Position in chronology
SAA 04 164. Fragment Similar to No. 156 (PRT 049) [appointment]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 4(Beginning destroyed) (r 1) [Disregard that I, the haruspex your servant, ......] have seen [fear and] terror [at night], or [jumbled the oracle query in my mouth].Let them be taken out and put aside! (r 2) I ask you, Šamaš, [great lord], whether, (should) Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, appoint the man whose name is written in this papyrus and [placed] before yo[ur great] divinity, to the position which is [written] in [this] papyrus, (r 5) (whether) he will, as long as [he holds] this position, instigate [an insurrection and rebellion against] Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, and Assurbanipal,…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 4 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
⸢LUḪ⸣-tú pí-rit-ti IGI-ru ú—lu [ta-mit i-na KA-ia up-tar-ri-du] / ⸢lu⸣-ú ZI-MEŠ lu-ú BAR-MEŠ a-šal-ka dUTU [EN GAL-ú] / ki-i LÚ šá MU-šú i-na ni-a-ra an-na-a šaṭ-ru-ma i-na IGI DINGIR-ti-⸢ka⸣ [GAR-un] / mdaš-šur—ŠEŠ—SUM-na LUGAL KUR—aš-šur.KI a-na pi-qí-tu-tu šá i-na ni-a-ra-im-ma [an-na-a šaṭ-rat-tú] / [i-pa-qí-du]-šú-ma ⸢a⸣-di UD-MEŠ mál pi-qí-tu-tu an-ni-ti / [ip-pu-šú si-ḫu ḪI.GAR i-na UGU…
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 P236937.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P236937). 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/P236937/.
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.