Position in chronology
SAA 04 063. Will Chief Eunuch Ša-Nabu-šu Capture Amul? (PRT 009+) [military and political]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 4(1) [Šamaš, great lord], give me a firm positive answer [to what I am ask]ing you! (2) [Should Esarhaddon, king of] Assyria, send Ša-Nabû-šû, chief eunuch, [and the army] at his disposal [to take the road, and] to go to capture the city Amul? (4) If they go and set up ca[mp be]fore [that ci]ty, [Amul], will they, be it by means of war, [... o]r by force, or through tun[nels and breaches, or by means of ramps, o]r by means of battering rams, (7) or through fri[endliness or peaceful negotiation]s, or through insurrection and rebellion [......], [or through any ruse of] capturing a city, (9)…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 4 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[dUTU EN GAL-ú šá a-šal]-lu-ka an-nam GI.NA a-pal-an-ni / [mdaš-šur—ŠEŠ—SUM-na LUGAL] ⸢KUR⸣—aš-šur.KI liš-pur-ma mšá—dAG—MU GAL*—LÚ.SAG-MEŠ / [a-di e-mu-qu mál it]-ti-šú a-na ṣa-ba-a-ta URU.a-mul / [ur-ḫa ḫar-ra-na li-iṣ-bu-tu-ma] ⸢lil⸣-li-ku GIM it-tal-ku-ma i-na ⸢UGU URU⸣ [UR₅-tú] / [URU.a-mul ma-dak]-ta il-ta-kan i-na DÙ-eš GIŠ.TUKUL [MURUB₄ u MÈ] / [lu-ú i-na x x x lu]-ú i-na da-na-na lu-ú…
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 P238980.
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/P238980/..
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/P238980/.
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