Position in chronology
SAA 03 051. Your Slanderous Lips
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 3(Beginning destroyed) (1) [...] before the king [......] (2) [...]... one who plots [ ......] (3) He approached me, [......] the fates. (4) You used to wonder about [......] (5) The slander of your lips [......] (6) All the dark things that you did [......] (r 1) You pocketed a shekel, [......] your comrade (r 2) You used to sit opposite [......] (r 3) What did you achieve, (you) terrible, evil [......]? (r 4) He tears out [...], does not [......] flesh (r 5) [...]... does not [......] (Rest destroyed)
State Archives of Assyria, volume 3 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[x x] ⸢x⸣ IGI ⸢LUGAL⸣ [x x x x x] / [x x]+⸢x⸣-ri-da ka-⸢ṣir⸣ [x x x x x] / ⸢iq⸣-ṭar-ba-ni ši-ma-⸢ti⸣ [x x x x x] / ta-at-ta-tal-lak ina ⸢UGU⸣ [x x x x x] / a-kal kar-ṣe-e NUNDUN-MEŠ-⸢ka⸣ [x x x x x] / ik-la-ti am—mar te-pu-⸢šá⸣-[ni x x x x] / 01 GÍN tùm-ta-aṭ-ṭi e-ber-ka [x x x x x] / ⸢ta⸣-at-ta-taš-šab a-na mi-iḫ-ri-[it x x x x] / [mi]-⸢i⸣-nu tak-šir ek-ṣu lem-nu [x x x x x] / [x x] i-mal-laḫ UZU ⸢ul⸣ [x x x x x] / [x x x]-⸢li-ik⸣ ul i-[x x x x x]
Scholarly note
Neo-Assyrian court poetry or literary text, edited by Alasdair Livingstone (SAA 3, 1989). ORACC text P336608.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from Alasdair Livingstone, Court Poetry and Literary Miscellanea (State Archives of Assyria, 3), 1989. Lemmatised by Mikko Luukko, 2019-20, 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/P336608/..
Translation excerpted from Livingstone, A. 1989. Court Poetry and Literary Miscellanea. SAA 3. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa03/P336608/.
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.
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.
The literary tradition is no longer anonymous from this point. Authorship — the idea that a specific human voice composes a specific work — enters the historical record with her.