Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 10 263. Burying Apotropaic Figures (ABL 0022) [from exorcists]

~670 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P333974

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 10
High confidence
(1) To the king, my lord: your servant Marduk-šakin-šumi. Good health to the king, my lord! May [Nabû] and Marduk bless the king, my lord! (5) Concerning the prophylactic figurines about which the king, my lord, wrote to me, "Where will they be buried?" — it is said in the (ritual) tablet as follows: "You bury them at the outer gate." Now, with the king's permission, [......] (11) (Break) (r 2) Also tomorrow, after the king has gone out, they should bury them in front of the main room and the bedrooms, in places to be additionally specified by the king. Daytime or nighttime makes no difference; one may bury whenever one likes. (r 13) I, for my part, will bury (figurines) in the said way here.

State Archives of Assyria, volume 10 — scholar edition (ORACC).

Transliteration

a-na LUGAL EN-ía / ARAD-ka m⸢dAMAR.UTU⸣—GAR—MU / ⸢lu⸣-u DI-mu a-na LUGAL EN-ía / [dPA] ⸢u⸣ dAMAR.UTU a-na LUGAL EN-ía / ⸢lik*-ru*⸣-bu ina UGU tim*-ra*-a-ni / ⸢ša* LUGAL*⸣ be*-lí iš*-pur-an-ni / ma*-[a a].a*-ka* i-tam-me-ru / ina* ṭup*-pi* ⸢ki*⸣-i* an-ni-i qa-bi / ma*-a* ⸢ina* KÁ*.DIL*⸣.ÀM* te-te-⸢mir⸣ / ⸢ú*⸣-ma*-a* šum*-[mu] LUGAL i-qab-bi / [x x] ⸢x x x x x⸣ / [x x x x x x]+⸢x⸣ / [x x 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 P333974.

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/P333974/..
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/P333974/.

Related tablets

Related sources