Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 187. Should Assurbanipal Take a Medication? (AGS 144) [medical]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P336112

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4
High confidence
(Beginning destroyed) (1) [Should Assurbanipal, the crown prince of the] Succession Palace, [drink this drug which] is placed [before] your great [div]inity, [and in drinking this drug will he] be rescued and spared? (4) [Will he live and get well? Will he ..., be s]aved and escape? [Will the illness of] his [body] be released? Will it leave (him)? Does your great divinity know it? (6) [Is the res]cue, survival [of Assurbanipal, crown prince of the Suc]ces[sion Palace], by drinking this drug, [decreed and confirmed in a favorable case, by the command of your great divinity], Šamaš, great…

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

Transliteration

[mdaš-šur—DÙ—DUMU.UŠ DUMU—LUGAL šá] É—re-du-⸢ú⸣-[ti] / [šam-mu an-na-a šá i-na IGI] ⸢DINGIR⸣-ti-ka GAL-ti GAR-un ⸢li-il⸣-[ti-ma] / [i-na šá-qé-e šam-me an-na-a i]-šet-i KAR-ri TIN-⸢ṭu⸣ / [i-šal-li-mì i-x-šá-la uš-te]-zi-bi uš-te-ṣi-⸢i⸣ / [x x x x x x GIG SU]-šú DU₈-a È-a DINGIR-ut-ka GAL-ti ZU-e / [x x x x x x x x šu]-⸢zu⸣-ub-šú šá-lam ZI-MEŠ-šú / [šá mdaš-šur—DÙ—DUMU.UŠ DUMU—LUGAL šá…

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 P336112.

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/P336112/..
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/P336112/.

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