Position in chronology
SAA 04 057. Should Esarhaddon Send his Messenger to Kaštaritu? (PRT 003+) [military and political]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 4(1) [Šamaš, grea]t [lord, give me a f]irm positive answer to what I am ask[ing you]! (2) [Should Esarhad]don, ki[ng of Assyria, send] the messenger whom he wishes [to Kašt]ar[itu, city lord] of Karkaššî? [And if Esarhaddo]n, king of Assyria, [sends his messenger to go to K]aštaritu, [will he, on the advice of his coun]sellors, [seize] that messenger, [question him], (and) kill him? (8) [Does your great divinity know it? Will he who can se]e, se[e it? Will he who can he]ar, he[ar it]? (Break) (r 1) [Disregard that he who touches the forehead of the sheep is dressed in] his ordinary soiled…
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] / [mdaš-šur—ŠEŠ]—⸢SUM⸣-na ⸢LUGAL⸣ [KUR—aš-šur].⸢KI⸣ DUMU—šip-ri šá ŠÀ-šú ⸢ub⸣-[lu] / [liš-pur-ma a-na UGU mka-áš]-⸢ta-ri⸣-[ti LÚ.EN]—⸢URU⸣ šá ⸢KUR.kar⸣—kaš-ši-i / [lil-lik-ma GIM mdaš-šur—ŠEŠ—SUM]-⸢na⸣ LUGAL KUR—aš-šur.KI / [LÚ.DUMU—šip-ri-šú a-na UGU m]⸢ka⸣-áš-ta-ri-ti / [il-tap-ru il-la-ku i-na GALGA LÚ.AD].⸢GI₄⸣.GI₄-MEŠ-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 P238985.
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/P238985/..
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/P238985/.
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