Position in chronology
SAA 04 108. Should Esarhaddon Send an Army to a Destination? (PRT 026) [military and political]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 4(1) [Šam]aš, great lord, [give me a firm positive answer] to what I am asking y[ou]! (2) [Es]arhaddon, king of Assyria, who now is intent on send[ing to the destin]ation of his preference [the troops and armed forces wh]ich are written in this papyrus, and [placed before your great divinity, and (whom) your great divinity knows] — (5) [in accor]dance with the command of your great divinity, Šam[aš], great lord, and your [favor]able decisions, should the subject of this query, [Esarhaddon, king of Assyria], strive and plan? [Should he send] these troops and armed forces to where he wishes? Is…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 4 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[d]⸢UTU⸣ EN GAL-ú šá a-šal-lu-⸢ka⸣ [an-na GI.NA a-pal-an-ni] / [mAN].ŠÁR—ŠEŠ—SUM-na LUGAL KUR—AN.ŠÁR šá ⸢TA⸣-an-⸢ni⸣ [ERIM-MEŠ Á.KAL-MEŠ] / [šá] i-na Ú.ur-ba-an-ni an-ni-⸢i⸣ šaṭ-ru-ma ⸢ina⸣ [IGI DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti šak-nu] / ⸢KI⸣ ŠÀ-ba-šú ub-lam a-na ⸢KIN-šú⸣-ma ti-iṣ-⸢mu⸣-[ru-ma DINGIR-ut-ka GAL-ti ZU-ú] / ⸢GIM⸣ KA DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti d⸢UTU⸣ EN GAL-ú EŠ.BAR-ka [šal]-mu EN—MU.⸢MU NE-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 P238978.
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/P238978/..
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/P238978/.
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