This small tablet, containing 25 lines in total, is a commentary on Šumma Ālu 48. According to its colophon, it was written by Nabû-šumu-līšir, a scribe from the Egibatila family who also wrote CCP 3.5.49, a commentary on ŠĀ 49 very similar to this one. As is the case with the other Egibatila tablets from the DT collection, DT 36 was probably written at the end of cuneiform culture, during the second or first centuries BC.
Little is known of its base text, Šumma Ālu 48. Some 20 fragmentary omens are preserved in the first section of the reverse of K.217+ (DA 103-106), but they do not seem to correspond to those commented on in the present tablet. Work on this commentary has allowed the editor to identify as belonging to ŠĀ 48 a fragment that was hitherto thought to belong to Šumma Izbu, K.7033 (CT 28 13), and which contains meager remains of the base text on which the present tablet comments.
The tablet is mostly concerned with philological matters: for instance, l. 7 renders the logogram a.ri.a syllabically, as namû, "pasturage"; and line 13 explains the rare word ubāru, "alien," as nakru, "enemy." Occasionally it contains some of the same glosses found in its sister tablet, CCP 3.5.49. More interestingly, it quotes at least twice from Malku (ll. 2 and 12). The second of these quotations ("'(his) reign' means '(his) days'") is particularly intriguing, since it seems to attempt the transformation of an omen that originally pertained to the crown into one valid also for private individuals, perhaps reflecting the political situation of the time (the section ll. 9-12 can be understood otherwise only poorly).
This commentary uses šanîš to introduce alternative interpretations. The explanation takes on one occasion the form of a paraphrase introduced by ša (l. 6). The different explanations, as well as the various lines commented upon, are separated by cola (note that in l. 12 a triple colon is used to introduce a new line).
The end of the tablet contains a line from the base text that is left unexplained. After this there is a whole section (ll. 19-21), separated from the preceding and the following text by rulings, with only the gloss ḫepi eššu, "broken recently," repeated twice in each line. This indicates that a whole section was broken in its Vorlage. The interpretation of this commentary is further hindered by the poor condition of the tablet. Several signs from each line are missing, and the surface of the tablet has greatly deteriorated since it was copied by Gadd in 1931. Consequently some of the new readings proposed here are hypothetical.
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