Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 215. Fragment of a Query on Behalf of Esarhaddon (PRT 075) [unclassifiable]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P239086

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4
High confidence
(Beginning destroyed) (1) [Is the ... of] Esarhaddo[n, king of Assyria, decreed and confirmed in a favorable case, by the command of your great divinity], Šamaš, great lord? [Will he who can see, see i]t? Will he who can hear, [hear it]? (4) [Disregard the (formulation) of the prayer for today's case, be it] good, be it f[aulty]. (5) [Disregard that an unclean] person [has performed extispicy in this place]. (Rest destroyed)

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

Transliteration

[x x x x x x x x x x x x] mdaš-šur—ŠEŠ—SUM-⸢na⸣ [LUGAL KUR—aš-šur.KI] / [i-na SILIM-tim ina KA DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti d]UTU EN GAL-[ú] / [qa-bi-i ku-un-i IGI-ru IGI]-⸢mar⸣ še-mu-ú [i-šem-me-e] / [e-zib šá ik-rib di-nim UD-mu NE-i GIM DÙG]-⸢ab⸣ GIM ⸢ḫa⸣-[ṭu-ú] / [e-zib šá ina KI an-ni-i lu-ʾu]-ú [MÁŠ MÁŠ-ú]

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 P239086.

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/P239086/..
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/P239086/.

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