Position in chronology
SAA 02 003. Sennacherib’s Succession Treaty (PKTA 31)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 2(Beginning destroyed) (1) [...... which Sennach]erib, king of Assyr[ia, your lord], has set to you: (2) [If you should hear] improper things, you shall speak out [going] to Sennacherib, king of Assyria, [your lord], and totally devoting yourselves to the king, your lord, (5) if you should not protect [Esarhaddon, the crown prince designate, and] the other princes [whom Sennacherib, king of Assyria, has presen]ted to you; (otherwise): (7) [May Aššur, Mullissu, Šerua], Sin, Nikkal, Šamaš, Nu[r, Anu, Antu, Illil, Adad, Š]ala, Kippat-mati, [Ištar of Heaven, Ištar of Nineveh], Ištar of [Arbela,…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 2 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[x x x x ša md30—PAB]-⸢MEŠ*—SU*⸣ MAN* KUR—aš-⸢šur⸣.[KI EN-ku-nu] / [x x x x iš]-⸢ku*⸣-na-⸢ka⸣-[nu-ni] a-bu-tú ⸢la* de*⸣-iq-⸢tú⸣ [ta-šam-ma-a-ni] / [la ta-qab-ba]-⸢a*-ni*⸣ a-na md30—PAB-MEŠ—SU MAN KUR—aš-šur.[KI EN-ku-nu] / [la ta-lak-a-ni-ni] ⸢ŠÀ*-ba*⸣-ku-nu a-na LUGAL EN-ku-nu ⸢la* ga*⸣-mur-[u-ni o] / [šum-ma maš-šur—PAB—AŠ DUMU—MAN GAL ša É—UŠ-ti ù] ⸢re-eḫ⸣-te DUMU-MEŠ—LUGAL [ša…
Scholarly note
Neo-Assyrian treaty or loyalty oath, edited by Simo Parpola & Kazuko Watanabe (SAA 2, 1988). Binding agreement invoking divine sanction. ORACC text P336317.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from Simo Parpola and Kazuko Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths (State Archives of Assyria, 2), 1988. Lemmatised by Mikko Luukko, 2016, 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/P336317/..
Translation excerpted from Parpola, S. & Watanabe, K. 1988. Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths. SAA 2. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa02/P336317/.
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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.