Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 129. Should Esarhaddon Carry out a Written Plan? (AGS 098) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P238965

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4
High confidence
(1) [Šamaš, great lord], give me a firm [positive answer to what I am asking you]! (2) [Whatever Esarhaddon, king of Assyria], w[rot]e on [this] tablet and placed [before] your [great divini]ty — (4) should he act accor[ding to] this document? (5) Is it pleasing to your great divinity? Is it acceptable to your great divinity? Is it decreed and confirmed in a favorable case, by the command of your great divinity, Šamaš, great lord? Will he who can see, see it? Will he who can hear, hear it? (10) Disreg[ard the (formulation) of] today's [case], be it good, be it faulty. (11) Disreg[ard that a…

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 / [mim-ma šá mdaš-šur—ŠEŠ—SUM-na LUGAL KUR—aš-šur.KI] i-na ŠÀ-bi IM.GÍD.⸢DA⸣ / [an-na-a] ⸢iš⸣-[ṭu-ru]-⸢ma⸣ [i-na IGI] ⸢DINGIR⸣-ti-ka [GAL]-ti iš-ku-un / GIM [pi-i] ma-al-ṭa-ra an-na-a li-pu-ú-šú / UGU DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti DÙG.GA-i / pa-an DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti ma-ḫi-i-ri / i-na SILIM-tim i-na KA DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti / dUTU EN GAL-ú qa-bi-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 P238965.

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/P238965/..
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/P238965/.

Related tablets

Related sources