This tablet contains a commentary in Late Babylonian script whose subscript describes itself as “Lemmata and oral explanations relating to (the work) ana antašubbâ nasāhi u pašāri, ‘In order to tear out and disperse antašubbû(-disease).’”1 The base text of this commentary has several points in common with a passage in a compilation of medical texts from Assur that begins ana antašubbâ nasāhi, ‘In order to tear out antašubbû(-disease)’ (BAM 311 ll. 59′-76′ = KAR 186 = VAT 8914).2 The scribe did not include any details about the circumstances in which he wrote the commentary, however the tablet’s consignment in the British Museum suggests that it comes from either Babylon or Sippar (Abu Habbah).3 It is probably therefore later in date than the seventh century BCE.4

The commentary contains Akkadian synonyms for various Sumerian terms and Akkadian words or phrases encountered in the base text. However, only three of the twelve preserved terms in the commentary are encountered in the putative base text, BAM 311 ll. 56′-76′ and all three of them come from the first ten lines. These terms are zību (l. 3 = l. 59′), dgiš-gím-maš (l. 4 = l. 60′), and gu (l. 5 = l. 65′).5 A fourth term that the commentary may have in common with BAM 311, arrabu (l. 8 = l. 55′), appears as an explanans, as well as out of sequence vis-à-vis its appearance in the base text before dgiš-gím-maš and gu. Perhaps, then, the commentator drew on several different sets of prescriptions against epilepsy when creating his commentary. Alternatively, he may have been commenting on a single set of prescriptions which has not yet been discovered but which has some words in common with BAM 311 ll. 56′-65′. Editions of the relevant sections of BAM 311 ll. 55′-65′ can be found below:

To modern scholars this commentary is best known for the crucial role it played in the decipherment of the Akkadian pronunciation of the name Gilgamesh, the protagonist of the most famous piece of ancient Mesopotamia literature. Until the discovery of the equation of dgiš-gím-maš with dgi-il-ga-meš in l. 4, these signs were read as “Gišṭubar.”6 The discovery of this equation seems all the more fortuitous because dgiš-gím-maš is the most common way in which Gilgamesh’s name was written in the first millennium BCE.7 That this writing merited a phonetic spelling in a commentary is, therefore, by no means expected.

This commentary is one of only two therapeutic text commentaries known to have a tabular format.8 A tabular format is attested for other Babylonian commentaries with ṣâtu designations in their subscripts.9

The number of lines broken away at the end of the obverse and the beginning of the reverse is unclear, but they are probably not too many.

• 1. The antašubbû disease is a type of epilepsy that appears only in technical Babylonian literature (M. Stol, Epilepsy in Babylonia. Styx, 1993. Pp. 7-9), for example TDP p. 192 l. 37 // SpTU 3 no. 89 r. 1, discussed recently by J. A. Scurlock, Magico-medical means of treating ghost-induced illnesses in ancient Mesopotamia. Brill, 2006. P. 16 with n. 239.
• 2. As noted by CAD Q 289a and S 166b (and followed by E. Frahm, Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries. Origins of Interpretation. Ugarit-Verlag, 2011. P. 238 n. 1113). Cf. the description of the present tablet as an “Ālu Commentary” in CAD A/2 s.v. arrabu [lexical section] (repeated by M. J. Geller, Ancient Babylonian Medicine: Theory and Practice. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. P. 201 n.283).
• 3. Dilbat, Borsippa and even Kuyunjik are also possibilities: see J.E. Reade, “Rassam’s Babylonian Collection: the Excavations and the Archives”, in E. Leichty, Catalogue of the Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum. Volume VI: Tablets from Sippar 1. British Museum Publications, 1986. Pp. xxxii-xxxiii. As noted by E. Frahm, Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries. Origins of Interpretation. Ugarit-Verlag, 2011. Pp 230 n. 1073, Sippar seems the most likely of all these options.
• 4. Cf. S. Parpola, “The Esoteric Meaning of the Name of Gilgamesh”, in Intellectual Life of the Ancient Near East. Papers Presented at the 43rd Rencontre assyriologique internationale, J. Prosecký, Ed. Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Oriental Institute, 1998, pp. 315-329. P. 316.
• 5. The probability that zību in the commentary is drawn from the appearance of the word in BAM 311 l. 59′ is weakened by its appearance in the commentary as an explanans as opposed to explanandum.
• 6. T. G. Pinches, “Exit Gišṭubar!”, The Babylonian and Oriental Record, vol. 4, p. 264, 1889.
• 7. For the history of this and other spellings of Gilgamesh’s name see A. R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic. Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts. Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. 81-83.
• 8. E. Frahm, Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries. Origins of Interpretation. Ugarit-Verlag, 2011. P. 230.
• 9. E. Frahm, Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries. Origins of Interpretation. Ugarit-Verlag, 2011. P. 55.