This almost perfectly preserved tablet contains a thirty-four line commentary on the 7th tablet of the teratological series Šumma Izbu. The rubric classifies the tablet as a ṣâtu 7c-type commentary and as the “8th lecture (on entries) from (the Series) Šumma Izbu.” As noted by Frahm, another commentary on Šumma Izbu from Uruk, on the 17th tablet (SpTU 2 38 = CCP 3.6.3.B), also describes itself as a “lecture” (malsûtu). The existence of such a series of commentaries notwithstanding, two ḫepi-glosses (at the ends of ll. 19 and 20) mark places where the Vorlage of the present commentary was damaged, and thereby prove that this manuscript is a copy of an earlier composition. The present tablet belonged to the well-known Hellenistic scholar, exorcist, owner of a brewer’s prebend, and (perhaps) teacher, Iqīšāya, who also owned the aforementioned commentary on Šumma Izbu 17 (= CCP 3.6.3.B). Together with a commentary on Šumma Izbu 14 (ROM 991 = CCP 3.6.3.D), it may have been found by unauthorized diggers in the area of the Bīt rēš temple.
The text comments on various apodoses and protases of Šumma Izbu beginning with line 3 of that tablet and continuing with comments on sporadic omens, apparently following the order of their appearance in the base text. The commentary’s citation of the base text enables the correct interpretation of some passages of Šumma Izbu VII. Line 2’s explicit spelling mé-eṭ-lu-tú, “mature age,” for instance, clarifies the ambiguous spelling bad-lu-tam in the manuscripts of Šumma Izbu l. 3. Lines 5-6 quote in full an omen otherwise unattested in the preserved manuscripts of Šumma Izbu: “If an anomalous foetus has no head, but has swollen flesh instead of its head.” Many of the apodoses cited in whole or in part are otherwise unattested (e.g., ll. 4, 7 (two different unknown apodoses), 12), and must therefore come from missing sections of Šumma Izbu VII.
In addition, the commentary contributes some otherwise unattested readings of logograms, namely the readings of kur as ṭardu, ṭardūtu, and ḫubtu (l. 4); the reading of ma as nasāḫu (l. 12); and the abbreviated logogram sag.gar (instead of the elsewhere attested uzu.šà.gar.gar.ra) for surummu (l. 33). The commentary also contains the rare word zerpu, approx. “lumpy swelling” (l. 8), and the context in which the verb dakāšu is cited in line 15 indicates that it probably means “to bulge” (AHw 151b) rather than “to pierce” (so CAD D 34-35).
In support of several commentarial entries, the commentator explicitly cites once from the literary text Ludlul Bēl Nēmeqi (ll. 17-18); once from an unknown bilingual Emesal prayer (ll. 13-14), described as coming “from the corpus of lamentation priests” (ina kalûtu); once from the lexical list Erimhuš (ll. 23-24), which he quotes “vertically,” i.e. providing first several Sumerian words, followed by their Akkadian equivalents; and once from a poorly known series of proverbs and wisdom literature, the “Series of Sidu” (ll. 29-30). Though not identified explicitly, line 11 cites part of a line of Ludlul, and the three-column commentary on the thematic lexical list Ura, ḪAR-gud, may have been the source of some of the equations in lines 9-10.
The commentary often simply equates individual words with synonyms, and several of these equations are also found in the so-called Principal Commentary to Šumma Izbu, e.g., itkulu = ḫarāṣu (l. 3) (// Prin Comm 254 b-c) and ṭardu = raddu (l. 4) (// Prin Comm 254 d-e). As noted by Frahm, the owner of the present tablet, Iqīšāya, also owned a tablet inscribed with an excerpt from the Principal Commentary.
Two common technical terms are used in this commentary: šanîš, “alternatively” (ll. 10, 21, 34) and libbū, “as in” (ll. 11, 17, 29). As in many commentaries, the Glossenkeile that separate the cited portion of the base text from the commentary are deployed inconsistently: they are not used to connect the two synonyms in the equations kur = ṭardūtu (l. 4), assukku = zerpu (l. 8) and surummu = erru (l. 33).
Four scribal errors have been identified in this tablet: (1) a dittography of ṭi-id in l. 9, (2) the omission of a in a-ḫa-a-a in l. 17, (3) an irrelevant kid or é sign in l. 19 (possibly an error of tactile memory), and (4) a disconnected dittography (mu for ru) in l. 26, to use the terminology of Worthington.
As emphasized by Frahm, in line 11 the author seems to reproduce – or himself to perpetrate – an error in his quotation of Ludlul Bēl Nēmeqi. In view of the possible composition of this commentary in Uruk, the omission of the name of the god Marduk in the quotation may be deliberate, for theological reasons. In lines 17-18, two grammatical errors are apparent in the quotation of the same text: (1) the writing ḫa-la-liš for ḫa-la-la, and (2) the hypercorrection of almad to almadu, as noted by Finkel. Occasionally the author may have misunderstood the base text: according to Frahm, the learned equation of the verb nasāḫu, “to turn out,” with šakānu, “to place,” by means of a bilingual lament (ll. 12-14) suggests that the commentator did not understand the apodosis “(If) the flesh is torn out like a plum.” Following Finkel, Frahm also considers the entry in ll. 16-19 as evidence of misunderstanding of the base text (but see ad l. 16 for further discussion).
The text is currently in a private collection. The present edition is greatly indebted to the first edition of the text, by I.L. Finkel, and the making of this electronic edition has been facilitated by an electronic edition prepared by Marie-Françoise Besnier for the GKAB project project, which has been revised. Thanks are expressed to Marie-Françoise Besnier and Eleanor Robson.