| 1 Šalāš unqātum1 ana šarrī Lilî2 šaplān šamê, | Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, |
| 2 Sebûm ana bēlī Kurî3 ina appadānīšunu4 ša abnim, | Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, |
| 3 Tišûm ana Tenēšētim5 enšētim6 kišid eperim,7 | Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die, |
| 4 Ištētum ana Bēlim Eklim wašbim eli kussîšu eklim | One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne |
| 5 Ina māti Mūrdūr8 ali ṣillū iṣallalū.9 | In the Land of Mordor where the shadows lie. |
| 6 Ištēt Unqum ana bêlīšina kalîšina, Ištēt Unqum ana amārīšina, | One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, |
| 7 Ištēt Unqum ana puḫḫurīšina10 kalîšina u ina eklētim kaṣārīšina | One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them |
| 8 Ina māti Mūrdūr ali ṣillū iṣallalū. | In the Land of Mordor where the shadows lie. |
Akkadian translation and footnotes by Joshua Tyra.
[1] unqum – f. “ring; (stamp-)seal” (Jeremy Black, Andrew George, and Nicholas Postgate, eds., A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian [Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1999], 423).
[2] šarrī Lilî – “the Elven-kings”, lit. “the kings of the (storm) demons” (see Ibid., 182). Here I have followed the lead of Faragallah Sayyid Muhammad who, in his magisterial Arabic translation of The Lord of the Rings, chose the term jinn (“demon[s]”) to translate Tolkien’s elves. A jinn can be harmful or benevolent and so can a lilûm, as far as I understand the matter (see J. R. R. Tolkien, Sayyidu l-Khawaatim: Rifqatu l-Khaatim [The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring], trans. Faragallah Sayyid Muhammad [Cairo: Nahdet Misr, 2009]).
[3] kurûm, f. kurītum – “short”; as subst. “short (person), dwarf” (Black, George, and Postgate, A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian, 169).
[4] appadān – “pillared hall”, a Neo-Assyrian loanword from Old Persian. Probably too late to be used in this translation, which otherwise mostly adheres to Old Babylonian norms, but the meaning is such a good fit (the dwarves’ halls are indeed pillared) that I couldn’t resist.
[5] Tenēšētim – “human kind”, pl. of tenēštum (Black, George, and Postgate, A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian, 404).
[6] enšētim – for “mortal” I have used enšum “weak”; this term is not only related to the previous word tenēšētum (see note 5) but also to Hebrew ʾenôš, “man[kind]”, translated “mortal man” in such passages as Job 4:17. As Averbeck has suggested, perhaps the Semitic root originally implied the weakness, limitedness, and hence mortality of humankind. I’m open to better suggestions for “mortal”.
[7] kišid eperim – “acquisition of the soil”, “conquered by the soil” = doomed to be buried (Ibid., 74–75).
[8] Mūrdūr – Following standard Akkadian practice and Faragallah’s Arabic example, the name of Mordor is indeclinable.
[9] By a happy (and poetic) coincidence, one verb for “to lie” (ṣalālum) is from the same root as “shadows” (ṣillū) (Black, George, and Postgate, A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian, 332).
[10] puḫḫurīšina – puḫḫurum = “to bring together, assemble (trans.)”, the D-stem inf. of paḫārum (Ibid., 261).
TEDS Akkadian 