SAA 04 188. Will Prince Assurbanipal Get Well? [medical]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P336620

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4

High confidence

(1) [Šamaš, great lord], give me a f[irm positive answer to what I am asking you]! (2) [Will Assurbanipal, so]n of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, [who is now ill and] whose [...] and epigastrium hurt him, [...]...? Does your great divinity know it? (5) [Is it decreed and confirmed in accordance with the command of your great divinity, Šamaš, great lord], and your favorable decisions? (Break) (r 1) [Be present in this ram, place (in it) a firm positive answer], favorable designs, [favorable, propitious omens] by the oracular [command of your great divinity], and may I see (them). (r 4) May (this…

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

Transliteration

[dUTU EN GAL-ú šá a-šal-lu-ka an-na] ⸢GI⸣.NA a-pal-an-ni / [mdaš-šur—DÙ—DUMU.UŠ] ⸢DUMU⸣ mdaš-šur—ŠEŠ—SUM-na LUGAL KUR—aš-šur.KI / [šá i-na-an-na GIG-ma x x]+⸢x SAG*⸣.DU KUŠ.MURUB₄-MEŠ-šú KÚ.KÚ-šú / [x x x x x x x]-⸢bu⸣-ú-ma DINGIR-ut-ka GAL-ti ZU-⸢e⸣ / [GIM KA DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti dUTU EN GAL]-ú ù EŠ.BAR-ka šal-⸢mu⸣ / [x x x x x x x x x x x] ú [x] / [GUB-za-am-ma an-na GI.NA GIŠ].ḪUR-MEŠ SILIM-MEŠ…

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 P336620.

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/P336620/..
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/P336620/.

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