Position in chronology
Sargon II 046
Translation — scholar edition
RINAP 2(1) Palace of Sargon (II), appointee of the god Enlil, nešakku-priest of the god Aššur, strong king, king of the world, king of Assyria; (5) king who ruled the four quarters (of the world), from east to west, and set governors (over them). (9b) In accordance with my heart’s desire, I built a city at the foot of Mount Muṣri and named it Dūr-Šarrukīn. (14) I erected dwelling(s) for the gods Ea, Sîn, Šamaš, Adad, and Ninurta inside it. The god Ninšiku (Ea), the creator of everything, fashioned images of their great divine majesties and they occupied (their) daises. (22) I built inside it (the…
Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period, volume 2 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
É.GAL mLUGAL-GI.NA / GAR dEN.LÍL NU.ÈŠ / da-šur LUGAL dan-nu / LUGAL KIŠ LUGAL KUR aš-šur / LUGAL šá ul-tú ṣi-tan / a-di šil-la-an / kib-rat LÍMMU-i / i-be-lu-ma iš-tak-ka-nu / LÚ.GAR-nu-ti i-na / bi-bil ŠÀ-ia GÌR.II1 / KUR.mu-uṣ-ri KUR-i / URU DÙ-ma URU.BÀD-MAN-GIN / az-ku-ra ni-bit-su / šu-bat dé-a d30 / dUTU dIŠKUR u dMAŠ / i-na qer-bi-šú ad-di / bu-un-na-né-e / DINGIR-ti-šú-nu GAL-te /…
Scholarly note
Royal inscription of Sargon II, edited by Grant Frame (RINAP 2, 2021). ORACC text Q006527.
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 Frame, G. 2021. The Royal Inscriptions of Sargon II, King of Assyria (721–705 BC). RINAP 2. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap2/Q006527/.
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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The earliest historical document in human history.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.