Position in chronology
SAA 13 128. Theft of Temple Property (ABL 0493)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 13(1) To the king, my lord: your servant, Aššur-reṣuwa, priest of Ninurta. Good health to the king, my lord. May Bel, Aššur, and Ninurta bless the king, my lord. May they give to the king, my lord, long days, everlasting years, long life, and the attainment of all he strives for. (11) In the time of the father of the king, my lord, the clergy of the temple of Ninurta cut off 3 fingers (worth) of golden appendages from the beams of gold at the head of Ninurta. I turned in a report to the father of the king, my lord. All the men [went] to meet [...]. (b.e. 20) (Break) (r 2) [...] inside [......]…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 13 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
a-na LUGAL EN-ia / ARAD-ka maš-šur—re-ṣu-u-a / LÚ.SANGA ša dMAŠ / lu šul-mu a-na LUGAL EN-ía / dBE aš-šur dMAŠ a-na LUGAL EN-ía / lik-ru-bu / UD-MEŠ GÍD.DA-<MEŠ> MU.AN.NA-MEŠ / da-ra-a-te la-bur TI.LA / ṣa-mur ka-šá-du / a-na LUGAL EN-ía li-di-nu / ina ŠÀ AD-šú ša LUGAL EN-ía / LÚ.TU—É ša É—dMAŠ / TAv ŠÀ GIŠ.ÙR-MEŠ ša KUG.GI / ša SAG dMAŠ 03 ŠU.SI / mu-še-ṣi-iʾ KUG.GI ib-ta-at-qu / ṭè-e-mu ina…
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 P334340.
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/P334340/..
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/P334340/.
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.