Cuneiform Commentaries Project Newsletter (June 2016)

June 27, 2016
Dear subscribers,
 
Several new texts have been recently added to the corpus of the Cuneiform Commentaries Project (http://ccp.yale.edu).
 
Thanks are expressed to the following scholars, who have contributed their editions and feedback: Yoram Cohen and Ulla Koch. We would like to renew or invitation for Assyriologists around the world to contribute their editions of as yet unedited commentary tablets, for which they will receive full credit.
 
Best wishes,
 
Enrique Jiménez (Senior Editor of CCP)
 
 
CCP 2.2.1.A.b (Marduk’s Address, Muššuʾu, and Udughul A): This small landscape-oriented tablet from Assur contains commentarial notes on two lines of the incantation Marduk’s Address to the Demons, a line of an incantation so far attested only in Muššu’u, and a line of Udugḫul III. (Read more)
 
CCP 3.1.5.A (Enūma Anu Enlil 5 (?) A): This landscape-oriented tablet contains a commentary in the indentation format, written in Babylonian script. Although it provides information on the circumstances in which the tablet was produced, the tablet’s colophon does not refer to the text with any designation, nor does it identify the base text. Accordingly, this introduction to the commentary deals with the four topics in the following order: (Read more)
 
CCP 3.1.8.A.a (Enūma Anu Enlil 8 A): A completely preserved cola-type commentary on Tablet 8 of Enūma Anu Enlil, one of six commentaries on this series found in Uruk, whose colophons indicate that they belonged to the well-known scholar, exorcist, owner of a brewer’s prebend, and (perhaps) teacher, Iqīšāya, who was active in Uruk in the late fourth century. (Read more)
 
CCP 3.1.u83 (Enūma Anu Enlil (?)): This commentary is written on a small, landscape-oriented tablet, which is described as an u’iltu-tablet in its colophon. According to Gehlken,1 this tablet and another one (K.68 = CCP 3.1.u80) are extracts from a tablet of the commentary series Sîn ina tāmartīšu (SIT), and they discuss omens from Enūma Anu Enlil (EAE) 46. (Read more)
 
CCP 3.4.5.Q (Bārûtu 5 Pān tākalti 8 Q): This previously unidentified fragment belongs to the British Museum’s “Sippar Collection,” and contains a commentary on Padān šumēl marti, the 8th tablet of the 5th chapter (Pān tākalti) of the extispicy series Bārûtu. (Read more)
 
CCP 3.5.30 (Ālu 30-32 (“27-30”)): This almost entirely preserved tablet written in Babylonian script was the first tablet accessioned in the Kuyunjik collection (K.1). It contains a commentary on four chapters of the series of terrestrial omens Šumma Ālu. (Read more)
 
CCP 3.5.57 (Ālu 57-58): This tablet contains a commentary on chapters 57 and 58 (according to the tablet’s tally, 45 and [46]) of the series of terrestrial omens Šumma ālu ina mēlê šakin, “If a City is Set on a Height.” These chapters deal mainly with ominous events that occur in a garden or palm grove. (Read more)
 
CCP 3.6.3.E (Šumma immeru, Izbu aḫû E): This tablet is a commentary termed, according to its colophon, as a ṣâtu, ‘lemmata’, ‘words’. It is concerned with explicating words and phrases belonging to the šumma immeru (‘If a sheep’) omen series and possibly also to non-canonical or extraneous omens of the šumma izbu (‘If a foetus’) omen series. The colophon states that the tablet was written by Anu-ikṣur, a member of the Šangû-Ninurta family, who lived circa 400 BCE. (Read more)
 
CCP 4.1.34 (Sagig 34): The present tablet, copied by [Iqīšāya son of Ištar-šumu-ēreš], of the Ekurzakir family, is according to its rubric a ṣâtu-commentary on a tablet whose incipit is šumma amēlu ana sinništīšu libbašu inaššīšū-ma, “If a man has desire for his wife.” This incipit was previously identified as belonging to a potency incantation (Šaziga),1 since the prognosis is in fact attested in some of these texts. (Read more)
 
CCP 7.2.u178 (Uncertain): There is no proof that this small and badly damaged fragment from Babylon belongs to a text commentary, but the presence of a Glossenkeil dividing two apparently similar words in l. 7′ suggests that it might be one. (Read more)