SAA 04 227. Fragment of a Query (AGS 089) [unclassifiable]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P336072

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4

High confidence

(Beginning destroyed) (1) [Dis]regard that the days [......]. (r 1) Disregard the (formulation) of [today's] case, [be it good, be it faulty]. (r 2) Disregard that a clean [or an unclean person has touched the sacrificial sheep, or blocked the way of the sacrificial sheep]. (r 3) Disregard that an unclean [man or woman has come near the place of the extispicy and made it unclean]. (r 4) Disregard that the ram (offered) [to your divinity for the performance of the extispicy is deficient or faulty]. (r 5) Disregard that [he who touches the forehead of the sheep is dressed in his ordinary soiled…

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

Transliteration

[e]-zib šá UD-MEŠ ⸢x⸣+[x x x x x x x x x x x x] / [e-zib] ⸢šá⸣ di-⸢in⸣ [UD NE-i GIM DÙG.GA GIM ḫa-ṭu-ú] / e-zib šá KUG [lu-ʾu-ú SISKUR.SISKUR TAG-MEŠ ú—lu ana IGI SISKUR.SISKUR GIL-MEŠ] / e-zib šá ⸢lu⸣-[ʾu-ú lu-ʾu-ú-tu KI MÁŠ DIB.DIB-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 SAG.KI UDU.NÍTA TÚG gi-né-e-šú ár-šá-a-ti lab-šú] / mim-⸢ma⸣…

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 P336072.

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/P336072/..
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/P336072/.

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