The multi-column tablet VAT 10220 (+) VAT 10249 (KAV 46 and 47) was found in the “House of the Exorcist” in Assur and dates to the late Neo-Assyrian period. There are several possible base texts: the Weidner God List (WGL), the extended sign syllabary Diri, or the sign syllabary Ea. Although in his edition of WGL Ernst Weidner did not join them, he identified both VAT 10220 and VAT 10249 as exemplars of the WGL and edited them as texts D and E, respectively. If it is indeed an exemplar of WGL, VAT 10220 (+) VAT 10249 is the only known manuscript that has at least five subcolumns. Weidner’s edition, however, largely presents two subcolumns and only includes a third subcolumn (which he identifies as “Spalte a”) in Column II ll. 8-21 (corresponding to VAT 10220 ll. 4-19) and Column III ll. 8-10 (corresponding to VAT 10249 ll. 12-18). This is somewhat misleadingly done, as the “third” subcolumn actually represents the fourth subcolumn on the present tablet; the true third subcolumn is entirely omitted by Weidner. It is this third subcolumn, which contains the explanation of the writing for the theonyms, that complicates the identification of the base text, since it is not represented in other exemplars of WGL. If the base text is WGL, then WGL subcolumn 1 is subcolumn 2 in this text and WGL subcolumn 2 is subcolumn 4 in this text. Frahm has acknowledged the problem of determining if the text is a commentary on the WGL or simply an “expanded version” of it. For an introduction to the WGL, including the issue of the generic boundary between commentary and WGL, and an edition of another exemplar from 7th c. Assur, see CCP 6.7.B.
Because of the explanatory information included in the third subcolumn, Diri has also been advanced as a possibility for the base text. Diri, a lexical list of Sumerian and Akkadian equivalences that is first attested in the Old Babylonian period and spans six tablets in its canonical form, presents “compound logograms whose readings cannot be inferred from the readings of their individual components.” Diri exemplars dated to first millennium BCE Assyria and Babylonia have been found. However, while Diri was occasionally excerpted, it is not clear that any commentaries on Diri were ever created and none have thus far been found. What has been suggested instead is that, at some point, a seventh tablet was added to Diri, and that it contained a god list much like the WGL. This additional tablet is called Diri 7 in scholarly literature.
Though the existence of Diri 7 is still largely hypothetical, Civil has argued that “the existence of such a tablet can nevertheless be considered certain” and it “represents an expansion and standardization of the old AN-sections” that is still extant in an Old Babylonian exemplar from Nippur and the “Oxford” exemplar, of unknown provenance. The possibility that the present text represents the thus-far-unattested Diri 7 was set forth by Civil himself, who seems to be the first to treat the two exemplars as a join. Shibata notes that there is another, unpublished Neo-Assyrian manuscript that preserves the beginning of the text, but this manuscript is not included in the present edition. A fragmentary exemplar from Nineveh in the Neo-Assyrian period may also contain part of Diri 7 (K 14126) although the format is slightly different and the preserved lines do not match up with the WGL or the exemplars here.
The third possibility that has been suggested in scholarship is that the base text is Ea/Aa. As defined by Veldhuis, “the sign lists Ea and Aa explain the reading and meaning of simple Sumerian signs, in contrast to Diri (…) which deals with complex signs (…) the basic format of Ea is item marker (single vertical) –gloss—sign” but there is a more extensive format that has three columns, structured “gloss—sign—Akkadian translation”; Aa is the name used for the latter format. This suggestion has not been widely accepted, possibly because Ea/Aa exemplars did not contain theonyms. Civil did not discuss the present text in his study of Ea/Aa.
The formatting of the text is worthy of comment. The first subcolumn regularly omits the divine determinative, whereas it is obligatory in subcolumns 2 and 4. Subcolumn 4 always begins with the min (“ditto”) sign, though it is unlikely that it is meant to straightforwardly indicate repetition of a previous entry. Single rulings divide the subcolumns except on VAT 10249, which uses a double ruling to divide between subcolumns 1 and 2. Occasionally, a horizontal ruling divides the tablet; here, between lines 5' and 6', 9' and 10', and 18'' and 19''. One might suggest that these rulings indicate subsections, as the best-preserved subdivision seems based on uses and readings of ba (here, the ba and ba₄ signs) in divine names, but not enough remains of this exemplar to make any definitive claims. No other exemplars of the WGL contain horizontal rulings, whereas it is a feature of Diri exemplars. VAT 11758, which contains Tablet 2 of Diri, is a fragment also from Assur in the Neo-Assyrian period and one that has similar rulings and structure, including a column that begins consistently with min—one might speculate that it belongs with the text at hand as part of the same collection of Diri tablets from the House of the Exorcist.
Frahm characterizes the columns as having “individual entries offering a) the pronunciation of the theonyms, b) the theonyms themselves, c) the ancient names of the cuneiform signs used to write them, d) identifications with other deities, and e) additional information whose exact nature remains unclear because of breaks.“ One might further qualify that the second subcolumn is the god identified by the most typical or recognizable writing for the divine name, and the fourth subcolumn is the better-understood or -known deity. That the first subcolumn contains the pronunciation is consistent with Diri exemplars after the Old Babylonian period.
There are, additionally, some oddities in the writing on the tablet. One line, 6', seems to include a colon; the tablet is otherwise not of the cola-type. Frahm has noted some “Assyrianizing tendencies,” for example the pronunciation of Papsukkal that shows that “the renderings in KAV 46 reflect the Assyrian /s/ > /š/ shift. They also suggest that KAV 46 and 47 may not go back to Babylonian models, but rather represent an Assyrian tradition, possibly with a pedagogical background,” although he cautions that the latter claim cannot be confirmed without an exemplar of Diri 7. Other possible Assyrianisms include the writing In instead of Nin in (N)Inzuanna (line 18').