Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 310. Should NN be Appointed as Royal Delegate in the Temple of ...? [appointment]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P336628

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4
High confidence
(Beginning destroyed) (1) The 'base of the throne' is overtu[rned ......]. (2) If the top of the right surface of the 'finger' is spl[it: defeat of my army]. Revolt of my army. My army will not achieve its enterprise. (4) If the top of the 'finger' is atrophied: the enemy will attack the vanguard of my army. (5) An attack will be assigned to the king. (6) The 'increment' is normal. If the upper [part] extends beyond the surface of the right lung: devastation of the steppe, loss of cattle. (8) If the middle 'finger' of the lung is o[vertur]ned and [is located in] the place of the 'treasure'…

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

Transliteration

BE ŠUB—AŠ.TE ⸢BAL?⸣ [x x x x x x] / BE SAG EDIN 15 ŠU.SI ⸢DU₈⸣ [SÌG-iṣ SAG.DU ERIM]-⸢MU⸣ / GABA.RAḪ ERIM-MU ṣú-mi-rat ERIM-MU NU KUR-MEŠ / BE SAG ŠU.SI KAR-im IGI-it ERIM-MU KÚR TAG-[at] / [ZI]-⸢bu⸣ a-na ⸢LUGAL⸣ ip-pa-qid / BE MÁŠ SILIM-im AN.[TA?] EDIN MUR šá 15 i-bir / KAR-tum EDIN ZI.GA MÁŠ.ANŠE / BE ŠU.SI—MUR MURUB₄ ⸢BAL-at⸣ KI MÍ.ŠEŠ MUR / šá ki-di ana ŠÀ URU šá ŠÀ URU ana ki-di ⸢TU?⸣ /…

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 P336628.

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/P336628/..
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/P336628/.

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