Position in chronology
SAA 05 243. Portrait of a Vassal (ABL 0317)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 5(1) To the king, [my] lo[rd]: your servant Šarru-emur[anni]. Good health to the king, [my lord]! (4) I am not the son of the city lord of [Qunbuna]; I am a house-born slav[e], a servant of the king, my lord! The king, my lord, appointed me in Qunbuna; I tell everything that I see and hear to the king, my lord, I do not conceal anything from the king, my lord. (12) As to the king [my lord]'s subjects who came to Ar[zizi] from Carchemish, about whom I wrote to the Palace, I have now had them arrested and am herewith handing them over to the king, my lord. From this act, it should be understood…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 5 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
a-na LUGAL ⸢EN⸣-[ia] / ARAD-ka mLUGAL—IGI.LAL-[an-ni] / lu-u DI-mu a-na LUGAL [EN-ia] / la-a DUMU LÚv.EN—URU ⸢ša URU⸣.[x x] / a-na-ku LÚv.un-za-ar-⸢ḫu⸣ / LÚv.ARAD ša LUGAL EN-ia a-na-ku / LUGAL be-li ina URU.qu-un-bu-na / ip-taq-da-ni mi-i-nu / ša a-ma-ru-ni ša a-šam-mu-ni / ina pa-an LUGAL EN-ia a-qab-bi / me-me-ni TA IGI LUGAL la* ú-⸢ba*-zar*⸣ / ina UGU LÚv.ARAD-MEŠ-ni ⸢ša LUGAL⸣ [EN-ia] / ša…
Scholarly note
Royal correspondence from Assyria's northern frontier under Sargon II, edited by Giovanni B. Lanfranchi & Simo Parpola (SAA 5, 1990). ORACC text P334205.
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/P334205/..
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/P334205/.
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.