Position in chronology
SAA 13 168. The Restoration of Esaggil is Completed (ABL 0119)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 13(1) To the king, my lord: your servant, Urdu-ahhešu. Good health to the king, my lord. May Aššur and Ešarra bless the king, my lord. May Marduk, Zarpanitu, Nabû, Tašmetu, Nanaya, and all the gods who dwell in Esaggil lengthen the days of the king, my lord. May they firmly establish the throne of the king, my lord. May they grant happiness and physical well-being to the king, my lord. (12) Esaggil, (including) the upper courtyard in the temple in which Bel and Beltia reside, together with its sanctuaries, and the cella of Tašmetu, the lower courtyard, together with its san[ctuaries] — every…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 13 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
a-na LUGAL be-lí-ía / ARAD-ka mARAD-ŠEŠ-MEŠ-šú / lu šul-mu a-na LUGAL be-lí-ía / daš-šur É.ŠÁR.RA a-na LUGAL be-lí-ía / lik-ru-bu dAMAR.UTU dzar-pa-ni-tum / dAG dtaš-me-tum dna-na-a / ù DINGIR-MEŠ am—mar ina É.SAG.ÍL / kam-mu-su-ni UD-me ša LUGAL be-lí-ía / lu-ur-ri-ku GIŠ.GU.ZA ša LUGAL be-lí-ía / lu-ki-in-nu ṭu-ub ŠÀ-bi / ṭu-ub UZU a-na LUGAL be-lí-ía lid-di-nu / É.SAG.ÍL ki-sal-lu e-le-nu-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 P334067.
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/P334067/..
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/P334067/.
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.