Position in chronology
SAA 04 207. Fragment Referring to Hardships of Travel [miscellaneous]
About this tablet
This tiny, badly worn clay chip is part of a formal divinatory query — a written petition addressed to the sun-god Šamaš by royal diviners on behalf of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon. Such texts asked the god to ignore any incidental flaws (illness, travel fatigue, ritual impurity, a blocked path) that might otherwise corrupt the reading of a sacrificial sheep's entrails, so that the true divine answer could be trusted. The mention of 'hardship of travel' suggests the underlying question concerned the dangers of a journey or military campaign. It is one small piece of the elaborate bureaucratic machinery of state divination that guided Assyrian royal decision-making in the 7th century BCE.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a scrap of a formal petition to the god Šamaš, part of the standard boilerplate that Assyrian diviners recited before reading the omens. The priests ask the god to set aside anything that might spoil the reading: whatever concerns the army of King Esarhaddon, any sickness or exhaustion from travel that might affect the result, the possible ill will of a god or of the goddess Ištar, and any physical impurity — such as an unclean person touching the sacrificial sheep, blocking its path, or an unclean man or woman coming near the place where the ritual was performed. In short, the diviners are asking the god to overlook technical contamination and give them his real, unclouded answer. Most of the tablet is broken away, so only these formulaic clauses survive.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(traces, too fragmentary to translate) / [......] his/her ...... (blank) [......] / (1) [Disregard that ......] the forces of Esarhaddon, [king of Assyria ......] / (2) [Disregard that ......] turns him back, (that) illness (or) the hardship [of travel is encountered] / (3) [Disregard that ...... a god] of evil (or) the evil of Ištar [......] / (4) [Disregard that a clean or] unclean (person) has touched the sacrificial sheep, / (5) [or] has blocked the way [of the sacrificial sheep]. / (6) [Disregard that an unclean man or wom]an has come near the place of the extispicy [and made it unclean]. / (7) [Disregard that] in this place [an unclean person has performed extispicy].
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Engine notes
read from photo7 uncertain terms ↓
- e-zib šá — Formulaic 'aside from the fact that' — a standard clause-introducer in Assyrian oracular query texts (tamītu); translation is well-established but the restorations of each clause-opening are heavily reconstructed from parallel texts.
- ma-na-aḫ-ti šá KASKAL.2 IGI-MEŠ — 'Hardships of previous journeys' — KASKAL.2 (harrānu) 'journey/road'; IGI-MEŠ 'previous/former'; manaḫtu 'fatigue/hardship'. Reading and restoration plausible from parallels but partly broken.
- ú-ta?-ru-šú GIG — Tentative reading (note '?' in transliteration): 'it (the sickness) weighed upon him' or 'returned to him as sickness'. The verbal form is uncertain.
- DINGIR? ḪUL dINNIN? ḪUL — Both DINGIR and INNIN are tentative (marked with '?' in transliteration). 'Evil god, evil Ištar' is the standard restoration from parallel query formulae, but the signs are not confirmed on the tablet surface.
- KUG lu-ʾu-ú — 'Ritually impure' — lu'û used repeatedly for ritual impurity; KUG (ellu, 'pure') combined with lu'û may indicate a specific cultic contamination formula; the exact nuance of the phrase is debated.
- MÁŠ DIB-MEŠ-qu-ma ú-le-ʾu-ú — 'They seized an extispicy and were unable' — referring to an invalid or inauspicious liver inspection; restoration from parallel SAA 4 texts.
- KI NE-i — Typically read as 'fire-site' (kinûnu?) or 'that place of fire'; the interpretation of NE here is uncertain — it may denote a brazier or ritual fire-pit used in extispicy preparation.
Reasoning ↓
Visual examination: The photograph shows multiple fragments from British Museum tablet K.14599 (visible ink-written museum number on several pieces). The clay is reddish-brown, heavily worn and eroded; surfaces are pitted and abraded throughout. On the third and fourth fragments from the top, rows of cuneiform wedges are faintly but unmistakably visible — horizontal and diagonal impressions consistent with Neo-Assyrian script — but individual signs cannot be reliably read at this resolution and given the surface damage. The two smaller fragments at the top show almost no legible sign detail. The bottom two fragments show the best-preserved inscribed surfaces but the wedges are still too eroded for sign-by-sign verification. Layer 2 (transliteration-based): The text belongs to the genre of oracular/divinatory queries (tamītu or related), cataloguing ritual impediments — impurity, hardship of travel, evil omens — that may have affected a campaign or journey, with Esarhaddon (Aššur-aḫa-iddina) named in line 3. Cross-check: The photo confirms the general format of a multi-line inscribed tablet with heavy lacunae, consistent with the heavily bracketed transliteration, but individual signs cannot be verified. No discrepancies can be confirmed or denied at this resolution. The text belongs to SAA 04 and its genre and royal name are consistent with Neo-Assyrian query texts of the Esarhaddon period (cf. Starr, SAA 4, 1990).
Generated by claude-sonnet-4-6 · prompt 2026-05-11/v3-conventions · May 11, 2026 · 3430 in / 1122 out tokens
Transliteration
[x x x x x x x x] ⸢x x x⸣ ṣu ⸢x⸣+[x x x x x x x x] / [x x x x x x]+⸢x⸣-šú (blank) [x x x x x x x] / [e-zib šá x x] ⸢e⸣-mu-qu šá mdaš-šur—⸢ŠEŠ⸣—[SUM-na LUGAL KUR—aš-šur.KI] / [e-zib šá x x ú]-⸢ta?⸣-ru-šú GIG ma-na-[aḫ-ti šá KASKAL.2 IGI-MEŠ] / [e-zib šá x x x DINGIR?] ḪUL d⸢INNIN?⸣ [ḪUL x x x x x x x] / [e-zib šá KUG lu-ʾu-ú] ⸢UDU.NÍTA⸣ [SISKUR.SISKUR TAG-MEŠ] / [ú—lu a]-na IGI [SISKUR.SISKUR GIL-MEŠ-ku] / [e-zib šá lu-ʾu-ú lu-ʾu-ú-ti KI] ⸢MÁŠ DIB⸣-[MEŠ-qu-ma ú-le-ʾu-ú] / [e-zib šá ina KI NE]-i [lu-ʾu-ú MÁŠ MÁŠ-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 P239279.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P239279). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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