Position in chronology
SAA 15 177. Merodach-Baladan in Nippur (CT 53 064)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 15(1) To the king, my lord: your servant Aššur-belu-taqqin. Good health to the king, my lord! (4) News of Merodach-Baladan: he is [in N]ippur. (5) News of Bit-Dakkuri: he is staying [in ...], and they are [kee]ping watch over him. (7) [...] Chal[deans ......] (Rest destroyed)
State Archives of Assyria, volume 15 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
a-na LUGAL be-lí-ia / ARAD-ka maš-šur—U—LAL-in / lu-u DI-mu a-na LUGAL be-lí-ía / ṭè-mu ša mdAMAR.UTU—DUMU.UŠ—SUM-na / [ina] ⸢EN⸣.LÍL.KI šú-ú ṭè-mu ša ⸢É⸣—m*⸢da*⸣-kur* / [ina x x]+⸢x⸣ kam-mu-su EN.NUN-šu / [i-na]-⸢ṣu*-ru*⸣ [x x] ⸢x⸣ LÚv*.kal*-[da-a.a] / [x x x x x x x]+⸢x⸣ ma [x x x]
Scholarly note
Royal correspondence from Babylonia and the eastern provinces under Sargon II, edited by Andreas Fuchs & Simo Parpola (SAA 15, 2001). ORACC text P313479.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from Andreas Fuchs and Simo Parpola, The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part III: Letters from Babylonia and the Eastern Provinces (State Archives of Assyria, 15), 2001. 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/P313479/..
Translation excerpted from Fuchs, A. & Parpola, S. 2001. The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part III: Letters from Babylonia and the Eastern Provinces. SAA 15. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa15/P313479/.
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.