Cuneiform Commentaries Project Update

Cuneiform Commentaries Project Newsletter

Several new texts have been recently added to the corpus of the Cuneiform Commentaries Project.

Thanks are expressed to the following scholars, who have contributed their editions and feedback: Irving Finkel, Uri Gabbay, Ulla Koch, Strahil Panayotov, and Henry Stadhouders. 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)

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CCP 3.1.16 (Enūma Anu Enlil 16-20): This long and well-preserved tablet contains a commentary on the series of astrological omens Enūma Anu Enlil. The entries explained in the tablet are extracted mainly from chapter 16th of that series, which deals with lunar eclipses.1 In addition, the last entries of the tablet comment on entries from the 19th tablet of Enūma Anu Enlil, which is devoted to the same topic.

CCP 4.1.13.A (Sagig 13 (?)): This small tablet contains entries of a commentary on an unknown text. The tablet was published a hundred years ago by J.-V. Scheil under the title “tablette scolaire d’Uruk avec gloses et vocabulaire.” An Uruk provenience of the tablet seems indeed very likely – note that tablets from Uruk started to flood European collections in 1913.

CCP 4.1.13.B (Sagig 13 and 12/14 (?)): This small tablet contains a complete commentary on the series of medical diagnoses and prognoses Sagig. According to its ṣâtu 3b subscript, preserved on the lower edge of the tablet, the ten first entries of the text pertain to a chapter whose incipit would be ¶ GIG KIŠIB.

CCP 4.2.B (Therapeutic B): This tablet contains a well-preserved commentary of twenty-seven lines that was found during the eleventh campaign of excavations of the Oriental Institute at Nippur (1972/1973). More specifically, it was found in a trash pit dating to the Persian period, in area WA. The tablet was subsequently published by M. Civil.

CCP 4.2.G (Therapeutic G): This tablet preserves a commentary on an unidentified therapeutic text. According to its rubric, it is a ṣâtu 6a commentary on a tablet whose incipit is šumma amēlu qaqqassu īta[nakkalšu] (?), “If a person’s head cau[ses him pain].” Moreover, according to its subscript the tablet would represent the second section ([pirsu]) of the elusive series Bulṭu bīt Dābibi,1 “Prescriptions of the house of Dābibi,” a series mentioned in the rubrics of commentaries from Nippur (CCP 4.2.B and CCP 4.2.P) and also in BM 59607 (CCP 4.2.Q), from the “Sippar Collection.”

CCP 4.2.U (Therapeutic U): This small tablet, which belongs to the British Museum’s “Sippar Collection,” contains a commentary on a medical text.1 It is written in the tabular format, although several entries span more than one row, and in some cases the column division is altogether ignored (e.g. a 16 and b 19′).

CCP 4.3.u4 (Sagig 14?): This small fragment contains meager remains of a commentary on a medical text. The rare phrase kalīt zikartīšu, “the kidneys of his manhood” (i.e., the testicles), which appears in line r 3′ of the present text, is elsewhere known only in the 14th chapter of the medical series of prognoses and diagnoses (Sagig).

CCP 6.1.2.B (Aa I/2): This fragment contains remains of a commentary on a text of uncertain nature. The fact that it features a technical lexical term (KA.KA.SI.GA, b 3′) suggests that the base text may be of lexical nature.

CCP 7.2.u32 (Uncertain, Rituals and qualifications of the diviner): The present tablet is a damaged treatise of heterogeneous character. Its contents are rather miscellaneous: the obverse contains what appears to be a commentary, in which the different entries are divided by means of a triple colon; whereas the reverse seems to feature a list, not a commentary.

CCP 7.2.u97 (Uncertain): This small fragment, which was drawn to our attention by N. Veldhuis, contains remains of a commentary in tabular format.