SAA 04 009. Will Mugallu or Iškallu Attack Chief Eunuch Ša-Nabu-šu? (AGS 057) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P238964

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4

High confidence

(1) Šamaš, great lord, [give me a firm positive answer] to what I am as[king you]! (2) Ša-Nabû-šû, the chief eunu[ch of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria], who [has gone] with [eunuchs (and) m]agnate[s, the army of Esarhaddon], ki[ng of Assyria, against ......] (5) (Break) (7) [If] he goes and [sets up c]am[p ......], (8) will either [Mugallu w]ith his troops, [or ......], or Iškallû the Tabalean [......], or any other [enemy], either in daytime [or at night] strive and plan, (9) [mount an attack agai]nst [......] Ša-Nabû-šû and his [army], and ki[ll and plunder (them)]? (Break) (r 1) (... whether)…

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] / mšá—dAG—[šu]-ú LÚ.GAL—LÚ.⸢SAG⸣ [šá mAN.ŠÁR—ŠEŠ—SUM-na LUGAL KUR—AN.ŠÁR] / šá TA [LÚ.SAG-MEŠ] ⸢LÚ⸣.GAL-[MEŠ e-mu-qi šá mAN.ŠÁR—ŠEŠ—SUM-na] / ⸢LUGAL*⸣ [KUR—AN.ŠÁR ana UGU x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x] / [x]+⸢x⸣ [x x x x x] ⸢x⸣+[x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x] / [x x x] ⸢x x x⸣ [x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x] / DU-MEŠ-ku…

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 P238964.

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/P238964/..
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/P238964/.

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