Position in chronology
Ashurnasirpal II 112
Translation — scholar edition
RIAo(1) Ashurnasirpal (II), [(appointee of the god Enlil, vice-regent of (the god) Aššur), great king, strong king, king of the world, king of Assyria], son of Tukultī-Ninurta (II), great king, strong king, king of the world, king of [Assyria], son of Adad-nārārī (II), (who was) also great [king], strong king, king of the world, and king of [Assyria]: property of the temple of the goddess Ištar o[f Nineveh].
Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online — scholar edition (ORACC / MOCCI).
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Why it matters
Dedicatory inscription claiming temple property for Ištar of Nineveh, linking Ashurnasirpal II's legitimacy through three generations of royal titulature to both Enlil and Aššur.
Transliteration
maš-šur-PAP-A [(GAR dBAD ŠID aš-šur) MAN GAL MAN dan-nu MAN ŠÚ MAN KUR aš-šur] / A TUKUL-MAŠ MAN GAL MAN ⸢dan⸣-[nu] MAN ŠÚ MAN KUR [aš-šur] / A ⸢10-ERIM.TÁḪ⸣ [MAN] ⸢GAL⸣ MAN dan-nu MAN ŠÚ MAN [KUR aš-šur]-ma NÍG.GA É dINANNA ⸢šá⸣ [URU.ni-nu-a]
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 Q004566.
Attribution
Image: BM 128343 (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P423091). 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/Q004566/.
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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The earliest historical document in human history.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.