Position in chronology
SAA 08 134. Full Moon on 13th Day (ABL 0823) [lunar]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 8(1) We ke[pt] watch on the 12th day; on the 13th day the moon and [sun] saw each other. May Nabû and Marduk bless [the king] my lord! (r 1) [From Na]bû'a of Assur.
State Archives of Assyria, volume 8 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
UD 12-KÁM / ⸢ma⸣-ṣar-tu ni-⸢ta⸣-[ṣar] / UD 13-KÁM d30 u d[UTU] / [a]-ḫe-iš e-ta-am-⸢ru⸣ / dAG u dAMAR.UTU / [a-na LUGAL] be-lí-ia / [lik]-ru-bu / [ša mna]-⸢bu⸣-u-a / [ša URU].⸢ŠÀ⸣—URU
Scholarly note
Astrological report from a court scholar to an Assyrian king, edited by Hermann Hunger (SAA 8, 1992). Celestial and meteorological observation correlated with omens. ORACC text P334576.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from Hermann Hunger, Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings (State Archives of Assyria, 8), 1992. Lemmatised by Mikko Luukko, 2016-17, 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/P334576/..
Translation excerpted from Hunger, H. 1992. Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings. SAA 8. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa08/P334576/.
Related tablets
Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
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.