Position in chronology
SAA 01 097. The Road to Kar-Šamaš (ABL 0095)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 1(1) To the king, my lord: your servant Ṭab-ṣill-Ešarra. Good health to the king, my lord! May Aššur and Mullissu bless the king, my lord! (5) As to what the king, my lord, wrote to me: "The chief eunuch is going to Kar-Šamaš", — why is he going to Kar-Šamaš? The [roa]d through the province of Arrapha is very exacting; there are permanent wadis filled with reed and it is getting (worse). Let him come to the Inner City; this [road] along the river is [in good condit]ion. (15) [...... the roa]d is bloc[ked ...... the] troo[ps ......] come [to m]e [...... (Break) (r 1) Who will [be there] for the…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 1 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
a-na LUGAL ⸢EN⸣-ia / ARAD-ka mDÙG.GA—GIŠ.MI—É.ŠÁR.RA / lu DI-mu a-na LUGAL EN-ia / aš-šur dNIN.LÍL a-na LUGAL EN-ía lik-ru-bu / ša LUGAL EN iš-pur-an-ni / ma-a LÚv.GAL—SAG a-na URU.kar—dUTU / il-la-ka a-na am—me-ni / [a]-na URU.kar—dUTU il-la-ak / [KASKAL].2 ša NAM URU.arrap-ḫa / ⸢ma*⸣-a-zu-uʾ a—dan-niš na-ḫal-a-te / [GI].⸢ap⸣-pa-ru uk-tú-i-ni i-šá-kan / [a]-⸢na⸣ [URU].ŠÀ—URU lil-li-ka /…
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 P334044.
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/P334044/..
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/P334044/.
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.