Position in chronology
SAA 10 071. Predicting Eclipses (ABL 1069) [from astrologers]
Translation · reference
High confidence(Beginning lost) (1) We will look it up [...], and I shall send the king, my lord, a ta[blet] dealing with the halo of the moon. (6) Concerning the watch for a lunar eclipse about which the king, my lord, wrote to me — its watch will be (kept) [on the deci]ded [night]; (but) [whether] its [wat]ch should be during sunset, [we have not been able to de]cide. (r 1) (Break) (r 4) [Eclipses] cannot occur [dur]ing certain periods. [After] 4 months, there was a watch in Marchesvan (VIII), and now, in the month Kislev (IX), we will (again) keep watch. A[s the]se watche[s] (Remainder lost)
Source: Parpola, S. 1993. Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars. SAA 10. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa10/P334714/
Why it matters
Transliteration
⸢x x⸣+[x x x] / né-mu-ur ⸢ṭup*⸣-[pu] / ša TÙR ša d30 / a-na LUGAL EN-ia / a-šap-pa-ra / ina UGU ma-ṣar-ti / ša AN.MI d30 / ša LUGAL be-lí / iš-pur-an-ni / [mu-šu par]-⸢su⸣ ma-ṣar-tu-šú / [x x pa]-⸢ar*⸣-su / [šum-ma ina] dšá-maš ra-⸢bé⸣-e / [ma-ṣar]-tu-šú / [la ni-ip]-ru-us / [x x x x x]+⸢x⸣-a / [x x x x x]+⸢x⸣-šú / [x x x x la]-áš-šú / [AN.MI ina] ⸢ŠÀ⸣ UD*.DUG₄.GA-MEŠ / [o] a-da-an-na-a-te /…
Scholarly note
Letter from a scholar (astrologer, exorcist, physician, lamentation-priest) to Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 10, 1993). ORACC text P334714.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) ? — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P334714). source
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/P334714/.
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.