SAA 04 170. Fragment Similar to No. 156 (AGS 112) [appointment]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P240244

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4

High confidence

(Beginning destroyed) (1) [Will he who can see], se[e it? Will he who can hear, hear it]? (2) [Disregard the (formulation) of the prayer for] today's case, [be it good, be it faulty]. (3) [Disregard that the ram (offered) to] your great [divinity] for the performance of the extispicy [is deficient or faulty]. (4) [Disregard that he who touches the forehead] of the sheep [is dressed] in his ordinary soiled garments. (5) [Disregard that I, the haruspex] your [servant, am dressed in] my ordinary [soiled] garments, [have changed] or altered [the proceedings], (or that) the oracle query has…

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

Transliteration

[a-mi-ru] im-[ma-a-ra še-mu-ú i-šem-mé-e] / [e-zib šá ik-rib di]-⸢nim⸣ UD-mu ⸢NE-i⸣ [GIM DÙG.GA GIM ḫa-ṭu-ú] / [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 TÚG gi-né-e-šú ár-[šá-ti lab-šú] / [e-zib šá a-na-ku DUMU—LÚ.ḪAL ARAD]-ka TÚG gi-né-e-a ⸢ár⸣-[šá-ti lab-šá-ku] / [ku-un qa-ti BAL]-ú uš-pe-lu ta-mit ina KA-ía ⸢ip⸣-[tar-ri-du lu-ú…

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 P240244.

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/P240244/..
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/P240244/.

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