Sargon birth tablet K.3401

A clay tablet from NinevehNineveh and KuyunjikNineveh is an ancient Assyrian city near Mosul in northern Iraq; Kuyunjik is one of its archaeological moundsGlossary · Click to read the explanation, written in AkkadianAkkadianAn ancient East Semitic language written in cuneiform in Mesopotamia.Glossary · Click to read the explanation, preserving an account of the birth of Sargon of AkkadSargon of AkkadThird-millennium BCE king associated with later birth and ascent traditions.Glossary · Click to read the explanation, a king who ruled in the third millennium BCE. The tablet belongs to the Neo-Assyrian period (about 911–612 BCE), separating this copy’s date from the lifetime of the person it describes. ^[3][4]

The CuneiformCuneiformWriting with wedge-shaped signs, developed from Mesopotamian recording traditions and used for several languages from the third millennium BCE.Glossary · Click to read the explanation Digital Library Initiative records it as P365306, with the identity K.3401 + Sm.2118; it is held in the British Museum. These identifiers trace the object and its parts in catalogues and help locate the written witness used to read the story. ^[3]

Marie-Lan Nguyen’s photograph shows the actual tablet and is used under CC BY 2.5. It depicts a written witness; its relationship to stories of infants in baskets is studied by comparing the texts.