SAA 04 285. Will the Army of Šamaš-šumu-ukin Leave Babylon? (PRT 113) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P237804

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4

High confidence

(1) The 'station' has a bifurcation toward the right side, whose inside is white and sp[eckled ......]. (3) In the middle of the right side of the 'station' there is a hole. (4) If the 'path' is curled: a traveller ...[......]. (6) The 'strength' is absent. (7) There is a hole in the right of the 'pouch.' (8) The 'path' on the left of the gall bladder is present. (9) The left of the gall bladder is split. (10) The top of the left surface of the 'finger' is [split]. (11) In the base of the wide part of the left side of the 'finger' [towards] the side of the middle surface of the 'finger' there…

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

Transliteration

BE NA ana 15 PA ⸢TUKU⸣-[ši] / ŠÀ-šú BABBAR ma-⸢tir⸣ [o] / BE ina MURUB₄ 15 NA BÙR ⸢ŠUB?-di⸣ / BE GÍR kup-pu-uṣ [o] / a-lik KASKAL šu ŠUB i-⸢x⸣+[x] / BE KALAG NU GAR-in [o] / BE ina DÙN 15 BÙR ŠUB-⸢di⸣ / BE GÍR 150 ZÉ GAR-in [o] / BE 150 ZÉ DU₈ [o] / BE SAG EDIN 150 ŠU.SI [DU₈] / BE ina SUḪUŠ DAGAL 150 ŠU.SI [ana] / ⸢Á⸣ EDIN U MURUB₄ BÙR ŠUB-⸢di⸣ / [BE ina] ⸢15⸣ u 150 ŠU.SI GIŠ.[TUKUL GAR] / [BE…

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 P237804.

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/P237804/..
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/P237804/.

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