Position in chronology
SAA 04 157. Fragment Similar to No. 156 (AGS 119) [appointment]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 4(Beginning destroyed) (1) [If he appoints him, as long as he holds this position, will he instigate] an insurrection [and rebellion against Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, and Assurbanipal], the crown prince of the [Succession] Palace, [or cause others to instigate it]? (2) [Will he order it or cause others to order it]? Will he plot [it, or cause others to plot it or incite it? Or will] someone else [cause him to plot it, and will he listen, and] turn [to disobedience]? (6) [Or] will he act [with evil intent] against [Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, and Assurbanipal, the crown prince of the…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 4 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
si-⸢ḫu⸣ [bar-tú a-na UGU mdaš-šur—ŠEŠ—SUM-na ù mdaš-šur—DÙ—DUMU.UŠ] / DUMU—LUGAL šá ⸢É⸣—[UŠ-ti ip-pu-šú ú-še-pa-áš-šá i-qa-bi-i ú-šá-qa-ba-a] / i-da-[bu-ú-bu ú-šá-ad-ba-a-ba ú-šá-an-ḫa-aṣ-ṣa lu-ú] / ma-am-mu [ú-šad-ba-ab-šú-ú lu-ú šú-ú i-šá-me-e a-na lá šá-me-e] / IGI-MEŠ-šú [iš-šak-ka-a-na lu-ú ŠU.2-su a-na ḪUL-tim] / a-na ŠÀ-[bi mdaš-šur—ŠEŠ—SUM-na LUGAL KUR—aš-šur.KI ù mdaš-šur—DÙ—DUMU.UŠ…
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 P336096.
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/P336096/..
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/P336096/.
Related tablets
Related sources
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.
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.
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.