Position in chronology
SAA 10 175. Deciding about an Extispicy Report (ABL 0773) [from diviners]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 10(1) To the king, my lord: your servant Marduk-šumu-uṣur. Good health to the king, my lord! May Nabû and Marduk bless the king, my lord! (7) Concerning the haruspex appointed to the service of Arbayu who last year made a report to the king, [my] lord, and said: "When A[rbayu] comes, [let them question him] and decide about [the re]port [concerning him]," (r 4) Arbayu is now here — let the king question [him] and decide about the report of his servant.
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 be-lí-ía / ARAD-ka mdAMAR.UTU—MU—PAB / lu-u šul-mu / a-na LUGAL be-lí-ia / dAG u dAMAR.UTU / a-na LUGAL be-lí-ia / lik-ru-bu ina UGU LÚ.ḪAL / ša ina IGI már-ba-a.a / pa-qí-du-u-ni / ša ina šá-daq-diš / ṭè-e-⸢mu⸣ / ina IGI LUGAL be-lí-[ia] / ú-te-ru-u-[ni] / ma-a ki-ma m⸢ár⸣-[ba-a.a] / it-tal-⸢ka*⸣ / [ma-a] a-na [x x x] / [ṭè]-en-[šú] / [li]-⸢ip*⸣-ru-[su] / ⸢ú*-ma*⸣-a már-[ba-a.a] / ⸢an*⸣-na-[ka] / LUGAL liš-⸢al⸣-[šú] / ṭè-e-mu / ša ARAD-šú / li-ip-ru-su
Scholarly note
Letter from a scholar (astrologer, exorcist, physician, lamentation-priest) to Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 10, 1993). ORACC text P334547.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P334547). 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/P334547/.
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.