This tablet, found at the “house of the exorcists” in Assur, represents the only commentary on Šumma Ālu from that city. It explains omens related to bathing. The omens are taken from an Ālu tablet that is known to us from SpTU 2, 34, an Uruk tablet labeled as the 43rd excerpt (nisḫu) of Šumma Ālu. As the Uruk text explains, the omens in question were “extraneous” (aḫû), i.e., they did not belong to a canonical Ālu tablet. Both SpTU 2, 34 and the Assur commentary have been edited by Farber.
The commentary, of which only the beginning is preserved, has the indentation format typical of commentaries from the “house of the exorcists” in Assur. Some of its explanations are couched in sentence form. In obv. 1-2, for instance, we read: šumma amēlu ina tallakte mê irmuk ul ultabbar / ša ina muḫḫi askuppati mê irammuk “‘If a man washes himself with water in the walkway, he will not grow old’ - (This refers to someone) who washes himself with water on the threshold slab.” In obv. 7, the negation ul has been secondarily added to the apodosis of the omen quoted in this line (ul i-pa-šaḫ “he will (not) become calm”), an obvious manipulation of the base text, which does not have a negation here (see SpTU 2, 34, obv. 7). This tablet can be dated to the seventh century BCE.
The commentary is concerned exclusively with philological matters, and it uses the termini technici aššu and ša (introducing the explanation).
[Adapted from E. Frahm, Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries. Origins of Interpretation. Ugarit-Verlag, 2011. P. 201]
The tablet was collated in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in June 2016.
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