Position in chronology
SAA 04 224. Fragment of a Query (AGS 140) [unclassifiable]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 4(Beginning destroyed) (2) [Disregard that ...] in the heart of the army [...]. (3) [Disregard that ...] and the dead [...]. (4) [Disregard the (formulation) of today's case], be it good, [be it faulty]. (r 1) [Disregard that a clean or an unclean person] has touched [the sacri]ficial sheep, or [blocked] the [way of the sacrificial sheep]. (r 2) [Disregard that an unclean man or woman] has come near the place of the extispicy and [made it unclean]. (r 3) [Disregard that the ram (offered) to your great divinity for the] performance [of the extispicy] is deficient [or faulty]. (r 4) [Disregard that he who touches the forehead of the sheep] is dressed [in his ordinary] soiled [garments]. (Rest destroyed)
State Archives of Assyria, volume 4 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[x x x x x x x x x x] ⸢x x⸣ [x x x x x] / [e-zib šá x x x x] ⸢a-na⸣ ŠÀ-bi ⸢LÚ.ERIM?⸣-[MEŠ x x x] / [e-zib šá x x x x] ù mi-ti ⸢x⸣+[x x x x] / [e-zib šá di-in UD-mi an-ni]-i GIM DÙG-ab [GIM ḫa-ṭu-ú] / [e-zib šá KUG lu-ʾu-ú SISKUR].⸢SISKUR⸣ TAG-tú lu-ú a-na pa-[an SISKUR.SISKUR GIL-MEŠ] / [e-zib šá lu-ʾu-ú lu-ʾu-ú-tu a]-⸢šar⸣ MÁŠ DIB-MEŠ-qu-ma ⸢ú⸣-[le-ʾu-ú] / [e-zib šá UDU.NÍTA DINGIR-ti-ka šá a-na MÁŠ] MÁŠ-ú LAL-ú [ḫa-ṭu-ú] / [e-zib šá TAG-it pu-ut UDU.NÍTA TÚG gi-né-e-šú] ar-šat ⸢lab⸣-[šú]
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 P336108.
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/P336108/..
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/P336108/.
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