Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 003. Will the Chief Eunuch Drive Mugallu away from a Fortress of Melid? (AGS 055) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P238967

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4
High confidence
(1) Šamaš, great lord, [give me a firm positive answer] to what I am [asking you]! (2) Mugallu and the troops [of ..., (allied) with him], who have now [set up ca]mp aga[inst ..., a fortress] of the city Melid — (4) [will the chief eunuch of Esarhaddon, ki]ng of Assyria, and [his] troop[s and army who] have gone against him, [drive Mugallu and his troops away] from the w[all of ..., and will he] aban[don the w]all? (9) Does your great divinity kn[ow it? Will he who can see, see it? Will he who can hear, hear it]? (10) Disregard the (formulation) of [to]day's case, [be it good, be it faulty].…

State Archives of Assyria, volume 4 — scholar edition (ORACC).

Transliteration

dUTU EN GAL-ú šá a-[šal-lu-ka an-na GI.NA a-pal-an-ni] / mmug-gal-lum a-di ERIM-⸢MEŠ⸣ [x x x x x x mál it-ti-šú] / šá i-na-an-na i-na ⸢UGU⸣ [URU.x x x x x bir-ti?] / šá URU.mi-li-di ma-⸢dak⸣-[ta iš-ku-nu LÚ.GAL—SAG šá mdaš-šur—ŠEŠ—SUM-na] / ⸢LUGAL⸣ KUR—aš-šur.KI a-di ERIM-⸢MEŠ⸣ [e-mu-qu šá it-ti-šú] / [a]-na UGU-ḫi-šú it-tal-ku-[ma mmu-gal-lu a-di ERIM-MEŠ šá] / ⸢it⸣-ti-šú TA UGU ⸢BÀD?⸣ [šá URU.x…

Scholarly note

Extispicy query addressed to Šamaš, the sungod and patron of divination, edited by Ivan Starr (SAA 4, 1990). The king asks the deity to render a yes/no verdict on a political or military question. ORACC text P238967.

Attribution

Image: Adapted from Ivan Starr, Queries to the Sungod: Divination and Politics in Sargonid Assyria (State Archives of Assyria, 4), 1990. Lemmatised by Mikko Luukko, 2018, 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/P238967/..
Translation excerpted from Starr, I. 1990. Queries to the Sungod: Divination and Politics in Sargonid Assyria. SAA 4. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa04/P238967/.

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