Position in chronology
SAA 10 050. Sightings of Mercury are Unpredictable (ABL 0692) [from astrologers]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 10(1) [To the k]ing, [our] lord: your [servants] Balasî and [Nabû]-ahhe-eriba. [Good he]alth to the king, our [lord]! [May] Nabû and Marduk bless the king, our lord! (9) [Concer]ning the planet Mercury [about which] the king, our lord, [wr]ote to us: "I have heard it [can be seen in B]abylon" — [he who] wrote (this) to the king, our [lord], may really have observed it. His eye, however, must have fallen on it. (r 7) We ourselves have kept watch (but) we have not observed it. [On]e day it might be too early, [anoth]er day it might lie flat (in the horizon). [To see it], our [e]yes sho[uld] (literally) [have f]allen on it. (r 13) (Remainder lost)
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] ⸢DI⸣-mu a-na LUGAL / [EN]-ni / [d]PA dAMAR.UTU / [a]-⸢na⸣ LUGAL EN-ni / [lik]-ru-bu / [ina] ⸢UGU⸣ MUL.UDU.IDIM.GUD.UD / [ša] LUGAL EN-ni / [iš]-pur-an-na-ši-ni / [ma-a] ⸢šu⸣-ú / [ina] ⸢KÁ*⸣.DINGIR*.RA / [IGI-mar] ⸢as*⸣-se-me / [ša] a-na LUGAL / [EN]-ni iš-pur-an-ni / [ina] ket-ti-šú / [is]—su-ri e-ta-mar / ⸢IGI⸣.2-šú…
Scholarly note
Letter from a scholar (astrologer, exorcist, physician, lamentation-priest) to Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 10, 1993). ORACC text P334490.
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/P334490/..
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/P334490/.
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