Position in chronology
SAA 10 047. Conjunctions of Mars and Saturn (ABL 0079) [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! (6) Concerning the planets [Satur]n and [Mars] ... (Break) (r 1) There is (still) (a distance of) about 5 fi[ngers] left; it (= the conjunction) is not y[et] certain. Presently we keep observing and shall write to the king, our lord. It (= Mars) moves about a finger a day.
State Archives of Assyria, volume 10 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
a-na LUGAL EN-ni / ARAD-MEŠ-ka mba-la-si-i / mdPA—PAB-MEŠ—SU lu-u DI-mu / a-na LUGAL EN-ni / dPA dAMAR.UTU a-na LUGAL / EN-ni lik-ru-bu ina UGU / MUL.[UDU.IDIM.SAG].⸢UŠ*⸣ / ⸢MUL*⸣.[ṣal-bat-a-nu] / am—⸢mar 05 ú⸣-[ba-ni] / re-e-ḫe ú-[di-na] / la pa-ri-[is] / an-nu-rig ni-na-ṣar / a-na LUGAL EN-ni / ni-šap-pa-ra / am—mar ú-ba-ni / ša UD-me il-lak
Scholarly note
Letter from a scholar (astrologer, exorcist, physician, lamentation-priest) to Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 10, 1993). ORACC text P334028.
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/P334028/..
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/P334028/.
Related tablets
Related sources
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.
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.