Position in chronology
Tukulti-Ninurta II 07
Translation — scholar edition
RIAo(1') [Palace of Tukultī-Ninurta (II), vice-regent of (the god) Aššur, son of Adad-nārārī (II), vice-regent of (the god) Ašš]ur, son of Aššur-dān (II), (who was) also vice-regent of (the god) Aššur. At that time, the towers of [...]. I raised (its height) [N layers of] brick; [I added] thirty-five layers of brick more than before. [...]
Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online — scholar edition (ORACC / MOCCI).
Why it matters
Preserves Tukulti-Ninurta II's own account of a building project — specifying brick-course increments — adding measurable detail to the archaeological record of Assyrian royal construction between Adad-nārārī II and Aššurnasirpal II.
Transliteration
[... aš]-⸢šur⸣ A aš-šur-KAL ŠID aš-šur-ma e-nu-ma na-mé-[ri ...] / [... ti-ib]-ki lu ul-li 35 ti-ib-ki ana maḫ-ru-⸢te⸣ [...]
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 Q006037.
Attribution
Image: BM 099128 (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) ? — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P467576). 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/Q006037/.
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Related sources
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The earliest historical document in human history.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.