Position in chronology
Ashurnasirpal II 041
Translation — scholar edition
RIAo(1) Ashurnasirpal (II), appointee of the god Enlil, vice-regent of (the god) Aššur, son of Tukultī-Ninurta (II), appointee of the god Enlil, vice-regent of (the god) Aššur, son of Adad-nārārī (II), (who was) also appointee of the god Enlil (and) vice-regent of (the god) Aššur: (3b) conqueror from the opposite bank of the Tigris River to Mount Lebanon and the Great Sea [of] the land Amurru in the west, (who) has conquered the land Ḫatti in its entirety; [(I am the one who) have gained dominion over] (the region stretching) from the source of the Subnat River [to the land Urume, the wide [Naʾiri] lands. [...] … [...]
Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online — scholar edition (ORACC / MOCCI).
Transliteration
[m]aš-šur-PAP-A GAR dBAD ŠID aš-šur A TUKUL-MAŠ / GAR dBAD ŠID aš-šur A 10-ERIM.TÁḪ GAR dBAD / ŠID aš-šur-ma ka-šid ⸢TA⸣ e-ber-tan / ÍD.ḪAL.ḪAL EN KUR.lab-na-ni / ù A.AB.BA GAL-tu / [šá] KUR.a-mur-ri šá šùl-mu / [d]šam-ši KUR.ḫat-te a-na si-ḫír-⸢te⸣-šú / [qa-at]-su ik-šu-du TA ⸢SAG e-ni⸣ / ÍD.su-ub-na-at [EN] / [KUR.ú-ru-me] DAGAL-tu KUR.KUR [na-i-ri] / [...] x x [...]
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 Q004495.
Attribution
Image: Based on A. Kirk Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC I (1114-859 BC) (RIMA 2), Toronto, 1991. Adapted by Jamie Novotny (2015-16) and lemmatized and updated by Nathan Morello (2016-17) 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. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/riao/Q004495/..
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/Q004495/.
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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.