Position in chronology
Ashurnasirpal II 141 add
Translation — scholar edition
RIAo(1) Palace of Ashurnasirp[al (II), ...].
Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online — scholar edition (ORACC / MOCCI).
Transliteration
⸢É⸣.GAL maš-⸢šur⸣-PAP-[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 Q008370.
Attribution
Image: Edition based on von Soldt, Pappi, Wossink, Hess, and Ahmed 2013. Adapted and lemmatized 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/Q008370/..
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/Q008370/.
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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The earliest historical document in human history.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.