SAA 04 095. Fragment Similar to No. 96 (PRT 037) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P240296

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4

High confidence

(1) [Šamaš, great lord, gi]ve me [a firm positive answer to what I am asking you]! (2) [.... NN], chief eunuch (3) [... (whom) your great divinity] knows — (4) [in accordance with the command of your great divinity, Šamaš, great lord, and your favo]rable [decisions, ......] (Break) (r 1) [... the base of the middle 'finger' of the lung] is 'loose.' (r 2) [......] there is an [atrop]hied part. (r 3) [...... Third] extispicy. (r 4) [May (this query) go to your great divinity, O Šamaš, great lord, and may an oracle] be given as an answer.

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 x x x x] LÚ.GAL—LÚ.SAG / [x x x x x x x x x x DINGIR-ut-ka GAL-ti] ZU-ú / [x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x]-mu / [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 ŠU.SI—MUR MURUB₄ SUḪUŠ]-⸢sà⸣ BAR / [x x x x x x x x x x x x x KAR-tum] ⸢ŠUB⸣-át / [x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x 03]-KÁM / [UGU DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti dUTU EN GAL-ú lil-lik-ma KIN li]-tap-pal

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 P240296.

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/P240296/..
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/P240296/.

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