Position in chronology
SAA 04 040. Same Tablet as no. 39 (PRT 038) [military and political]
Translation · reference
High confidence(Beginning destroyed) (1') [...] Is it decreed and con[firmed by the command of your great divinity Šamaš, great lord? Will he, who can see, see it? Will he who can hear, hear it]? (2) [Disregard that in] their midst either the M[edes or the ......]. (3) [Disregard that in]side Bit-Hamban [......] (Break) (r 1) [(Disregard that)] he has [ea]ten, drunk, or anointed himself with [anything unclean], o[r has altered or changed the (ritual) proceedings]. (r 2) [Disregard that] the oracle query has become ju[mbled in the mouth] of the haruspex, your servant.Let them be [taken out] and put aside! (r…
Source: 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/P237383/
Why it matters
Transliteration
[dUTU EN GAL]-ú qa-bi-i ku-[ni-i IGI-ru IGI-ra ŠE-ú ŠE-e] / [e-zib šá i]-⸢na⸣ ŠÀ-bi-šú-nu lu-ú LÚ.ma-[da-a.a x x x x x x x x] / [e-zib šá qí?]-rib É—URU.ḫa-am-ban ⸢x⸣+[x x x x x x x x] / [mim-ma lu-ʾu-ú] ⸢KÚ⸣ NAG-ú ŠÉŠ-šú ú—⸢lu⸣ [ku-un ŠU.2 BAL-ú uš-pe-lu] / [e-zib šá ina KA] DUMU—LÚ.ḪAL ARAD-ka ta-mit ⸢up⸣-[tar-ri-du] / [lu-ú ZI-MEŠ] lu-ú BAR-MEŠ a-šal-ka d[UTU EN GAL-ú] / [ki-i LÚ.ERIM]-⸢MEŠ⸣…
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 P237383.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from Ivan Starr, Queries to the Sungod: Divination and Politics in Sargonid Assyria (State Archives of Assyria, 4), 1990. Lemmatised by Mikko Luukko, 2018, as part of the research programme of the Alexander von Humboldt Chair in the Ancient History of the Near and Middle East at LMU Munich (Karen Radner, Humboldt Professorship 2015). The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/saao/P237383/..
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/P237383/.
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