Position in chronology
SAA 05 012. Fragment Referring to Military Operations and Spies (ABL 1043)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 5(Beginning destroyed) (r 1) [As to the ... of] the [Hubu]škian, the sc[outs whom I sent] have r[eturned] from his presence, (reporting): (r 3) "He is [in front of] the city, opposite [...]. They [have atta]cked the rest of the [Urarṭian] cam[p]; now, [......]." (r 6) [As to] the Ur[arṭian] spies [about whom the king], my lord, wrote me: "Has the [comman]der of the fort [not] held [them] back?" — [...] the Hubuškian [...] said: (r 10) "[Whichever] spie[s sa]ved themselves [have entered] the towns; we [are sending] fire (signals) [in m]y [country ...]." (r 13) I said: "No [......] (Rest destroyed)
State Archives of Assyria, volume 5 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[x KUR.ḫu]-⸢buš*⸣-ka-a.a ⸢LÚv.da*⸣-[a.a-li] / [ša áš-pur-u]-ni TAv pa-ni-šú i*-⸢suḫ?⸣-[ru-ni] / [ma-a ina IGI?] URU šu-u : pu-u-tú ⸢x⸣+[x x x] / [x x x ma]-a re-eḫ-ti ma-⸢dak*⸣-[ti x x x] / [i-zu]-⸢qu⸣-pu ma-a ú-ma-a ⸢x⸣+[x x x] / [ina UGU] ⸢LÚv⸣.da-a.a-li KUR.⸢URI⸣-[a.a] / [ša LUGAL] be-lí iš-pur-an-ni [ma-a] / [la LÚv].⸢GAL*⸣—ḪAL.ṢU ik-la*-[šú-nu-u] / [x x KUR].ḫu-buš-ka-a.a [x x x] / [x x]…
Scholarly note
Royal correspondence from Assyria's northern frontier under Sargon II, edited by Giovanni B. Lanfranchi & Simo Parpola (SAA 5, 1990). ORACC text P334694.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from Giovanni B. Lanfranchi and Simo Parpola, The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part II: Letters from the Northern and Northeastern Provinces (State Archives of Assyria, 5), 1990. 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/P334694/..
Translation excerpted from Lanfranchi, G.B. & Parpola, S. 1990. The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part II: Letters from the Northern and Northeastern Provinces. SAA 5. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa05/P334694/.
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.