Position in chronology
SAA 08 235. Auspicious Days [calendrical]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 8(1) [......] (2) [In all] 4 auspicious days for performing [...]. (3) [The 1st day] (and) the 3rd day are good; (4) [the 4th day] (and) the 5th day are good; (5) [the 7th day], the 8th day, the 10th day [are good]; (6) [the 14th day], when the moon and sun [......]; (7) [the xth day] in front of Marduk [......]; (8) [the 21st day], the 22nd day [......]; (9) [the 23rd day] in front of Gu[la ......]; (10) [the 24th day], the 25th day in front of [......]; (11) [the 27th day], when the moon in ... [......]. (12) [In all x] auspicious [da]ys for performing extispicy. (Rest destroyed)
State Archives of Assyria, volume 8 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
⸢x x x x x x x x x x x⸣ / [PAB] 04 UD-MEŠ DÙG.GA-MEŠ DÙ-ti [x x] / [UD 01-KAM] UD 03-KAM DÙG.GA [o] / [UD 04-KAM] UD 05-KAM DÙG.GA [o] / [UD 07-KAM] UD 08-KAM UD 10-KAM [DÙG.GA] / [UD 14?-KAM] GIM d30 u dUTU ⸢x⸣+[x x x] / [UD x-KAM] ina IGI dAMAR.UTU [x x x] / [UD 21?-KAM] UD 22-KAM [x x x x] / [UD 23-KAM] ina IGI dgu-[la x x x] / [UD 24-KAM] UD 25-KAM ina IGI d[x x x] / [UD 27?-KAM] GIM d30 ina šub-[x x x] / [PAB x UD]-MEŠ DÙG.GA-MEŠ DÙ-ti ḪAL-⸢ti⸣ [o]
Scholarly note
Astrological report from a court scholar to an Assyrian king, edited by Hermann Hunger (SAA 8, 1992). Celestial and meteorological observation correlated with omens. ORACC text P336673.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from Hermann Hunger, Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings (State Archives of Assyria, 8), 1992. Lemmatised by Mikko Luukko, 2016-17, as part of the research programme of the Alexander von Humboldt Chair in the Ancient History of the Near and Middle East at LMU Munich (Karen Radner, Humboldt Professorship 2015). The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/saao/P336673/..
Translation excerpted from Hunger, H. 1992. Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings. SAA 8. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa08/P336673/.
Related tablets
Related sources
Whatever its purpose, this single tablet shows that Babylonian mathematicians, working in base-60, had an arithmetic understanding of right triangles a millennium before Pythagoras was born.
The single most important literary discovery of the 19th century. It rewired the understanding of the Bible's literary context and proved that the Mesopotamian flood tradition is older. It is the oldest surviving epic poetry in human history.
The literary tradition is no longer anonymous from this point. Authorship — the idea that a specific human voice composes a specific work — enters the historical record with her.