Position in chronology
SAA 04 265. Query Similar to No. 264 (AGS 105+) [cultic]
Translation · reference
High confidence(Beginning destroyed) (1) Is it acceptable [to your great divinity and] to the great lord, Ma[rduk]? (2) [Does your great divinity know it? Is it de]creed and confirmed [in a favo]rable case, by [the command] of your great divinity, [Šamaš, great lord]? (4) [Will he who can see, see] it? Will he who can hear, hear it? (5) [Disregard the (formulation) of] to[day's case], be it good or faulty. (6) [Disregard that a clean or an unclean person] has touched the sacrificial sheep, or blocked the way of the sacrificial sheep. (7) [Disregard that an unc]lean man or woman has come near the place of…
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/P336084/
Why it matters
Transliteration
[pa-an DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-i ù] ⸢pa-an EN⸣ GAL-i d⸢AMAR⸣.[UTU] ⸢ma⸣-ḫe-⸢e⸣-re / [DINGIR-ut-ka GAL-ti ZU-e i-na] ⸢SILIM⸣-tim i-na [KA] DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti / [dUTU EN GAL-ú] ⸢qa⸣-bi-i ku-un-ú / [IGI-ru] ⸢IGI⸣-ra še-⸢mu-ú⸣ i-⸢šem⸣-me-e / [e-zib šá di-in UD-me] an-ni-e GIM DÙG.GA GIM ⸢ḫa⸣-[ṭu]-ú / [e-zib šá KUG lu-ʾu-ú] SISKUR.SISKUR TAG-MEŠ ú—lu a-na IGI SISKUR.SISKUR GIL-MEŠ-ku / [e-zib šá lu]-⸢ʾu⸣-ú…
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 P336084.
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/P336084/..
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/P336084/.
Related tablets
Related sources
The single most important literary discovery of the 19th century. It rewired the understanding of the Bible's literary context and proved that the Mesopotamian flood tradition is older. It is the oldest surviving epic poetry in human history.
The literary tradition is no longer anonymous from this point. Authorship — the idea that a specific human voice composes a specific work — enters the historical record with her.
The single most influential Mesopotamian king list — the model for every later attempt to chronicle the deep history of the region. It transmits the political theology of divinely granted kingship, an idea that would echo through Babylon, Assyria, and into the Hebrew Bible. The Weld-Blundell prism (WB 444) at the Ashmolean is the most complete surviving copy.