SAA 04 228. Fragment of a Query (AGS 090) [unclassifiable]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P237203

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4

High confidence

(Beginning destroyed) (r 1) [......] The 'path' is [...] on the right [...] (r 2) [...... o]ver the 'increment.' The coils of the colon [...] (r 3) [...... The heart of the r]am is normal.Šu[mâ (and) NN] (r 4) [......; f]irst [Elul/Adar], 22nd day, [eponym year of NN]. (r 5) May (this query) go [to your great divinity, O Šamaš], great lord, and [may an oracle be given as an answer].

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

Transliteration

[x x x x x x x x]-⸢tum⸣ GÍR ⸢15⸣ [x x x x x] / [x x x x x x x x] ⸢UGU⸣ MÁŠ ŠÀ.NIGIN [x x x x x] / [x x x x x x x ŠÀ UDU].NÍTA šá-lim mšu-[ma-a x x x] / [x x x x x x ITI.x] ⸢maḫ*⸣-ru-ú UD 22-[KÁM x x x x x] / [UGU DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti dUTU] ⸢EN⸣ GAL-ú DU-ik-⸢ma⸣ [KIN li-tap-pal]

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 P237203.

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/P237203/..
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/P237203/.

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