Position in chronology
SAA 04 258. Fragment of a Query (AGS 156) [unclassifiable]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 4(Beginning destroyed) (r 1) [Be present in this ram], place (in it) [... propitious omens by the oracular command of your great divinity], and [may I see (them)]. (r 2) [......] faces the [...]. (r 3) [......] is curled. (r 4) [......] (r 5) [......] The 'cap' of the lung is spl[it]. (r 6) [......] is present. (Rest destroyed)
State Archives of Assyria, volume 4 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
[x x x x x x x x šuk]-nam-ma [lu-mur] / [x x x x x x x x x] IGI [(x)] / [x x x x x x x x] ⸢ka⸣-pí-iṣ [o] / [x x x x x x x x x]+⸢x⸣-is [(x)] / [x x x x x x x x x]+⸢x⸣ U.SAG MUR ⸢DU₈⸣ / [x x x x x x x x x] GAR [o]
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 P239006.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P239006). 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/P239006/.
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.
A major witness to the Mesopotamian Flood tradition and its relationship to later biblical literature. The date of this particular copy must be distinguished from the older history of the story.
An object naming and depicting a powerful priestess and royal daughter around 2300 BCE. Enheduanna is also a landmark in named literary authorship, but that literary legacy must be distinguished from this disk’s dedication.