Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 173. Fragment Similar to No. 156 [appointment]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P240344

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4
High confidence
(1) [Šamaš, great lord], gi[ve me] a firm positive answer [to what I am asking you]! (2) [Should Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, appoint the man whose name is written in this papyrus and placed] before your [great] divinity, [to the po]sition [which is written] in [this papyrus]? (Break) (r 1) May (this query) go [to your great divinity, O Šamaš, great lord], and [may an oracle be given as an answer].

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

Transliteration

[dUTU EN GAL-ú šá a-šal-lu-ka] an-nam GI.NA ⸢a⸣-[pal-an-ni] / [LÚ šá MU-šú i-na ni-ʾa-a-ra an-na-a šaṭ-ru-ma] i-na IGI DINGIR-ti-⸢ka⸣ [GAL-ti GAR-un] / [mdaš-šur—ŠEŠ—SUM-na LUGAL KUR—aš-šur.KI a-na pi]-⸢qí⸣-tu-tu šá ⸢ina⸣ [ni-ʾa-a-ra an-na-a šaṭ-rat-tu] / [x x x x x x x x]+⸢x⸣-MEŠ ⸢x⸣+[x x x x x x x x x x] / [UGU DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti dUTU EN GAL-ú] lil-lik-ma [KIN li-tap-pal]

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 P240344.

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/P240344/..
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/P240344/.

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