Position in chronology
Sargon II 096
Translation — scholar edition
RINAP 2(1) Sargon (II), strong king, king of the world, king of Assyria, completely built the temple of the lord, the god Nabû, (located) inside the city of Nineveh from its foundations to its crenellations for the sake of ensuring his good health (and) and prolonging his life.
Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period, volume 2 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Why it matters
Attests Sargon II's construction of a Nabû temple at Nineveh, anchoring the scribal god's cult within the city a generation before Nineveh became Assyria's imperial capital.
Transliteration
mMAN-GIN MAN KAL MAN ŠÚ MAN KUR AŠ / É EN dMUATI ŠÀ URU.NINA.KI1 / ana TI ZI.MEŠ-šú GÍD TI-šú2 / TA UŠ₈-šú EN gaba-dib-bi-šú3 / DÙ-uš ú-šak-lil
Scholarly note
Royal inscription of Sargon II, edited by Grant Frame (RINAP 2, 2021). ORACC text Q006577.
Attribution
Image: BM 137468 (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P428599). source
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/Q006577/.
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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The earliest historical document in human history.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.