This tablet preserves some fifty fragmentary lines of a commentary on the astrological series Enūma Anu Enlil, specifically on a section of the series that deals with the movement of planets and stars. Since the part of the series commented upon in this tablet (ca. tablets 52-54) is still unedited, it is very difficult to ascertain to which line of the base text each commentarial entry refers. It is however possible to recognize close parallels with other astrological commentaries, and in particular with the large tablet CCP 3.2.2.A , a manuscript of Sîn ina tāmartīšu 2 from Nineveh. The lines for which parallels have been identified are indicated in the edition below.
The present tablet was found on level II of the Ue 18-1 area of Uruk. This level is commonly associated with the tablet collection of Iqīšāya, and this tablet may in fact have belonged to that collection. However it may be, the colophon of the tablet does not mention this scribe, but rather a certain Enlil-bēlšunu, nêšakku-priest of Enlil, who is known to have been a member of the Gimil-Sîn family. The tablet was thus probably written in Nippur, and only at a later stage brought to Uruk and integrated into Iqīšāya’s library.
The rubric of the tablet states that the text was copied “from a wooden writing board (containing) a mukallimtu commentary on Enūma Anu Enlil.” This tablets represents in fact one of the only three commentary texts from outside Nineveh whose rubrics classify them as mukallimtu commentaries. Moreover, the format of the present tablet, in which the quotations from the base text are written at the beginning of the line, but all subsequent commentarial entries are indented, is typical of the Nineveh mukallimtu commentaries, but only seldom seen in Late Babylonian texts. For this reason, and also because of the close parallels that can be found with Nineveh commentaries, it seems likely that the present tablet reflects a tradition that either originated in Nineveh or reached the Assyrian capital at some point.
Although the right hand side of the tablet is missing, and in consequence most of the explanations are lost, the scope of the commentary is clear when the entries that are paralleled in other commentaries are considered. The main goal of the present text seems to be to list astronomical equivalents for the planets and stars mentioned in the base text. By doing so, it provides more interpretive possibilities for its base text.
The present edition has benefited from a set of photographs of the tablet kindly made available by the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut. Thanks are expressed to Irmgard Wagner. It has also benefited greatly from an electronic transliteration and translation prepared by Eleanor Robson for the GKAB project, which was kindly made available by its editor.
