Position in chronology
SAA 01 241. My Troops are Scarce (ABL 0563)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 1(Beginning destroyed) (2) ......] my [troops are scarce. [My prefects] went to (fetch) the men at their command; I have been waiting for them ever since I came back from the king my lord's presence, but they have not come. (r 2) I wrote to the king, my lord, but only got [2]60 horses and [13] small boys. [2]67 horses and 15 men — I have 527 horses and 28 men, all told. I have been writing to wherever there are king's men, but they have not come. The scribe is with the king, my lord; the king, my lord, should ask him. (r 11) The horses of the king lord had grown weak, so I let them go up the mountain and graze there [...... (Rest destroyed)
State Archives of Assyria, volume 1 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[x x x x]+⸢x⸣+[x x x x x] / [e-mu-qi]-ia e*-⸢ṣa* LÚv*⸣.[GAR-nu-MEŠ-ia] / [ina] UGU LÚ.ERIM-MEŠ ŠU.[2*]-šú*-⸢nu⸣ / [it]-⸢tal⸣-ku TAv mar / [TAv] IGI LUGAL EN-ia / ⸢al⸣-li-kan-ni a-da-gal / [ina] ⸢IGI⸣-šú-nu la-áš-šu la i-li-ku-ni / [ina] UGU LUGAL EN-a a-sap-ra / [02] me 60 ANŠE.KUR.RA-MEŠ / [13] LÚv.TUR-MEŠ qàl-lu-te ak-ta-šá-da / [02] me 67 ANŠE.KUR.RA-MEŠ 15 LÚv.ERIM-MEŠ / PAB 05 me 27 KUR-MEŠ…
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 P334385.
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/P334385/..
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/P334385/.
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.