Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 250. Fragment of a Query (AGS 159) [unclassifiable]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P336120

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4
High confidence
(Beginning destroyed) (1) [Disregard that a clean or unclean person has touched the sacrificial sheep or] blocked [the way of the sacrific]ial sheep. (2) [Disregard that an unclean man or woman has come near the place of the extispicy] and made it unclean. (r 1) [Disregard that an] unclean person has performed extispicy [in this 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 ordina]ry soil[ed garment]. (Rest destroyed)

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

Transliteration

[e-zib šá KUG lu-ʾu-ú UDU SISKUR.SISKUR TAG-MEŠ ú—lu a-na IGI SISKUR].⸢SISKUR⸣ GIL-MEŠ / [e-zib šá lu-ʾu-ú lu-ʾu-ú-tu KI MÁŠ DIB-MEŠ]-ma ú-le-ʾu-ú / [e-zib šá i-na KI an-ni-i lu-ʾu]-⸢ú⸣ 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 pu-ut UDU.NÍTA TÚG gi-né]-⸢e⸣-[šú] ⸢ar⸣-šá-a-[ti 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 P336120.

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/P336120/..
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/P336120/.

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