Position in chronology
Esarhaddon 013
Translation — scholar edition
RINAP 4(1) [Aššur-etel-ilāni-mu]kīn-apli, the senior son of the king, who (resides in) the House of Succession, [... ... is co]mplete, surpassing in intelligence, [...] whose mind has learned ... of all of the experts, [(...); son of Sennacherib, king of the world] (and) king of Assyria; descendant of Sargon (II), king of the world (and) king of A[ssyria] — (5) [... i]n the city Bāṣ[i (Bāzu) ...] (1') [... when I bro]ught its construction to an end, [...] I invited [...] into it, and I offered [sumptuous pure] offerings [before] them and I presented (them) with my gifts. (4') [Those gods, in] their steadfast [hearts], truly blessed me. [...] ... in that small palace. [May ... l]ast [forever and ever]. May they never leave it (the palace). (7') [...].
Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period, volume 4 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[maš-šur-e-tel-DINGIR.MEŠ]-⸢GIN⸣-IBILA DUMU LUGAL GAL-u ša É ri-⸢du⸣-u-ti / [... gu]-⸢um⸣-mu-ru šu-tu-ru a-na ṭè-e-mi1 / [...] x-ni šá gi-mir um-ma-nu-te lit-mu-du ka-⸢ras-su⸣ / [(...) DUMU md30-PAP.MEŠ-SU MAN ŠÚ] ⸢MAN KUR aš⸣-šur.KI DUMU mMAN-GIN MAN ŠÚ MAN KUR ⸢aš⸣-[šur.KI] / [...] ⸢qé⸣-reb URU.ba-a-⸢ṣi?⸣ [...] / [... ú]-⸢qat-tu-u ag-mu-ra ši-pir-šá⸣ / [...] ⸢ina⸣ qer-bi-šá aq-re-ma /…
Scholarly note
Royal inscription of Esarhaddon, edited by Erle Leichty (RINAP 4, 2011). ORACC text Q003242.
Attribution
Image: Created by Erle Leichty, Jamie Novotny, and the Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period (RINAP) Project, 2011, 2017. Lemmatized by Jamie Novotny, 2010, and updated by him, 2017, for the Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative (MOCCI), a corpus-building initiative funded by LMU Munich and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (through the establishment of the Alexander von Humboldt Chair for Ancient History of the Near and Middle East) and based at the Historisches Seminar - Abteilung Alte Geschichte of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/rinap/Q003242/..
Translation excerpted from Leichty, E. 2011. The Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria (680–669 BC). RINAP 4. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap4/Q003242/.
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.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.