Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 263. Fragment Similar to No. 262 [cultic]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P336626

Translation · reference

High confidence
(Beginning destroyed) (1) [Should Šamaš-šumu-ukin, son of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, within this year se]ize the [hand of the great lord Marduk i]n the Inner City, [and go] to Ba[bylon? Is it pleasing to your great divinity,] and the great lord, [Marduk]? (Rest destroyed)

Source: 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/P336626/

Why it matters

Transliteration

[x x x x]-bi URU.ŠÀ—URU [ŠU.2 EN GAL-i] / [dAMAR.UTU li]-⸢iṣ⸣-bat-ma a-na ⸢KÁ⸣.[DINGIR.RA.KI lil-lik] / [UGU DINGIR-ti-ka GAL-ti] ⸢ù⸣ EN GAL-⸢e⸣ [dAMAR.UTU DÙG.GA-ab]

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 P336626.

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/P336626/..
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/P336626/.

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