Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 171. Fragment Similar to No. 156 (PRT 054) [appointment]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P240405

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4
High confidence
(Beginning destroyed) (r 1) I ask [you, Šamaš, great lord, whether, (should) Esarhaddon], king of Ass[yria, appoint the man whose name is written in this papyrus and placed before your great divinity], to the [position of his choosing], (r 4) he will instigate [or cause others to instigate] an insurrection and rebellion [against Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, ......]. (Rest destroyed)

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

Transliteration

[x x x x x x x] a-šal-[ka dUTU EN GAL-ú GAL-ú ki-i mdaš-šur—ŠEŠ—SUM-na] / LUGAL KUR—aš-⸢šur⸣.[KI LÚ šá MU-šú i-na ni-a-ra an-ni-i šaṭ-ru i-na IGI DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti GAR-un] / a-na UGU-⸢ḫi⸣ [pi-qit-ti KI ŠÀ-šú ub-lam ip-taq-du-uš x x x x x x] / si-ḫu ḪI.⸢GAR⸣ [a-na UGU mdaš-šur—ŠEŠ—SUM-na] [LUGAL KUR—aš-šur.KI] / ⸢ip⸣-pu-⸢šú⸣-[ú ú-še-pi-šú]

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 P240405.

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/P240405/..
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/P240405/.

Related tablets

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