Position in chronology
SAA 07 181. Animal Offerings from the Palace (ADD 1014)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 7(1) 1 ox, 10 sheep, 1 duck — gate of the big shrine; (2) 1 ox, 10 sheep, 1 duck — gate of the small shrine; (3) 2 oxen, 1 sisalhu ox, 30 sheep, 2 ducks — before Ištar (of) the temple; (4) in all 4 oxen, 1 sisalhu ox, 50 sheep, 4 ducks, offerings of the month of Ab (V), 11th day. (6) Meat (of) oxen, sheep — obligatory: (7) 1 (cut of) meat, 1 sheep — the queen; (r 1) 1 (cut of) meat, 1 sheep — the crown prince; (r 2) 1 (cut of) meat, 1 sheep — the chief eunuch; (r 3) in all, 3 (cuts of) meat, 3 sheep, consumed. (r 4) 4 oxen, 4 (cuts of) meat, 44 sheep, 4 ducks — [obliga]tion of the palace.
State Archives of Assyria, volume 7 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
01 GUD 10 UDU 01 MUŠEN—GAL KÁ suk-ki dan-nu / 01 GUD 10 UDU 01 MUŠEN—GAL KÁ suk-ki qàl-li / 02 GUD 01 si-sal-ḫu 30 UDU 02 MUŠEN—GAL IGI d15 É—DINGIR / PAB 04 GUD 01 si-sal-ḫu 50 UDU-MEŠ 04 MUŠEN—GAL / SISKUR-MEŠ ITI.NE UD 11-KÁM / UZU GUD-MEŠ UDU-MEŠ ri-ik-su / 01 UZU 01 UDU MÍ—É.GAL / 01 UZU 01 UDU DUMU—LUGAL / 01 UZU 01 UDU GAL—SAG / PAB 03 UZU 03 UDU KÚ-MEŠ / 04 GUD 04* UZU 44 UDU-MEŠ 04 MUŠEN—GAL / [ri-ik?]-⸢su⸣ É.GAL
Scholarly note
Neo-Assyrian administrative record (palace or temple), edited by F.M. Fales & J.N. Postgate (SAA 7, 1992). ORACC text P335835.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from F. Mario Fales and J. Nicholas Postgate, Imperial Administrative Records, Part I: Palace and Temple Administration (State Archives of Assyria, 7), 1992. Lemmatised by Mikko Luukko, 2017, 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/P335835/..
Translation excerpted from Fales, F.M. & Postgate, J.N. 1992. Imperial Administrative Records, Part I: Palace and Temple Administration. SAA 7. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa07/P335835/.
Related tablets
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.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.