Position in chronology
SAA 08 351. Occultation of Pleiades (RMA 242) [planetary]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 8(1) If the Pleiades [enter the moon]: the land will perish all together; a month will pass, the enemy [...] Elam. (4) If the Pleiades enter the moon [and] come out towards the north: Akkad will become happy; the king of Akkad will become strong and will have no rival. (8) — The north wind blows. (9) Since the moon entered the Pleiades, the north wind is blowing. The morning watch (means) Elam; this is bad for the enemy. (r 4) If the Pleiades are elongated: the field will produce a yield. (r 6) — At the conjunction of the moon [(the Pleiades) go in front]. (r 7) May the lord of kings be eve[rlasting]! (r 8) From Ašare[du] the y[ounger].
State Archives of Assyria, volume 8 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
1 MUL.MUL ana ŠÀ [30 TU] / KUR 01-niš ZÁḪ ITI ⸢uš-ta⸣-[x x?] / NIM.MA.KI LÚ.KÚR [x x] / 1 MUL.MUL ana ŠÀ 30 TU-ME?-[ma] / ana IM.SI.SÁ È-MEŠ-ni [o] / ŠÀ KUR—URI.KI DÙG-ab LUGAL URI.[KI] / KALAG.GA-ma GABA.RI NU TUK-ši / IM.SI.SÁ DU-ma / ul-tu 30 ana ŠÀ MUL.MUL / i-ru-bu IM.SI.SÁ DU-ak / EN.NUN—UD.ZAL.LA KUR.NIM.MA.KI / ḪUL šá LÚ.KÚR šu-ú / 1 MUL.MUL šá-ti-iḫ / A.ŠÀ A.QAR 01 GÚ.UN ÍL / ina šit-qul-ti 30 i-[pan-nu-ma] / EN LUGAL-MEŠ lu-ú ⸢da⸣-[ri] / šá ma-šá-ri-[du] ⸢qa⸣-[at-nu]
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 P236988.
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/P236988/..
Translation excerpted from Hunger, H. 1992. Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings. SAA 8. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa08/P236988/.
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.