Position in chronology
SAA 10 338. The Akitu Procession of Sin (ABL 0667) [from lamentation priests]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 10(1) To the king, my lord: your servant Urad-Ea. Good health to the king, my lord! May Nabû, Marduk, Sin and Nikkal bless the king, my lord! (9) On the 17th day Sin sets off and takes up residence in the akītu-temple. Let the king, my lord, order that they give the garments; I should b[ring them] with me. The penitential psalm will be [per]formed ov[er them], he will bless the king, [my lord], and give a life of dis[tant d]ays to the king, [my] lord. (r 3) A bodyguard [should be] sent with me because of [the tr]aitors.
State Archives of Assyria, volume 10 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
a-na LUGAL be-lí-ía / ARAD-ka mARAD—dÉ.A / lu-u DI-mu / a-na LUGAL be-lí-ía / dAG u dAMAR.UTU / d30 u dNIN.GAL / a-na LUGAL be-lí-ía / lik*-ru*-bu* / UD 17-KÁM d30 i-ta-bi / ina a-ki-it ú-šab / LUGAL be-lí / ṭè-e-mu liš-kun / ⸢TÚG⸣.gu-zip-pi lid-⸢di-nu⸣ / [is]-si-ia lu-[bi-la] / ⸢ÉR⸣.ŠÀ.ḪUN.GÁ ina [UGU-ḫi] / [in-né]-pa-áš a-na LUGAL [EN-ía] / ⸢i⸣-kar-[rab] / ba*-laṭ na-⸢piš⸣-[ti] / [šá] ⸢UD⸣-me…
Scholarly note
Letter from a scholar (astrologer, exorcist, physician, lamentation-priest) to Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 10, 1993). ORACC text P334465.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P334465). source
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/P334465/.
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.