Position in chronology
SAA 04 266. Should Assurbanipal Appoint NN as Priest of Marduk? (AGS 106) [appointment]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 4(1) [Šamaš, great lord, give me a firm positive answer to what] I am asking you! (2) [Should Assurbanipal, son of Esar]haddon, ki[ng of Assyria, appoint the man whose name is written] in [this papyrus and placed before yo]ur great [divinity, to] the office of [high priest] in the sh[rine of Marduk ......]? (Break) (r 1) [Disregard that he who touches the head of the sacrificial sheep ... has eaten, drunk], or anoint[ed himself with anything unclean, (or) has altered or changed the proceedings]. (r 2) [Disregard that the oracle query has become jumbled in the mouth] of the haruspex, your…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 4 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[dUTU EN GAL-ú šá] a-šal-[lu-ka an-na GI.NA a-pal-an-ni] / [LÚ šá MU-šú i]-na ŠÀ-bi [ni-ʾa-a-ra an-na-a šaṭ-ru-ma] / [i-na IGI DINGIR-ti]-⸢ka⸣ GAL-ti [GAR-un mdaš-šur—DÙ—DUMU.UŠ] / [DUMU mdaš-šur]—ŠEŠ—SUM-na ⸢LUGAL⸣ [KUR—aš-šur.KI] / [a-na LÚ.SANGA]-ú-ti a-na É—⸢pa⸣-[paḫ dAMAR.UTU lip-qid?-ma] / [x x x x x x x] še piš ri [x x x x x x x] / [mim-ma lu-ʾu-ú KÚ NAG-ú] ⸢ŠÉŠ⸣-[šú ku-un ŠU BAL-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 P336085.
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/P336085/..
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/P336085/.
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