Position in chronology
SAA 04 065. Should the Magnates March Deep into Media to Collect Tribute? (PRT 022) [military and political]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 4(Beginning destroyed) (1) [... and should he send them to col]lect a trib[ute of horses]? Should they ta[ke the road and go to Sikr]iš, [to ......], to Kukkubâ, to the land Tu[aiadi, to ......, to the ci]ty UDpani, to the city Ramadani, and as far as the land Arrî? Will they collect [a tribute of h]orses? (6) Will they (be able to) ma[rch about] for as many days [as they wish], will they, either going or returning, escape, be sa[ved, or] save themselves from [the troops of the Medes, or] from the troops of the Manneans, [from the troops of the Cimmerians, and from any other enemy]? (9) [Will…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 4 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
[x x x a-na e-se]-er man-⸢da⸣-[at-ti šá ANŠE.KUR.RA-MEŠ liš-pur-ma] / [ur-ḫa KASKAL li]-⸢iṣ⸣-ba-tu-ma a-na [KUR.si-ik-ri]-⸢iš* x⸣+[x x x x x x x x] / [a-na KUR.x x x x] a-na KUR.ku-uk-ku-ba-a a-na KUR.tu-[a-ia-di?] / [a-na KUR.x x a-na] ⸢URU*⸣.UD-pa-ni a-na URU.ra-ma-da-ni ⸢ù⸣ a-di KUR.ár-⸢ri-i⸣ [o] / [lil-li-ku man-da-at-ti šá] ⸢ANŠE⸣.KUR.RA-MEŠ li-si-ru a-di ma-al UD-me / [ŠÀ-ba-šú-nu ub-lu…
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 P237053.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P237053). 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/P237053/.
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.