Position in chronology
SAA 10 058. Omens from Birds and a Request (ABL 0353) [from astrologers]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 10(1) To the king, my lord: your servant Balasî. Good health to the king, my lord! May Nabû and Marduk bless the king, my lord! (5) Concerning the raven about which the king, my lord, wrote to me, (here are the relevant omens): (7) If a raven brings something into the house of a man, the said man will obtain something that does not belong to him. (11) If a falcon or a raven drops something it carries into the house of a man, (or) according to a variant, before a man, the said house will have išdihu. Išdihu (means) profit. (17) If a bird carries flesh, a bird, or anything, and drops it into the…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 10 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
a-na LUGAL EN-ia / ARAD-ka mba-la-si-i / lu-u DI-mu a-na LUGAL EN-ia / dPA dAMAR.UTU a-na LUGAL EN-ia / lik-ru-bu ina UGU Ú.⸢TÈ⸣.MUŠEN / ša LUGAL be-[lí iš]-pur-an-ni / 1 Ú.TÈ.MUŠEN mì-im-ma / ana É NA ú-še-ri-ib / LÚ BI mì-im-ma la šu-a-tú / ŠU-su KUR-ád / 1 ŠÚR.DÙ.MUŠEN lu a-ri-bu.MUŠEN / mì-im-ma ša na-šu-ú / a-na É NA šá-ni-iš / ana IGI NA id-di / É BI iš-di-ḫu TUK-ši / iš-di-ḫu né-me-lu / 1…
Scholarly note
Letter from a scholar (astrologer, exorcist, physician, lamentation-priest) to Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 10, 1993). ORACC text P334229.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P334229). source
Translation excerpted from Parpola, S. 1993. Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars. SAA 10. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa10/P334229/.
Related tablets
Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.
Part of the earliest known body of international diplomatic correspondence. Akkadian, written in cuneiform on clay, was the lingua franca of Late Bronze Age statecraft — used between Egypt, the Hittites, Mitanni, Babylon, Assyria, and the Levantine vassals.