Position in chronology
Sargon II 102
Translation — scholar edition
RINAP 2(1') ... [...] (2') [He plotted] evil. He made (them) [act in unison and he prepared for battle]. (4') [He spo]ke [deceitfully], words complaining about me, [Sargon ... and] I became enr[aged]. (8') I threw him, together with [his family], his wife, his sons, (and) [his] d[aughters], in iron fetters, [and] I brought t[hem] to Assyria. I se[t] a eunuch [of mine] as provincial governor over the citizens of that city (and) [made (the city)] (part of) the territory of Assyria. (15') In my fifth regnal year, Ullu[sunu (…)]
Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period, volume 2 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
x x x [...] / a-mat ⸢ḪUL⸣-[ti ik-pu-ud? pa-a? e-da?] / ú-šá-áš-[kin-ma ik-ṣu-ra? MÈ?]1 / ia-a-ti ⸢m⸣[LUGAL-GI.NA ...] / da-ba-ab [sa-ar-ra-a-ti?]2 / at-me-e te-ke-e-ti [id-bu-ub-ma]3 / ú-šá-aṣ-ri-iḫ [ka-bat-ti?]4 / šá-a-šu ga-du [qin-ni-šú]5 / DAM*-su DUMU.MEŠ-šú ⸢DUMU⸣.[MUNUS.MEŠ-šú]6 / bi-re-tu AN.BAR ad-di-šu-[nu-ti-ma] / a-na qé-reb KUR aš-šur.KI ub-la-áš-[šú-nu-ti] / UGU DUMU.MEŠ URU…
Scholarly note
Royal inscription of Sargon II, edited by Grant Frame (RINAP 2, 2021). ORACC text Q006583.
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/Q006583/.
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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The earliest historical document in human history.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.