SAA 04 307. Should Urda-... be Appointed as Priest of Sin? [appointment]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P238755

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4

High confidence

(Beginning destroyed) (1) The to[p ......]. (2) If the l[eft] fissure [...] (3) is not visible: [...]. (4) The 'finger' and 'increment' are no[rma]l. (5) [If the front] of the atrophied part is effaced [...]: taking booty. (7) The base of the middle 'finger' of the lung is 'loose.' (8) If the left side of the 'cap' grows a 'finger': divine compassion for the man. (10) If between the 'cap' of the lung and the 'lift of the head' of the lung a piece of flesh is ...: the sun in its rising. (12) [...]... for a headband (14') (Break) (r 1) Should Assurbanipal, [ki]ng of Assyria, your creature,…

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

Transliteration

BE ⸢SAG⸣ [x x x x] / BE DU₈ ⸢150?⸣ [x x x x x] / NU IGI-mar [x x x x] / BE ŠU.SI u MÁŠ ⸢šal-mu⸣ / [BE IGI] KAR-tim pa-šiṭ / [x x] È-ú šil-lat / BE U—MUR MURUB₄ SUḪUŠ-sà BAR / BE 150 U.SAG ŠU.SI DÙ-nu / ta-a.a-rat DINGIR ana LÚ / BE ina bi-rit U.SAG MUR u MU.SAG MUR / UZU mun-dur dUTU ina MÚ-šú / [x]-nun-ma ana ku-lu-lu / [x x] uš? LUGAL? x KAR? ⸢x⸣+[x] / [x x x] UD šá-lim [x x x x] / [LÚ šá]…

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 P238755.

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/P238755/..
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/P238755/.

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