Position in chronology
Sennacherib 1021
Translation — scholar edition
RINAP 3(1') [...] ... [... Senn]acherib [...] ... Lacuna?
Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period, volume 3 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Why it matters
One of the surviving manuscript witnesses to Sennacherib's royal inscriptions, preserving fragmentary titulary that documents how the king projected his authority in the last decade of his reign.
Transliteration
[...] x x (x) x / [... md30]-⸢PAP⸣.MEŠ-SU / [...] x x x x
Scholarly note
Royal inscription of Sennacherib, edited by A. Kirk Grayson & Jamie Novotny (RINAP 3, 2012–2014). ORACC text Q004077.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P404517). 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/Q004077/.
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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The earliest historical document in human history.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.