Position in chronology
SAA 10 206. Prayers and Rituals against Retrograding Mars (ABL 1401) [from exorcists]
About this tablet
A letter from Assyrian court exorcists to their king — almost certainly Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal — reporting on a worrying celestial event: Mars moving retrograde through the constellation of the Furrow (roughly Virgo). In Mesopotamian celestial divination, such a configuration threatened locust plagues and calamity for the empire's northern territories, a region called Subartu. The exorcists write to reassure the king that they are actively performing the prescribed apotropaic namburbi rituals and 'raised-hand' prayers before the planet itself. Their closing guarantee — 'there is no sin' — is a technical formula confirming that the proper rites are in order and the king bears no ritual fault for the omen.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
May Nabû and Marduk bless you, my king. You wrote to me about Mars — and I should let you know that it is currently traveling through the constellation of the Furrow, a configuration that carries an omen of locust swarms; the planet is blazing with its fierce radiance and the portent threatens harm to the northern lands. We are actively countering these signs: we are performing the full namburbi apotropaic ritual and reciting the raised-hand prayers before Mars on a regular basis. There is no fault on your part. May your heart be at ease.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[Nabû and M]arduk [to the king,] my lord, [may they bl]ess. [Concerning] Mars, [about which the king, my lord,] wrote to me — [the king, my lord,] does not know [that as/when ...] ... those [...] [...] [in] the constellation of the Furrow (Virgo) it goes; [the flight of] locusts [...] [...] carries [radi]ance; [... evil of] Subartu; [... th]ese we ward off. [Its namburbi-ritual and] lifted-hand prayers [before Mar]s [...] regularly [we perform.] [As for sin,] there is none. May the heart [of the king, m]y lord [be well ...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Engine notes
read from photo9 uncertain terms ↓
- MUL.AB.SÍN — Conventionally identified as Virgo; the Babylonian constellation covers roughly the same area. Transliteration shows AB* with asterisk indicating uncertainty in the sign reading.
- ZI-ut BURU₅ — 'Rising of the locust' — a standard omen phrase; ZI-ut can also mean 'disappearance/departure' or 'rising/onset'; BURU₅ = locust, grasshopper. The exact ominous significance in this context is debated.
- šá-ru-ri na-ši — 'It bears radiance/brilliance' — šarūru is the characteristic glow or halo of a planet or deity; na-ši from našû 'to carry, bear.' The phrase describes the visual appearance of Mars.
- SU.BIR₄.KI — Subartu — the land north/northeast of Assyria, used here in an ominous geographical context. The sign ḪUL* preceding is uncertain (asterisked), meaning 'evil/bad.'
- ni-suḫ₄ — From nasāḫu, 'to remove, uproot, extirpate' — referring to ritual removal of evil portended by the omen. The precise form is debated.
- NAM.BÚR.BI — Namburbi — the standard Akkadian/Sumerian term for an apotropaic dissolution ritual performed to avert an evil omen. Retained untranslated as a technical term in some editions; here rendered 'namburbi-ritual.'
- ŠU.ÍL.LÁ.KÁM.MEŠ — Literally 'hand-lifting' prayers — a technical genre of Akkadian lament/petition prayer; rendered 'lament-prayers' following convention, though 'prayers of supplication' is equally valid. Signs carry asterisks in transliteration indicating uncertainty.
- ḫi-iṭ-ṭu la-áš-šú — 'There is no sin' — ḫiṭṭu means 'sin, offense, fault'; la aššu = 'there is not.' The phrase assures the king no ritual fault was committed, but the bracketing makes the restoration partly conjectural.
- ka-a.a-ma-nu — 'Always, regularly, constantly' — kâmanu/kayyamānu, an adverb of habitual or continuous action. Here applied to the ritual performance or the planet's behaviour.
Reasoning ↓
Visual examination of the photograph: The tablet appears in multiple fragments — two joining halves visible across the image panels, plus what may be the top and bottom edges shown separately. The clay is light buff/cream in colour, moderately well fired. Cuneiform wedges are visible on the central face panels, though at this photograph resolution and with significant surface abrasion and breakage, individual signs cannot be read with confidence. The left edge shows a modern museum label (KI. / 1904 / 10 3 [or 10 9] / 274), and the right panel bears accession number 99242, consistent with a British Museum holding. The obverse and reverse both show dense cuneiform inscription in rows, but the wedge detail is too fine to isolate individual signs against the worn surface in this scan. The transliteration is provided by SAA 10 206 (State Archives of Assyria vol. 10, no. 206); cross-check against photo cannot confirm or deny specific sign readings owing to resolution and surface damage — flagged throughout as 'cannot verify from photo.' The text is a letter from an Assyrian scholar (exorcist) to the king reporting on Mars (Ṣalbatānu) transiting Virgo (MUL.AB.SÍN), associated with the omen of the 'Rising of the Locust' (ZI-ut BURU₅), and noting that apotropaic namburbi rituals and lament-prayers have been performed. Reconstructions follow Parpola, SAA 10 (1993), pp. 155–156.
Generated by claude-sonnet-4-6 · prompt 2026-05-11/v3-conventions · May 11, 2026 · 3343 in / 1283 out tokens
Transliteration
[dAG d]⸢AMAR⸣.UTU / [a-na LUGAL] ⸢be⸣-lí-ia / [lik]-⸢ru⸣-bu / [ina UGU MUL].ṣal-bat-a-nu / [šá LUGAL be-lí] iš-pur-an-ni / [LUGAL be-lí] ⸢la⸣ ú-da-a / [ki-i x x] ⸢x⸣-lu šu-tu-ni / [x x x]-me-ra / [ina ŠÀ MUL].⸢AB*⸣.SÍN il-lak / [ZI-ut] BURU₅ / [x x x x] ⸢x x x⸣ / [šá-ru]-⸢ri⸣ na-ši / [x x x] ⸢ḪUL*⸣ SU.BIR₄.KI / [x x an]-nu-te ni-suḫ₄ / [NAM.BÚR.BI u] ⸢ŠU⸣.ÍL.LÁ*.KÁM*.MEŠ* / [ša IGI MUL.ṣal]-bat-a-nu / [x x x x]+⸢x⸣ ka-a.a-ma-nu / [né-pa-áš] ḫi-iṭ-ṭu / [la-áš-šú] ŠÀ-bu / [šá LUGAL be]-lí-ia / [lu-u DÙG.GA x]+⸢x⸣ nu
Scholarly note
Letter from a scholar (astrologer, exorcist, physician, lamentation-priest) to Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 10, 1993). ORACC text P334885.
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/P334885/..
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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