Position in chronology
SAA 10 373. Books Worth Keeping (ABL 0334) [miscellaneous]
Translation · reference
High confidence(1) To the king of the lands, my lord: your servant Ninurta-aha-iddin. Good health to the king, my lord! May Nabû and Marduk bless the king, my lord! May the great gods make the foundation of your offspring as durable as heaven and earth. (9) I have s[et (aside) ...] for the k[ing, my lord]; let them fetch and con[sult ...]. (r 1) I have [...]ed the second [...] (r 2) on [......] (r 3) of the house of my lord [...] (r 4) Let me read the tablets in the presence of the king, my lord, and let me put down on them whatever is agreeable to the king; whatever is not acceptable to the king, I shall remove from them. (r 11) The tablets I am speaking about are worth preserving until far-off days.
Source: Parpola, S. 1993. Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars. SAA 10. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa10/P237763/
Why it matters
Transliteration
a-na LUGAL KUR.KUR be-lí-ia / ARAD-ka mdMAŠ—ŠEŠ—SUM-na / lu-u DI-mu a-na LUGAL EN-ía / dPA u dAMAR.UTU a-na LUGAL / EN-ía lik-ru-bu DINGIR-MEŠ GAL-MEŠ / ki-ma AN-e u KI.TIM / iš-di pi-ri-iʾ-ka / lu-ki-in-nu-ú / ši-ki-⸢in-nu* É? x⸣ / a-na ⸢LUGAL⸣ [EN-ia] / al-⸢ta*-kan*⸣ [x x x] / liš-šu-ú ⸢li*⸣-[mu-ru] / 02*-ú ap*-⸢ta*⸣ [x x x x] / UGU-ḫi bi-⸢im?⸣-[x x x] / šá É—EN*-⸢ia*⸣ [x x x] / ṭup-pa-a-ni ina…
Scholarly note
Letter from a scholar (astrologer, exorcist, physician, lamentation-priest) to Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 10, 1993). ORACC text P237763.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P237763). 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/P237763/.
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.