Position in chronology
SAA 08 072. Moon in Pleiades [lunar]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 8(1) If the Pleiades come close to the front of the moon and stand there: the great gods will ... for the better understanding of the land. (4) Sin interceded for the king with the gods; the king is safe. (7) If the Field star comes close to the front of the moon and stan[ds] there: in that [year] ... [...], variant: [there will be] an attack of [the enemy]. (r 2) The Pleiades are (equivalent to) [Mars]; this night the moon approa[ched ...]. (r 5) From Nabû-ahhe-eriba.
State Archives of Assyria, volume 8 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
1 MUL.MUL ana IGI d30 TE-ma GUB-iz / DINGIR-MEŠ GAL-MEŠ / uṣ-rat / ma-a-ti / a-na / da-mì-iq-ti / uṣ-a?-ru / d30 / ab-bu-ut-ti / LUGAL / a-na DINGIR-MEŠ iṣ-ṣa-bat / LUGAL šá-li-im / 1 MUL.AŠ.GÁN ana IGI d30 ⸢TE⸣-ma ⸢GUB⸣-[iz] / ina [MU] BI me ú [x x x x] / KI.MIN ZI [KÚR GÁL-ši] / MUL.MUL MUL.[ṣal-bat-a-nu] / ina mu-šu an-ni-u d30 ina ⸢IGI⸣ [MUL.x x] / iq-ṭi-[rib] / šá mdPA—PAB-MEŠ—SU
Scholarly note
Astrological report from a court scholar to an Assyrian king, edited by Hermann Hunger (SAA 8, 1992). Celestial and meteorological observation correlated with omens. ORACC text P336657.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from Hermann Hunger, Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings (State Archives of Assyria, 8), 1992. Lemmatised by Mikko Luukko, 2016-17, 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/P336657/..
Translation excerpted from Hunger, H. 1992. Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings. SAA 8. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa08/P336657/.
Related tablets
Related sources
Whatever its purpose, this single tablet shows that Babylonian mathematicians, working in base-60, had an arithmetic understanding of right triangles a millennium before Pythagoras was born.
A major witness to the Mesopotamian Flood tradition and its relationship to later biblical literature. The date of this particular copy must be distinguished from the older history of the story.
An object naming and depicting a powerful priestess and royal daughter around 2300 BCE. Enheduanna is also a landmark in named literary authorship, but that literary legacy must be distinguished from this disk’s dedication.