Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 174. Fragment Similar to No. 156 (AGS 157) [appointment]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P336118

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4
High confidence
(Beginning destroyed) (r 1) [Let them be taken out and put a]side! (r 2) [I ask you, Šamaš, great lord, whether, (should) Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, appoint the] man [whose name is written in this papyrus and placed] be[fore your great divinity], to the of[fice that is written in] this [same papyrus], (r 7) [he will he plan something b]ad, ev[il ......] (Rest destroyed)

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

Transliteration

[x x x x]+⸢x⸣+[x x x x x lu-ú ZI-MEŠ] / [lu-ú] ⸢BAR⸣-[MEŠ a-šal-ka dUTU EN GAL-ú] / [ki-i a]-me-⸢lu⸣ [šá MU-šú i-na ni-ʾa-ri 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] a-na pi-[qit-tu-ú-ti šá i-na ŠÀ] / [ni-ʾa-ri-ma] ⸢an⸣-na-[a šaṭ-rat-tú i-pa-qi-du-šú-ma a-ma-tú] / [la ṭa-ab-tú la] de-[iq-tu x x x x x x x x x]

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 P336118.

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/P336118/..
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/P336118/.

Related tablets

Related sources