Position in chronology
SAA 01 105. Barley and Straw Taken from Desert Depots (ABL 0871)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 1(Beginning destroyed) (1) in the town [...] in the middle of [... ...] has taken 40 homers of b[arley] and 200 bales of straw, (as supplies) for two days, referring the matter to the king, (9) (while) in the village of Diqarate in the desert Aššur-belu-taqqin the prefect has taken 16 homers of barley and a pile of straw and seized farmers of the Palace. (r 8) They have borrowed [... and gi]ven [...... (Break) (e. 1) they open [......] without the go[vernor]'s permission; the king [my lord should know this].
State Archives of Assyria, volume 1 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
⸢m*d*⸣[x x x x] / ina qa-ab-[si URU.x x] / 40 ANŠE ⸢ŠE*⸣.[PAD-MEŠ] / 02 me ma-⸢qa⸣-ru-tú / ša ŠE.IN.NU / ša 02 UD-mu-MEŠ / it-ti-ši / ⸢a*⸣-bat LUGAL i-zak-ra / [maš]-⸢šur*⸣—U—LAL LÚv.GAR-nu / [ina] ⸢URU⸣.ŠE—KAM-MEŠ / [ina] ⸢KUR⸣.mu-da-bir / 16 ANŠE ŠE.PAD-MEŠ / ŠE.kur-diš-šu / ša ŠE.IN.NU / it-ti-ši / LÚv.ENGAR-MEŠ É.GAL / ú-ṣa-bi-it / ⸢a*⸣-na* pu-u-ḫi / [x x na]-ṣu-u-ni / [x x it]-⸢ta*⸣-nu / [x x x x]+⸢x x⸣+[x] / ša la-a LÚv.⸢EN⸣.[NAM x x x x] / ⸢i*⸣-pat-ti-u ⸢LUGAL⸣ [EN lu ú-di]
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 P334598.
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/P334598/..
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/P334598/.
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.