Position in chronology
SAA 17 034. The Door of Esaggil is Finished -- Please Give Me my Prebend! (ABL 1340)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 17(1) [Your servant Nabû-šumu-liš]ir: I would [gladly die for the king of the universe, my lord]! May [Nab]û and Marduk [bless] the king of the universe, [my] l[ord]! Say to the king of the universe, m[y lord]: (5) Every [day], from the unlocking of the door socket until the closing of the gate, I bless the king, my lord, with raised hands before Bel and Beltiya. (9) The bread is excellent, the best quality beer is good. The door of the god of the dead one has been put up. The plating is ready, and all the Babylonians who on the 4th day went up to Esaggil and saw the door, blessed the king, my…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 17 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[ARAD-ka mdAG—MU—SI].SÁ a-na [di-na-an] / [LUGAL ŠÁR be-lí-ia] lul-[lik] / [d].⸢AG⸣ ù dAMAR.UTU a-na LUGAL ŠÁR ⸢be⸣-[lí-ia lik-ru-bu] / [um]-ma a-na LUGAL ŠÁR be-lí-ia-[a-ma] / [UD]-mu-us-su i-na pa-te-e up-[pi] / [a]-⸢di*⸣ tur*-ru* KÁ i-na na-še-e [o] / ⸢ne?⸣-eš—ŠU.2 i-na pa-an dEN / ⸢ù⸣ dGAŠAN-ia <$a-na$> LUGAL be-lí-a / [a]-⸢kar*⸣-rab* NINDA-ḪI.A ba-ni KAŠ.SAG / ⸢ṭa⸣-a-bi GIŠ.IG DINGIR šá…
Scholarly note
Babylonian-language letter to Sargon II or Sennacherib, edited by Manfried Dietrich (SAA 17, 2003). ORACC text P238726.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from Manfried Dietrich, The Neo-Babylonian Correspondence of Sargon and Sennacherib (State Archives of Assyria, 17), 2003. Lemmatised by Mikko Luukko, 2009-11, as part of the AHRC-funded research project “Mechanisms of Communication in an Ancient Empire: The Correspondence between the King of Assyria and his Magnates in the 8th Century BC” (AH/F016581/1; University College London) directed by Karen Radner. The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/saao/P238726/..
Translation excerpted from Dietrich, M. 2003. The Babylonian Correspondence of Sargon and Sennacherib. SAA 17. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa17/P238726/.
Related tablets
Related sources
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.
Part of the earliest known body of international diplomatic correspondence. Akkadian, written in cuneiform on clay, was the lingua franca of Late Bronze Age statecraft — used between Egypt, the Hittites, Mitanni, Babylon, Assyria, and the Levantine vassals.