Position in chronology
SAA 04 018. Will Ursaya of Urartu Invade Šubria? (AGS 048) [military and political]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 4(1) [Šamaš, great lord], give me a fi[rm positive an]swer [to what I am asking you]! (2) [From this day, the ...th day of this month] Nisan (I), to the 1st day of Tammuz (IV) of this year, [for ... days and nights, the stipulated ter]m for the performance of (this) extispicy — within this stipulated term, (4) [will Ursâ, king of Ur]arṭ[u], whom they call Yaya, [...] whom they call king of Pa[...], strive and plan? (6) Will he, [whether ...] or on the advice [of his counsellor]s, together with his army, (7) [or with the] Cimmerians or any of his a[ll]ies, [take] the road from where they are to…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 4 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[dUTU EN GAL-ú šá a-šal-lu-ka an]-na ⸢GI⸣.[NA] a-pal-an-ni / [TA UD-mu an-ni-i UD x-KAM šá ITI an-ni-e ITI].BARAG a-di UD 01-⸢KÁM šá ITI⸣.ŠU šá MU.AN.NA an-ni-ti / [a-na x UD-MEŠ x MI-MEŠ ši-kin a-dan]-⸢ni⸣ a-na DÙ-eš-ti ba-ru-ti i-na ši-kin a-dan-ni UR₅-tú / [mur-sa-a LUGAL šá KUR.ur]-⸢ár*-ṭu* šá*⸣ mia-a.a i-qa-bu-niš-šú-un-ni / [x x x x x] LUGAL šá KUR.pa*-[x x x] i-qa-bu-niš-šú-un-ni…
Scholarly note
Extispicy query addressed to Šamaš, the sungod and patron of divination, edited by Ivan Starr (SAA 4, 1990). The king asks the deity to render a yes/no verdict on a political or military question. ORACC text P336054.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P336054). source
Translation excerpted from Starr, I. 1990. Queries to the Sungod: Divination and Politics in Sargonid Assyria. SAA 4. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa04/P336054/.
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.