SAA 04 169. Fragment Similar to No. 156 (PRT 047) [appointment]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P240279

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4

High confidence

(Beginning destroyed) (1) [... Esarhad]don, ki[ng of Assyria, ......]? (2) [...] Will he speak [evil things and] malicious [wor]ds [against] Esarhaddon, k[ing of Assyria, and make an insurrection and rebellion against him]? (4) [Disregard the (formulation) of today's case], be it good, be it faulty, (and that) a clean or an unclean person has touched the sacrificial sheep. (5) [Disregard that the ram (offered) to your divinity for the performance of the extis]picy is deficient [or faulty]. (6) [Disregard that he who touches the forehead of the sheep] is dressed in his [ordinary] soiled…

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

Transliteration

[x x x x mAN.ŠÁR—ŠEŠ]—⸢SUM⸣-na ⸢LUGAL⸣ [KUR—AN.ŠÁR.KI] / [x x x x x a-na UGU m]AN.ŠÁR—ŠEŠ—SUM-na ⸢LUGAL⸣ [KUR—AN.ŠÁR.KI] / [a-mat ḪUL-tim dib]-⸢bi⸣ bi-iʾ-šu-ti i-dab-bu-[bu-ú si-ḫu bar-tu ana UGU-šú ip-pu-šú] / [e-zib šá di-in UD-mu NE]-i GIM DÙG-ab GIM LAL-ú KUG lu-ʾu-u UDU.NÍTA ⸢TAG⸣-[MEŠ] / [e-zib šá UDU.NÍTA DINGIR-ti-ka šá a-na MÁŠ MÁŠ]-ú LAL-ú [ḫa-ṭu-ú] / [e-zib šá TAG-it pu-ut UDU.NÍTA…

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 P240279.

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/P240279/..
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/P240279/.

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