Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 217. Fragment of a Query on Behalf of Esarhaddon (AGS 084) [unclassifiable]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P237210

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4
High confidence
(Beginning destroyed) (1) [Is it decreed and confirmed by the command of your great divinity? Will he who can see, see it]? Will he who can hear, hear it? (2) [Disregard the (formulation) of today's case, be it good, be it] faulty, (and that) the day is overcast. (3) [Disregard that a clean or an unclean person has touched the sacrificial sheep, or] blocked [the way of the] sacrificial [sheep]. (4) [Disregard that an unclean man or woman has come near the place of the extispicy and] made it unclean. (5) [Disregard that an unclean person] has performed [extispicy in this place]. (r 1)…

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

Transliteration

[ina KA DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti qa-bi-i ku-un-ú IGI-ru IGI-ra ŠE].⸢GA⸣-ú ŠE-e / [e-zib šá di-in UD-mu NE-i GIM DÙG-ab GIM ḫa-ṭu]-⸢ú⸣ UD ŠÚ-pu / [e-zib šá KUG lu-ʾu-ú SISKUR.SISKUR TAG-MEŠ ú—lu a-na IGI SISKUR].SISKUR GIL-MEŠ / [e-zib šá lu-ʾu-ú lu-ʾu-ú-tu KI MÁŠ DIB-MEŠ-ma] ú-le-ʾu-ú / [e-zib šá i-na KI an-ni-i lu-ʾu-ú MÁŠ] MÁŠ-ú / [e-zib šá UDU.NÍTA DINGIR-ti-ka šá a-na MÁŠ MÁŠ-ú LAL-ú] ⸢ḫa⸣-ṭu-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 P237210.

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/P237210/..
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/P237210/.

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