Position in chronology
SAA 08 308. Red Sun (RMA 181) [lunar]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 8(1) If the sun rises and (is as if) dyed red: this land will disappear. (2) If the sun rises and is red: plenty for the people, variant: battle will be done in the land, variant: rebellion, variant: losses for the king of all lands. (4) If the sun at its rising carries red radiance: an eclipse will take place, and Adad will devastate. (6) The morning watch concerns Elam. This sign came at sunrise. (r 2) If Adad thunders in Iyyar (II): emmer wheat and flax will not prosper. (r 4) The star about which I spoke to the king my lord is very faint; it has not yet ascended, and so I have not identified it. (r 7) From Zakir.
State Archives of Assyria, volume 8 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
1 20 KUR-ma SA₅ ṣa-rip KUR BI ZÁḪ / 1 20 KUR-ma SA₅ nu-ḫuš UN-ME : MÈ ina KUR GAR / : ḪI.GAR : tam-ṭa-a-ti ana LUGAL KUR DÙ.A.BI / 1 20 ina KUR-šú ŠE.ER.ZI SA₅ ÍL* AN.MI GAR-ma / dIM RA-iṣ / EN.NUN šá še-e-ri šá KUR.NIM.KI / ina ni-pi-iḫ dUTU it-tum an-nit / ta-at-tal-ka / 1 ina ITI.GUD dIM GÙ-šú ŠUB ZÍZ.ÀM / u GU-ú? NU SI.SÁ-ME / MUL šá ana LUGAL EN-ía aq-bu ma-aʾ-diš / un-nu-ut a-din-nu ul i-šaq-qam-ma / ul ú-mas-si / šá mza-kir
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 P240145.
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/P240145/..
Translation excerpted from Hunger, H. 1992. Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings. SAA 8. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa08/P240145/.
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.