SAA 04 084. Should Esarhaddon Go to Egypt and Wage War against Taharka? (AGS 068) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P237483

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4

High confidence

(1) [Šamaš, great lord], give me a firm positive answer [to what] I am asking you! (2) [Should Esarhaddon, king of] Assyria, strive and plan? [Should he take the road] with his army and camp, and go to the [dis]trict of Egypt, as [he wis]hes? (4) [Should he wage] war [against Taharka], king of Cush, [and the troops which] he has? (5) [If he go]es, will he [engage in battle] with [Taharka, k]ing of Cush and his army? (6) In waging [this war, will the weapo]ns of Esa[rhad]don, ki[ng of Assyria, and his army, prevail ov]er the weapons of T[aharka], king of Cush, and the troops w[hich he has]?…

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 li-iṣ-rim lik-⸢pid⸣-ma EN ERIM.ḪI.A-šú ù KI.KAL×BAD-šú / [ur-ḫa KASKAL li-iṣ-bat-ma a-na na]-gi-i šá KUR.mi-ṣir a-šar ŠÀ-[ba-šú ub]-lu lil-lik-ma / [it-ti mta-ar-qu-ú] LUGAL šá KUR.ku-ú-šú ⸢EN⸣ [ERIM-MEŠ mál] ⸢it⸣-ti-šú GIŠ.TUKUL MURUB₄ ⸢MÈ!⸣ [x]+⸢x⸣ / [li-pu-uš GIM it]-⸢tal⸣-ku it-ti…

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 P237483.

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/P237483/..
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/P237483/.

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