Position in chronology
SAA 06 191. Sale of a Garden (682) (ADD 0370)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 6(1) Seal of Qurdi-Issar-lamur, (2) seal of Na'id-Aššur, (3) [in a]ll 2 men, owners of the garden being sold. (cylinder seal impression) (Break) (r 1) [Witness NN], servant of the gove[rnor]. (r 2) [Month ...], 11th day, [eponym year of Adad-šar]ru-uṣur, governor of Marqasi. (r 4) The corn taxes [of] that garden shall not be exacted, he shall not do the labour service with his town.
State Archives of Assyria, volume 6 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
⸢NA₄.KIŠIB⸣ mqur-⸢di⸣—15—la-mur / NA₄.KIŠIB mI—aš-šur / ⸢PAB⸣ 02 LÚ-MEŠ-e EN GIŠ.SAR SUM-ni / [x x x x x x] LÚv.ARAD ša ⸢LÚv*.EN*⸣.[NAM] / [ITI.x] UD 11-KAM / [lim-mu mdPA]—⸢MAN⸣—PAB LÚv.GAR.KUR URU.mar-qa-si / [šá] GIŠ.SAR šú-a-tú ŠE.nu-sa-ḫi-šú / ⸢la⸣ i-na-su-ḫu il-ku* / TAv URU*-šú* la* il-lak
Scholarly note
Neo-Assyrian legal transaction at the royal court of Nineveh, edited by Theodore Kwasman & Simo Parpola (SAA 6, 1991). ORACC text P335314.
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/P335314/..
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/P335314/.
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The earliest historical document in human history.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.