Position in chronology
SAA 01 232. News and Complaints (CT 53 864)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 1(1) [A letter from Nabû-damm]iq to [...]ti-Bel. [Good he]alth to my lord! (4) [Ta]bni-ilu has come here; he has been summoned for Nabû-šezib and should speak in the presence of the crown prince. (7) Bring me barley and sesame! Why do you take away the barley? To whom do you distribute it? I alone am being excluded from it! ...... (r 1) [......] in the presence of the crown prince [...... (Rest destroyed)
State Archives of Assyria, volume 1 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[a-na mx-x]+⸢x⸣-ti—EN / [IM mdPA-SIG₅]-⸢iq⸣ / [lu DI]-mu a-na EN-a / [m]⸢tab?⸣-ni—DINGIR ḫa-na-ka / i-tal-ka a-⸢na⸣ mdPA—še-zib / da-ki ina IGI DUMU—LUGAL liq-qi-bi / ŠE.⸢PAD*⸣-MEŠ ŠE*.GIŠ.Ì bi-la-nu / a*-ke* ŠE.PAD-MEŠ / ta-na*-ši* ma*-nu ta-da-⸢šu-nu*⸣ / ana-ku ú-da*-ia / a-ka-li-šú / NUMUN?-šú ⸢ir?⸣-tú-mu? / [ina] ⸢IGI*⸣ DUMU—⸢MAN*⸣ / [x] ⸢x⸣ [x] ⸢x⸣ [x] / [x x] ⸢x⸣ [x x] / ú*-[x x] ⸢x x⸣ / [x x] ⸢x x⸣ [x] / [x] ⸢x⸣+[x x]
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 P314273.
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/P314273/..
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/P314273/.
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.