Position in chronology
Adad-nerari III 07
Written in modern English
Dedicated to Adad — almighty lord, son of Anu, canal inspector of heaven and the underworld, the one who brings rain and abundance, who dwells in the city Zamaḫu. Adad-nārārī III, strong king, king of Assyria, son of Šamšī-Adad V and grandson of Shalmaneser III, records that he mustered his chariots, soldiers, and armed forces and ordered a march into the land of Hatti. In a single year he brought both Amurru and Hatti to their — the inscription breaks off here, the rest of the line lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — scholar edition
RIAo(1) To the god Adad, the almighty lord, powerful noble of the gods, son of the god Anu, unique, awesome, supreme, canal inspector of heaven and netherworld, who rains down abundance, who dwells in the city Zamaḫu, the great lord, his lord: (3) Adad-nārārī (III), strong king, king of the world, king of Assyria, son of Šamšī-Adad (V), king of the world, king of Assyria, son of Shalmaneser (III), king of the four quarters (of the world): (4) I mustered my chariotry, troops, (and) armed forces (and) ordered the march to the land Ḫatti. In one year, I made lands Amurru (and) Ḫatti in their (text…
Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online — scholar edition (ORACC / MOCCI).
Transliteration
ana dIŠKUR EN šur-bé-e NIR.GÁL DINGIR.MEŠ mug-dáš-ri bu-kúr da-nim e-diš-šú-u ra-šub-bi / MAḪ gú-gal AN-e u KI-tim mu-šá-za-nin ḪÉ.NUN a-šib URU.za-ma-ḫi EN GAL-e EN-šú / m10-ERIM.TÁḪ MAN dan-nu MAN ŠÚ MAN KUR aš-šur A mdšam-ši-dIŠKUR MAN ŠÚ MAN KUR aš-šur A mdsál-ma-nu-MAŠ MAN kib-rat LÍMMU / GIŠ.GIGIR.MEŠ ERIM.ḪI.A.MEŠ KARAŠ.MEŠ lu ad-ke ana KUR.ḫat-te DU-ka lu aq-bi ina 1-et MU.AN.NA / KUR…
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 Q004755.
Attribution
Image: Based on A. Kirk Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC II (858-745 BC) (RIMA 3), Toronto, 1996. Adapted by Jamie Novotny (2016) and lemmatized and updated by Nathan Morello (2016) for the Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative (MOCCI), a corpus-building initiative funded by LMU Munich and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (through the establishment of the Alexander von Humboldt Chair for Ancient History of the Near and Middle East) and based 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. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/riao/Q004755/..
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/Q004755/.
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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.