SAA 10 065. (no title) (CT 53 483) [from astrologers]

~670 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P313896

Translation · reference

High confidence

(Beginning destroyed) (2) [...... the Path of] the Anu stars (3) [......]... (4) [......] touched (5) [......] made it pass by (6) [......] is good (7) [......]... (8) [......] where the king, my lord (9) [...... an]ything (Rest destroyed)

Source: Parpola, S. 1993. Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars. SAA 10. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa10/P313896/

Why it matters

Transliteration

[x x x x x x x]+⸢x⸣+[x] / [x x x x KASKAL šu-ut d]a-nim [x] / [x x x x x x] ṣi ir [x] / [x x x x x x] ⸢il⸣-ta-pat / [x x x x x x] ⸢us⸣-se-ti-⸢iq⸣ / [x x x x x x] ⸢ṭa⸣-a-ba / [x x x x x x x]+⸢x⸣-lak / [x x x x x x]+⸢x⸣ É LUGAL be-lí / [x x x x x x me]-me-e-⸢ni⸣

Scholarly note

Letter from a scholar (astrologer, exorcist, physician, lamentation-priest) to Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 10, 1993). ORACC text P313896.

Attribution

Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P313896). 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/P313896/.

Related tablets

Related sources

~2050 BCE

Drehem Cattle-Distribution Tablet

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.

~1800 BCE

Plimpton 322

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.

~650 BCE

Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet XI (the Flood)

The single most important literary discovery of the 19th century. It rewired the understanding of the Bible's literary context and proved that the Mesopotamian flood tradition is older. It is the oldest surviving epic poetry in human history.