Position in chronology
SAA 04 213. Fragment of a Query (PRT 094) [unclassifiable]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 4(1) [Šamaš, great lord], give m[e a firm positive answer to what I am asking you]! (Break) (r 1) [Be present in this ram, place (in it) a firm positive answer, favorable designs, favorable, propitious omens by the oracular command of your great divinity], and [may I see (them)]. (r 2) [May] (this query) go [to your great divinity, O Šamaš, great lord, and m]ay an oracle [be given as an answer]. (r 3) [... is over]turned. The top of the middle surface of the 'finger' [...]. (r 4) [... The coils of the colon] are 12 in number. The heart of the ram is normal. (r 5) [...] is present and faces downward. The 'increment' is wide [...]. (r 6) [The bre]ast-bone is thick. The c[oils of the colon] are 12 in number. The heart of the ra[m is normal].
State Archives of Assyria, volume 4 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
[dUTU EN GAL-ú šá a-šal-lu-ka an-na GI.NA a]-pal-⸢an-ni⸣ / [šuk-nam]-⸢ma⸣ [lu-mur] / [UGU DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti dUTU EN GAL-ú] ⸢lil⸣-lik-ma UR₅.ÚŠ ⸢li⸣-[tap-pal] / [x x x x x x x] ⸢BAL⸣-ut BE SAG EDIN U ⸢MURUB₄⸣ [x x x] / [x x x x x x ŠÀ.NIGIN] 12 ŠÀ UDU.NÍTA šal-me [x x x] / [x x x x x x x x] GAR-ma KI.TA IGI BE MÁŠ DAGAL [x x] / [BE] ⸢GAG⸣.ZAG.GA KUG ⸢ŠÀ⸣.[NIGIN] 12 ŠÀ UDU.⸢NÍTA⸣ [šá-lim]
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 P336355.
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/P336355/..
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/P336355/.
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.