Position in chronology
SAA 01 095. On Carpenters and Architects (CT 53 510)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 1(Beginning destroyed) (4) Aššur [......] (5) which [......] (6) five chariots [......] (7) 60 urabi (troops) [......] (8) 300 Itu['aeans ......] (9) As to the carpenters about whom [the king my lord] wrote to me: "30 [......]!" 22 carpenters ...[......]; half of them have not [yet] co[me]. Five architects of the g[overnor] of Calah have come to me [on the ...th] of [...]; none [of them] is w[orking ......]. (r 5) I [......] (r 6) I shall go [......] (r 7) in the city of [......] (r 8) the men [...... (Rest destroyed)
State Archives of Assyria, volume 1 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
⸢x⸣+[x x x x x x x x x x] / ni-⸢x⸣+[x x x x x x x x x] / šu-⸢x⸣+[x x x x x x x x x] / daš-⸢šur⸣ [x x x x x x x] / ša ⸢i⸣-[x x x x x x x x] / 05 GIŠ.GIGIR-⸢MEŠ⸣ [x x x x x] / 60 ur-a-⸢bi⸣ [x x x x x] / 03 me KUR.i-tú-[ʾa-a.a x x] / ina UGU LÚv.NAGAR-MEŠ ša [LUGAL be-lí] / iš-pur-an-ni ma-a 30 [x x x] / 22 LÚv.NAGAR-MEŠ pa-ni-[x x x] / meš-lu-šú-nu la-a i-la-[ku-u-ni] / 05 LÚv.še-lap-pa-a.a ša…
Scholarly note
Royal correspondence under Sargon II, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 1, 1987). Letter from a governor or high official to the king of Assyria. ORACC text P313923.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from Simo Parpola, The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part I: Letters from Assyria and the West (State Archives of Assyria, 1), 1987. 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/P313923/..
Translation excerpted from Parpola, S. 1987. The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part I: Letters from Assyria and the West. SAA 1. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa01/P313923/.
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.