Position in chronology
SAA 01 099. Building a Palace in Ekallate (ABL 0099)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 1(1) [To the king], my lord: your servant Ṭab-ṣill-Ešarra. Ešarra is well, the [temple]s are well, the Inner City is [well, Assyri]a is we[ll, may] the king, my lord, be well! (5) [As to] what the king, my lord, wrote to me: "Let these [...]ians of Ekal[late ......] who are being deported build the queen's palace in [the city with the] Pal[ace Manager]", (9) the Palace Manager petiti[oned the Palace] in Shebat (XI), saying: "Let [the ...] build the palace in [......]!" Now the Inner City [... 'son]s of bought (slaves)' [......] (Break) (r 2) In the past days, when the father of [the king my…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 1 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[a-na LUGAL] EN-ia ARAD-ka mDÙG.GA—ṣil—[É].ŠÁR o* / [DI-mu a]-⸢na⸣ É.ŠÁR.RA DI-mu [a-na É.KUR]-MEŠ* / [DI-mu] a-na URU.ŠÀ—URU ⸢DI⸣-[mu a-na KUR—aš-šur].KI / [lu] DI-mu a-na LUGAL ⸢EN⸣-[ia ina UGU] / ⸢ša⸣ LUGAL be-lí iš-⸢pur⸣-[a-ni ma-a LÚv.x-x]-a.a / ḫa-nu-te ša URU*.É*.[GAL-MEŠ x x x x]+⸢x⸣ / ša i-na-saḫ-u-[ni TAv LÚv.GAL—É].⸢GAL*⸣ / ma-a É MÍ—É.GAL ša* [x x x li]-ir-ṣi-pu / ina ⸢ITI.ZÍZ…
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 P334048.
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/P334048/..
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/P334048/.
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.