Position in chronology
SAA 04 150. Should Esarhaddon Appoint NN as ‘Bishop’? (AGS 131) [appointment]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 4(1) [Šamaš], great [lo]rd, [give me a firm positive answer] to what I am as[king you]! (2) [Should Esarhaddon appoint the man whose] name [is written] in [this] pa[pyrus and placed] before your [great] divinity, to the office of 'bishop' i[n ...]? (4) [If he appoints him, will he remain loyal] to Esarh[addon, king of Assyria]? Will he remain [loyal] to [Assurbanipal, the crown prince of the Succession Palace? Will he guard] the interests of Esar[haddon, king of Assyria]? (8) Does your great divinity kn[ow it? Is it decreed and confirmed in a favorable case, by the command of your great…
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] / [LÚ šá] MU-šú i-na ⸢na⸣-[a.a-ra an-na-a šaṭ-ru-ú-ma] / [i]-na IGI DINGIR-ti-ka [GAL-ti GAR-un] / [a]-⸢na⸣ LÚ.ŠÀ.TAM-ú-ti i-[na É x x x lip-qid-su GIM ip-taq-du-uš ŠÀ-ba-šú] / ⸢it⸣-ti mdaš-šur—⸢ŠEŠ⸣—[SUM-na LUGAL KUR—aš-šur.KI gu-um-mu-ru] / ⸢ŠÀ⸣-ba-šú it-ti m⸢d⸣[aš-šur—DÙ—DUMU.UŠ DUMU—LUGAL šá É—re-du-ti gu-um-mu-ru] / EN.NUN šá…
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 P238984.
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/P238984/..
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/P238984/.
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