Position in chronology
SAA 01 159. Reclaiming Investments in Dur-Šarruken (ABL 1442)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 1(1) To the king, my lord: your servant Salmanu-[...]. Good health to the king, my lord! (4) The king my lord told [me]: "Nobody will pay back your loans until the work on Dur-Šarruken is finished!" — (9) (Now) they have ref[unded] to the merchants (loans on) the portion of Dur-Šarruken that has been constructed, but nobody [has reminded] (the king) about me; 570 minas of silver with [my seal] and due this year have not been repaid as yet. (16) When the king, my lord, sold gold and pre[cious stones] on my account, I told the king, my lord, that my father was much in debt to Har[...], Huziru…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 1 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
a-na LUGAL EN-[ia] / ARAD-ka mdDI-ma-nu—[x x] / DI-mu a-na LUGAL ⸢EN⸣-[ia] / LUGAL EN iq-ṭí*-[bi-a] / ma-a a-di dul-lu ša URU.⸢BÀD⸣—[mMAN—GIN] / ú-gam-ma-ru-u-[ni] / ma-a me-me-ni ḫa-bul-li-⸢ka⸣ / la ú-šal-[lam] / ni-is-ḫu ša TAv URU.BÀD—[mMAN—GIN] / ra-ṣi-pu-u-[ni] / a-na LÚv.DAM.QAR-MEŠ ú*-⸢sa*⸣-[li-mu] / me-me-ni ina UGU-ḫi-ia ⸢la⸣ [ú-šaḫ-sis] / 05 me 70 MA.NA KUG.UD NA₄.[KIŠIB-ia] / 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 P334910.
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/P334910/..
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/P334910/.
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.