Position in chronology
Ashurnasirpal II 116
Translation — scholar edition
RIAo(1) Ashurnasirpal (II), king of the world, king of Assyria, son of Tukultī-Ninurta (II), king of the world, king of Assyria, son of Adad-nārārī (II), (who was) also king of the world (and) king of Assyria.
Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online — scholar edition (ORACC / MOCCI).
Why it matters
One of the royal inscriptions establishing Ashurnasirpal II's three-generation Assyrian lineage, a formulaic claim that grounded his legitimacy in an unbroken line of world-kings.
Transliteration
mAŠ-PAP-A MAN ŠÚ MAN KUR AŠ / A mTUKUL-MAŠ MAN ŠÚ MAN KUR AŠ / A m10-ERIM.TÁḪ MAN ŠÚ MAN KUR AŠ-ma
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 Q004570.
Attribution
Image: BM 123495 (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P422571). 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/Q004570/.
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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The earliest historical document in human history.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.