Position in chronology
SAA 04 077. Has the Enemy Captured Ṣiṣṣirtu? (AGS 072) [military and political]
Translation · reference
High confidence(1) [Šamaš], great lord, give me a firm positive answer to what I am asking you! (2) [The ci]ty Ṣiṣṣirtu, a fortress of Harhar, which is located on the border of Ellipi, and (which) your great divinity knows — (4) [in ac]cordance with the command of your great divinity, Šamaš, great lord, and your favorable decisions, has the enemy captured that city, Ṣiṣṣirtu? Has he conquered it? Has he entered it? Has he plundered and looted it? (7) Has he who can see, seen it? Has he who can hear, heard it? Does your great divinity know it? (9) Disregard the (formulation) of the prayer for today's case,…
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/P237386/
Why it matters
Transliteration
[dUTU] EN GAL-ú šá a-šal-lu-ka an-na GI.NA a-pal-an-ni / ⸢URU⸣.ṣi-iṣ-ṣi-ir-ti bir-ti šá LÚ.ḫar-ḫar-a.a šá ina UGU tu-ḫu-mu / šá KUR.il-li-pi na-du-ma DINGIR-ut-ka GAL-ti ZU-ú / ⸢GIM⸣ KA DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti dUTU EN GAL-ú EŠ.BAR-ka šal-mu / URU.bir-ti šu-a-tú URU.ṣi-iṣ-ṣi-ir-ti LÚ.KÚR iṣ-ṣa-bat-su-ú / ik-ta-šad-su-ú a-na ŠÀ-[bi-šú] i-te-ru-bu ḫu-bu-us-su šil-lat-su / iḫ-ta-ba-tu IGI-ru i-ta-ma-ru…
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 P237386.
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/P237386/..
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/P237386/.
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