Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 134. Fragment Similar to No. 132 (PRT 057) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P237698

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4
High confidence
(Beginning destroyed) (1) [Will whatever is written in this papyrus and placed] before [your great] divinity [be] successfully [accomplished]? (3) [Does] your great divinity [know it? Is it decreed and confirmed] in a favorable case, b[y the command of your great divinity], Šamaš, great lord? Will he who can see, see it? [Will he who can hear, hear it]? (7) Disregard that the ram (offered) [to your divinity for the performance of the extispicy is deficient or faulty]. (Break) (r 1) [Disregard that] I, [the haruspex your servant, am dressed in my ordinary] soiled [garments], have s[een fear]…

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

Transliteration

⸢i-na IGI DINGIR-ti⸣-[ka GAL-ti GAR-un] / i-šal-li-i-mi [in-né-ep-pu-u-šu] / 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-i] / IGI-ru IGI-[ra ŠE.GA-ú ŠE.GA-e] / [e]-zib šá UDU.NÍTA [DINGIR-ti-ka šá a-na MÁŠ MÁŠ-ú LAL-ú ḫa-ṭu-ú] / [mim]-ma [x x x x x x x x] / [x] na ⸢an⸣ [x x x x x x x] / [e-zib šá a-na]-⸢ku⸣ [DUMU—LÚ.ḪAL ARAD-ka TÚG…

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 P237698.

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/P237698/..
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/P237698/.

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