Only five of the original thirteen entries are preserved on this uʾiltu-tablet that comments on Enūma Anu Enlil 24(25). Like Nabû-zuqup-kēnu’s imgiddû commentary on Enūma Anu Enlil 56 (CCP 3.1.56.A), the colophon of K.8510 uses the deceptively simple subscript ša libbi followed by the incipit of the source text.1 The entries preserved on K.8510 comment on four omen protases in the third part of EAE 24(25), all of which concern celestial events that coincide with the rising of a šamšatu, a solar disk or parhelion.2 The exegetical focus of K.8510 is commonplace in the commentaries on EAE, namely, increasing the applicability and specificity of the celestial phenomena described in the source text. For example, the interpretations of three entries (lines 1′, r. 1, r. 4) focus on making the omens applicable to phenomena involving the planet Mars, either as a more specific interpretation of kakkabu, “star/astral body,” or as an astral interpretation of the obscure divine name Kabta. Another entry (line r. 6–7) appears to gloss the phrase kakkabū kayyāmānūtu, “regular stars,” with kakkabū ḫarrānāti, “stars of the paths,” meaning the fixed stars in the well-known paths of Ea, Anu, and Enlil. The most striking interpretive move (line r. 5) makes the omen pertaining to the rising of a solar disk applicable to an eclipse, here presumably a solar eclipse.

Perhaps the most peculiar feature of this tablet is the claims in its colophon that it is “new, not old,” but nevertheless copied from an original (line r. 9). Without any parallels this expression is difficult to understand, but perhaps the claim is being made that K.8510 is a first-generation copy of a commentary, i.e., the Vorlage of K.8510 was new, perhaps even an original composition. Nevertheless, a claim of newness is peculiar in a scribal culture in which hoary antiquity undergirds both the rhetoric and the practice of knowledge production.

Another uʾiltu-tablet belonging to Aššur-mudammiq, son of Nabû-mušēṣi, is the Enūma Anu Enlil commentary K.872 (see CCP 3.1.u83 for a discussion of this Assur scribe and his connection to Nineveh).

• 1. W. H. van Soldt, Solar omens of Enūma Anu Enlil: Tablets 23(24)-29(30). Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 1995. P. 17
• 2. See W. H. van Soldt, Solar omens of Enūma Anu Enlil: Tablets 23(24)-29(30). Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 1995. Pp. 24–25.