Position in chronology
SAA 10 067. Conjunction of Venus and Mercury (ABL 0647) [from astrologers]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 10(1) To the king, [my lord]: your servant Nabû-[ahhe-eriba]. Good health to [the king, my lord]! May Nabû and Marduk bl[ess the king], my lord! (6) If it [suits the king], the apotropaic ritual [against evil] of any kind shou[ld be performed], and [the interpretation] of the observ[ation] of J[upiter] and Me[rcury] which, in the same [day], came forth in succession, should be written in (the text). It is said as follows: (r 1) "If the star of Marduk is black, in that year the as[akku]-disease [will rage (in the country)]." (r 4) They [are at a distance] and will keep away from each other; 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 mdPA—[PAB-MEŠ—SU] / lu DI-mu a-⸢na⸣ [LUGAL EN-ia] / dPA dAMAR.UTU [a-na LUGAL] / EN-ia lik-[ru-bu] / šum-ma ina ⸢IGI⸣ [LUGAL ma-ḫi-ir] / NAM.BÚR.⸢BI⸣ [ḪUL] / me-me-ni ⸢lu*⸣ [e-pi-iš] / ša ta-mar*-[a-ti] / ša MUL.⸢SAG⸣.[ME.GAR] / ša MUL.⸢UDU*⸣.[IDIM.GUD.UD] / ša ina ŠÀ 01-⸢en⸣ [UD-me] / da-rat a-⸢ḫe*⸣-[e-iš] / uṣ-ṣu-u-⸢ni⸣ [pi-šìr-šú-nu] / ina ŠÀ-bi liš-ṭu-[ru] / a-ki…
Scholarly note
Letter from a scholar (astrologer, exorcist, physician, lamentation-priest) to Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 10, 1993). ORACC text P334448.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P334448). 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/P334448/.
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.