Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 132. Will a Plan Written on Papyrus Succeed? (AGS 095+) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P336077

Translation · reference

High confidence
(1) [Šamaš, gre]at [lo]rd, give me a firm positive [answer] to what I am asking you! (2) [Will whatev]er is written in th[is] papyrus and placed before your great divinity be accomplished successfully? (5) Does your great divinity know it? (6) 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, he[ar it]? (9) [Disregard the (formulation) of] today's case, be it good, [be it faulty]. (r 1) [Disregard that a] clean or an unclean person has touched the sacrificial sheep, or [blocked the way…

Source: 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/P336077/

Why it matters

Transliteration

[dUTU] ⸢EN GAL⸣-ú šá a-šal-lu-ka [an-na] GI.NA a-pal-[an-ni] / [mim]-⸢ma⸣ šá i-na ŠÀ ni-a-ri an-[ni-e] ša-aṭ-ṭa-ru-⸢ú⸣-[ma] / i-na IGI DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti GAR-[nu] / in-né-ep-pu-ú-šú i-šal-li-i-mì / DINGIR-ut-ka GAL-ti ZU-e / i-na SILIM-tim i-na KA DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti / dUTU EN GAL-ú qa-bi-i ku-un-⸢ú⸣ / IGI-ru IGI-ra ŠE-⸢ú⸣ i-⸢šem⸣-[me-e] / [e-zib šá] ⸢di⸣-in UD-me an-ni-e GIM DÙG.GA [GIM…

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 P336077.

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/P336077/..
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/P336077/.

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