Position in chronology
SAA 19 068. “Your Country and the People of Your Country are Well” (CTN 5 p. 200)
Translation · reference
High confidence(1) To the king, my lord: your servant Šamaš-ila'i. The best of health to the king, my lord! (6) Your country (and) the people of your country are well. May Aššur and Šamaš bless the king, my lord!
Source: Luukko, M. 2012. The Correspondence of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II from Calah/Nimrud. SAA 19. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa19/P224466/
Why it matters
Transliteration
a-na LUGAL be-lí-ía / ARAD-ka mdUTU—⸢DINGIR⸣-[a].a / ⸢lu⸣ DI-mu a-na LUGAL / be-lí-ia / a—dan-niš / DI-mu ina KUR-ti-ka / DI-mu a-na UN-MEŠ / KUR-ti-ka / ⸢d⸣aš-šur u dUTU / [a]-na LUGAL / be-lí-ía / lik-ru-bu
Scholarly note
Royal correspondence from Kalḫu (Nimrud) under Tiglath-pileser III or Sargon II, edited by Mikko Luukko (SAA 19, 2012). ORACC text P224466.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from Mikko Luukko, The Correspondence of Tiglath-Pileser III and Sargon II from Calah/Nimrud (State Archives of Assyria, 19), 2012. Lemmatised by Mikko Luukko, 2012, as part of the AHRC-funded research project “Mechanisms of Communication in an Ancient Empire: The Correspondence between the King of Assyria and his Magnates in the 8th Century BC” (AH/F016581/1; University College London) directed by Karen Radner. The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/saao/P224466/..
Translation excerpted from Luukko, M. 2012. The Correspondence of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II from Calah/Nimrud. SAA 19. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa19/P224466/.
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.