Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 144. Fragment Similar to No. 139 (AGS 109) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P336087

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4
High confidence
(1) [Šamaš, great lord, gi]ve me [a firm positive answer to what I am asking you]! (2) [From the ...th day of this month ..., to the ...th day of the month ... of] this [year, for ... days and nights, my stipulated term — (3) within this stipulated term, will (any of) the] magnates (and) governors, [or (any) of the eunuchs (and) the bearded (officials), the king's entourage, o]r any among senior members of the royal line (5) [or junior members of the royal line, or the prefects, the recruitment officers (and) the team commanders, or] the chariot drivers (and) the 'third men,' (or) the chariot…

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 / [TA UD x-KAM šá ITI NE-i ITI.x a-di UD x-KAM šá ITI.x šá MU.AN.NA] an-ni-ti / [a-na x UD-MEŠ x MI-MEŠ ši-kin a-dan-ni-ia i-na ši-kin a-dan-ni šu-a-tú lu-ú LÚ].GAL-MEŠ LÚ.NAM-MEŠ / [lu-ú i-na LÚ.SAG-MEŠ šá—ziq-ni man-za-az—pa-ni LUGAL lu]-⸢ú⸣ i-na NUMUN—LUGAL IGI-MEŠ / [lu-ú i-na NUMUN—LUGAL EGIR-MEŠ lu-ú GAR-nu-MEŠ mu-šar-kis-a-ni…

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 P336087.

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/P336087/..
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/P336087/.

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