Position in chronology
SAA 20 002. Rituals on Shebat 18-22 (Babyloniaca 01, 206-207)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 20(beginning (about 32 lines) lost) (i 1') [The queen supplies the food for] the w[edding night of Mullissu]. (i 2') [......] (i 3') On the 18[th] day [the king goes down to the House of God. He ...s at the Royal Entrance]. A [chanter ...s before the king. At the Anzû Gate] water [for the purification cone is placed in the king’s hands] and the gods [are hung around the king’s neck]. (i 6') [The king enters and prostrates himself] before [Aššur. He places loaves of bread before Aššur. He swings] the puri[fication device over the censer, gives] in[cense] twice, [and pours out a libation bowl].…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 20 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
⸢qur?⸣-[šú? x x x x x x x x x x x] / i-[x x x x x x x x x x x x x x] / UD ⸢18⸣-[KÁM LUGAL ina É—DINGIR ur-rad ina né-reb LUGAL x x x] / LÚ.[UŠ.KU ina IGI-at LUGAL x x x x ina KÁ an-ze-e] / A-MEŠ [ša mul-li-li a-na ŠU.2 LUGAL i-šak-ku-nu] / DINGIR-MEŠ [ina GÚ LUGAL i-kar-ru-ru x x x LUGAL er-rab] / ina IGI ⸢d⸣[aš-šur uš-ka-na NINDA-MEŠ a-na IGI daš-šur GAR-an] / ša—⸢te⸣-[li-si ina UGU še-eḫ-ti…
Scholarly note
Neo-Assyrian royal ritual or cultic text, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 20, 2017). ORACC text P398228.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from Simo Parpola, Assyrian Royal Rituals and Cultic Texts (State Archives of Assyria, 20), 2017. Adapted by Jamie Novotny and lemmatised by Mikko Luukko, 2017, 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/P398228/..
Translation excerpted from Parpola, S. 2017. Assyrian Royal Rituals and Cultic Texts. SAA 20. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa20/P398228/.
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.