Position in chronology
SAA 10 319. Curing an Abscess (ABL 0392) [from physicians]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 10(1) To the king, my lord: your servant Urad-Nanaya. The very best of health to the king, my lord! May Ninurta and Gula give happiness and physical well-being to the king, my lord! (8) The baby is much better. I fastened an absorptive dressing on this abscess behind his ear, it rested loosely against its tip. (15) Yesterday evening I opened the lint by which it was attached and removed the dressing on it. There was pus as much as the tip of (one's) little finger on the dressing. (r 9) By your gods, nobody had laid hands upon it — he gave his word (for it). He is very well; the king, my lord, can be glad. He will be cured in 7 or 8 days.
State Archives of Assyria, volume 10 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
a-na LUGAL EN-ia / ARAD-ka mARAD—dna-na-a / lu šul-mu ad—dan-niš ad—dan-niš / a-na LUGAL EN-ia / dMAŠ u dgu-la / DÙG-ub lib-bi DÙG-ub UZU-MEŠ / a-na LUGAL EN-ia lid-di-nu / šul-mu ad—dan-niš / a-na la-ku-ú / si-ik-ru ḫa-ni-u / ša ku-tal PI*.2-šú / ta-al-i-tú ina UGU / ur-ta-ki-is ina ap-pi-šú / ir-tu-mu / ina ti-ma-li / ki-i ba-di / ši-ir-ṭu ša ina ŠÀ-bi / ṣa-bit-u-ni ap-ta-ṭar / ta-al-i-tú šá…
Scholarly note
Letter from a scholar (astrologer, exorcist, physician, lamentation-priest) to Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 10, 1993). ORACC text P334267.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from Simo Parpola, Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars (State Archives of Assyria, 10), 1993. Lemmatised by Mikko Luukko, 2016, 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/P334267/..
Translation excerpted from Parpola, S. 1993. Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars. SAA 10. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa10/P334267/.
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.
Whatever its purpose, this single tablet shows that Babylonian mathematicians, working in base-60, had an arithmetic understanding of right triangles a millennium before Pythagoras was born.
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.