Position in chronology
SAA 04 101. Should NN be Sent to Lay Siege to and Conquer the City ...? (PRT 011) [military and political]
Translation · reference
High confidence(Beginning destroyed) (2) [Should Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, send NN with me]n, ho[rses, and an army, as (great as) he wishes, ......]? (4) [If he sends him, should he with men, horses, and an army, (as great) a]s he wis[hes, go to take the city ..., and will he, be it] through friendly words [...... or] by means of ramps, [or by means of battering-rams, or by ladder]s, [conquer that city, ...]? Will it be delivered to him? (9) [Will he who can see, see it? Will he who can hear, hear it? Does your great divinity] know it? (r 1) [Disregard that a clean or an unclean person has touched the…
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/P237358/
Why it matters
Transliteration
[x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x] ⸢x⸣ [x] / [x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x a-di ERIM]-MEŠ ⸢ANŠE⸣.[KUR.RA-MEŠ] / [Á.KAL-MEŠ mál ŠÀ-ba-šú ub-lu x x x x x x li-ma]-⸢ʾi?⸣-ir-⸢ma?⸣ / [ki-i il-tap-ru a-di ERIM-MEŠ ANŠE.KUR.RA-MEŠ Á.KAL-MEŠ] ⸢mál⸣ ŠÀ-ba-⸢šú⸣ [ub-lu] / [a-na ṣa-ba-ta URU.x x x x lil-lik-ma lu-ú] ina dib-bi ṭa-⸢bu⸣-[ti] / [x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x lu-ú] i-na a-ra-am-mu / [lu-ú…
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 P237358.
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/P237358/..
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/P237358/.
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