Position in chronology
SAA 08 401. Clouds (RMA 182) [weather]
Translation · reference
High confidence(1) If cloudbanks lie in the path of the sun: the gods will make a favorable decision about the land. (3) If four cloudbanks lie there: destruction of cattle and wild animals. (5) If a cloudbank has come out in the path of the sun: rain and flood will come. (r 1) If (at) the sun's rising cloudbanks lie in its path: the emblems of the land will fall. (r 3) From Rašil the older, servant of the king.
Source: Hunger, H. 1992. Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings. SAA 8. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa08/P237785/
Why it matters
Transliteration
1 ni-du ina KASKAL 20 ŠUB-MEŠ DINGIR-MEŠ GALGA KUR / ana MÍ.SIG₅ GALGA-MEŠ / 1 04 ni-du ŠUB-ME / NÍG.ḪA.LAM.MA GUD-MEŠ u ú-ma-mu / 1 ina KUR 20 ni-du a-ṣi / A.AN u A.KAL DU-MEŠ / 1 20 KUR ina KASKAL-šú ni-du ŠUB-MEŠ / ŠU.NIR KUR ŠUB-MEŠ / šá mTUK-ši—DINGIR / ARAD šá LUGAL maḫ-ru-u
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 P237785.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P237785). source
Translation excerpted from Hunger, H. 1992. Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings. SAA 8. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa08/P237785/.
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.