Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 247. Fragment of a Query [unclassifiable]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P336625

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4
High confidence
(Beginning destroyed) (1) [Disregard that an unclean man or woman has come] near [the place of the extispicy] and made it unclean. (r 1) [Disregard that] the extispicy is being performed [in this uncl]ean place. (r 2) [Disregard that the ram (offered) to your divinity for the performance of the extispicy] is deficient or faulty. (r 3) [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

[e-zib šá lu-ʾu-ú lu-ʾu-ú-tu KI MÁŠ DIB]-MEŠ-qu-ma ú-le-ʾu-ú / [e-zib šá i-na KI an-ni-e lu-ʾe]-e MÁŠ MÁŠ-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 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 P336625.

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/P336625/..
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/P336625/.

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