Position in chronology
SAA 15 353. Tracks on the Riverside (CT 53 203)
Translation · reference
High confidence(Beginning destroyed) (r 1) "[Come] quickly! There are not man[y] tracks on the riverside. Cross [the river] at the ...!"
Source: 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/P313618/
Why it matters
Transliteration
⸢ma⸣-a ár-ḫiš [x x x] / kib-su la ma-⸢aʾ?⸣-[da] / ina UGU ⸢ÍD⸣ / ina zi-li-te ⸢x⸣+[x x] / e-bi-[ir]
Scholarly note
Royal correspondence from Babylonia and the eastern provinces under Sargon II, edited by Andreas Fuchs & Simo Parpola (SAA 15, 2001). ORACC text P313618.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P313618). source
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/P313618/.
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.