Position in chronology
SAA 09 004. Fragment of a Collection of Encouragement Oracles
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 9(Beginning destroyed) (2) [Esarhaddo]n, king of Assyria, [......] (3) I will [catch ... and wease]ls, (and) (4) I will [cast them before] your feet. (5) [As for yo]u, fe[ar] not! [......] (6) I will v[anquish] the later [......] (7) You shall ... yo[ur ......] (8) [...] I will p[ut ......] (9) [...] massive in [...] (Rest destroyed)
State Archives of Assyria, volume 9 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[x x x x x] ⸢x x⸣ [x x x] / [maš-šur—PAB]—⸢AŠ⸣ MAN KUR—aš-šur [x x x] / [ka]-⸢kiš⸣-a-ti ⸢ú⸣-[ba?-ra?] / [ina IGI] GÌR.2-ka ⸢a⸣-[kar-ra-ar] / [at]-⸢ta?⸣ la ta-⸢pal⸣-[làḫ x x] / [x x]+⸢x⸣ ur-ki-u-te a-⸢kaš?⸣-[šad x x x] / [x x]-⸢ka⸣ tap-ta-an-[x x x] / [x x]-⸢ti⸣ a-šá-[kan x x] / [x x x]+⸢x-ka-bar⸣ ina ⸢x⸣+[x x x]
Scholarly note
Neo-Assyrian prophetic oracle, edited by Simo Parpola (SAA 9, 1997). ORACC text P336677.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from Simo Parpola, Assyrian Prophecies (State Archives of Assyria, 9), 1997. Lemmatised by Mikko Luukko, 2012, as part of the AHRC-funded research project “Mechanisms of Communication in an Ancient Empire: The Correspondence between the King of Assyria and his Magnates in the 8th Century BC” (AH/F016581/1; University College London) directed by Karen Radner. The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/saao/P336677/..
Translation excerpted from Parpola, S. 1997. Assyrian Prophecies. SAA 9. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa09/P336677/.
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.
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.
The literary tradition is no longer anonymous from this point. Authorship — the idea that a specific human voice composes a specific work — enters the historical record with her.