Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 172. Fragment Similar to No. 156 (PRT 046) [appointment]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P236928

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4
High confidence
(Beginning destroyed) (1) Should [Esarh]addo[n, king of Assyria, ......] appoint hi[m] to a position of his choosing? (3) [If he appoints him, will he, as long as he holds] his position, [..., and] be loyal to [Esarhaddon, king of Assyria? Does your great] divin[ity know it]? (7) Disregard the (formulation) of [to]day's case, [be it good, be it faulty]. (8) Disregard that a clean or an unclean person [has touched the sacrificial sheep, or blocked the way of the sacrificial sheep]. (r 1) Disregard that an un[clean man or woman has come near] the place of the extispicy [and made it unclean]. (r…

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

Transliteration

[mdaš-šur]—⸢ŠEŠ⸣—SUM-[na LUGAL KUR—aš-šur.KI a-na UGU pi-qit-ti] / KI ŠÀ-ba-šú ub-[lu x x x x x x x x x x] / li-ip-qid-⸢su⸣ [GIM ip-taq-du-uš a-di UD-MEŠ mál x x x x x x x] / pi-qit-ta-šú i-[pu-šu x x x x x x x x x x] / ŠÀ-ba-šú it-ti [mdaš-šur—ŠEŠ—SUM-na LUGAL KUR—aš-šur.KI] / ki-ni-i DINGIR-[ut-ka GAL-ti ZU-e] / ⸢e⸣-zib šá di-nim ⸢UD⸣ [NE-i GIM DÙG.GA GIM ḫa-ṭu-ú] / ⸢e⸣-zib šá KUG lu-ʾu-[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 P236928.

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/P236928/..
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/P236928/.

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