Position in chronology
SAA 04 008. Should Assyrian Army Lay Siege to a Fortress of Mugallu of Melid? (PRT 027) [military and political]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 4(Beginning destroyed) (1) [Disregard the (formulation) of tod]ay's [ca]se, be it good, be it faulty, (and that) a clean or an unclean person [has touched] the sacri[ficial sheep]. (2) [Disregard that the ra]m (offered) to your great divinity for the performance of the extispicy is deficie[nt or faulty]. (3) [Disregard that he who tou]ches the forehead of the sheep is dressed in his ordinary soiled garments, [(or) has touched] the (libation) beer, [the maṣhatu-flour, the water, the container and the fire]. (4) [Disregard that] I, the haruspex your servant, am dressed in my ordinary soiled…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 4 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[e-zib šá di]-⸢nim UD⸣-[mu an-ni-i] GIM DÙG-ab GIM LAL-u KUG lu-ʾu-u ⸢SISKUR⸣.[SISKUR TAG-MEŠ] / [e-zib šá UDU].⸢NÍTA⸣ DINGIR-ti-ka šá ana MÁŠ MÁŠ-u LAL-[u ḫa-ṭu-u] / [e-zib šá TAG]-it pu-ut UDU.NÍTA TÚG gi-né-e-šú ár-šá-tú lab-šú mi-iḫ-ḫa [ZÍD.MAD.GÁ A-MEŠ ḫaṣ-bu IZI TAG-MEŠ] / [e-zib šá a-na]-ku DUMU LÚ.ḪAL ARAD-ka TÚG gi-né-e-a ár-šá-tú lab-šá-[ku mim-ma lu-ʾu-u KÚ NAG ŠÉŠ-šú] / [ku-un qa-ti]…
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 P236926.
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/P236926/..
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/P236926/.
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