Position in chronology
SAA 04 151. Should Esarhaddon Appoint NN to the Service of Lady Niq’a? (AGS 130) [appointment]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 4(Beginning destroyed) (1) [Should] Esar[haddon, king of Assyria, appoint him to the position] which [is written] in [this] pap[yrus]? (3) If he appo[ints him, as long as he holds this position], (4) will he love [him? ......] (5) Will he [abstain] from sedition [and rebellion ......]? (6) Will he guard lady Niq'a [like his own self ......]? (8) Does your great divinity [know it? 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, hear it]? (10) Disregard the (formulation) of today's…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 4 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
⸢mdaš-šur⸣—[ŠEŠ—SUM-na LUGAL KUR—aš-šur.KI a-na pi-qit-tu-ú-ti] / šá i-na ni-ʾa-[a-ra an-na-a šá-aṭ-ra-at-tu li-ip-qi-su] / ki-ma ip-te-⸢eq⸣-[du-uš x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x] / i-ra-ʾa-a-ma-[šú? x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x] / la—pa-an si-ḫi [ḪI.GAR x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x] / ma-aṣ-ṣar-ta-šú šá MÍ.⸢niq*⸣-[a ki-i ra-ma-ni-šu x x x x x x] / i-na-aṣ-ṣa-a-ra pi-⸢ṣa⸣-[x x x x x x…
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 P238977.
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/P238977/..
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/P238977/.
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