Position in chronology
SAA 08 420. New Moon on 1st Day (RMA 010) [lunar]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 8(1) If the moon [becomes visible] on the 1st day: reliable speech; [the land will become] happy. (3) [If] the day reaches its normal length: a reign of long days. (5) [If the moon] at its appearance wears a crown: [cons]tantly the harvest of the land will prosper; [the land] will dwell as if in pastures near the city; the king will reach the highest rank. (r 3) From Nabû-iqbi of Cutha.
State Archives of Assyria, volume 8 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
1 30 UD 01-KÁM [IGI-ir] / KA GI.NA ŠÀ [KUR DÙG.GA] / [1] UD-mu ana ŠID-MEŠ-šú GÍD.DA-ik / BALA UD-MEŠ GÍD.DA-MEŠ / [1 30] ina IGI.LAL-šú AGA a-pir / [SAG].UŠ-ma BURU₁₄ KUR SI.SÁ / [KUR] ⸢a⸣-bur-riš TUŠ-ab / LUGAL SAG.KAL-tú DU-ak / šá mdAG—iq-bi / DUMU GU.DU₈.A.KI
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 P237864.
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/P237864/..
Translation excerpted from Hunger, H. 1992. Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings. SAA 8. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa08/P237864/.
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.