Position in chronology
Ashurnasirpal II 056
Translation · reference
High confidence(1) Ashurnasirpal (II), king of Assyria, great king, strong king, unrivalled king of the world, king of all the four quarters, sun(god) of all people, strong king, chosen of the gods Enlil and Ninurta, trampler of all [(his) enemies], who breaks open high mountains the distant regions of which no one had ever traversed, strong [male] who treads upon the necks of his foes, who destroys his enemies, who destroys the fortifications of his enemies, (5) [subduer of those] insubordinate to him, receiver of tribute and tax from the four quarters, capturer of [hostages, he who] is victorious over all…
Source: 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/Q004510/
Why it matters
Preserves the full titulary of Ashurnasirpal II — sun-king, world-trampler, chosen of Enlil and Ninurta — encoding the theological and imperial ideology that legitimised Neo-Assyrian expansion in the 9th century BCE.
Transliteration
maš-šur-PAP-A MAN KUR aš-šur MAN GAL MAN dan-nu MAN ŠÚ MAN la šá-<na>-an MAN kúl-lat / kib-rat LÍMMU-i dšam-šu kiš-šat UN.MEŠ MAN dan-nu ni-šit dBAD ù dMAŠ / da-iš kul-⸢lat⸣ [KÚR.MEŠ] ⸢mu⸣-pa-ri-ru ḫur-šá-a-ni šá-qu-ti šá du-rug-šú-nu la-a e-ti-⸢qu⸣ / [NÍTA] ⸢dan⸣-nu mu-kab-bi-<is> GÚ a-a-bi-šú mu-ḫal-liq za-i-ri-šu mu-ʾa-bit BÀD KÚR.MEŠ-šú / [mu-šak-niš la-a ka]-an-šu-te-šú ma-ḫír GUN ù…
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 Q004510.
Attribution
Image: BM 123450 (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P422530). source
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/Q004510/.
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