Position in chronology
Sennacherib 166
Translation — scholar edition
RINAP 3(1) Sennacherib, great king, strong king, king of the world, king of Assyria, king of the four quarters (of the world), lead[er] of a widespread population, the one who fashioned image(s) of the deities Aššur, Anu, Sîn, Šamaš, [Adad], Nergal, Ištar of Bīt-Kidmuru, Bēlet-ilī, and the (other) great gods, the one who carries out to perfection the rites of Ešarra and Emašmaš, who knows well how to revere the gods of heaven and the gods of Assyria, the builder of Assyria, the one who brings his cult centers to completion, the one who uproots enemies (and) destroys their settlements, circumspect…
Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period, volume 3 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
md30-PAP.MEŠ-SU MAN GAL MAN dan-nu MAN ŠÚ MAN KUR aš-šur.KI MAN kib-rat LÍMMU-tim mut-⸢tar⸣-[ru-u] / UN.MEŠ DAGAL.MEŠ e-piš ṣa-lam AN.ŠÁR da-nim d30 dUTU d[IŠKUR] / dU.GUR d15 šá É-kid-mu-ri DINGIR.MAḪ ù DINGIR.MEŠ GAL.⸢MEŠ⸣ / mu-šak-lil pa-ra-aṣ é-šár-ra u é-mes-mes šá pa-làḫ DINGIR.MEŠ šá AN-e u DINGIR.MEŠ / KUR aš-šur.KI ra-biš mu-du-u e-piš KUR aš-šur.KI mu-šak-lil ma-ḫa-zi-šú na-si-⸢iḫ⸣1 /…
Scholarly note
Royal inscription of Sennacherib, edited by A. Kirk Grayson & Jamie Novotny (RINAP 3, 2012–2014). ORACC text Q003971.
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/Q003971/..
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/Q003971/.
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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The earliest historical document in human history.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.