Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 130. Should Esarhaddon Carry out a Plan Written on Papyrus? (AGS 097+) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P336078

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4
High confidence
(1) [Šamaš, great lord, give me a fi]rm positive answer to what I am asking you! (2) [Should Esarhad]don, king of Assyria, [plan whatever] is written [in] this [pa]pyrus and [placed] before [your great] divinity, and do accordingly? (5) Is it pleasing to your great divinity? Is it ac[ceptable] to your great divinity? Does your great divinity kn[ow it]? (8) [Is it dec]reed and [con]firmed in a favorable case, by the command of your great divinity, Šamaš, [great] lo[rd]? Will he who can see, see it? Will he who can hear, [hear it]? (10) [Disregard the (formulation) of] today's case, be it good…

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 i-na] ⸢ni⸣-a-ri an-na-a šaṭ-ru-ma i-na IGI DINGIR-ti-[ka GAL-ti GAR-un] / [mdaš-šur—ŠEŠ]—SUM-na LUGAL KUR—da-šur₄.[KI] / [x x x]-⸢ma⸣ ap—pi-it-ti le-⸢pu⸣-[ú-šú] / ⸢UGU⸣ DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti DÙG.⸢GA⸣-[i] / pa-an DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti ⸢ma⸣-[ḫi-i-ri] / DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti ⸢ZU⸣-[e] / i-na SILIM-tim i-na KA DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti dUTU…

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 P336078.

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/P336078/..
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/P336078/.

Related tablets

Related sources