Position in chronology
SAA 13 097. Arrival of Kushite Horses from the Magnates (ABL 0373)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 13(1) To the king, my lord: your servant Nabû-šumu-iddina. The very best of health to the king, my lord! May Nabû and Marduk bless the king, my lord! (7) 104 Kushite horses from the commander-in-chief; (9) 72 Kushite horses from the palace herald; (11) 69 Kushite horses from the chief cupbearer; (13) 1 Kushite horse from the deputy [...]: (r 2) [a total of 246 Kushite] horses have come in [to]day. (r 5) When are the horses trained to the yoke to come before the king, my lord? Let the king, my lord, send word so I can be alerted and I can have orders issued for the horses to stay overnight and be provisioned.
State Archives of Assyria, volume 13 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
a-na LUGAL be-lí-ia / ARAD-ka mdAG—MU—AŠ / lu DI-mu a-na LUGAL / be-lí-ia a—dan-niš a—dan-niš / dAG dAMAR.UTU a-na LUGAL / be-lí-ia lik-ru-bu / 01 me 04 KUR-MEŠ ku-sa-a-a / ša LÚv.tur-tan-ni / 72 KUR-MEŠ ku-sa-a-a / ša LÚv.NIGIR—É.GAL / 69 KUR-MEŠ ku-sa-a-a / ša LÚv.GAL—KAŠ.LUL / ⸢01⸣ KUR ku-sa-a-a / [ša x x]+⸢x⸣ 02-u / [x x x x x]+⸢x⸣-u / [PAB 02 me 46] KUR-MEŠ / [ku-sa-a]-⸢a⸣ UD-mu / [an-ni-u]…
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 P334249.
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/P334249/..
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/P334249/.
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.