Position in chronology
SAA 10 220. The Substitute King Should Go to his Fate (ABL 0359) [from exorcists]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 10(1) To the king, [my lord]: your servant Adad-[šumu-uṣur]. Good health to the k[ing, my lord]! May Nabû and Marduk bless the king, my lord! (7) Concerning the substitute king about whom the king, my lord, wrote to me: "How many days should he sit (on the throne)?" — (10) we waited for a solar eclipse, (but) the eclipse did not take place. Now, if the gods are seen together on the 15th day, he may go to his fate on the 16th. (r 4) Alternatively, (if) it is agreeable to the king, my lord, let him complete the 100 days.
State Archives of Assyria, volume 10 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
a-na LUGAL [be-lí-ia] / ARAD-ka mdIM—[MU—PAB] / lu-u DI-mu a-na ⸢LUGAL⸣ [EN-ia] / dAG u dAMAR.UTU / a-na LUGAL be-lí-ia / lik-ru-bu / ina UGU LUGAL—pu-u-ḫi / ša LUGAL be-lí iš-pur-an-ni / ma-a ki ma-ṣi UD-MEŠ / lu-ši-ib ina IGI AN.MI / dUTU nu-us-sa-ad-gíl / AN.MI dUTU la iš-kun / ú-ma-a šum-ma / UD 15-KAM DINGIR-MEŠ / a-ḫe-iš em-mu-ru / UD 16-KAM a-na šim*-te / li-il-lik / ú-la*-a ina IGI LUGAL / be-lí-ia ma-ḫi-ir / 01-me* UD-me lu-ma-al-li
Scholarly note
Letter from a scholar (astrologer, exorcist, physician, lamentation-priest) to Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 10, 1993). ORACC text P334235.
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/P334235/..
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/P334235/.
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.