Read Chronology Themes Tablets Engine About

Read
Chronology
Themes
Tablets
Engine
About

Sumerian · Book

Reading the tablets…

A curated narrative reconstruction of humanity's first great civilization, sourced from the tablets themselves. Open scholarship, beautifully accessible.

The site

About the project The engine Dossiers FAQ Methodology Sources & licensing Provenance & ethics Contact & support

Legal

Independent scholarship · No academic affiliation · No institutional funding · Tablet imagery attributed per item via CDLI, ETCSL, ORACC, Wikimedia, and public museum collections.

Home
All tablets

The corpus

All tablets.

Every tablet in the corpus — sortable by date, title or period; filterable by theme and period. Use the controls below or change the URL parameters directly.

Sort

Oldest first Newest first Title (A–Z)By period

Theme

Religion & Myth Law Economy Astronomy & Mathematics Daily Life Writing & Literature

Period

Ubaid Uruk Period Early Dynastic Akkadian Empire Ur III · Neo-Sumerian Old Babylonian Old Assyrian Middle Babylonian Middle Assyrian Neo-Assyrian Neo-Babylonian Achaemenid Persian

Source

Editorial Sumerian literature Sumerian royal Assyrian royal Assyrian archives

70,836 of 102,257 tablets · 3 filters activeClear filters

65401–65450 of 70836

Page 1309 / 1417

~655 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 5

Ashurbanipal 229

Claims Ashurbanipal personally mastered 'all of the scribal arts' — a rare royal self-presentation as literate scholar that underlies his systematic collection of texts at Nineveh.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~655 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 5

Ashurbanipal 230

Records Ashurbanipal's restoration of Emeslam — the temple of Nergal at Cutha — including bricks molded in ebony and musukkanu-wood and scented with crushed aromatics: a concrete window into Sargonid sacred construction ritual.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~655 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 5

Ashurbanipal 231

Equates Babylon with the zodiacal Crab constellation while describing Ashurbanipal's restoration of its tottering foundations — linking Assyrian royal ideology to celestial geography in a rare astro-theological framing of conquest and clemency.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~655 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 5

Ashurbanipal 232

Asserts Ashurbanipal's personal mastery of the scribal arts as a divine gift — one of the clearest royal claims to literacy in the ancient Near East, legitimising his famous library-building programme at Nineveh.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~655 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 5

Ashurbanipal 233

Claims Assyrian sovereignty over territory reached by a journey of 'one month and twenty days into the midst of the sea' — among the most expansive geographical boasts in the surviving Sargonid royal corpus.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~655 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 5

Ashurbanipal 234

Chronicles Ashurbanipal's repeated installation and removal of Elamite client-kings — Ḫumban-nikaš II, Tammarītu, Ḫumban-ḫaltaš III — documenting Assyrian mechanisms for controlling Elam through dynastic manipulation rather than outright annexation.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~655 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 5

Ashurbanipal 235

Records Ashurbanipal's sack of Susa and the return of the goddess Nanāya to Eanna after her long Elamite 'captivity' — linking military conquest to the restoration of Babylonian cult.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~655 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 5

Ashurbanipal 236

Attests Nanāya, Uṣur-amāssa, and Urkayītu as divine guarantors of royal legitimacy at Uruk — preserving a local theological formula for kingship otherwise scarcely documented in Sargonid inscriptions.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~655 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 5

Ashurbanipal 237

One of the composite royal inscriptions of Ashurbanipal preserved across multiple manuscript witnesses, attesting the Sargonid titulary 'king of Sumer and Akkad' as a living ideological claim to Babylonian sovereignty.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~655 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 5

Ashurbanipal 238

Records Ashurbanipal's military intervention against a ruler of Qirbit who refused submission — one of the few inscriptions attesting Assyrian punitive campaigns into the Kassite borderlands during his reign.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~655 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 5

Ashurbanipal 239

Preserves Ashurbanipal's three-generation dynastic lineage — son of Esarhaddon, grandson of Sennacherib — a formulaic claim that anchored Sargonid legitimacy in royal inscriptions of the mid-seventh century BCE.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~655 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 5

Ashurbanipal 240

Names Urtaku and Ummanigaš — the Elamite king and his brother whose rivalry Assyria exploited — placing this inscription among the direct royal accounts of Ashurbanipal's Elamite campaigns.

Ashurbanipal 229

Ashurbanipal 230

Ashurbanipal 231

Ashurbanipal 232

Ashurbanipal 233

Ashurbanipal 234

Ashurbanipal 235

Ashurbanipal 236

Ashurbanipal 237

Ashurbanipal 238

Ashurbanipal 239

Ashurbanipal 240

SAA 14 001. Milki-nuri Buys the Village of Nabu-šezib (668-VI-19) (ADD 0472)

SAA 14 002. Milki-nuri Buys the Village of Bahaya (666-XII-19) (ADD 0627)

SAA 14 003. Milki-nuri Buys Ten Slaves (ADD 0727)

SAA 14 004. Milki-nuri Buys Five Slaves (ADD 0287)

SAA 14 005. Milki-nuri Buys Six Slaves (ADD 0316)

SAA 14 006. Milki-nuri Buys Land and People (ADD 0452)

SAA 14 007. Milki-nuri Buys [...] (ADD 0494)

SAA 14 008. Zarpi, Manageress, Buys a Woman (668-V-27) (ADD 0208)

SAA 14 009. Manageress of the Central City Buys a Slave (668-I-22) (ADD 0190)

SAA 14 011. The Lady Sinqi-Issar Receives a Slave Woman Instead of Silver (654-II-14) (ADD 0076)

SAA 14 012. Manageress Buys Two Slaves (ADD 0267)

SAA 14 013. Manageress of Assur Buys a Slave (650) (ADD 0206)

SAA 14 014. Manageress of Assur Buys a Woman (ADD 0209)

SAA 14 015. Court Decision on Behalf of Ninuayu, the King’s Eunuch (*641-VII-13) (ADD 0105)

SAA 14 016. Ninuayu Buys Slaves (*639-X-18) (ADD 0250)

SAA 14 017. Ninuayu Buys a Woman (*633-II-14) (ADD 0214)

SAA 14 018. Ninuayu Buys a Slave (ADD 0182)

SAA 14 019. Ninuayu Buys Two Slaves (ADD 0249)

SAA 14 020. Ninuayu Buys Three Slaves (ADD 0254)

SAA 14 021. Ninuayu Buys Slaves (ADD 0260)

SAA 14 022. Ninuayu Buys Land and People (ADD 0505)

SAA 14 023. Bel-duri Lends Barley and an Ox (658-VI-18) (ADD 0152)

SAA 14 024. Luqu, Cohort Commander of the Crown Prince, Buys Women (659-II) (ADD 0233)

SAA 14 025. Luqu Lends Silver (*648) (ADD 0111)

SAA 14 026. Luqu Lends Ten Shekels of Silver (*645-VI-5) (ADD 0004)

SAA 14 027. Purchase of a Vacant Lot (*640) (ADD 0358+)

SAA 14 029. Kiṣir-Aššur Buys a Woman (*636-XI-3) (ADD 0207)

SAA 14 030. Kiṣir-Aššur Lends 16 Shekels of Silver (*635-I-11) (ADD 0001)

SAA 14 031. Kiṣir-Aššur Lends Eight Shekels of Silver (*623-VII-21) (ADD 0023)

SAA 14 032. Kiṣir-Aššur Lends Straw (*618-I-15) (ADD 0151)

SAA 14 033. Kiṣir-Aššur Lends One Mina 30 Shekels of Silver (ADD 0080)

SAA 14 034. Kakkullanu Buys a Woman as a Wife for His Servant (*630-II-20) (ADD 0308)

SAA 14 035. Kakkullanu Buys an Outbuilding Adjoining His House (*630-V-22) (ADD 0349)

SAA 14 036. Kakkullanu Buys a Vineyard and Two Persons in Irbu (*630-XI-17) (ADD 0446)

SAA 14 037. Kakkullanu Buys a Woman as a Wife for His Servant (*630) (ADD 0309)

SAA 14 038. Kakkullanu Buys a Woman for His Servant (*629-I-19) (ADD 0711)

SAA 14 039. Kakkullanu Buys a Man in Exchange for a Woman (*625-II-20) (ADD 0318)

SAA 14 040. Kakkullanu Buys His Neighbour’s House in Nineveh (*625-III-17) (ADD 0325)