This tiny fragment from the British Museum’s “Babylon Collection” preserves meager remains of a lexical list or tabular commentary dealing with field pests. Other fragments from the same collection dealing with the same topics are known, such as BM 38684 (CCP 7.2.u109) and BM 40739 (CCP 3.5.34, a previously unpublished commentary on Šumma Ālu 34), but no parallels with the present text can be found.1 It is possible that the first line represents the incipit of the base text. Two columns are currently visible, but it is likely that the original tablet contained several more.

An rough edition of this tablet is given, under the museum number “BM 40987,” by T. Oshima.2 It is suggested there that the tablet may represent a second commentary on the Theodicy, but no evidence is adduced to support this claim.

• 1. H. Stadhouders (private communication) suggests that the present tablet might represent “a list of animals portending bad omens, belonging to the domain of terrestrial omen literature, quite possibly representing part of a namburbi. If this supposition is correct, the two columns do not reflect equations but enumerations of ominous animals one by one.”
• 2. T. Oshima, Babylonian Poems of Pious Sufferers. Ludlul Bēl Nēmeqi and the Babylonian Theodicy. Mohr Siebeck, 2014. P. 168