Position in chronology
SAA 04 164. Fragment Similar to No. 156 (PRT 049) [appointment]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 4(Beginning destroyed) (r 1) [Disregard that I, the haruspex your servant, ......] have seen [fear and] terror [at night], or [jumbled the oracle query in my mouth].Let them be taken out and put aside! (r 2) I ask you, Šamaš, [great lord], whether, (should) Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, appoint the man whose name is written in this papyrus and [placed] before yo[ur great] divinity, to the position which is [written] in [this] papyrus, (r 5) (whether) he will, as long as [he holds] this position, instigate [an insurrection and rebellion against] Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, and Assurbanipal,…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 4 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
⸢LUḪ⸣-tú pí-rit-ti IGI-ru ú—lu [ta-mit i-na KA-ia up-tar-ri-du] / ⸢lu⸣-ú ZI-MEŠ lu-ú BAR-MEŠ a-šal-ka dUTU [EN GAL-ú] / ki-i LÚ šá MU-šú i-na ni-a-ra an-na-a šaṭ-ru-ma i-na IGI DINGIR-ti-⸢ka⸣ [GAR-un] / mdaš-šur—ŠEŠ—SUM-na LUGAL KUR—aš-šur.KI a-na pi-qí-tu-tu šá i-na ni-a-ra-im-ma [an-na-a šaṭ-rat-tú] / [i-pa-qí-du]-šú-ma ⸢a⸣-di UD-MEŠ mál pi-qí-tu-tu an-ni-ti / [ip-pu-šú si-ḫu ḪI.GAR i-na UGU…
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 P236937.
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/P236937/..
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/P236937/.
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