Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 069. Fragment Similar to No. 66 (PRT 015) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P236929

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4
High confidence
(Beginning destroyed) (r 1) [Disregard that he who touches the forehead of the sheep] is dressed [in his ordinary soiled garment]s, [has eaten, drunk, or anointed himself with anything unclean], has altered or changed [the (ritual) proceedings, or (that) the oracle query] has become jumbled [in] his [mouth]. (r 4) [Disregard that I, the haruspex your servant], am dressed [in my ordinary] soiled garments.[Let them be taken out and put aside]! (r 5) [I ask you, Šamaš], great lo[rd, whether the governors and magnates, men, horses and ar]my [of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, who are going to col]lect tribute [......] (Rest destroyed)

State Archives of Assyria, volume 4 — scholar edition (ORACC).

Transliteration

[e-zib šá TAG-it SAG.KI UDU.NÍTA TÚG gi-né-e-šú ár-šá-a]-ti lab-šú / [mim-ma lu-ʾu-ú KÚ NAG-ú ŠÉŠ-šú ku-un qa-ti] BAL-ú uš-pe-lu / [ú—lu ta-mit i-na KA]-šú ip?-tar-ri-du / [e-zib šá a-na-ku DUMU—LÚ.ḪAL ARAD-ka TÚG gi-né-e-a] ⸢ar⸣-šá-a-ti lab-šá-ku / [lu-ú ZI-MEŠ lu-ú BAR-MEŠ a-šal-ka dUTU] ⸢EN⸣ GAL-ú / [ki-i LÚ.EN.NAM-MEŠ LÚ.GAL-MEŠ ERIM-MEŠ ANŠE.KUR.RA-MEŠ e]-⸢mu⸣-qu / [šá mdaš-šur—ŠEŠ—SUM-na LUGAL KUR—aš-šur a-na e]-se-er man-da-at-ta

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 P236929.

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/P236929/..
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/P236929/.

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