This large tablet contains a commentary on a section of the exorcistic text known as “Marduk’s Address to the Demons.” Only a few lines (ll. 60-74) are commented upon in the tablet. These lines are part of a long liturgical section, every line of which contains a self-presentation of the god beginning with “I am Asalluḫi, who ...” The refrain of the litany (anāku asalluḫi) is represented by the repetition sign (kimin) in most manuscripts of “Marduk’s Address,” but in the present commentary it appears as gi u-ḫi. This is probably a cryptographic writing, where gi = gá-e (i.e., the Sumerian equivalent of anāku) and u-ḫi = šīlu(?)-ḫi o umun-ḫi, i.e., Asalluḫi.
Several factors make this commentary highly unusual. In the first place, the lines from the base text are cited in full and consecutively, whereas commentaries usually cite just certain lemmas from certain lines. Secondly, the commentarial entries are indented, whereas the quotation from the base text appears at the beginning of the line: this format is very uncommon in commentaries from Babylonia, but frequent in Assyrian tablets. Thirdly, the commentary does not seem to be concerned in the least with the many philological problems that its base text poses: instead, its main interest seems to be the suppositious relationship between the lines from the base text and specific (micro-)zodiacal constellations. This connection is established by means of associations between certain lemmata from the base text and elements of the description of the astral body. Thus, the line “[I am Asallu]ḫi, who with his torch burns the enemy and the wicked” (Marduk’s Address l. 73) is said to refer to the fire-god Girra, “the light in front of Enmešarra,” because of the association between the “torch” of the base text and the fire. Similarly, the line “I am Asalluḫi, who brings across the canals and establishes the life of the country” (Marduk’s Address l. 64), the “canals” are said to pertain the region of Scorpio: this is due to the association between the constellation Scorpio, the goddess Išḫara, and the Sea established in astronomical compendia (ll. 12-13). In the third place, the line “I am Asalluḫi, whose weapon is the [fierce] flood” (Marduk’s Address l. 72) is said to refer to the constellation Auriga (gamlu): in this case the association is based, as explicitly stated in the commentary, on the fact that the word gamlu also means “weapon.” In fact, the traditional description of the constellation Auriga is “the weapon in the hand of Marduk” (ll. 31-33).
The commentary uses the technical terms ša iqbû, “what it said” (l. 13); ana muḫḫi... qabi, “it is said on account of...” (l. 23); libbū, “as in” (l. 11); and šanîš, used to introduce alternative explanations (ll. 23 and 29). Several entries are clearly quoted from various texts: while in one case the text cannot be identified (l. 20), in another case the text cites the incipit of a well-known incantation (l. 23).
A one-line colophon states that the tablet belongs to a member of the Ēṭiru family, either Marduk-perʾu-uṣur or his son Iprāʾya (or “Šemāʾya”). As established by I.L. Finkel, scribes of this family were active during the Achaemenid period. Although the present copy can thus be dated to the fifth or fourth century BCE, it is uncertain when the commentary was composed.
The tablet was identified by I.L. Finkel, who also joined the two pieces of the manuscript. The edition below is based on the manuscript edition of W.G. Lambert, published posthumously by M.J. Geller. The interpretation offered here deviates from that of Geller on several occasions, and it includes new collations and textual notes. Some of the notes are taken from an unpublished edition of the text prepared by E. Frahm in 1998: notes taken from that edition are marked below as [EF]. It should however be stressed that many aspects of this text remain obscure, at least to this editor.
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