Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 030. Will Army of Assyria Retake Dur-Illil? (AGS 019) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P237224

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4
High confidence
(1) [Šamaš, great lord], give me a fi[rm positive answer to what I am asking you]! (2) [Dur-Illil, a fortress of Esarhaddo]n, king of Assyria, located on the border [of Mannea, which the Manneans captured] and took possession of — (4) should [NN together with men, hors]es, and an army, as (great as) he wishes, go [to capture that city, Dur-Il]lil and (will they), (6) be it by means of [war, or by means of friendliness and peace]ful negotiations, [or by means of a tunnel or breach, or by means of] hunger, (8) or through lack [of soldiers in the city], or by means of ramps, [or by ...]..., o[r…

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 / [URU.BÀD—dEN.LÍL bir-tu šá mdaš-šur—ŠEŠ—SUM]-⸢na⸣ LUGAL KUR—aš-šur.KI šá i-na UGU ta-ḫu-mu / [šá KUR.man-na-a.a na-du-ma LÚ.man-na-a.a DIB-MEŠ]-ma a-na šá ram-ni-šú-un ú-tir-ru-uš / [x x x x x x a-di ERIM-MEŠ ANŠE.KUR].⸢RA⸣-MEŠ e-mu-qu ma-al ŠÀ-ba-šú ub-lu / [a-na ṣa-ba-a-ta URU šá-a-šú URU.BÀD—d]⸢EN⸣.LÍL lil-li-ku lu-ú ina DÙ-eš /…

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 P237224.

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/P237224/..
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/P237224/.

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