Position in chronology
Sargon II 019
Translation — scholar edition
RIAo(1) O god Adad, the canal inspector of heaven and netherworld, who illuminates the daises, with regard to Sargon (II), king of the world, king of Assyria, governor of Babylon, king of the land of Sumer and Akkad, the one who constructed your cella, bring him at the right times rain from the sky (and) (5) floods from the depths. Pile up grain and oil in his meadowland(s). Have his people dwell (as safely) as in a meadow in great prosperity. Establish the foundation of his throne firmly (and) prolong his reign.
Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online — scholar edition (ORACC / MOCCI).
Transliteration
dIŠKUR GÚ.GAL AN-e u KI-tim mu-nam-me-ru / BÁRA.MEŠ a-na mMAN-GIN MAN ŠÚ MAN KUR aš-šur.KI GÌR.NÍTA / KÁ.DINGIR.RA.KI MAN KUR EME.GI₇ ù URI.KI ba-nu-u / ku-me-ka uk-ki-ip-šú ŠÈG.MEŠ ina AN.MEŠ / ILLU.MEŠ ina nag-bi áš-na-an u piš-šá-tú / gúr-ri-na ta-mir-tuš ba-ʾu-la-te-e-šú1 / ina ḪÉ.NUN ù* ṭuḫ-di šur-bi-ṣa a-bur-riš2 / iš-di GIŠ.GU.ZA-šú ki-in šul-bi-ra BALA-šú
Scholarly note
Royal inscription of an Assyrian king, published in the Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online project (RIAo). Translation reproduced from the ORACC edition. ORACC text Q006500.
Attribution
Image: Created by Grant Frame and the Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period (RINAP) Project, 2019. Adapted for RINAP Online by Joshua Jeffers and Jamie Novotny and lemmatized by Giulia Lentini, Nathan Morello, and Jamie Novotny, 2019, for the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation-funded OIMEA Project at the Historisches Seminar - Abteilung Alte Geschichte of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0..
Translation excerpted from Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online (RIAo), Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative (MOCCI), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; in association with the RINAP Project, University of Pennsylvania. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/riao/Q006500/.
Related tablets
Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.