SAA 04 116. Fragment of a Military Query (AGS 028) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P238982

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4

High confidence

(Beginning destroyed) (1) [o]r in the days [......] (2) [o]r [will] a strong enemy [attack NN, and the men, horses] and army at [his] disposal, and kill (and) plunde[r (them)? Will Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, be trou]bled and angry? (5) [Will he who can see, see it? Will he who can hear, hear it? Does your great divinity know it]? (6) [Disregard that] the enemy's army (may) arriv[e ...]. (7) [Disregard what] they speak with (their) mouths [or what they think]. (8) [Disregard the (formulation) of the pr]ayer for today's case, be it [good, be it faulty]. (r 1) [Disregard that he who touches the forehead of the sh]eep [is dressed in his] ordin[ary soiled] garments (Rest destroyed)

State Archives of Assyria, volume 4 — scholar edition (ORACC).

Transliteration

[lu]-ú ina UD-MEŠ [x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x] / [lu]-ú LÚ.KÚR dan-ni ana UGU [mx x x x x x x x ERIM-MEŠ ANŠE.KUR.RA-MEŠ] / ⸢ù⸣ Á.KAL mál it-ti-[šú i-ma-aq-qu-tu-ú] / [i]-duk-ku-ú i-ḫab-ba-⸢tu⸣-[ú ŠÀ-bi šá mdaš-šur—ŠEŠ—SUM-na LUGAL KUR—aš-šur.KI] / [i]-⸢mar⸣-ra-ṣu i-lam-mì-ni [IGI-ru IGI-ra ŠE.GA-ú ŠE.GA-e DINGIR-ut-ka GAL-ti ZU-e] / [e-zib šá] Á.KAL šá LÚ.KÚR i-KUR-⸢da⸣ [x x x x x x x x…

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 P238982.

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/P238982/..
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/P238982/.

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