Position in chronology
SAA 08 527. Full Moon on 15th Day (RMA 160B) [lunar]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 8(1) If on the 15th day the moon and [sun] are seen [tog]ether: [a strong enemy will raise] his weapons against the land; [the enemy will tear down] my city gate. (r 1) Shebat (XI) means the Westland [...] the 15th day means the Westland [......] bad for the Westland [......]. (r 4) Report of [NN].
State Archives of Assyria, volume 8 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
1 UD 15-KÁM 30 u [20 it-ti] / a-ḫa-meš IGI-ME [LÚ.KÚR dan-nu] / GIŠ.TUKUL-ME-šú ana KUR i-⸢na⸣-[áš-šá-a] / KÁ.GAL URU-ia [LÚ.KÚR ina-qar] / ITI.ZÍZ KUR—MAR.⸢TU⸣ [x x x] / UD 15-KÁM KUR—MAR [x x x x x] / ḪUL šá KUR—MAR [x x x x x] / ú-ìl-tum ša [mx x x x x]
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 P237311.
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/P237311/..
Translation excerpted from Hunger, H. 1992. Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings. SAA 8. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa08/P237311/.
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.