SAA 04 016. NN Sent to Que (AGS 062+) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P238744

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4

High confidence

(1) Šamaš, great lord, [give me a firm positive answer] to what I am ask[ing you]! (2) [Fr]om this day, the 26th day o[f this month, ... of this year, to the ...th day] of Tishri (VII) o[f thi]s [year], my [stipulated te]rm — (4) [within th]is [stipulated te]rm, [should Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, strive and plan, and send ... where the ...]eans are located? (6) [Is it pleasing to your great divinity? If he, having planned], sends, [will either NN ... and his army, or ...]šattû and his army, [or NN ... and his army, or ...]ni, son of Kandâ and his army, [or the ...ians, ... or the Tabale]ans…

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⸣ / ⸢TA⸣ UD-mu an-ni-i UD 26-KÁM šá ⸢ITI⸣ [an-ni-i ITI.x šá MU.AN.NA an-ni]-⸢ti⸣ / [EN UD x-KAM] šá ITI.DU₆ ⸢šá⸣ [MU.AN.NA an-ni-ti ši-kin a-dan]-ni-ia / [ina ši-kin a-dan]-ni šu-[a-tu mdaš-šur—ŠEŠ—SUM-na LUGAL KUR—aš-šur li-iṣ-rim lik-pid]-ma / [x x x x x] ⸢x⸣+[x x x x x x x x x]-a.a áš-bu / [liš-pur UGU DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti DÙG-ab GIM…

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 P238744.

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/P238744/..
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/P238744/.

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