Four of the letters in the volume refer in one way or another to prophecy (nos. 139, 148, 37, 144; see Nissinen SAAS 7 pp. 9-10 for the criteria for recognizing prophecy in NA texts). No. 139 clearly contains a prophecy as it quotes the words of a divinity and mentions the name of Assurbanipal. Moreover, it uses the formulaic "fear not" (lā tapallah), characteristic of prophetic utterances (cf. Parpola SAA 9 p. LXV Chart I). Details of the manner of the prophecy are lost. No. 148 is only a small scrap, but it is likely that it was the beginning of a prophecy since the woman reporting the "message" (šipirtu) was a votary of Ištar of Arbela, an important deity in Neo-Assyrian prophecy. The name of the votary is not preserved, but the extant traces do not match any of the prophets or prophetesses known from the prophecy corpus (Parpola SAA 9 pp. XLVIII-LII). The fact that this piece, like no. 139, is from Arbela is in keeping with the importance of this city as a source of prophecies.
In no. 37 we find an interesting mixture of a report of a prophecy and bureaucratic buck-passing. A prophetess (raggintu), speaking in the name of a deity whose name is not preserved, demands the throne from a temple. Adad-ahu-iddina, obviously in charge of the temple, refuses to hand over the throne without the king's permission, equally obviously fearing the king's wrath more than that of the god (cf. Nissinen SAAS 7 pp. 78-81). Finally, no. 144 is less sure to be a prophecy: although it seems to be quoting the words of a divinity, the mode of address is not characteristic in that the king is, in part, addressed indirectly and the message consists entirely of cultic demands. The message is part of a general report on cultic matters and comes after a break in the text.
Despite the scattered and incomplete nature of these few references, taken together with the corpus of archived prophecy (SAA 9 1-4), the other prophecy reports (SAA 9 5-11), and the references to prophecy in a wide variety of text types (Nissinen SAAS 7), it is clear that prophecy was an important vehicle for establishing the divine will during the late Neo-Assyrian period, and that priests and temple administrators were responsible for reporting prophetic messages to the king.
Robert M. Whiting
Robert M. Whiting, 'Prophecy', Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Priests to Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, SAA 13. Original publication: Helsinki, Helsinki University Press, 1998; online contents: SAAo/SAA13 Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2020 [http://oracc.org/saao/saa13/lettersfrompriests/prophecy/]