Position in chronology
SAA 10 051. Mistaking Mercury for Venus (ABL 0618) [from astrologers]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 10(1) To the ki[ng, my lord]: your servant [Balasî]. Good health [to the king, my lord]! May Nabû and Marduk bl[ess the king], my lord! (6) Concerning the planet [Venus] about which the king, my lord, [wrote to me: "I am] told that it has [become visible]" — (10) the man who wrote (thus) to the king, [my lord], is in (complete) ignorance. He does not k[now] the [...], the cycle [...], (or) the (synodic) revoluti[ons of Venus]. (17) (Break) (19) Venus is not y[et] vis[ible]. Tonight, as I am sending [this] message to the king, [my] lord, we [see] only Merc[ury]; we do not [see] Venus. Presently…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 10 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
a-na ⸢LUGAL⸣ [EN-ia] / ARAD-ka [mba-la-si-i] / lu DI-mu [a-na LUGAL EN-ia] / dPA dAMAR.UTU [a-na LUGAL] / EN-ia lik-[ru-bu] / ina UGU MUL.[dil-bat] / ša LUGAL be-⸢lí⸣ [iš-pur-an-ni] / ma-a iq-ṭi-[bu-u-ni] / ma-a it-[ta-mar] / ša a-na LUGAL [EN-ia] / iš-pu-ra-[an-ni] / ina la mu-da-[nu-te] / šu*-ú ri*-[x x x] / a-da-an-nu [x x x x] / da-a.a-la-[te ša MUL.dil-bat] / la ú-[da] / i-ga-ra-⸢at⸣ [x x x]…
Scholarly note
Letter from a scholar (astrologer, exorcist, physician, lamentation-priest) to Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 10, 1993). ORACC text P334428.
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/P334428/..
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/P334428/.
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