Position in chronology
SAA 06 007. Mušallim-Issar Buys a Slave (ADD 0180)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 6(1) [Inst]ead of his seal he impressed his fingernail. (fingernail impressions) (2) Fingernail of Balaṭu-ereš, owner of the man. (3) Akbar, his servant — (4) Mušallim-Issar, [village] manager of the chief eunuch, has contracted and bought him from Bala[ṭu-ereš] for 100 minas of copper. (7) The money is paid completely. That man is purchased and acquired. Any revocation, lawsuit, or litigation is void. (9) Whoever in the future, at any time, lodges a complaint, whether Balaṭu-ereš or his sons or his grandsons, and seeks a lawsuit or litigation against Mušallim-Issar, (15) shall pla[ce] 10…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 6 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[ku]-⸢um NA₄.KIŠIB-šú ṣu-bár*⸣-šú GAR-un / ṣu-pur mTI.LA—KAM-eš EN ⸢LÚ⸣ / mak-bar LÚv.ARAD-šú / ú-piš-ma mmu-DI—⸢15 GAL⸣—[URU-MEŠ-ni] / ša GAL—SAG TAv IGI mTI.⸢LA⸣—[KAM-eš] / ina ŠÀ 01 me MA.NA URUDU-MEŠ il-qi / kas-pu ga-mur ta-din LÚ šú-a-⸢tú⸣ / za-rip laq-qi ⸢tu-a-ru de⸣-nu / DUG₄.DUG₄ la-áš-šú man-nu šá ina ur-kiš / ina ma-te-ma i-za-qu-pa-a-ni / lu-u mTI.LA—KAM-eš / lu-u DUMU-MEŠ-šú lu-u…
Scholarly note
Neo-Assyrian legal transaction at the royal court of Nineveh, edited by Theodore Kwasman & Simo Parpola (SAA 6, 1991). ORACC text P335130.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from Theodore Kwasman and Simo Parpola , Legal Transactions of the Royal Court of Nineveh, Part I: Tiglath-Pileser III through Esarhaddon (State Archives of Assyria, 6), 1991. Lemmatised by Melanie Groß, 2010–2011, as part of the FWF-funded research project "Royal Institutional Households in First Millennium BC Mesopotamia" (S 10802-G18) directed by Heather D. Baker at the University of Vienna. The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/saao/P335130/..
Translation excerpted from Kwasman, T. & Parpola, S. 1991. Legal Transactions of the Royal Court of Nineveh, Part I: Tiglath-Pileser III through Esarhaddon. SAA 6. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa06/P335130/.
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.
The earliest historical document in human history.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.
The oldest surviving law code in human history. The principle that the state — not the wronged family — defines and enforces justice begins here.