This tablet contains a commentary on Šumma Ālu 25, one of the tablets of terrestrial omens that deals with snakes. The base text is very fragmentary and consequently it is difficult to identify the explanandum of most of the commentary's entries: only three or four of them can be identified with certainty.
Two main types of commentary entries can be found in this tablet. The first one is philological glosses: e.g. in the first line the logogram šub is explained as nadû, "to throw;" and in l. 2 the verb ittanapraš, "it flutters," is explained as išaʾʾa, "it flies about." Occasionally the explanations display some creativity. This is the case of ll. 6-7, where, after the name of the snake muš.túm.túm (= muš.du.du) has been explained via its Akkadian equivalent, asqūdu, the commentator proceeds by explaining the name etymologically: muš.du.du means, he claims, "the wandering snake" (muttalliku).
The second kind of explanation used in this commentary begin with a relative pronoun (ša) and try to explain the base text by elaborating more freely on its possible meaning. Thus, e.g. in ll. 12-13 the "wine snake" is explained as the snake "whose eyes are dark" (sc. like the wine) and, alternatively, as the snake "whose skin resembles wine." These free glosses are usually introduced after the philological, literal ones, normally preceeded by šanîš, "alternatively." In this tablet šanîš precedes not only the second, but all the subsequent alternative explanations.
When the glosses limit themselves to the syllabic rendering of a logogram, they are occasionaly introduced immediately after the quotation of the base text without any colon or terminus technicus, as if they were phonetic glosses. This is the case e.g. of l. 22 (sá-meš ik-kaš-šá-du) or 25 (bar-meš i-zu-zu).
A peculiar terminus technicus used by this commentary is ana muḫḫi, which apparently introduces the lemma from which the explanandum is derived, a function fulfilled in other commentaries by ana. It occurs in l. 20 and 33.
This tablet belonged, according to its colophon, to Nabû-balāssu-iqbi son of Marduk-zēru-ibni, of the Egibatila family. This scribe appears in the colophons of nine other commentary tablets, one of which (CCP 3.8.2.B), dated to 103 BC, is the latest datable commentary. He owned three other commentaries on Šumma Ālu (CCP 3.5.31, CCP 3.5.48, and CCP 3.5.49). As in the case of the first of them, CCP 3.5.31, the colophon of the present tablet states that the continuation (arkīšu) of the tablet (i.e., Šumma Ālu 26) was written on a leather roll (magallatu).
This tablet once belonged to Adolphe Funck, from Roubaix (France), who was also the owner of a LB exemplar of Syllabary B ("Funck 1," see AL4 pp. 102-103), and of a N/LB tablet of omens ("Funck 3," see AfO 18 p. 72). The current whereabouts of these three tablets are unknown and so it has not been possible to collate the copy, which was made by F. Delitzsch in 1874. He apparently wrote in the margin that this was his "erster Kopierversuch," which probably explains several obscure points of the autograph, especially in the lower part of the obverse. The transliteration of the tablet contains several reading proposals that should be checked against the original when it resurfaces.
