The letters from Sargon's correspondence were first published in the State Archives of Assyria series. They are reproduced here with the kind permission of the authors and the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project [http://www.helsinki.fi/science/saa/] (NATCP). The Nimrud Letters, part of the royal correspondence of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II, were re-edited by Mikko Luukko as part of this research project and published as a volume in the SAA series in 2012. Copyright remains with the authors and the NATCP. The letters may not be reproduced for non-educational purposes, beyond fair use, without the permission of the authors and the NATCP.
» Browse or search the letters. [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/aebp/corpus]
| Abbreviation | Original publication |
|---|---|
| SAA 1 | S. Parpola, The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part I: Letters from Assyria and the West (State Archives of Assyria 1), Helsinki 1987 |
| SAA 5 | G. B. Lanfranchi and S. Parpola, The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part II: Letters from the Northern and Northeastern Provinces (State Archives of Assyria 5), Helsinki 1990 |
| SAA 15 | A. Fuchs and S. Parpola, The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part III: Letters from Babylonia and the Eastern Provinces (State Archives of Assyria 15), Helsinki 2001 |
| SAA 17 | M. Dietrich, The Neo-Babylonian Correspondence of Sargon and Sennacherib (State Archives of Assyria 17), Helsinki 2003 |
| SAA 19 | M. Luukko, The Correspondence of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II from Calah/Nimrud (State Archives of Assyria 19), Helsinki 2012 |
The original publications were reviewed in specialist Assyriological journals. In general, we have not taken those reviews into account in the online edition but strongly recommend that they be consulted when using this site as a resource for specialist Assyriological research. The Nimrud Letters attributed to Sargon that were published in SAA 1 (1987; nos. 1, 26, 32, 110, 171, 172, 175, 176), SAA 5 (1990; nos. 74 and 215) and SAA 15 (2001; nos. 83 and 84) on the basis of H. W. F. Saggs' preliminary copies have been updated by Mikko Luukko to reflect Saggs' 2001 monograph. The differences to the print edition are documented here [~/downloads/saa19_updates.pdf] (requires free Adobe Acrobat reader [http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/acrobat/readstep2.html]).
You may find it helpful to print out this page for reference before you start to explore the letters for the first time. If your browser has problems displaying all the special transliteration characters, you may want to download Steve Tinney's Ungkam font [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/doc/user/fonts/#Ungkam] for Mac, Windows or Linux.
If you're still having trouble viewing these characters, then you'll need to set the character encoding on your browser correctly.
The letters are listed in publication order, grouped by volume and chapter, in the main part of the window. The chapter titles and text titles are those of the modern editors, not the ancient scribes. The names of the sender(s) and addressee(s), where known, are given in the right-hand column of the list. Left and right arrows at the top of the page enable you to move through the listing. You can also jump to another page by typing the page number in the box at the top centre.
The "CDLI" button on the left-hand side of each entry takes you to the relevant entry in the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative [http://cdli.ucla.edu]'s database. The publication numbers (in blue) link to the item view, which displays the transliteration and translation of a single text (see Item View below).
The left-hand sidebar gives an outline view of the SAA volumes with the Sargon correspondence [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/aebp/corpus] or, if you are using SAA online [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/corpus], of the eighteen SAA volumes, among them the four with the Sargon correspondence, and allows you to select a single chapter to browse by clicking on the appropriate link. Using the links in the red zone at the top, you can also perform a search, or start again with a new browse or search.
» Browse or search the letters. [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/aebp/corpus]
The Item View shows the transliteration and translation of a single text, as first published in the SAA series. See the Knowledge and Power [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/knpp] page on the cuneiform writing system [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/knpp/essentials/cuneiformscript/] for an explanation of transliteration conventions. The lines of text immediately above the transliteration and translation give information about the text, including the place of first publication. Also, the cuneiform script of the text is identified as either Neo-Assyrian or Neo-Babylonian.
The left-hand sidebar gives the following information:
In Item View you can hide or show the left-hand sidebar by clicking on [Hide Outline Pane] or [Show Outline Pane] in the left-hand corner of the page header.
» Browse or search the letters. [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/aebp/corpus]
There are different ways to search the content of the letters in the original Akkadian and the English translation, see searching SAA online. To make the most of the glossary, you should use the Sargon correspondence sub-corpus [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/aebp/corpus] of State Archives of Assyria Online.
Content last modified: 26 Apr 2013.
