SAA 04 094. Should Esarhaddon Send his Chief of Trade to Capture ...? (PRT 017+) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P238175

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4

High confidence

(1) Šamaš, great lord, [give me a firm positive answer to what I am asking you]! (2) The Chief of Trad[e, together with the men, horses, and army of Esarhaddon], king of Assyria, who [went] to capture [......] — (4) [if he goes] wher[e he wishes ......] (5) in the month [......] (6) or [......] (Break) (r 1) Let them be taken out and [put aside]![I ask you, Šamaš, great lord], whether, should the Chief of Trade, [with the men, horses and army] of Esarhaddon, ki[ng of Assyria, at his disposal go] to where he wishes, (r 5) they will be killed, captured, taken prisoner [......] (r 6)…

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] / LÚ.GAL—ka-a-⸢ra⸣ [a-di ERIM-MEŠ ANŠE.KUR.RA-MEŠ e-mu-qi] / šá a-na ṣa-bat ⸢x⸣+[x x x x x x x x x] / a-na a-⸢šar⸣ [ŠÀ-ba-šú ub-lu il-li-ku-ma x x x x x x] / i-na ITI.[x x x x x x x x x x x x] / lu-ú ⸢LÚ⸣.[x x x x x x x x x x x x x x] / ⸢x x⸣ [x x x x x x x x x x x x] / ⸢lu⸣-ú ZI-MEŠ lu-ú [BAR-MEŠ a-šal-ka dUTU EN GAL-ú] / ki-i…

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 P238175.

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/P238175/..
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/P238175/.

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