"Anum, father of heaven... in the ritual act I perform... put here truth!"

As promised, here's a thread showing you all a little bit how I translate cuneiform, so you can see it happen in real time!

If youre curious about how to read a text of magic omens from 3,800 y ago

The text I'm translating here (YOS 11, 22) is a divinatory omen from the Old Babylonian period, just under 4,000 years ago, that is read to ask the gods for help in rituals of extispicy.

What is extispicy? It's the reading of organs from slaughtered animals to tell the future.

I should tell you all, that this a drawn copy (drawn by an assyriologist decades ago) of an actual clay tablet. Translating from a clay tablet itself is a whole other process, and paper copies are easier and the signs are more visible, so that's why I chose this!

We are going to translate, together, this chunk from the middle of the text, that is a prayer to the god Šamaš to bless the extispicy at hand, that would be read by the priest, or bārûm, in a temple ritual (I've marked our text with red arrows)

Translating cuneiform is a difficult process that usually includes 3 crucial steps:

- Transliteration, or writing down the values of each sign
- Normalization, turning the signs into understandable language (here, Old Babylonian Akkadian)
- Translation, translating from Akkadian

Alright let's start with the first line. I've marked each individual word with a different color so you can see how they are separated! Normally, all of this work would have to be done from scratch, but I've done it for us so you can visualize the words.

So you can follow along, I will be referring to each color using the system:

P - purple
R - red
B - blue
G - green
O - orange
Y- yellow

P - the first sign here is DINGIR, the Sumerian word for god, followed immediately by the Sumerian sign UTU, which is their word for the god Šamaš.

so we begin our translation knowing that this text is addressing the DINGIR UTU, or (d)UTU for our transliteration

R - unfortunately, this part of the tablet is damaged, but we kind of make out two downward wedges that are likely the beginning of the vowel "a"

At the end, we see DINGIR again, except here it's actually read as the syllable "an," NOT god, as many signs have many diff readings

from the damaged part, we have to make a guess what lies under the damage, but seeing the ends of the wedges, and the end of a "ka" sign sticking out from the side of the damage, one can assume that the signs *might* be a-[ša-k]a-an, that is, those four syllables in a row

B - this is clearly visible, and shows an "a" sign followed by a "na" sign giving us a-na

G - also clearly written, there are two signs, the second can be read "i" but the first can be read either wa, we, wi, wu, pi, pe, but since an "i" is following, it must be wi or pi

and since wi isn't an Akkadian word, we can assume it's meant to be "pi"! giving us pi-i

O - this word is a MINEFIELD. the first three signs have multiple readings to puzzle out, which could be ku/qu, ut/ud/ut./tam, ri/re !!

Knowing that the fourth sign is read "nim" only helps so much, as the word could be ku-ud-ri-nim, qu-ut-re-nim, etc etc (you get the picture)

Eventually, you have to make a decision and then if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. There is an Akkadian word, qutrēnim, meaning "incense" that makes sense, so we'll try qu-ut-re-nim

At the end of the line, our transliteration is then:

(d)Šamaš a-š[a-k]a-an a-na pi-i qu-ut-re-nim

Now, you have to use your background in Akkadian grammar to figure out what each word might be.

a-š[a-k]a-an looks like a verb, that uses the Š K N root meaning "put" conjugated in the 1st person present (more accurately called "durative" but I'm trying to make this easily understood by non Akkadian speakers)

so a-š[a-k]a-an is likely ašakkan or "I put"

a-na is an incredibly common word "ana" meaning "to, for" sometimes "in" and pi-i is likely the word pī coming from the word for "mouth"

for the idiomatic expression ana pī ____ (lit. in the mouth of....) meaning "in accordance with" or "in"

the last word we already translated, qutrēnim, meaning "incense" here giving us the phrase:

Šamaš ašakkan ana pī qutrēnim

or : "O Šamaš ! I am placing (putting) in the incense..."

And that's the first line, transliterated, normalized, and translated!!

I took the liberty to transliterate and normalize the rest so you can compare to my color-coding to see each word!

A space between the hy-ph-en-ated words means that the next word has begun, CAPITALS means a sumerian single sign meaning one word, and [] means damage

ša [.........-]ri-i-ka (giš)ERIN el-la-am li-ši-ib qu-ut-re-nu

ša .... rīka erēnam ellam lišib qutrēnū

li-iq-ri-a-am i-li-i ra-bu-tim

liqriam ilī rabûtim

i-na ik-ri-ib a-ka-ra-bu i-na te-er-ti e-pu-šu

ina ikrib akarrabu ina têrti ēpušu

(notice the repeating signs that I highlighted!)

ki-il-tam šu-uk-nam

kiltam šuknam

So the entire piece of this omen, normalized reads in Akkadian:

Šamaš ašakkan ana pī qutrēnim
ša .... rīka erēnam ellam lišib qutrēnū
liqriam ilī rabûtim
ina ikrib akarrabu ina têrti ēpušu
kiltam šuknam

Read aloud, it sounds like a melodic, chanted spell!

Well... here's the translation:

"O Šamaš ! I place in this incense (of your....) pure cedar. Let this incense linger!

Let it gather here the great gods!
In the blessing I pray, in the extispicy I perform,

put (here) truth!"

i should also mention, i’m not a professional assyriologist, only a college student who makes typos! so please be kind if u have corrections :)