Position in chronology
SAA 04 096. Should Esarhaddon Send Ša-Nabu-šu to Plunder ...? [military and political]
Translation · reference
High confidence(1) [Šamaš, great lord], gi[ve me a fi]rm [positive answer to what I am asking you]! (2) [From this day, the ...th day of this month], A[b (V), to the ...th day of the month ...], (3) [should Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, send Ša-Nabû]-šû, [chief eunuch], (4) [with the men, horses and army at his disposal, t]o the district [of ...]? (5) [If he sends them], will they kill [what there is to kil]l, [loot, what there is to loot ...]? (Break) (r 2) [... The base of the middle part] is 'loose.' (r 3) [... The coils of the colon are ...] (and) are 16 in number. (r 4) [May (this query) go to your great divinity, O Šamaš, great lord, and may an] oracle be given as an [answer]. (r 5) [......]... (r 6) [...... Check]-up.
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/P240299/
Why it matters
Transliteration
[dUTU EN GAL-ú šá a-šal-lu-ka an-na GI].NA a-⸢pal⸣-[an-ni] / [x x x x x x x x x x x x ITI].NE.NE.[GAR x x x] / [x x x x x x x x x x x x mšá—dAG]-šu-u ⸢a?-di?⸣ [x x x] / [x x x x x x x x x x x a]-na na-ge-[e x x x] / [x x x x x x x x x x šá GAZ] GAZ-ku ⸢šá⸣ [SAR SAR-tu] / [x x x x x x x x x x x x] ZU-[e] / [x x x x x x x x x x x x] ⸢U₅⸣ [o] / [x x x x x x x x x MURUB₄-tum SUḪUŠ]-sà BAR [o] / [x x…
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 P240299.
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/P240299/..
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/P240299/.
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