CCP 3.6.1.A.l - Izbu (gurru maḫīru) A

This school tablet was found at Assur, in the House N2. As such, it very likely belonged to the archive of Nabû-aḫa-iddina and Šumma-balāṭ.1 It preserves excerpts from 9 different works, separated by rulings. The excerpted works are the following:

Obverse
1-2: Erim-ḫuš II, ll. 234-237
3-5: Erim-ḫuš III, ll.12-17
6-8: Diri I, ll. 247-249
9-11: ‘Principal Commentary’ on Šumma Izbu (gurru maḫīru), ll. 121-123
12-14: ḫar-gud I, ll. 12a, 13, 17
Bottom edge
15-16: Maqlû IV, ll. 135-136
Reverse
17-18: Great Hymn to Šamaš ll. 138-139
19-20: Ludlul bēl nēmeqi I, ll. 82-83
21-22: Enūma eliš I, ll. 22-23
23-24: Erra Epic I, ll. 73-74

Remarkably, the tablet VAT 10756, a school tablet from the same archive, preserves excerpts from the following lines of the same texts cited in the present tablet. Thus, whereas VAT 10071 cites Erimḫuš II 234-237, VAT 10756 quotes Erimḫuš II 238-240. The only text cited in the present tablet and not in VAT 10756 is the ‘Principal Commentary on Šumma Izbu’ (ll. 9-11 of the present tablet).

In fact, the present tablet is the only known school tablet to contain an extract from a commentary. As noted by E. Frahm, “it is likely that the ‘Principal Commentary’ owes its exceptional inclusion in Ass. 1114 to the fact that it could be used as a lexical list in its own right.”2

• 1. O. Pedersén, Archives and Libraries in the City of Assur. A Survey of the Material from the German Excavations. Almqvist & Wiksell, 1986. P. 29.
• 2. E. Frahm, Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries. Origins of Interpretation. Ugarit-Verlag, 2011. P. 206.