in the 8th Century BC” (AH/F016581/1; University College London) directed by Karen Radner. The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/saao/P334682/..
Translation excerpted from Cole, S.W. & Machinist, P. 1998. Letters from Priests to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal. SAA 13. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa13/P334682/.
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.
The single most important literary discovery of the 19th century. It rewired the understanding of the Bible's literary context and proved that the Mesopotamian flood tradition is older. It is the oldest surviving epic poetry in human history.
The literary tradition is no longer anonymous from this point. Authorship — the idea that a specific human voice composes a specific work — enters the historical record with her.