Position in chronology
Adad-nerari II 1
Written in modern English
Adad-nerari II identifies himself as great king, strong king, king of the world, king of Assyria, and ruler of all four quarters — chosen by the god Aššur, attentive in his rule, and acting with the backing of the great gods Aššur and Ninurta, who helped him strike down his enemies. He traces his lineage through three generations: his father Aššur-dan II, his grandfather Tiglath-pileser II, and his great-grandfather Aššur-resha-ishi II, each also titled king of the world and king of Assyria. The inscription then turns to his accession year and first regnal year, beginning an account of when he took the throne — but the surface breaks off there.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — scholar edition
RIAo(1) Adad-nārārī (II), great king, strong king, king of the world, king of Assyria, king of all the four quarters (of the world), the one selected by (the god) Aššur, attentive ruler, the one who acts with the support of the gods Aššur and Ninurta, the great gods, his lords, and (thereby) has struck down his foes; (5) son of Aššur-dān (II), king of the world, king of Assyria, son of Tiglath-pileser (II), king of the world, king of Assyria, son of Aššur-rēša-iši (II), (who was) also king of the world (and) king of Assyria. (8) In my accession year (and) in my first regnal year, when I sat on…
Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online — scholar edition (ORACC / MOCCI).
Transliteration
mdIŠKUR-ERIM.TÁḪ LUGAL GAL-ú LUGAL dan-nu MAN KIŠ MAN KUR aš-šur / MAN kúl-lat kib-rat 4-i bi-bíl lìb-bi aš-šur / NUN-ú na-a-du ša i-na GIŠ.tukul-ti aš-šur ù dMAŠ DINGIR.MEŠ GAL.MEŠ / EN.MEŠ-šu it-tal-la-ku-ma ú-šam-qi-tu ge-ri-šu / DUMU aš-šur-KAL-an LUGAL KIŠ MAN KUR aš-šur / DUMU GIŠ.tukul-ti-IBILA-é-šár-ra LUGAL KIŠ MAN KUR aš-šur / DUMU aš-šur-SAG-i-ši LUGAL KIŠ MAN KUR aš-šur-ma / i-na…
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 Q006020.
Attribution
Image: Based on A. Kirk Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC I (1114-859 BC) (RIMA 2), Toronto, 1991. Adapted by Jamie Novotny (2015-16) and lemmatized and updated by Nathan Morello (2016-17) 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/Q006020/..
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/Q006020/.
Related tablets
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.