Position in chronology
Esarhaddon 075
Translation — scholar edition
RIAo(1) I, Aššur-etel-ilāni-mukīn-apli, king of the world, king of Assyria, son of Sennacherib, (5) king of the world (and) king of Assyria, descendant of Sargon (II), king of the world (and) king of Assyria; the one who (re)constructed the temple of the god Aššur, (re)built Esagil (10) and Babylon, restored the shrines of cult centers, completed (15) the rites, (and) (re)confirmed the offerings of the great gods, am I.
Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online — scholar edition (ORACC / MOCCI).
Why it matters
Esarhaddon's self-presentation as restorer of Esagil and Babylon documents the ideological rehabilitation of Babylonian cult after Sennacherib's destruction of the city in 689 BCE.
Transliteration
a-na-ku / maš-šur-e-tel-DINGIR.MEŠ-GIN-A / MAN ŠÚ MAN KUR AŠ / A m30-PAP.ME-SU / MAN ŠÚ MAN KUR AŠ / A mMAN-GIN MAN ŠÚ / MAN KUR AŠ-ma / DÙ-u É AN.ŠÁR / DÙ-ìš é-sag-gíl / u KÁ.DINGIR.KI / mu-ud-diš / eš-re-e-ti / šá ma-ḫa-zi / mu-šak-líl / par-ṣi / mu-kin SÁ.DUG₄ / šá DINGIR.ME GAL.ME / ana-ku-ma
Scholarly note
Royal inscription of an Assyrian king, published in the Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online project (RIAo). Translation reproduced from the ORACC edition. ORACC text Q003304.
Attribution
Image: BM 113864 (British Museum, London, UK) — from uncertain (mod. Kalah Shergat) ? — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P345495). source
Translation excerpted from Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online (RIAo), Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative (MOCCI), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; in association with the RINAP Project, University of Pennsylvania. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/riao/Q003304/.
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The earliest historical document in human history.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.