To the king, my lord: your servant Išdī-Nabû.
. . .
Šummu-ilu, the son of Aramiš-šar-ilāni, the mušarkisu-official commissioned by the king, made the
following declaration before me: “My father died in enemy country; the fifty
soldiers under his command took thereupon 12 horses and left, they are now
bivouacking in the surroundings of Nineveh. I said to them: ‘Even if my father
is dead, why have you left the king’s service and have done away?’” (ABL 186 in
A. Leo Oppenheim, Letters from Mesopotamia: Official, Business, and Private
Letters on Clay Tablets from Two Millennia [Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1967], 177)
