Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 281. Will the Elamites Mobilize and Join the War? (PRT 128) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P238054

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4
High confidence
(1) If the base of the 'station' is protruding pointedly: the enemy will take the vanguard of my army. (2) If a filament lies crosswise in the top of the 'station': the god will not listen to the prince's prayer. In warfare: the prince's army will not achieve its enterprise. (4) The 'well-being' is destroyed. There is a hole in the right side of the 'pouch.' (5) It takes the place of a cyst. If the front of the top of the gall bladder is split, it is a split referring to the diviner's negligence. A pole will break. The merchant will lose his money bag on the (business) trip he is taking, and…

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

Transliteration

BE SUḪUŠ NA šá-miṭ EGIR ERIM-MU KÚR ⸢TI⸣ / BE ina SAG NA GU GIL ik-rib NUN DINGIR ul ⸢iš⸣-me / ina GIŠ.TUKUL ERIM NUN ŠÀ.SÈ.SÈ.KI-šá NU KUR-ád / BE SILIM RA-iṣ BE ina DÙN 15 BÙR ŠUB-di / BE KI di-ḫu TI IGI-it SAG ZÉ DU₈ / DU₈ e-gu-ti DUMU—LÚ.ḪAL GIŠ.me*-še-du TAR-ir / DUMU DAM.QAR ina KASKAL DU-ku ki-is-su / ú-ḫal-laq SUD*-sa GUR-ra / BE ina 150 ZÉ DU₈ SUḪUŠ U IGI / IZI.GAR KA NU GI.NA / BE ⸢SAG⸣…

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 P238054.

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/P238054/..
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/P238054/.

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