SAA 04 109. Fragment Similar to no. 108 (PRT 093) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P237405

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4

High confidence

(Beginning destroyed) (1) [......] at his dis[posal ......] (2) [...... the arm]y of Esarhaddon, [king of Assyria], (3) [......] an attac[k ......] (4) [......] the han[ds of ......] (Rest destroyed)

State Archives of Assyria, volume 4 — scholar edition (ORACC).

Transliteration

[x x x x x x] ma-al it-[ti-šú x x x x x x] / [x x x x Á].⸢KAL⸣ šá mdaš-šur—ŠEŠ—SUM-[na LUGAL KUR—aš-šur] / [x x x x x x x]-iz? ZI-⸢bu⸣ [ši-iḫ-ṭu x x x x x] / [x x x x x x x] ⸢lu*⸣ ŠU.[2-su-un a-na ḪUL-tim x 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 P237405.

Attribution

Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P237405). 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/P237405/.

Related tablets

Related sources

~1800 BCE

Plimpton 322

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.

~650 BCE

Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet XI (the Flood)

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.

~2300 BCE

Disk of Enheduanna

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.