SAA 04 191. Fragment Similar to No. 190 (AGS 102) [medical]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P238974

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4

High confidence

(1) [Šamaš, great lord], give me a firm positive answer [to what I am as]king you! (2) [Niq'a, mother of Esa]rhaddon, king of Assyria, [who is now ill], and on whom the 'hand' of Nanaya of Uruk is being placed [in extispicy] — (5) will it be placed [for death]? (Break) (r 1) [(I ask you) whether the 'hand' of Nan]aya of [Uruk, which is being placed on he]r [in extispicy, will be pla]ced for death, (and whether) the 'hand' of Nana[ya of Uruk] will be placed on her [in ext]ispicy. (r 5) Be present [in] this [ram], place (in it) a firm positive answer, [favorable designs], favorable, propitious…

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] / [MÍ.x x x mAN].⸢ŠÁR⸣—ŠEŠ—SUM-na LUGAL KUR—aš-šur.⸢KI⸣ / [šá i-na-an-na mar-ṣa-tu]-ma qa-ti dna-na-a šá UNUG.KI / [i-na bi-ri iš]-šá-ka-na-áš-ši / [a-na UGU ÚŠ-MEŠ x x] ⸢iš⸣-šá-⸢ka⸣-an / [x x x x x x x x x qa-ti dna]-⸢na⸣-a šá [UNUG.KI] / [šá i-na bi-ri iš-šá-kan-áš]-⸢ši⸣ a-na UGU ÚŠ*-[MEŠ] / [x x x x x iš-šá]-⸢ka⸣-an ŠU.2 dna-na-[a] / [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 P238974.

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/P238974/..
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/P238974/.

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