Position in chronology
Sennacherib 096
Translation — scholar edition
RINAP 3(1) Sennacherib, king of the world, king of Assyria, built the wall of Nineveh anew.
Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period, volume 3 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Why it matters
Attests Sennacherib's rebuilding of Nineveh's city wall, situating one phase of the capital's monumental expansion within his broader programme of urban transformation after destroying Babylon in 689 BCE.
Transliteration
md30-PAP.MEŠ-SU MAN ŠÚ MAN KUR aš-šur / BÀD ša URU.ni-na-a GIBIL-ìš DÙ-uš
Scholarly note
Royal inscription of Sennacherib, edited by A. Kirk Grayson & Jamie Novotny (RINAP 3, 2012–2014). ORACC text Q003570.
Attribution
Image: BM 090774 (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P428346). source
Translation excerpted from Grayson, A.K. & Novotny, J. 2012–2014. The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib, King of Assyria (704–681 BC). RINAP 3. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap3/Q003570/.
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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The earliest historical document in human history.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.