Position in chronology
SAA 04 235. Fragment of a Query (PRT 080) [unclassifiable]
Translation · reference
High confidence(Beginning destroyed) (1) [......] to [......] (2) [Disregard the (formulation) of today's case, be it] good, be it faulty, (and that) a clean or unclean person has touched the sacrificial sheep. (3) [Disregard that the ram (offered) to your divinity] for the performance of the extispicy is deficient or faulty. (r 1) [Disregard that he who touches the forehead of the sheep] is dressed in his ordinary soiled garments, [or has touched] the (libation) beer, the maṣhatu flour, [the water, the pot, or the fire]. (r 2) [Disregard that I, the haruspex your servant, am] dressed in my ordinary soiled…
Source: 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/P237702/
Why it matters
Transliteration
[x x x x x x x x x x i]-⸢na⸣ UGU ⸢GA⸣ [x x x x x] / [e-zib šá di-in UD-mu NE-i GIM DÙG]-⸢ab?⸣ GIM LAL-u KUG lu-ʾu-u UDU.NÍTA TAG-[MEŠ] / [e-zib šá UDU.NÍTA DINGIR-ti]-⸢ka⸣ šá ana MÁŠ MÁŠ-ú LAL-ú LAL-[ú] / [e-zib šá TAG-it SAG.KI UDU.NÍTA] ⸢TÚG⸣ gi-né-e-šú ár-šá-tú lab-šú mi-iḫ-ḫa ZÍD.⸢MAD⸣.[GÁ A-MEŠ ḫaṣ-bu u IZI TAG-MEŠ] / [e-zib šá a-na-ku DUMU—LÚ.ḪAL ARAD]-⸢ka⸣ TÚG gi-né-e-a ár-šá-tú lab-[šá-ku…
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 P237702.
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/P237702/..
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/P237702/.
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