SAA 17 090. Watch of Ekur and Nippur (CT 54 011)

• LÚ.GÚ.EN.NA — Sumerogram for 'governor' (Akkadian: šākin ṭēmi or bēl pīḫati); the specific title and identity of the sender are not preserved in the break.
• tu-kàṣ-ṣip — Second-person D-stem of kaṣāpu, 'to cut off / command / decree'; here in the sense 'whatever you have decreed/commanded.' The ṣip ending is unusual but attested in Neo-Assyrian epistolary texts.
• DUMU mx-a.a — A personal name partially broken; the first element is lost (x-a.a is a hypocoristic suffix common in Neo-Assyrian names). Identity unknown from this text alone.
• GÌR.2-ia — Literally 'my two feet,' a standard idiom for submission/obedience — 'place at my feet' means 'put under my authority/care.' The reading of the final sign(s) is uncertain in the transliteration (marked with ?).
• ma-ṣar-ta / ma-aṣ-ṣar-ta — Both spellings refer to 'watch, guard-duty' (maṣṣartu). The alternation in spelling within the same passage is normal Neo-Assyrian orthographic variation.
• mdMAŠ—na-ṣir — The divine element MÁŠ/DMAŠ typically stands for Ninurta in Neo-Assyrian contexts, yielding 'Ninurta-naṣir' ('Ninurta is the protector'). The name is partially broken at the start.
• ŠEŠ.GAL — 'Eldest brother' (aḫu rabû); its syntactic role in the broken context of line 17 is unclear — may be a title or a kinship term identifying a person.
• É.KUR — Literally 'Mountain House,' the great temple of Enlil/Ninlil at Nippur; rendered as 'Ekur' following standard convention.
• EN.LÍL.KI — Sumerian name for the city of Nippur ('place of Enlil'); rendered as 'Nippur' following standard convention.

Visual examination of the photograph (K.1165, British Museum): The tablet is a small, rounded clay tablet in reasonable but imperfect condition. The upper register shows the obverse with cuneiform signs visible in multiple columns/faces; the lower register shows a denser inscription face. The wedge impressions are clearly present but fine detail is difficult to resolve at this resolution and scale — individual sign readings largely cannot be confirmed from the photo alone. The surface shows some erosion and a notable chip/damage in the lower-centre of the obverse face. The reverse/lower face appears to have more intact text. Cross-check: the photo and transliteration are broadly consistent in that the upper portion of the obverse has sparser text (matching the beginning of a letter with partially broken lines), and the denser lower section corresponds to lines 8–21. Specific sign-by-sign confirmation is not possible from the photo at this resolution. The text is a standard Neo-Assyrian epistolary report from a governor to the king concerning the security watch over Ekur (the great temple of Enlil at Nippur) and the city of Nippur itself; this genre and the restorations follow SAA 17 parallel letter formulae. The personal name mdMAŠ—na-ṣir ('Naṣir-[Ninurta]' or 'Ninurta-naṣir') is partially broken; 'DUMU mx-a.a' is a partially legible personal name in the dative construction. Lines 17–21 are too broken to translate with confidence.