Position in chronology
SAA 04 281. Will the Elamites Mobilize and Join the War? (PRT 128) [military and political]
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 4(1) If the base of the 'station' is protruding pointedly: the enemy will take the vanguard of my army. (2) If a filament lies crosswise in the top of the 'station': the god will not listen to the prince's prayer. In warfare: the prince's army will not achieve its enterprise. (4) The 'well-being' is destroyed. There is a hole in the right side of the 'pouch.' (5) It takes the place of a cyst. If the front of the top of the gall bladder is split, it is a split referring to the diviner's negligence. A pole will break. The merchant will lose his money bag on the (business) trip he is taking, and…
State Archives of Assyria, volume 4 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
BE SUḪUŠ NA šá-miṭ EGIR ERIM-MU KÚR ⸢TI⸣ / BE ina SAG NA GU GIL ik-rib NUN DINGIR ul ⸢iš⸣-me / ina GIŠ.TUKUL ERIM NUN ŠÀ.SÈ.SÈ.KI-šá NU KUR-ád / BE SILIM RA-iṣ BE ina DÙN 15 BÙR ŠUB-di / BE KI di-ḫu TI IGI-it SAG ZÉ DU₈ / DU₈ e-gu-ti DUMU—LÚ.ḪAL GIŠ.me*-še-du TAR-ir / DUMU DAM.QAR ina KASKAL DU-ku ki-is-su / ú-ḫal-laq SUD*-sa GUR-ra / BE ina 150 ZÉ DU₈ SUḪUŠ U IGI / IZI.GAR KA NU GI.NA / BE ⸢SAG⸣…
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 P238054.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P238054). 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/P238054/.
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.