A one-column tablet containing a commentary on If the hand of a ghost has seized a man, part of the poorly known therapeutic series Cures from the House of Dābibī. Unlike other commentaries on Cures from the House of Dābibi (CCP 4.2.B, CCP 4.2.G and CCP 4.2.P), the scribe of this manuscript does not identify the base text by means of a particular pirsu or tablet number of the larger series.

The present tablet does not contain a colophon but it probably comes from Sippar and dates to the early Achaemenid period.1 The base text is also the subject of a commentary from Hellenistic Uruk, CCP 4.2.E, but whereas that commentary is concerned with demonstrating the base text’s internal coherence, this commentary is concerned only with clarifying the meaning of individual words and phrases, many of which are names of plants. In this respect, it resembles another therapeutic text commentary from early Achaemenid Sippar, CCP 4.2.R. In both commentaries, some entries seem to be drawn from the pharmacological-botanical treatise, Uruanna (CCP 4.2.Q: o 10 (?), 13, 15 and 16 and CCP 4.2.R: o 11).

The commentary uses cola both to divide entries in the same line (left edge 1') and to equate the word or phrase from the base text with its explanation (passim); the commentator twice uses a colon with three wedges instead of the more usual two (o 13 and r 6'). Nevertheless, the commentary’s layout is reminiscent of a tabular format.2 In order to explain terms in the base text, the commentary also uses the technical term šanîš (o 12), two pronunciation glosses (o 9 and 13), and antonyms (o 10 and 12) – a hermeneutic technique rare in cuneiform commentaries.3

Two features suggest that the commentary may have been written as part of a dictation exercise.4 The first is a possible error in which the scribe writes úmu-qu-na-a-tú instead of úqu-na-a-tú;5 the second is an apparent Sandhi writing of the negative adverb and the following infinitive verbal form (o 12).6

This edition benefited from the preliminary transliteration of W.G. Lambert (Folio 10105), and from the feedback of Eckart Frahm, Enrique Jiménez, and Shiyanthi Thavapalan.

• 1. E. Frahm, Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries. Origins of Interpretation. Ugarit-Verlag, 2011. P. 287.
• 2. E. Frahm, Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries. Origins of Interpretation. Ugarit-Verlag, 2011. P. 237.
• 3. E. Frahm, Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries. Origins of Interpretation. Ugarit-Verlag, 2011. P. 69.
• 4. E. Frahm, Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries. Origins of Interpretation. Ugarit-Verlag, 2011. P. 237.
• 5. According to both Frahm, 2011E. Frahm, Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries. Origins of Interpretation. Ugarit-Verlag, 2011.: 237 and Finkel, 2000I. L. Finkel, “On Late Babylonian Medical Training”, in Wisdom, Gods and literature: studies in Assyriology in honour of W.G. Lambert, A. R. George and Finkel, I. L. , Eds. Eisenbrauns, 2000, pp. 137-223.: 170, the explanation in this line of the commentary is an erroneous writing for ú.uqnâtu, caused by the process of writing from dictation (Frahm). It seems conceivable, however, that instead of úuqnâtu the scribe either intended to write úqunātu or else deliberately wrote šammu qunātu (so CAD U/W 193b). The case for reading qunātu in this context is two-fold. First, while uqnâtu is attested both as the name of a type of dyed wool (CAD U/W 194) and (to date only in technical literature) as a plant name, in Uruanna I 439-441 (CAD U/W 193b), úqunātu is also attested both as a wool name, viz. twice in a prescription written in early Achaemenid Sippar (Finkel, 2000I. L. Finkel, “On Late Babylonian Medical Training”, in Wisdom, Gods and literature: studies in Assyriology in honour of W.G. Lambert, A. R. George and Finkel, I. L. , Eds. Eisenbrauns, 2000, pp. 137-223.: 170 r 2' and 10'), and as a plant name, in a document written in Uruk during the reign of Nabonidus that mentions 1 nigida úqu-na-a-ta (YOS 6, 74: 3). The term qunātu appears once more – albeit without a determinative – in a text from Hellenistic Uruk relating to the rapādu-plant (Abusch & Schwemer, 2016T. Abusch and Schwemer, D. , Corpus of Mesopotamian Anti-witchcraft Rituals. Volume Two. Brill, 2016.: § 7.24, 12 – reference courtesy of S. Thavapalan). The second argument in favor of reading qunātu relates to the nature of the scribal error in the commentary (if, indeed, it is an error): the error is more easily explained if the intended term is qunātu: if uqnâtu was the correct term, why would the scribe have followed the mu-sign with qu- (instead of uq-)? As Henry Stadhouders suggests (personal communication), the /u/ could be an epenthetic vowel (epenthetic vowels tend to appear after emphatic consonants, see GAG § 18d). In sum, the appearance of the term qunātu in a late Neo-Babylonian-period document as well as manuscripts of technical literature written both in Uruk and in Sippar during the early Achaemenid and Hellenistic periods suggests that this term is not just a scribal error for uqnâtu. It seems to be an alternative spelling for qunātu that was in use from at least the time of Nabonidus until the Hellenistic period (personal communication with S. Thavapalan).
• 6. But see now M. Worthington, Principles of Akkadian Textual Criticism. De Gruyter, 2012. Pp. 9-10, who questions the view that Sandhi spellings alone constitute evidence for this method of textual transmission.