Andrew George

Sennacherib and the Tablet of Destinies

K 6177 + 8869 is a copy in Neo-Babylonian script, now in the British Museums Kuyunjik collection, of probably no more than two short inscriptions. Only its bottom half is extant, and so the first inscription is lost to us all but its last few fragmentary lines, which conclude a prayer (Text A). After a ruling a second, much better preserved text is given, and it is this, an inscription of Sennacherib in high literary style, which is of interest here (Text B). Text B describes the Tablet of Destinies ( ṭuppi sīmāti ), with the figure of Assur apparently depicted on it, presumably by means of a seal impression. The text continues with a description of a representation of the king standing in homage before Assur, which, if the text has any unity of construction, would also suggest a seal impression. The text is concluded with a routine royal prayer. The tablet—or rather half of it, the fragment K 6177—was known to pioneers in Sennacherib studies, having appeared accredited to that king in Bezolds Catalogue (II, p. 768), but it was deemed of too little significance to warrant more than passing reference by Meissner and Rost ( Senn. , p. 119). The join to K 8869, which provides Text B with its conclusion, was made by W. G. Lambert, who kindly brought the piece to my attention.

Tablets from the Sippar Library. VII. Three wisdom texts

The present article in the series begun in Iraq 52 and continued in Volumes 56–8 offers three tablets from the Sippar library which add to our knowledge of the genre of Babylonian literature known today as “wisdom”: a manuscript of Tablet I of Ludlul bēl nēmeqi (The Poem of the Righteous Sufferer), a copy of the great Samas Hymn, and a tablet inscribed with a small collection of proverbs. Since W. G. Lamberts edition of Ludlul in Babylonian Wisdom Literature several further sources for Tablet I of this text have been identified. Most notable of these is the manuscript from Nimrud, which plugged the gap between lines 12 and 41 and partly filled out the fragmentary end of the text. Being complete save for a few lines either side of its bottom edge, the new Sippar tablet provides further improvements in both places. It contains 11. 1–50 on its obverse and 62–120 on its reverse. The scribe failed to judge his spacing accurately, with the result that towards the end of the tablet he was forced to double up a whole sequence of lines, the twelve lines 105–16 occupying only six lines on the tablet. But even this was not enough, and 11. 117–20 and the catchline (=II 1) had to be written on the top edge of the tablet. Unfortunately this left no room for a colophon, unless one is inscribed on the left edge. For the moment we are unable to ascertain whether this might be so. The tablet came from Niche 1 D of the library — that is the fourth from the ground in the row furthest left on the south-east wall; it measures 14.7 × 7.5 × 3.1 cm.

The Dogs of Ninkilim, part two: Babylonian rituals to counter field pests

This article presents editions of all the extant Babylonian incantations against field pests. The sources date to the first millennium BC and many have not been published before. They are mostly tablets of the Neo-Assyrian period, from Ashurbanipals library at Nineveh, but the corpus also contains some Neo-Babylonian fragments from Nineveh, as well as a tablet from Sultantepe (ancient Huzirina) and two Late Babylonian tablets from southern Mesopotamia. Some of the pieces certainly belong to a series called in antiquity Zu-buru-dabbeda “To Seize the Locust-Tooth”, a compendium of incantations and rituals designed to combat by magic means the destruction of crops by locusts, insect larvae and other pests; other pieces are parts of related and similar texts. Some of the rituals require the observation of the Goat-star rising above the eastern horizon, which suggests they were performed at night as a precautionary measure during the winter months of the barley-growing season.

The Day the Earth Divided: A geological aetiology in the Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic

One of the most important pieces of the Babylonian Gilgameä Epic to have appeared recently is the Late Babylonian copy of Tablet V, in which the hero GilgameS and his friend Enkidu encounter, overpower and finally kill Humbaba, the guardian of the Cedar Forest of Lebanon. This manuscript, a tablet of six columns excavated at Warka and now in Baghdad, was published by E. von Weiher in 1980, in photograph and accompanying edition. The publication was especially welcome, for the Fifth Tablet of the Standard Babylonian epic was previously only extant in a few small fragments of the British Museums Kuyunjik collection, and our knowledge of the encounter with Humbaba was largely derived from three poorly preserved Old Babylonian tablets. Recent visits to the Iraq Museum have given me the opportunity of making a careful study of the new source. This collation has revealed a number of new readings, but the subject of the

Enkidu and the Harlot: Another fragment of Old Babylonian Gilgamesh

Abstract This article presents a newly deciphered Old Babylonian fragment of the Epic of Gilgameš. The passages of text preserved on it tell of Enkidu’s encounter with the prostitute and of his arrival in the city of Uruk, and clarify the relationship between other sources for the same episode. The perceived difference between the Old and Standard Babylonian poems’ treatment of Enkidu’s seduction disappears. The extant versions can be reconciled in a single narrative, common to all versions, that holds two different weeks of sexual intercourse. The different narrative strategies deployed in describing them are one of the ways in which the poem explores Enkidu’s psychological development as he changes from wild man to socialized man.

Akkadian turru (t.urru B) "corner angle", and the walls of Babylon

This article (a) examines the Akkadian word turru, sometimes ṭurru, in architectural contexts and finds it to designate an angle at the intersection of two walls. In the light of this discovery the article goes on (b) to elucidate passages of Nebuchadnezzar IIs inscriptions that describe his construction of the defences of Babylon on either side of the Ištar Gate, and (c) to consider other instances of turru, from which it emerges (d) that the meaning “corner angle” is not confined to architectural contexts, and (e) that bīt turrī, a technical term in damming, probably has nothing to do with turru “corner angle”.

Three Middle Assyrian tablets in the British Museum

Tablets of the Middle Assyrian period are rare in the collections of the British Museum, principally because the German excavations at Assur, from which most come, were plainly more carefully controlled than many early excavations. Thus it is a pleasure to place this article, which presents three Middle Assyrian tablets, in a volume celebrating Lady Mallowan and Prof. D. J. Wiseman, to both of whom Assyriology is grateful for the edition of many documents from a younger Assyrian capital, Nimrud. The three pieces published here are a fragment of edicts, a document listing personnel, and a collection of omens.*