Position in chronology
Sennacherib 133
Translation — scholar edition
RINAP 3(1) I, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, gave this naḫbuṣu-vessel to Aššur-ilī-muballissu, [my] son. Whoever should take it away from him, from his sons, (or from) his grandsons, may (the god) Aššur, king of the gods, take away his life, as well as (those of) his sons, (and) may he (lit. “they”) make their name(s) (and) their seed, as well as (those of) his advisors, disappear from the land.
Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period, volume 3 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
a-na-ku md30-PAP.MEŠ-SU MAN KUR AŠ NA₄.na-aḫ-bu-⸢ṣu⸣ an-ni-u a-na maš-šur-DINGIR.MU-TI.LA.⸢BI DUMU⸣-[ia] / at-ti-din man-nu šá TA pa-ni-šú TA DUMU.MEŠ-šú DUMU.ME DUMU.ME-šú i-na-áš-šú-u-ni AN.ŠÁR MAN DINGIR.MEŠ / ⸢a-di⸣ DUMU.MEŠ-šú TI.LA li-ki-mu-šú-nu a-du ma-li-ke-e-šú MU-šú-nu NUMUN-šú-nu ina KUR lu-ḫal-li-qu
Scholarly note
Royal inscription of Sennacherib, edited by A. Kirk Grayson & Jamie Novotny (RINAP 3, 2012–2014). ORACC text Q003938.
Attribution
Image: Created by A. Kirk Grayson, Jamie Novotny, and the Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period (RINAP) Project, 2014. Lemmatized by Jamie Novotny, 2013. The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/rinap/Q003938/..
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/Q003938/.
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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The earliest historical document in human history.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.