Ashurbanipal 185
| Obverse | ||
| o 1o 1 | URU.LÍMMU-DINGIR šu-bat diš-tar É i-sin-na-a-ti ⸢ù⸣ [nin-gu-ti?] | (1) (As for) the city Arbela, the abode of the goddess Ištar, the house of festivals and [joyous celebrations], whose (inner) wall had not been built (and) [whose] o[uter wall] had not been completed since time immemorial: I built its (inner) wall and completed its outer wall. I f[illed (it)] with splendor. |
| o 22 | ||
| o 33 | BÀD-šú ar-ṣip-ma ú-šak-lil šal-ḫu-u-šú lu-le-⸢e uš⸣-[mal-li] | |
| o 44 | É dINANNA GAŠAN-ia ina KÙ.BABBAR KÙ.GI URUDU ú-nam-mir GIM u₄-⸢mi⸣ | (4) (As for) the temple of the goddess Ištar, my lady, I made (it) shine like daylight using silver, gold, (and) copper. I decorated the divine emblems of the gateway(s) of the temple of the goddess Ištar with silver (and) gold and (then) I set (them) up. |
| o 55 | GIŠ.šu-ri-in-ni KÁ É diš-tar KÙ.BABBAR KÙ.GI ú-za-ʾi-in-ma az-qup1 | |
| o 66 | (6) (As for) the city Milqīʾa, the palace of the steppe, the dwelling place of the goddess Ištar, I renovated its dilapidated section(s), built its akītu-house, (and) completed the city in its entirety. I set my hands (to this task) in distress and weeping because an enemy had destroyed it, (but) I completed (it) in (the midst of) celebration. | |
| o 77 | ||
| o 88 | ina ta-di-ir-ti ù bi-ki-ti šá ú-šal-pi-tú-šú LÚ.KÚR / ŠU.II-ia₅ um-mid ina ḪÚL.MEŠ ú-šak-lil | |
| o 99 | GIŠ.šu-ri-in-ni É dU.GUR šá URU.tar-bi-ṣi šá ul-tú u₄-um pa-ni la GÁL-u / ana-ku az-qup | (9) I myself set up the divine emblems of the temple of the god Nergal of the city Tarbiṣu, which had not existed in the day(s) of the past. |
| o 1010 | ul-tu an-na-a ⸢e⸣-tap-pu-šú ag-mu-ru šip-ri a-mat AD ba-ni-ía ul PAD AŠ? / at-ta-ṣar ana-ku3 | (10) After I had done these things (and) finished (my) work, I did not ... the command of the father who had engendered me, (but rather) I kept (it). I entrusted Šamaš-šuma-ukīn, my favorite brother, with the kingship of the land Kardunia[š] (Babylonia), consecrated Aššur-mukīn-palēʾa, my younger brother, as a šešgallu-priest of (the god) Aš[šur], (and) consecrat[ed] Aššur-etel-šamê-erṣeti-muballissu, my young(est) brother, as a šešgallu-priest of the god Sîn, who resides in the city Ḫarrān. |
| o 1111 | mdGIŠ.NU₁₁-MU-GI.NA ŠEŠ.MU ta-li-mì ana*(erased) LUGAL-ut KUR.⸢kár⸣-d⸢dun-ía⸣-[àš] / ú-šad-gi-la pa-nu-⸢uš-šú⸣ | |
| o 1212 | mAN.ŠÁR-mu-kin-BALA.MEŠ-ía ŠEŠ.MU tar-den-ni ana LÚ.ŠEŠ.GAL-tú ug-dal-lib ina IGI AN.[ŠÁR?] | |
| o 1313 | mAN.ŠÁR-e-tel-AN-KI-TI.LA.BI ŠEŠ.MU TUR ana LÚ.ŠEŠ.GAL-tú ina IGI d⸢30⸣ / a-šib URU.KASKAL ug-dal-⸢lib⸣ | |
| Reverse | ||
| r 1r 1 | a-di ki-is-pi na-aq A.MEŠ a-na GIDIM.MEŠ LUGAL.MEŠ DU-ut ⸢maḫ⸣-[ri] / šá šub-ṭu-lu ár-ku-⸢us⸣ | (r 1) Together with the funerary offerings, I reinstat[ed] the libations for the spirits of the kings who came be[fore (me)] that had been discontinued (and) I performed good deed(s) for god and mankind, for (both) the dead and the living. (So) why are illness, misery, troubles, (and) loss bound up with me? Discord in the land (and) quarreling in the household cannot be kept away from [my] sid[e]. (rev. 5) Disorder (and) evil plan(s) constantly beset me. Unhappiness (and) ill health have contorted my body. |
| r 22 | ||
| r 33 | am*-mì*-ni*(over erasures) GIG ḪUL lìb-bi ud-du-u ḫu-lu-uq-qu-u rit-ku-sa / KI-ía | |
| r 44 | ina KUR ṣal-ta ina É pu-uḫ-pu-uḫ-ḫu-u la ip-par-ra-su ⸢Á⸣.[II-a-a] | |
| r 55 | ||
| r 66 | la DÙG.GA lìb-bi la DÙG.GA UZU <<MIN AŠ>> ik-ta-pa-ap la-a-ni5 | |
| r 77 | (r 7) I spend days in (saying) “Woe!” (and) “Alas!” I myself am troubled on the day of the god of the city, the festival day. Death takes holds of me, (and) I am suffering severely. (rev. 10) Day and night I wail on account of depression (and) melancholy. I am exhausted. O god, give (these things) to someone who is irreverent (so that) I may see your light! How long, O god, will you treat me this way? I am treated like one who does not revere god or goddess! | |
| r 88 | ||
| r 99 | ||
| r 1010 | ||
| r 1111 | ||
| r 1212 | EN im-mat DINGIR (erasure) an-na-a (erasure) te-ep-pu-šá-an-⸢ni⸣ | |
| r 1313 |
1There is some type of scribal notation on the left edge of the tablet comprised of two parallel horizontals with a diagonal strike through them. These marks look exactly like a reversed “does not equal” symbol, in which the diagonal slants down from left to right through the parallel lines rather than the opposite. This symbol may be on the left edge of the tablet, but it directly abuts the blank space in between lines 5 and 6. It is not clear what this notation signifies, although it might suggest that some kind of textual material had been left out of the tablet between the accounts of obv. 1–5 for the city Arbela and obv. 6–8 for the city Milqīʾa.
2É á-kit-su “its akītu-house”: The present orthography instead of É á-ki-ti-šú suggests that É should be taken as a determinative here; compare also É á-ki-tu as the accusative object of the verbs in text no. 23 (IIT) lines 67b–68a.
3ul PAD AŠ? “I did not ...”: C.F. Lehmann-Haupt (Šamaššumukîn 2 pp. 20–21 and 63) interpreted these signs as ul paṭ-[ru?] and translated this portion of the line as “führte ich das unverbrüchliche(?) Wort des Vaters.” D.D. Luckenbill (ARAB 2 p. 377 §983) accepted his reading of the signs, but instead translated, “(the command) which had not been canceled (lit., loosed).” M. Streck (Asb. p. 250) read the traces after ul as pat(?)-rum(?) in his edition, but also supplied a note suggesting a possible reading of u-šá-dil, although he offered no translation. The translations of Lehmann-Haupt and Luckenbill are problematic since one expects a la instead of an ul before any adjectival phrase that would modify a-mat, and since one would also expect such an adjective to be feminine in order to match the gender of the noun. Given the ul, it is probably better to suppose a main verb here, but, as a significant caveat, the use of u instead of ú for the prefix vowel of a verb in the D or Š stem is infrequent. If this is a verb that starts with u-šá-, it is unclear what verb it should be. If one follows the reading u-šá-dil as suggested in Streck’s note, could one interpret this as a D stem of šadālu and translate “I did not broaden the command of the father who had engendered me,” with the sense that Ashurbanipal did not modify or add anything to his father’s command, but instead carried it out exactly as his father had intended it? Of course, if these signs do comprise a verb, the issue is complicated further by the fact that the final horizontal wedge of the line taken as AŠ? might instead be the initial horizontal of another sign whose remaining wedges are now lost due to damage on the tablet.
4Traces of multiple wedges are interspersed throughout this line that are the remnants of signs that have been erased and written over.
5<<MIN AŠ>>: In his copy, C.F. Lehmann-Haupt (Šamaššumukîn 2 pl. XXXIII) said the two vertical wedges and the one horizontal wedge after UZU “health” are erasures, but the signs do not appear to be erased. M. Streck (Asb. p. 252) omitted these wedges in his edition, and CAD (Š/3 p. 117 sub šīru A 1.b.3´) read UZU.MEŠ. The use of the plural is well attested in this phrase, but the wedges on the tablet clearly do not match MEŠ and one would not expect a dual (MIN). Given that scribe has erased and written over material elsewhere on the tablet (see the on-page note to rev. 2), it is possible that these signs are remnants of previous content that was not erased.
Created by Jamie Novotny and Joshua Jeffers, 2015-22. Lemmatized by Joshua Jeffers, 2018-22, for the NEH-funded RINAP Project at the University of Pennsylvania. The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/rinap/Q007593/.