Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 024. Should Esarhaddon Send his Messenger to Hubuškia? (AGS 025+) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P238979

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4
High confidence
(1) [Šamaš, great lord, gi]ve m[e a firm positive answer to what I am asking you]! (2) [Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, who is now intent] on sending a messenger [of his choice to NN, king of Hubuški]a, and (whom) [your great divinity] knows — (5) [in accordance with the command of your great divinity, Šamaš, great lord, and yo]ur favo[rable decisions, should the subject of this query, Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, strive and] p[la]n, and [send his messenger to Hubuškia]? (7) [If he, having planned, sen]ds (him), [his messenger, whom he is sen]ding [to Hubuškia] — (9) will [the Urarṭians, or the…

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] / [mAN.ŠÁR—ŠEŠ—SUM-na LUGAL KUR—AN.ŠÁR šá i-na-an]-⸢na!⸣ LÚ.A—KIN-⸢šú⸣ / [šá ŠÀ-šú ub-lam a-na mx x x LUGAL KUR.ḫu-bu-uš-ki]-a ana KIN-šú-ma / [ti-iṣ-mu-ru-ma DINGIR-ut-ka GAL-ti] ZU-u / [GIM KA DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti dUTU EN GAL-ú ù EŠ.BAR]-⸢ka šal⸣-mu / [EN—MU.MU NE-i mAN.ŠÁR—ŠEŠ—SUM-na LUGAL KUR—AN.ŠÁR li-iṣ-rim] ⸢lik-pid⸣-[ma] /…

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 P238979.

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/P238979/..
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/P238979/.

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