Position in chronology
SAA 10 043. The King Must Give up Fasting (ABL 0078) [from astrologers]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 10(1) To the king, our lord: your servants Balasî and Nabû-ahhe-eriba. Good health to the king, our lord! May Nabû and Marduk bless the king, our lord! (7) The king, our lord, will pardon us. Is one day not enough for the king to mope and to eat nothing? For how long (still)? This is already the third day (when) the king does not eat anything. The king, a beggar! (16) (Surely) when, in the beginning of the month, the moon appears, he says: "I will not fast (any more)! It is the beginning of the month! I want bread to eat and wine to drink!" (r 4) Now Jupiter is the moon. The king can ask for food for even the whole of the year! We became worried and were afraid, and that is why we are (now) writing to the king.
State Archives of Assyria, volume 10 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
a-na LUGAL EN-ni / ARAD-MEŠ-ni-ka / mba-la-si-i / mdPA—PAB-MEŠ—SU / lu-u DI-mu a-na LUGAL EN-ni / dPA dAMAR.UTU a-na LUGAL / lik-ru-bu LUGAL EN-ni / re-ma-nu šu-ú / 01-en UD-mu e-ṣe-e / ša LUGAL ik-ku-šu ú-kar-ru-ni / ku-sa-pu la e-kul-u-ni / a-di im—ma-te šá-al-šú / ina UD-me an-ni-i-e / LUGAL NINDA-MEŠ la ek-kal / LUGAL muš-ke-e-nu / ki-ma SAG.DU ITI / d30 it-ta-mar / ma-a ra-me-ni / la…
Scholarly note
Letter from a scholar (astrologer, exorcist, physician, lamentation-priest) to Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 10, 1993). ORACC text P334027.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from Simo Parpola, Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars (State Archives of Assyria, 10), 1993. Lemmatised by Mikko Luukko, 2016, 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/P334027/..
Translation excerpted from Parpola, S. 1993. Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars. SAA 10. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa10/P334027/.
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