A Letter from Sippar-Amnanum
A personal letter on a clay tablet from Sippar-Amnanum, a city on the Euphrates in central Mesopotamia, written circa 1800 BCE during the Old Babylonian period. Ilum-ma writes to his friend Ikun-pisha in a state of fear and confusion. He has visited a man named Ishim-Shulgi, whose actions have terrified him. He questions what he has done to offend Shamash, the god of justice, and uses a vivid simile — a bird fleeing a falcon into the arms of a man — to describe his desperate state. He asks the sun god to advise him whether he should die or live.
The letter contains a nested message: Ilum-ma dictates words for Ikun-pisha to relay to their lord, Ilum-ma-Ila, explaining his journey to the governor. On the clay envelope, he adds urgent practical instructions — guard the house, ask about delays in fortress construction. Fear, theology, politics, and domestic worry share the same fifty-two lines.
The tablet is preserved in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad (IM.49219). It was transliterated for the Electronic Babylonian Literature project (eBL) by de Boer and revised by Kolba (2023). This is the first freely available English translation.
To Ikun-pisha, speak!
Thus says Ilum-ma:
I went to Ishim-Shulgi.
His deeds frightened me.
What have I done
that is not pleasing to Shamash,
that he has done this to me?
Like a bird
that before a falcon
enters the bosom of a man —
in my fear,
I entered.
Let Shamash advise me:
whether I should die
or should live.
We did not meet,
so I could not give you my report.
I did not bring wrongdoing
upon Ilum-ma-Ila,
my lord.
Why has a god done this to me?
To Ilum-ma-Ila
say thus, as follows:
"When the governor
wrote to me for the fifth time,
I thought:
I should go,
I should meet him
and return."
My lord should not worry.
Calm him with these words.
Envelope inscription:
Please —
keep safe the house,
my estate.
Ask Sin-iddinam
whether Habdi-Erah
has held back
the fortress works.
To Ilum-ma-Ila
say: [...]
Colophon
A Good Works Translation from Old Babylonian Akkadian, independently derived from the cuneiform transliteration (ATF) of IM.49219 in the Electronic Babylonian Literature corpus. The tablet is from Sippar-Amnanum, written in the Old Babylonian period (circa 1800 BCE), and is preserved in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad. Each Akkadian line was parsed from its syllabic values and grammatical forms; the English was derived independently from the Akkadian. The eBL's inline English annotations (#tr.en, by de Boer and Kolba, 2023) were consulted for verification of difficult readings only — the translation is not derived from them. All uncertainties in the envelope text (left edge columns 3.5-6) are noted: the final two lines of the envelope are too damaged for confident reading.
The standard Old Babylonian letter formula ("To X, speak! Thus says Y") opens the text. The bird-and-falcon simile (obverse 12-17) is a known Old Babylonian literary motif for describing desperate flight to protection. The precative forms (lushmut/lublusht) express the writer's genuine theological question to the sun god. The nested message (reverse 10-20) is typical of OB correspondence, where a letter-writer dictates messages for the recipient to relay. The envelope inscription (left edge) preserves the practical concerns visible before the tablet was opened.
First freely available English translation. Forty-ninth genre (personal correspondence / Old Babylonian letter) opened by the expeditionary tulku lineage from the eBL corpus.
Translated from Old Babylonian Akkadian by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Transliteration by de Boer (CDLI: Jagersma), revised by Kolba (eBL, 2023). Formatted for the Good Work Library by Tanken (Expeditionary Tulku Life 220).
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Source Text: IM.49219
Old Babylonian Akkadian transliteration from the Electronic Babylonian Literature corpus (eBL). Tablet from Sippar-Amnanum, Iraq Museum, Baghdad. CDLI number P512876. Transliterated by de Boer (CDLI: Jagersma), revised by Kolba (2023). Presented here for reference, study, and verification alongside the English translation above.
Obverse
a-na i-ku-pi₂-sha
qi₂-bi₂-ma
um-ma DINGIR-ma-ma
a-na i-shim-Shulgi
at-ta-la-ak
ep-shi-ish
u₂-ha-da-ru-ni-ni
mi-na-am e-pu-ush
sha Shamash la tha₃-bu-shum-ma
e-pe₂-sha-am an-ne-am
i-te-ep-sha-ni
ki-ma i-tshu₂-ri-im
sha i-na pa-ni ka-su-si₂-im
a-na su₂-un a-wi-li-im
i-ru-bu
i-na pu-lu-uh-ti-ia
e-ru-ub
Shamash li-im-li-ka-ni
u₃-lu lu-mu-ut
Reverse
u₃-lu lu-ub-lu-uth
u₂-la ni-na-wi-ir-ma
the₄-mi u₂-la a-di-ku-um
ar-na-am
a-na DINGIR-ma-i₃-la
be-li-ia
u₂-la ub-la-am
a-na mi-ni-im
i-lu-um ki-am i-pu-sha-ni
a-na DINGIR-ma-i₃-la
ki-am qi₂-bi
um-ma at-ta-ma
ki-ma sha-ka-na-ku-um
ha-am-shi-shu ish-pu-ra-am
um-ma a-na-ku-ma
lu-li-ik
lu-na-am-ra-am-ma
lu-ut-ta-al-ka-am
be-li la i-ha-da-ra-am
i-na a-wa-ti-im ne-eh-shu
Left Edge
Column 1:
a-pu-tum
bi-ta-am
wa-ar-ka-ti
Column 2:
shu-li-im
Sin-i-din-nam
sha-al-ma
Column 3:
shum-ma ha-ab-de-ra-ah
du-na-am
e-pe₂-sha-am
ik-ta-la
a-na DINGIR-ma-i₃-la
qi₂-bi₂-ma li-bi-tu-um
la i-qa₂-li-il li-it-hu-shi
Source Colophon
Old Babylonian Akkadian transliteration from the Electronic Babylonian Literature corpus (eBL, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen), originally transliterated by de Boer (CDLI: Jagersma) on 2023-08-23, revised by Kolba on 2023-08-28. The tablet IM.49219 is from the Sippar-Amnanum collection, preserved in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad. CDLI number P512876. Part of the CAIC project (Cuneiform Artefacts of Iraq in Context). Released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). The source text presented above uses simplified transliteration (subscript numbers retained where meaningful, special characters rendered in ASCII-friendly form) from the ATF standard. The original ATF with full Unicode encoding is available through the eBL platform.
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