This cola-type commentary on a medical text for the treatment of four types of epilepsy is one of the most frequently cited commentaries in modern secondary literature. For this edition, the tablet was collated in person and using Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), and several improved readings (o 4, 5, 15, 19, 27, 28, 29, r 4' and 5' – all indicated in the transliteration by asterisks) and interpretations have been possible. Thanks are expressed to Eckart Frahm, Enrique Jiménez and Klaus Wagensonner for their suggestions, which are acknowledged more specifically in the notes to the edition.

The base text was probably the first chapter of the medical series Qutāru, “Fumigation”, currently known from six different tablets and yet to be edited definitively:

• AO 6469 (from late 4th-century BCE Uruk, whose colophon identifies it as belonging to Iqīšāya, a well-known Urukean scholar) = TCL 6 34
• K 2472+ (from Nineveh, probably the Library of Ashurbanipal) = BAM 5 506
• VAT 13844, VAT 13934 and VAT 13920 (all from Assur) = BAM 2 178-179, 3 288
• IM 67601 (from the Ezida temple, Kalhu) = CTN 4 159

There are some obvious differences between the commentary and the base text in its current state of reconstruction. For example, the sequence in which certain words appear in each text is often different. More specifically, ‘hand-of-a-ghost’-disease, which is the topic of the commentary in o 2-3, is not mentioned in the base text. These divergences suggest that Qutāru 1’s text was relatively unstable.

The commentary is known from the upper section of a broken tablet written in unusually long lines in small, fine Late Babylonian script (BRM 4 32). The obverse contains thirty lines of text, the first sixteen of which are completely preserved or restorable in their entirety. The reverse preserves only the end of the last line of the commentary, followed by two lines of colophon and two lines of what appears to be another commentary on a therapeutic text. It might be the beginning of the second tablet in a commentary series on Qutāru, but the text commented on seems to be otherwise unattested, and the scribe’s decision to write only these lines on this tablet is unconventional. The script on the reverse is in general larger and less cramped than on the obverse. Although BRM 4 32 in its current state of preservation is the longest known commentary on a therapeutic medical text – and indeed one of the longer members of the entire commentary corpus –, the tablet’s camber suggests that it comprises less than half of the original, which must have had a portrait orientation and consisted of some 60 lines on its obverse plus some 20 more on its reverse.

The commentary’s main hermeneutic technique is to provide synonyms for terms in the base text. Sometimes it was simply a case of translating logograms into syllabic writings in Akkadian, e.g., dù.dù.bi : e-pu-uš-ta-šú, “its ritual” (Sumerian) means “its ritual” (Akkadian) (o 4). On other occasions, rare Akkadian words were given Akkadian synonyms, e.g., ta-a : a-par, “‘ta’u’ means ‘to cover’” (o 4). Some of the explanations are based on word play. Thus human semen (a.ri.a nam.lú.u₁₈.lu) is equated with the maštakal-plant because ‘steppe-plant’, written logographically as úa.ri.a, is another term for the maštakal-plant (o 5). Word play also seems to lie behind the explanation of ‘It-confronted-20’-plant (imhur ešrā) as “like the radiance of Ishtar” (šarūr ištar). Several of the explanations of plant names are drawn from botanical treatises: three can be identified as coming from Šumma šikinšu (o 7, 18 and 19), and three more from Uruanna (o 6, 19 and 22).

The colon is used both to equate terms and to separate entries. However, as is frequently the case in cola-type commentaries, this sign is used inconsistently, e.g., it is omitted in the equation of illu šimbuluh with ḫīlu ša ana asûti (o 13), and it appears at the end of o 5, 10, 12, 19, 23 and 29 but at the beginning of o 7 and 14. On one occasion, the colon appears to be used erroneously (between kīma and ištēn, o 8). In the two lines of commentary that follow the colophon, the commentator mostly writes the colon with one large oblique wedge, a feature unique to this commentary.

Various technical terms are used. The adverbs šanîš, “secondly/ alternatively” (passim), šalšîš, “thirdly” (o 17) and, very unusually, rebîš, “fourthly” (o 17) introduce multiple explanations of the base text. The preposition aššu is used in two different ways: to contextualize explanations by means of a lexical equation (with the meaning “because”, o 7), and to contextualize a lexical equation (with the meaning “concerning”, o 16).1 The adjective or adverb kayyānu appears once (o 26-27) to indicate that an explanation is “actual”.2 Abundant use is made of the preposition kīma in order to describe the appearance of the drugs mentioned in the base text (o 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 14, 16, 18, 19, 29).

The partially preserved colophon, as deciphered by Frahm,3 indicates that the tablet was written by a nêšakku-priest of Enlil, the son of one Zēr-kitti-līšir. As Frahm has pointed out, this means that the scribe was from Nippur and his father may be identical with the homonymous scribe of a commentary on lunar omens (CCP 3.1.5.E), who was also a nêšakku-priest of Enlil and a member of the Gimil-Sîn family.4 Despite the obvious Nippurean origin of these descendants of Gimil-Sîn, five tablets written or originally owned by members of this family were found in controlled excavations at Uruk. As a result, the present commentary may well have been found there.5 This possibility is further supported by the fact that a second commentary on Qutāru (SpTU 5 255, CCP 4.2.M.b) was excavated at Uruk in an archaeological level that contained several tablets belonging to Iqīšāya, the Urukean scholar who owned a manuscript of the base text (TCL 6 34). The present tablet may, therefore, have come into his possession either at some point in its later history, or because he was the teacher of the scribe (either in Nippur or Uruk).6 This idea fits well with Iqīšāya’s known interest in the base text, as demonstrated by the fact that he owned TCL 6 34. Alternatively, it could have been found in Nippur, and have no connection with Iqīšāya.7

Since none of the known members of this branch of the Gimil-Sîn family can be tied to a date, relative or absolute, it is difficult to date the production of this tablet with confidence. However, because other manuscripts of commentaries written by Nippureans date to the Persian period (see CCP 3.1.5.E, Introduction with n. 4), this manuscript probably dates to some point between the early 5th and late 4th centuries BCE.

Two small partial duplicates of this tablet are known: IM 135193 (SpTU 5, 255 = CCP 4.2.M.b // obv 7-8) and BM 44243 (CCP 4.2.M.c // obv 2-5). They are incorporated into the edition below, and are accessible by clicking on the line number of any of the lines preserved in more than one manuscript. To see a score edition, click on “Score” view below.

• 1. As interpreted by U. Gabbay, The Exegetical Terminology of Akkadian Commentaries. Brill, 2016. P. 158. See note below ad o 16.
• 2. See U. Gabbay, The Exegetical Terminology of Akkadian Commentaries. Brill, 2016. Pp. 183-184, 186-187, 190-192. for discussion of the meaning of kayyānu in this particular passage, and on whether it should be understood as referring to the meaning of a particular writing (“literal”) or to “the essence of the object represented by the word.”
• 3. E. Frahm, Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries. Origins of Interpretation. Ugarit-Verlag, 2011. P. 93
• 4. On this family see U. Gabbay and Jiménez, E. , “From Nippur to Uruk: The Tablets of the Gimil-Sîn Family”. Section IV. E. Frahm, Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries. Origins of Interpretation. Ugarit-Verlag, 2011. P. 236. notes that the scribe’s father could also be a Zēr-kitti-līšir // Absummu, who was active in the first half of the 4th century; Gabbay & Jiménez nevertheless prefer to identify him with the descendant of Gimil-Sîn because the colophon shares an unusual writing of the name of the god Nuska with two tablets that can be more confidently identified as belonging to descendants of Gimil-Sîn.
• 5. As noted already by J. Oelsner, Materialien zur Babylonischen Gesellschaft und Kultur in Hellenistischer Zeit. Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem, 1986. P. 187.
• 6. E. Frahm, “Traditionalism and Intellectual Innovation in a Cosmopolitan World: Reflections on Babylonian Text Commentaries from the Achaemenid Period”, in Encounters by the Rivers of Babylon: Scholarly Conversations between Jews, Iranians, and Babylonians, U. Gabbay and Secunda, S. , Eds. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014, pp. 317-334. P. 234. suggests that Iqīšāya could have acquired it in the course of a journey to Nippur, while acknowledging that many other scenarios are possible.
• 7. M. J. Geller, Ancient Babylonian Medicine: Theory and Practice. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. P. 168. claims that the text was “probably composed” by Iqīšāya.