SAA 04 011. Will Mugallu of Melid and Iškallu of Tabal Wage War? (AGS 059) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P336057

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4

High confidence

(Beginning destroyed) (r 1) [I ask y]ou, Šamaš, gr[eat] lord, [whether Mugallu, the Melidean, or] Iškallû the Ta[balean, or ... will strive] and plan, (r 4) (and whether) [they ......] will leave and [... to wage] war? (r 6) Be present [in thi]s [ram, place (in it) a firm positive answer, favorable designs], favorable, propi[tious omens by the oracular command of your great divinity, and may I see (them)]. (Rest destroyed)

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

Transliteration

[a-šal]-⸢ka dUTU⸣ EN ⸢GAL⸣-[ú ki-i lu-ú mmu-gal-lu KUR.mi-li-da-a.a] / [lu-ú m]iš-ka-lu-u KUR.ta-[ba-la-a.a lu-ú x x x x x] / [i-ṣar-ri]-⸢mu⸣ i-kap-pi-⸢du⸣ [x x x x x x x x x x] / [x x x x]-si uṣ-ṣu-⸢nim⸣-[ma x x x x x x x x x] / [DÙ-eš GIŠ].⸢TUKUL⸣ MURUB₄ u ⸢MÈ⸣ [x x x x x x x x x] / [i-na ŠÀ UDU.NÍTA an-ni]-i GUB-za-⸢am⸣-[ma an-na GI.NA GIŠ.ḪUR-MEŠ SILIM-MEŠ] / [UZU-MEŠ ta-mit] SIG₅-MEŠ ⸢SILIM⸣-[MEŠ šá SILIM-tim]

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 P336057.

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/P336057/..
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/P336057/.

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