Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 034. Should Esarhaddon Send NN with Army to Mannea? (AGS 042) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P237361

Translation · reference

High confidence
(1) [Šamaš, great lord, give me a f]irm positive answer [to what I am asking y]ou! (2) Should [Esarhaddon, king of] Assyria, who is now [......], send [NN to the dis]trict of Manne[a ......]? (4) [...]... Does your great divinity [know it]? (5) [Is it decreed and confirmed in accordance with the command of your great divinity, Šamaš, great lord], and your favorable decisions? (6) [If they go, will they ... es]cape and st[ay alive] (Break) (r 2) [I ask you ... whether ......] will go [...]. (r 4) [Be present in this ram, place (in it) a firm positive answer, favorable designs], favorable,…

Source: 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/P237361/

Why it matters

Transliteration

[dUTU EN GAL-ú šá a-šal-lu]-⸢ka⸣ an-na GI.⸢NA⸣ [a-pal-an-ni] / [mdaš-šur—ŠEŠ—SUM-na LUGAL] ⸢KUR⸣—daš-šur šá ÉŠ-⸢na⸣ [x x x x] / [x x x x x x x a-na na]-ge-e šá LÚ.man-na-a.[a] / [x x x x x x x x x x x x x]+⸢x⸣ liš*-pur*-šú* DINGIR-ut-ka GAL-⸢ti⸣ [ZU-e] / [GIM KA DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti dUTU EN GAL]-⸢ú⸣ EŠ.BAR-ka SILIM-[mu] / [x x x x x x x x x x x x uš-te]-⸢zi?⸣-bu-ú [x x x] / [x x x x x x x x x x x…

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 P237361.

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/P237361/..
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/P237361/.

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