Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 142. Will Anyone Make a Rebellion against Prince Assurbanipal? (PRT 044) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P336344

Translation · reference

High confidence
(1) [Šamaš, great lord], give me a firm positive answer to what I am asking you! (2) [From this day, the ...th day of] this [mo]nth, Iyyar (II), to the first day of the coming month, Sivan (III) of this year, [for ... days and nights], the term stipulated for the performance of (this) extispicy — within this stipulated term, (4) [will (any) of the] eunuchs (and) the bearded (officials), the king's entourage, or (any) of his brothers and uncles, (5) [his family], his fa[ther's line], or junior members of the royal line, or the 'third men,' chariot drivers (and) chariot fighters, (6) [or 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/P336344/

Why it matters

Transliteration

[dUTU EN GAL]-⸢ú⸣ šá a-šal-lu-ka an-na GI.NA a-pal-an-ni / [TA UD x-KÁM šá] ⸢ITI⸣ an-ni-e ITI.GUD EN UD 01-KÁM šá ITI TU-bi šá ITI.SIG₄.GA šá MU.AN.NA an-ni-ti / [x UD-MEŠ x MI-MEŠ] ⸢ši⸣-kin a-dan-ni DÙ-eš-ti ba-ru-ti i-na ši-kin a-dan-ni ⸢UR₅⸣-tú / [lu-ú i-na LÚ].⸢šá⸣—SAG-MEŠ šá—ziq-ni man-za-az—pa-ni LUGAL lu-ú i-na ŠEŠ-MEŠ-šú ŠEŠ-MEŠ—AD-šú / [qin-ni-šú NUMUN É]—⸢AD!⸣-šú lu NUMUN—LUGAL EGIR-MEŠ…

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 P336344.

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/P336344/..
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/P336344/.

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