SAA 04 073. Will the City Lord of Nartu Array himself against Assyrian Troops? (AGS 085) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P336071

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4

High confidence

(1) [Šamaš, great lord], give me a firm positive ans[wer to what I am asking you]! (2) Will [......] city lord of the land of Nart[u] line up (a battle array) [against troops of Esarhaddon, king of Assyr]ia? (Break) (r 1) [Be present in this ram, place (in it) a firm positive answer], favorable [designs, favorable, propitious omens by the oracular command of your great divinity], and may I see (them). (r 3) May (this query) go [to your great divinity, O Šamaš, great lord], and may an oracle be given as an answer. (r 4) [...] A design is drawn crosswise in the top of the area of the 'finger.'…

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 / [x x x x x x x x x x x] LÚ.EN—URU šá KUR.na-ar-⸢ti⸣ / [x x x x x x x x x KUR—aš]-⸢šur⸣.KI i-sa-da-⸢ra⸣-[a] / [i-na ŠÀ UDU.NÍTA an-ni-i GUB-za-am-ma an-na GI.NA GIŠ.ḪUR]-⸢MEŠ SILIM⸣-[MEŠ] / [UZU-MEŠ ta-mit SIG₅-MEŠ SILIM-MEŠ šá KA DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti šuk-nam]-⸢ma⸣ lu-mur / [UGU DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti dUTU EN GAL-ú] ⸢lil⸣-lik-ma UR₅.ÚŠ…

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 P336071.

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/P336071/..
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/P336071/.

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