Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 031. Will Army of Assyria Retake Dur-Illil? (PRT 010) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P240267

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4
High confidence
(1) [Šamaš, great lord, gi]ve me [a firm 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 Ma]nneans captured, [took possession of], and stationed th[eir troops] within it — (5) [should NN together with men, horses], and an army, as he wishes, [g]o [to capture that city Dur-Illil], and [will they], (7) be it by means of war, [or by means of friendliness or peaceful negotiations], or by means of a breach or a tunnel, [or by means of hunger, or] through lack of soldiers in the city [......] (Break)…

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 iṣ-ba-tu-ši-ma / [a-na šá ram-ni-šú-un ú-tir-ru-uš ERIM-MEŠ-šú]-un a-na ŠÀ-bi ú-še-lu-ú / [x x 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…

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 P240267.

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/P240267/..
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/P240267/.

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