Position in chronology
SAA 01 210. Measuring the Patti-Illil Canal (ABL 0621+)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 1(1) To the king, [our lord]: Your servants [Nabû-pašir] and Nabû-dur-ma[kie]. Good health to [the king, our lord]! May Sin and N[ikkal] bless the king, our lord! (4) As to the ditch about which the king wrote to us, we made a start on the ditch on the 10th, and on the 8th, as soon as we had got the men organized, we started measuring the Patti-Illil canal. As soon as we have found out its measurements and where it is easy and where difficult (to navigate), we shall write again to the king, my lord. (r 6) Right now Nabû-bel-šumate of Birat is going to appeal to the king about Galṣabri, a town of his; [...] (grain) depots [......] in his hands. The king [our] lord [......] men [......] with us [...... (Rest destroyed)
State Archives of Assyria, volume 1 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
a-na LUGAL [be-lí-ni] / ARAD-MEŠ-ka m[x x x x] / mdPA—BÀD—ma-[ki-e] / lu DI-mu a-na [LUGAL be-lí-ni] / d30 ù d⸢NIN*⸣.[GAL] / a-na LUGAL be-lí-ni / lik-ru-bu / ina UGU ÍD.ḫi-ri-te / ša LUGAL iš-pur-an-na-ši-ni / UD 10-KÁM Á.2-ni / ina UGU ÍD.ḫi-ri-te / nu-tu-me-di / a-di LÚ.ERIM-MEŠ nu-šá-áš-kín-u-ni / UD 08-KÁM ina UGU ma-da-a-di* / ša ÍD.pat-ti—dBI* / ni-iq-ṭí-ri-ib / a-di mi-da-as-su /…
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 P393866.
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/P393866/..
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/P393866/.
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.