Position in chronology
Ashurnasirpal II 057
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: (2) At that time, Emašmaš, the temple of the goddess Ištar of Nineveh, my lady, [which Šam]šī-Adad, vice-regent of (the god) Aššur, a ruler who has come before me, had built, had become dilapidated. I built (and) completed (it) from its foundations to its crenellations (and) decorated (it) mo[re] splendidly than before.…
Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online — scholar edition (ORACC / MOCCI).
Why it matters
Records Ashurnasirpal II's restoration of the Emašmaš temple at Nineveh, situating him within a chain of vice-regents stretching back to Šamšī-Adad and linking royal piety to political legitimacy.
Transliteration
mAŠ-PAP-A GAR dBAD ŠID AŠ A GISKIM-MAŠ ⸢GAR d⸣BAD ŠID AŠ A 10-ERIM.TÁḪ ⸢GAR⸣ dBAD ŠID AŠ-ma / e-nu-ma é-maš-maš É dINANNA šá URU.NINA NIN-ia [ša mšam]-⸢ši⸣-10 ŠID AŠ NUN DU IGI-ia e-pu-šú / e-na-aḫ-ma TA UŠ₈-šú EN gaba-dib-bi-šú ar-ṣip ú-šék-lil ú-si-im ú-šar-riḫ UGU maḫ-re-e ú-šá-[tir] / ⸢NA₄.NA⸣.RÚ.A al-ṭur ina qé-reb-šú aš-kun [NUN]-ú ⸢EGIR?⸣-ú an-ḫu-su lu-ud-diš-šú MU šaṭ-ra ana KI-šú lu-ter
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 Q004511.
Attribution
Image: BM 123474 (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P422553). 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/Q004511/.
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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.