Texts and Contexts: The Circulation and Transmission of Cuneiform Texts in Social Space 9781614515371, 9781614517177

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Texts and Contexts

Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records

General Editor: Gonzalo Rubio Editors: Nicole Brisch, Petra Goedegebuure, Markus Hilgert, Amélie Kuhrt, Peter Machinist, Piotr Michalowski, Cécile Michel, Beate Pongratz-Leisten, D. T. Potts, Kim Ryholt

Volume 9

Texts and Contexts The Circulation and Transmission of Cuneiform Texts in Social Space

Edited by Paul Delnero and Jacob Lauinger

DE GRUYTER

ISBN 978-1-61451-717-7 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-61451-537-1 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-61451-963-8 ISSN 2161-4415 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2015 Walter de Gruyter Inc., Boston/Berlin Typesetting: Meta Systems Publishing & Printservices GmbH, Wustermark Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Contents

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Paul Delnero and Jacob Lauinger Introduction Reassembling the Social from Texts and Contexts

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Textual Circulation and Performance 2

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Daniel E. Fleming Emar’s entu Installation Revising Ritual and Text Together

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Gojko Barjamovic Contextualizing Tradition Magic, Literacy and Domestic Life in Old Assyrian Kanesh

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Paul Delnero Texts and Performance The Materiality and Function of the Sumerian Liturgical Corpus

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Textual Circulation and Administrative Praxis 5

Christopher Woods Contingency Tables and Economic Forecasting in the Earliest Texts from 121 Mesopotamia

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Steven J. Garfinkle Ur III Administrative Texts Building Blocks of State Community

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Michael Kozuh Policing, Planning, and Provisos The Function of Legal Texts in the Management of the Eanna Temple’s 166 Livestock in the First Millennium BC

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Textual Circulation and the Mechanics of Production 8

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Sara J. Milstein The “Magic” of Adapa

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Matthew T. Rutz The Text after the Sacrifice Divination Reports from Kassite Babylonia

Christian W. Hess 10 Songs of Clay Materiality and Poetics in Early Akkadian Epic

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Jacob Lauinger 11 Neo-Assyrian Scribes, “Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty,” and the 285 Dynamics of Textual Mass Production

Paul Delnero and Jacob Lauinger

1 Introduction Reassembling the Social from Texts and Contexts For those who read and study cuneiform texts as sources for reconstructing and understanding the history and culture of ancient Mesopotamia, the textual record from this time and place frequently presents itself as a self-contained body of evidence, which, if examined and understood in its entirety, would reveal the answers to any questions that are asked of it within the limits of what is recorded in the surviving texts. Although cuneiform texts are recorded on physical media such as clay tablets and stone monuments, scholars and other interested readers almost always interact with their content through photographs or drawings of the original sources, or even more indirectly, through transliterations and translations produced by others who have studied the texts before them. In all of these instances, the different means employed to reproduce the sources share the intention of making their content available for further study as accurately and accessibly as possible. Since most reproductions of cuneiforms sources are intended for scholars interested primarily, if not exclusively, in their content, and it is not possible to replicate all of the features of a three-dimensional object in a two-dimensional space, let alone in transcription, the emphasis on reproducing the content of these sources is to a certain extent inevitable and unavoidable. But one of the unintended consequences of emphasizing content over the other aspects of the sources is that the content is presented as an abstraction that exists apart from the medium on which it appears. The exposure to the content of cuneiform sources as disembodied abstractions is so deeply embedded in the experience of studying Mesopotamian texts that even when working directly with an actual tablet or monument, it is very difficult not to ignore everything else about the object itself and to focus instead solely on transcribing and interpreting its content. While Assyriologists have long been aware of the importance of context for interpreting cuneiform texts, and it would be difficult to find a study from the past thirty or forty years that does not address, in some form or another, the archaeological, if not also the historical, cultural, or political context of the textual sources that are treated, the extent to which the content of a text is examined in isolation from its function as a material object has a subtle, but fundamental influence on the way the relationship between texts and their contexts is conceptualized. One of the most substantial effects of separating texts from their physical instantiations is that it detaches the content of a text

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from its immediate spatial and temporal anchoring so that it becomes a static, unchanging abstraction, which can be studied as a fixed and self-contained system of meaning, removed from the dynamics of the social world in which it was produced and circulated. Since freezing language so that it is no longer bound by time and space is one of the primary attributes of writing as a technology, examining the verbal content of a text without taking into account the multiplicity of meanings it might have had in the social context in which it was originally recorded, uttered, or conceived is justifiable, particularly when the text was intended to be read by readers in different times and places. But very few, if any Mesopotamian texts are likely to have been produced with the intention of transcending the circumscribed local and institutional contexts in which they were compiled. Moreover, with the exception of monumental and votive inscriptions addressed to deities or future rulers, it is unlikely that many cuneiform texts were ever intended to outlive the finite purpose for which they were written. However, when texts are bound to specific spatial and temporal contexts, the relationship between the content of a text and its audience is less stable than it would be for texts that were composed for an ideal audience of present and future readers who could be hoped to understand their meaning at any place or time. When understood as material objects with limited, but clearly defined spatial and temporal trajectories, the meaning of texts can be expected to change as they move through social space and the significance of their content is conditioned and transformed by the hands through which they pass and the different recipients who view and use them. In studying texts independently from their materiality and their movement through space and time, and examining their content instead as a fixed abstraction, a critical dimension of their meaning and their context is lost. The papers in this volume were first presented in their initial form at a one-day symposium organized by the editors at Johns Hopkins University on November 19, 2013. The goal of the symposium, and the articles in this volume which resulted from it, was to bring together specialists working on texts or textual corpora from different periods, genres, and areas of the cuneiform world to consider the relationship between Mesopotamian texts and their contexts specifically with respect to how different types of cuneiform texts moved and functioned as objects in social space. The purpose of asking the participants to address the question of text and context from this perspective was two-fold: 1. To provide a broad array of text- or corpora-specific studies that illustrate a range of social, cultural, and/or historical contexts in which texts of specific types circulated and to show how these contexts may have conditioned and transformed the meaning of the texts examined as they moved through space and time.

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To present different methodologies and sources of evidence that can be used to reconstruct the contexts in which the texts in question circulated, in order to provide a critical framework for determining how these texts functioned.

In keeping with these two goals, all of the papers presented at the symposium, and the articles that developed out of them for this volume, address the movement and function of texts in social space with respect to texts of many different types and from a wide range of methodological perspectives. The texts and periods covered by these studies comprise late-second millennium ritual texts from Emar (Daniel Fleming), Old Assyrian incantations from Kanesh (Gojko Barjamovic), early second millennium Sumerian laments (Paul Delnero), latefourth millennium administrative texts from Uruk (Christopher Woods), Ur III administrative texts from southern Mesopotamia (Steven Garfinkle), Neo-Babylonian administrative texts from Uruk (Michael Kozuh), Old Babylonian Sumerian literary compositions from Meturan (Sara Milstein), Middle Babylonian divinatory reports from Nippur (Matthew Rutz), Akkadian epics from the second and first millennia (Christian Hess), and Neo-Assyrian treaties from the core and periphery of the Neo-Assyrian empire (Jacob Lauinger). Although the methodologies applied to this broad array of texts and textual corpora are diverse and multi-faceted, each study emphasizes one of three more general approaches to the dynamic relationship between texts and contexts with respect to their function as material objects that move through social space: 1. Textual circulation and performance (Fleming, Barjamovic, and Delnero) 2. Textual circulation and administrative praxis (Woods, Garfinkle, and Kozuh) 3. Textual circulation and the mechanics of production (Milstein, Rutz, Hess, and Lauinger) Numerous scholars have treated the topic of Mesopotamian texts and contexts from a wide range of perspectives, resulting in studies that have yielded an abundance of valuable insights into the historical, cultural, and social contexts in which cuneiform texts circulated. Many of these studies have focused on illuminating one obscure side of the relationship between the content of texts and their contexts by focusing on the other. That is, context creates a framework for (re)approaching a text’s content, or content provides the means for (re)constructing a text’s context (historical, cultural, social, or otherwise). Still other studies self-consciously place content and context in a dialectical relationship. In the following section, we briefly summarize selected examples of these three methodologies – content to context, content from context, content and context – to illustrate how, explicitly or implicitly, the contributions to this

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volume are indebted to and build upon previous scholarship. The subsequent three sections then introduce in more detail the three main themes that organize the contributions to the present work.

1 Previous Approaches to Texts and Contexts Content from Context The so-called “archival approach” has been the dominant method in Assyriology for investigating the relationship between content and context over the past half-century. Briefly, the archival approach posits that the reason why an assemblage of texts (either excavated or reconstructed) was brought together in antiquity has the potential to inform and transform the content of the constituent texts. If Gelb’s 1966 presidential address to the American Oriental Society (published as Gelb 1967) can be considered a call-to-arms for the archival approach, the theme of the 30 th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, “Archives and Libraries,” (1983, papers published as Veenhof 1986) demonstrates its orthodox status less than twenty years later. Therefore, it seems appropriate that our illustrative examples come from the proceedings of this seminal conference, even if choosing only two papers does not do justice to the volume’s richness. The first paper is Charpin’s (1986) study of the transmission of titles to property in Old Babylonian family archives (see Charpin 2010: 53–69 for an updated version). This study develops Charpin’s (1980: 156–59) earlier work on an Old Babylonian family archive from Tell Sifr which held several instances of two temporally distinct contracts concerning the same parcel. In each instance, the person purchasing the parcel in the earlier transaction acts as the seller in the later transaction so that it becomes clear that the seller gave his original purchase contract to the parcel’s new owner at the conclusion of the transaction. Subsequently, Charpin is able to demonstrate that other legal transactions, including bequests and dowries, could also occasion the transfer of purchase contracts together with the relevant property and that the records of bequests and dowries could themselves be transferred when the property documented therein was sold. Charpin (2010: 66–67) documents one such chain of transfers that extended for 180 years. Accordingly, the content of Old Babylonian legal texts was not static. As the texts circulated in space from sellers to buyers or from parents to children, they were qualitatively transformed from titles to property into episodes in larger transactional histories

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that confirmed the licit transfer of property over time. Yet this transformation in content is only perceptible in an archival context, in which temporally distinct transactions concerning a single parcel are brought together. Our second example from the published papers of the 30 th RAI is Foster’s (1986) study of Sargonic archives. In this paper, Foster (1986: 46) uses archival texts “to define more closely than hitherto what was ‘imperial’ about the Sargonic empire.” He observes that within some archives certain groups of records were intended for inspection by imperial authorities. These records have a standardized form and content and manifest the imperial writing style that cuts across geographic regions. Foster gives examples of such archives from Sumer, Akkad, and the Diyala. For instance, an archive from Pugdan in Akkad contains a document about a royal official inspecting records of commodities to make sure leases of crown land paid on time. Foster (1986: 49) points out that “a group of tablets within the Pugdan archive is drawn up in the imperial style, and is detailed and explicit in formulary, as opposed to other groups which are less explicit and detailed and less neatly drawn up.” For Foster, it is in the Pugdan archive’s “imperial” group and in other similar groups of administrative texts in other archives that we see the Sargonic empire in action. Importantly, it is only the co-existence of the imperial group with the other, regional, group within the Pugdan archive, that is, the archival context, that transforms the content of this group of administrative texts from straightforward accounts into an active statement of empire (cf. Garfinkle’s contribution to this volume).

Content to Context Gelb’s 1966 presidential address, cited above, was aimed at what he saw as a relatively unreflective approach current in Assyriology that privileged content over context (and, relatedly, literary studies and religious history over social and economic history). In the years following this address, the pendulum has undoubtedly swung in the direction Gelb desired, again as mentioned above. Yet sometimes, an archival approach is not the best choice for an investigator, who instead chooses to move from a text’s content to its context. A modern example of such a self-reflective choice is found in Holtz’s (2009) monograph, which aims to reconstruct Neo-Babylonian court procedure. Holtz (2009: 14) remarks that: The archival approach is of inestimable value for the proper understanding of the NeoBabylonian texts, and, more generally, for the understanding of numerous aspects of ancient society and culture. Nevertheless, when it comes to the elucidation of questions of

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law, the archival approach is of only limited use. In order to describe the adjudication of legal cases, one cannot simply look at one archive, since any one archive may or may not contain litigation records. Furthermore, not every litigation record can be securely assigned to a specific ancient archive. To be sure, the results of the archival approach are necessary; situating a litigation record within an archive, when possible, often illuminates the legal question at hand. A comprehensive understanding of legal procedure, however, requires cross-archival and extra-archival research in order to select the relevant litigation records.

In other words, an archival approach would be of limited value to reconstructing Neo-Babylonian adjudicatory procedure, as a given archive might lack relevant legal texts and, conversely, a relevant text might lack a provenience. Instead, Holtz highlights the content of individual legal texts and especially the relevance of that content to the question at hand. Holtz (2009: 4) posits that a common adjudicatory procedure during the Neo-Babylonian period generated a “‘tablet trail’ left behind when cases were brought to justice in the Neo-Babylonian period.” His method then involves “studying the contents of the various text-types pertaining to court litigation” in order to characterize the different legal functions that these texts served” (Holtz 2009: 18). The different legal functions of the “tablet trail” can then be stitched back together into a comprehensive description of adjudicatory procedure (though cf. the remarks of Van De Mieroop 1997 discussed below).

Content and Context As Michalowski (2011: 47) has recently remarked, “[a] few decades ago, a statement such as ‘all Sumerian literature was school literature’ would have been greeted with some skepticism”; yet, as Michalowski points out, thanks to scholarship of Vanstiphout (1978, 1979), Veldhuis (1997, 2004), Tinney (1998, 1999), Robson (1999, 2001), Delnero (2012), and others, it is now clear that the vast majority of Sumerian literature written during the Old Babylonian period (in other words, the vast majority of the Sumerian literature extant) was produced by scribal apprentices during the course of their studies. This conclusion is the result of what Veldhuis (2004: 43) terms a “social-functional approach” to literary texts: The social-functional approach, finally, attempts to understand Sumerian literature in the social and institutional context in which it was used. In a way, we are back where we began: with history. Literary texts tell us about history, not so much the history contained in their narratives, but the history of the people and institutions that wrote and used these compositions. Where the documentary approach focuses mainly on contents (history) and the poetic approach on form (style and poetic devices), the social-functional approach

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looks at form and content from the perspective of the institutional context in which literary texts were produced and consumed.

Rather than moving from context to content or from content to context, the social-functional approach jibes and tacks between the two. Vanstiphout’s (1978) edition of the hymn Lipit-Eštar B points the way. He observes that the content of the text emphasizes scribal education in a syntax that is straightforward yet varied. The context of text must also be pedagogic since the majority of extant manuscripts are school extracts. Accordingly, Vanstiphout (1978: 51) concludes that “the hymn was composed in and primarily for the Edubba, to be used there as a beginner’s text.” Building upon this work and that of earlier scholars on tablet typologies (e.g., Civil 1995: 2038), Veldhuis (1997: 40–63) reconstructs the sequence of lexical lists and other exercises that made up the first phase of the scribal curriculum by contextualizing when compositions appear on the obverse or reverse of school tablets, in order to determine the compositions that they preceded or followed in the curriculum. Tinney (1999) follows a similar methodology in studying the literary texts the comprised the second phase of the curriculum. He identifies a first group of four texts that formed the initial core of this phase (“the Tetrad”) and a second group of ten texts that represented a more advanced stage (“the Decad”; on the evidence of the so-called literary catalogues, see now Delnero 2010). Finally, Robson (2001) contextualizes the scribal curriculum archaeologically in her study of House F, a single private dwelling at Old Babylonian Nippur that served as the site of scribal education. Robson’s (2001: 62) study demonstrates that “there was by no means a standard curriculum across the city, but rather a common fund of shared compositions upon which individual teachers drew according to personal taste or pedagogical preference.” In all of these studies, context (tablet typologies, archaeological find-spots) goes hand in hand with content (themes of scribal interest, catch lines) to transform Sumerian literary compositions from belles lettres to the byproducts of pedagogical and, necessarily, ideological processes. To reiterate, these examples of previous research on texts and contexts are not offered programmatically but rather to articulate the intellectual debt of the diverse contributions found in this volume. In a general way, all of the contributions build upon and respond to ways of thinking about texts and contexts that the examples provided above illustrate. In a more specific way, though, the contributions cluster around the circulation of texts in three different social spaces – performance, administration, and textual reproduction, and it is to these that we turn to now.

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2 Textual Circulation and Performance As noted at the beginning of this introduction, in focusing on the content of cuneiform texts as fixed and self-contained abstractions that can be studied apart from the texts as material objects, a critical dimension of the dynamic relationship between the text and its context is lost. When the meaning of a cuneiform text is considered in conjunction with the function of the object on which it is recorded, it becomes evident that both the meaning of the text and the function of the object to which it is bound are conditioned and transformed by the social context through which the text as an object moves. At each stage in its trajectory through social space, the content of a text and the material object on which it is written are subject to change and transformation, from the moment the text is composed and put into physical form until it goes out of use and is discarded or left behind, only to begin a new life cycle when it is rediscovered and reinterpreted by future generations of readers or scholars. Even before the text was composed, the physical limitations of the physical media available, including the maximum size of a transportable clay tablet and the amount of writing surface available, would have conditioned and constrained the length of the text and the nature of the information it could contain. And conversely, the intended social function of the text and the use to which it would be put by the recipient or recipients for whom it was compiled would have been a determining factor in selecting and making the materials and the form of the material object on which the text was written. Furthermore, the text and the object that resulted from this dynamic interaction between the material aspects of the medium and the social function of the message would have continued to change in meaning and form each time it was handled, read, transported, stored, or removed from storage to be handled, read, transported, or stored again. Regardless of whether the text was intended to serve as a model for training a scribe, to document the transfer of goods from one administrative office to another, or to be read only by a ruler or an elite group of scholars or high officials, at no point in its trajectory as an object would it have ceased to be marked and physically transformed by the hands that held it, the seals that sealed it, the scribes who modified or added content to it, or the natural elements which eroded its surface or caused it to break or deteriorate. Similarly, each use of the content of the text would have set in motion a series of actions that were performed in direct response to it. A diviner alerting a ruler to an ominous eclipse would have caused the preparations for a ritual to avert its effects to begin, a pupil copying an elementary sign list would have learned to write basic cuneiform signs in preparation for a professional career as a scribe, and the wearing of an amulet with an incantation inscribed on it

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would have protected its wearer from the demonic agent against which the text was directed. Far from being a passive and stable carrier of meaning, in all of these instances, the text and its materiality are thus better understood as dynamic processes, in which the content and the object on which it is written both actively shaped and were shaped by the social space in which they circulated. In the past two decades there has been a shift in archaeology, art history, anthropology, and other disciplines in which material culture is a primary focus to study inanimate objects as entities endowed with the capacity to shape and transform humans and their environment, in contrast to the conventional assumption that objects are passively acted upon by people who actively create and use them. One of the first scholars to argue that objects possess agency and are not merely passive recipients of human action was the anthropologist Alfred Gell, who formulated one of the first full and persuasive versions of this view in Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Gell 1998). In this widely influential book, which has stimulated and informed many of the studies of object agency that have followed since its publication, Gell (1998: 6) argued that objects, and in particular objects of art, have no intrinsic nature independent of their relational context, stating: In place of symbolic communication, I place all the emphasis on agency, intention, causation, result, and transformation. I view art as a system of action, intended to change the world rather than encode symbolic propositions about it.

Proposing a model in which artworks as objects can stand in different agentpatient relationship with respect to four terms, identified as indexes, artists, recipients, and prototypes, Gell (1998: 28–50) was able to define specific relational contexts in which different aspects of art objects, including their materiality, can act as agents in relation to human artists and recipients who occupy the position of patients in these contexts. While Gell never goes as far as to claim that objects can act or exhibit agency in the same way as humans, and he gets around the thorny question of how it would be possible for something to possess agency without the capacity to act intentionally by suggesting that objects be considered “secondary agents”, which are “essential to the formation, appearance, or manifestation of intentional actions” but do not possess intentionality themselves (Gell 1998: 36), others, working within a similar framework, have argued that objects are even more active in shaping humanobject relations than he proposes. One such position has been expressed by the anthropologist Daniel Miller, who argues that objects do more than simply influence human behavior, and instead perform a direct and substantial role in constituting who people are as

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well as what they do and become. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice, in which human identities and subjectivities are unconsciously constituted through structuring patterns of behavior performed in the course of everyday life, Miller (2005, 2010) makes a compelling case for how objects such as clothes and houses operate as frames that determine our expectations and condition what we consider an appropriate way to behave. In Miller’s (2005: 38) view, the usual subject-object dichotomy should be abandoned completely, and subjects should be understood instead as the emergent product of a dialectical relationship with objects, in which “the things that people make, make people.” Another theoretical approach to demonstrating that objects are more than secondary agents is to consider object agency from a symmetrical anthropological perspective. Symmetrical anthropology was first developed and applied to object agency by Bruno Latour, particularly in his formulation of Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) in Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Latour 2005) and his most recent modification of the theory in An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns (Latour 2013). In the first of the two formulations of Actor-Network-Theory, Latour put forward a forceful argument for understanding the social, not as an adjective to describe different types of human interaction, but instead as the result of an active process that has to be achieved and maintained by networks of human and nonhuman agents acting to produce the movements and transformations that constitute social collectives. In the networks described in this model, objects are assigned an active participatory function in mediating, modifying, and transforming the courses of action or states of affair that flow through these networks, and objects can be understood to possess agency to the extent that they act as mediators that “transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning or the elements they are supposed to carry” (Latour 2005: 39). Even though in his more recent work Latour (2013: 33) has re-conceptualized his understanding of networks as the first of a group of modes of existence, which he now defines as a “series of associations” that “makes it possible to understand through what series of small discontinuities it is appropriate to pass in order to obtain a certain continuity of action,” objects continue to play a pivotal role in effecting the forms of alteration through which each mode of existence has to pass in order to subsist. Further approaches to elevating the status of objects in human-object relations, which, like Miller’s, are also deeply rooted in practice theory, consider the question of object agency from either a cognitive or a social-processual orientation. The cognitive approach to object agency is best exemplified by Lambros Malafouris, who, together with other scholars who contributed to the

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symposium, “The Cognitive Life of Things: Recasting the Boundaries of the Mind” organized by him and Colin Renfrew in 2006, and published as an edited volume in 2010 (Malafouris and Renfrew 2010), has argued that material things are integral to the formation of the mind and the development of cognitive processes. Malafouris has developed this argument most fully in his recent book, How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement (Malafouris 2013), in which he presents the view that the human mind does not act and develop independently or in isolation from the material world, but is instead embodied, extended, and distributed, in and by means of the objects and things with which people come into contact and make during the course of their lives. According to the model proposed by Malafouris, which he calls “Material Engagement Theory” (MET), the brain is both biological and cultural, and material culture is not merely the backdrop against which human cognition takes shape. Things mediate, actively shape, and constitute our ways of being in the world and of making sense of the world (Malafouris 2013: 44).

One of the examples Malafouris (2013: 68–81) cites to illustrate how minds are enacted and constituted by things, which is of particular relevance to the approach to texts and contexts adopted in this volume, is the role tablets containing Linear B, a script developed in the 15 th century BCE for accounting purposes, might have played in shaping the process of Mycenaean thought. In Malafouris’s (2013: 73) view, the materiality of Linear B tablets, which enabled short messages to be written on the surface of wet clay that dried quickly and therefore precluded making additions and corrections after the clay dried, not only provided a means of externalizing information that originated in the mind, but also had a direct effect on how minds processed the information the tablets contained. By means of the combined effect of the possibilities of the material used to produce the tablets, and different aspects of the way in which messages were recorded on them, including how standard formulae were repeated within set spatial formats and individual entries were spatially separated, Malafouris (2013: 71–72) argues: It is clear that in this case the cognitive process does not simply involve the internal representation of symbols via the Linear B code in order to produce the outcome that we see inscribed on the tablets. The cognitive process of producing the file also involves the physical manipulation of the properties of the representational medium as a material object in real time and space. And the file, seen as a material spatial arrangement, is not simply amplifying the problem-solving process by reducing the complexity of the cognitive task – for example, directing attention so as to reduce the cost of visual search and to make it easier to notice, identify, and remember the items. The file, I want to suggest,

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is also transforming the physical boundaries of the problem’s space, and thereby restructuring the problem-solving process.

In presenting the relationship between minds and material objects in these terms, Malafouris, like others who situate object agency in human practice, rejects a strict dichotomy between human subjects and inanimate objects, by proposing that agency is an emergent property of the interaction between people and things, as opposed to a property possessed by one or the other. Although critical of strictly cognitive accounts of the relationship between humans and objects, social-processual models of materiality, such as those proposed by the scholars Tim Ingold and Ian Hodder, accord an equally prominent function to objects in shaping human experience. While arguing that the question of object agency is “largely beside the point” (Ingold 2013: 95), in part on the grounds that there is not an apparent reason why people should think with artifacts alone (Ingold 2013: 98), Ingold (2013: 99–100) nonetheless proposes that human engagement with the material world is immersive, and that through the process of engaging with materials to, for example, make a pot, the pot is not formed by the potter imposing a pre-formed idea of the shape of the pot originating in the mind on the clay, but instead through the clay and the hands of the potter interacting in a “gestural dance … coupled with a modulation in the material” during the making process. Ingold (2013: 132) prefers instead to characterize the relationship between humans and things as a “meshwork”, in which the products that result from the interaction between people and the material world are compared to an entanglement of lines in which dots are not deliberately connected, but are in a continuing process of unpremeditated becoming. Ingold’s meshwork is directly comparable to Ian Hodder’s conception of “entanglement”. Like Ingold, and other theorists who propose eliminating the conceptual barrier between people and things, Hodder argues that people and things are “co-entangled” and do more than simply co-produce or mutually constitute one another. Noting that “things are really just stages in the process of the transformation of matter” (Hodder 2012: 4–5) and that “everything depends on everything else in a particular constrained way” (Hodder 2012: 52), Hodder (2012: 94) argues, against Latour and Ingold, that humans and things are not merely connected in networks or meshes, but are “stuck to each other” in relations of entanglement and entrapment. The formula Hodder (2012: 88) proposes to define entanglement – entanglement = (HT) + (TT) + (TH) + (HH) – encapsulates his view that humans depend on things (HT), things depend on other things (TT), things depend on humans (TH), and humans depend on humans (HH), breaking down the dichotomy between humans and things in a

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way that conceptualizes human-things relations as a dynamic process of codependence. However, the view that objects belong to the same ontological continuum of animacy as humans finds its fullest expression in the work of the political scientist Jane Bennett. In her recent book, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Bennett 2010), Bennett presents a compelling argument for eliminating entirely the conception that inanimate things are less active agents than humans. In Bennett’s view, humans and non-humans both consist of “vibrant matter”, and the materiality of people and things are equally vital in shaping each other and acting upon the world of which they are a part. For Bennett (2010: 31–34), in so far as agency is conceived to be distributive, tied to undetermined trajectories, and defined by a causality that is “more emergent than efficient, more fractal than linear”, humans and things belong to an assemblage that “owes its agentic capacity to the vitality of the materials that constitute it.” Like the models proposed by Ingold and Hodder, Bennett’s vital materialism is strongly opposed to the hylomorphic view that inanimate matter is passive and can only be given organic form by humans, and calls attention to the “complex entanglements of humans and nonhumans” (Bennett 2010: 112). From a vital materialist perspective, food is not merely consumed, but enters into the people that consume it, actively transforming them in the process; woods and metals possess properties that induce specific effects in the people who work with them, dictating and constraining how and into what they can be shaped; and machines are more than just the sum total of their mechanical parts, taking on a life of their own which is beyond the full control of the people who operate them once they have been assembled. In each of these instances, the inanimate or nonhuman assemblage is no less active or vital than the humans who act upon them, as each draws the other into a complex interaction that generate effects that transform the people and things which participate in the interactive process. The reconfiguration of the relation between humans and the material world so that objects are conceived as equally active in shaping and constituting social relations, as it is expressed in these and other studies, has resulted in a paradigm-shift which has direct implications for how the function of texts as material objects is conceptualized. Once the hylomorphic dichotomy between active human agents and passive inanimate materials is eliminated, and objects are instead recognized as inseparable from the social processes in which they are implicated and embedded, and as actively constitutive of human subjectivities, it is no longer possible to separate texts from their material carriers and still hope to arrive at a complete understanding of their social function. However, while other aspects of Mesopotamian material culture have

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been analyzed productively from the perspective of object agency by scholars, including Irene Winter, who views agency as an affective property of nonhuman entities (Winter 2007), and more recently Marian Feldman, whose penetrating and incisive analysis of the social function of the Stele of Hammurabi is predicated on the assumption that people acquire agency and are constituted through interactions with the material world (Feldman 2010), the methodological benefits of studying texts as objects with agentive properties have yet to be fully realized by Assyriologists.1 When texts are considered as objects from the perspective of object agency, irrespective of which specific theoretical approach to it is adopted, it becomes clear that texts are more productively conceptualized as dynamic social processes than as static, abstract entities. Though the notion of text as process informs all of the studies in this volume, it is especially evident in the contributions that examine textual circulation in the context of performance. More than many other types of cuneiform sources, Mesopotamian texts, such as rituals, incantations, and liturgical hymns, whose content was publicly or privately performed, have a pronounced oral component and their material manifestations are frequently the indirect byproducts of the performative context for which they were composed, as opposed to direct written records of the performances to which they contributed. The relationship between the textual recordings of rituals and the social function of their content in performances is the subject of Daniel Fleming’s contribution to this volume. In this study, Fleming examines the content of two copies of a ritual for installing a priestess that was performed at Emar during the Late Bronze Age to determine how, why, and by whom the copies were compiled with respect to the social context in which the ritual recorded in the copies was performed. In place of focusing on the content of the copies as a source for reconstructing the ritual described in the sources, he combines a detailed study of the types of variation that occur between the two copies of

1 An important exception is Markus Hilgert, who addresses similar questions from the primarily anthropological perspectives of materiality, object agency, and Latour’s Actor-NetworkTheory, concluding “Das Geschriebene und die ‘Bedeutung’ des Geschriebenen zeigen sich nun unverstellt als Produkte menschlichen Handelns, dessen komplexer Vollzug in den ‘Natur/Kultur-Geweben’ des Sozialen die Komplexität und ‘Multidimensionalität’ ‘text-anthropologischer’ Forschung bedingt” (Hilgert 2010: 122). In contrast to the approach developed in this introduction, however, Hilgert’s study is focused more on hermeneutic issues concerning the meaning of cuneiform texts and the reception of this meaning as a product of the social and cultural context that generated it than on the social function of the content of texts as objects conceived as a dynamic process that is constitutive of the contexts in which texts circulated.

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the ritual – and particularly varying references to the specific payment that was to be made to the diviner at a particular time during the ritual – with a thorough investigation of the social role of diviners at Emar in connection with the archive in which the copies were discovered and in relation to the performance of rituals described in the sources at Emar during the time to which the copies date, to answer these questions. By considering different types of textual, archival, archaeological, administrative and historical evidence in this way, Fleming is able to identify the probable administrative function of the copies and the social process that produced and were shaped by these textual sources. Relying on an equally judicious combination of evidence from both textual and non-textual sources, Gojko Barjamovic, in his contribution to this volume, utilizes a similar methodology to determine the social function of textual copies of Old Assyrian incantations from the Anatolian city Kanesh. In studying multiple copies of a similar incantation produced in close spatial and temporal proximity, Barjamovic, like Fleming, combines different types of historical and archaeological evidence with internal textual evidence – which in his study includes archaic features and Babylonianisms in the language of the incantations, as well as the ductus of the individual sources for these texts – to identify how and to what extent traditions for performing incantations from southern Mesopotamia were adopted and adapted locally at Kanesh to serve the needs of the Assyrian merchants residing there. As Fleming’s study did for Late Bronze Age ritual texts from Emar, Barjamovic’s contribution to this volume brings to light how the sources containing the Old Assyrian incantations he examines are more than simply static copies of a text, but instead both integrally contributed to and were the direct product of, the social processes involved in the performance of these incantations. In the third and final study in this section, Paul Delnero considers the relationship between Old Babylonian copies of Sumerian liturgical laments and the role the copies themselves might have played in the performance of these texts. Reversing the orientation of the question of the influence oral transmission on the written versions of Sumerian literary compositions, he considers instead how the written copies of Sumerian laments might have influenced the oral performance of the compositions they contain. Examining in particular the nature of the different types of phonetic writings that occur in some of the many syllabically written duplicates of Sumerian laments to determine what purpose these writings might have served in the performance of the laments, and considering this evidence in conjunction with other forms of textual evidence about how and why laments were performed in Mesopotamia during the Old Babylonian Period, Delnero concludes that many of the surviving copies of Sumerian laments were compiled to aid in the performance of the

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compositions and not to produce faithful copies of the content of the texts to be archived, consulted, or reproduced. In keeping with the approach to texts as processes outlined in this introduction, Delnero’s study, together with the other two studies in this section, provides a further demonstration of how the content of cuneiform sources is conditioned by and constitutive of the social process that led to and resulted from the function the texts were intended to serve in the performative contexts in which they circulated.

3 Textual Circulation and Administrative Praxis Although it was not requested in advance by the editors, the three authors who have contributed papers on the circulation of administrative texts all engage with the question of whether administrative texts were meant to hold lowerlevel administrators liable for past management of commodities or to allow upper-level administrators to forecast future supplies. That is, was the primary function of administrative texts to “police” or “plan”? Since all three contributors respond to a similar body of second literature, in this section we summarize that literature to show the outlines of the debate before briefly describing how each contributor engages with it. While the debate itself has its origins outside the discipline of Assyriology (Jursa 2004: 146–47), a starting point for two contributors is Marc Van De Mieroop’s 1997 article, “Why Did They Write on Clay?” Writing in the pages of Klio, Van De Mieroop aims to contextualize the body of documentary cuneiform texts for the readership of this journal, which consists primarily of classical historians. Although the cuneiform documentary evidence is much larger in size than that from the classical world, Van De Mieroop (1997: 9) warns against seeing it as “all-encompassing.” In Van De Mieroop’s (1997: 9) view, “only a small portion of the day-to-day affairs of the ancient Mesopotamian was ever recorded.” Specifically, Van De Mieroop (1997: 9) argues that transactions were written down as administrative texts only when they met two requirements: “a transfer of a commodity with a monetary value, either at the time of writing or in the future”2 and “to justify the activities of an administrator to higher authorities.” In understanding administrative texts to have been written in order to justify an administrator’s activities to his superiors, Van De Mieroop evidently

2 “Monetary value” is defined as “a material value that can be expressed through a quantity of a commodity or through an equivalence in another commodity” (Van De Mieroop 1997: 9).

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considers these texts to have a policing function. Indeed, the policing function of administrative texts is a first principle on which his argument against a positivistic approach to documentary cuneiform texts depends. And to the extent that Van De Mieroop’s subsequent analysis of administrative texts demonstrates the limited purview of those texts, the principle is affirmed. For instance, the Isin craft workshop would seem an ideal source for information on the manufacture of at least some luxury items. Yet when we study the documents, we see that they actually give us almost no information on the manufacturing process at all, but only on the transfers of goods that enabled the manufacture. … All these transactions involved contacts between the workshop and other institutions. It is conceivable that some materials were not delivered from the outside to the workshop, and were therefore not accounted for. Fuel, for instance, must have been important, yet it is not attested in the delivery records (Van De Mieroop 1997: 12–13).

The restricted focus of the Isin craft archive on transactions between administrative offices and not on the manufacturing process itself indicates to Van De Mieroop that the texts comprising the archive were written only to document the licit nature of inter-office transactions. Accordingly, the texts possessed a policing function. In an article concerned with the role of writing, particularly the writing of legal and administrative texts, in changing the Mesopotamian experience of time, Selz (1999) has reached a different conclusion − that administrative texts possessed a planning function. Selz begins from the observation that the societies of pre-Sargonic southern Mesopotamia were characterized by a redistributive economy, an economic mode for which stockpiles of resources are both a consequence and a precondition.3 For Selz (1999: 487–90), administrative texts served as “Planungsdokumente” that permitted an emergent superstructure of administrators to create and maintain these stockpiles. Selz concludes the article by giving examples of planning for the future in diverse sectors of the preSargonic economy as evidenced by economic texts. For instance, in the timber industry, administrative texts über das Fällen von Bäumen (na–ři) geben auch detaillierte Auskunft darüber, wie die entsprechende Ernte zu verwenden ist: Die Herstellung von einzelnen Wagenteilen, Tränkeimern, Schiffsplanken und ähnlichem wird genauestens vermerkt. Dabei beweist

3 A “redistributive economy” is defined as “eine Organisation der Wirtschaft oder von Teilbereichen der Wirtschaft, wie etwa dem Ackerbau, in der Einnahmen und Ausgaben in gewissem Umfang zentral gesteuert werden” (Selz 1999: 487).

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der Text VS 27: 80 = AWAB Nr. 166, daß die Verwendung bereits vorab bei einer Bewuchskontrolle im einzelnen festgelegt und schriftlich fixiert wurde (Selz 1999: 501-02).

Other texts indicate that objects constructed of wood were recycled, such as one that lists the components of a wrecked ship, “offensichtlich in der Absicht, sie eventuell einer Neuverwertung zuzuführen” (Selz 1999: 502). If Selz’s interpretation is correct, then the pre-Sargonic administrators were looking to the future when they composed their administrative texts, which therefore can be characterized as documents for planning. Two articles that are much discussed by all three contributors have their origin papers delivered at a conference held in 2001, the 4 th International Scholars Conference on Ancient Near Eastern Economies. In the first of these articles, Steinkeller (2004) argues that administrative texts were written for planning purposes during the Third Dynasty of Ur. Steinkeller begins by noting that many administrative texts document the authorized disbursement of goods in diverse locations by a single administrator on a single day. Since it is impossible that the administrator was physically present at all of these locations, the only logical conclusion that can be drawn is that the texts were usually if not always written post factum, meaning that the document is not contemporaneous with but subsequent to the economic fact in question. Contrary to what commonly is imagined by non-specialists and scholars alike … it was prepared only later (very often much later) and in a different location and setting than those of the original transaction. The second – and even more important – feature of such records is that they describe a special type of reality (Steinkeller 2004: 68).

Important implications follow. Since there is a disjuncture between the transaction event and its administrative reality, the transactions themselves did not require writing in order to occur. Writing was an additional, optional, layer added to the transactions that fulfilled a correspondingly additional, optional, purpose (Steinkeller 2004: 77). Similarly to Van De Mieroop, Steinkeller (2004: 79) considers that it was only “when an office was required to report to higher authorities that written documentation became necessary.” However, Steinkeller (2004: 79) distinguishes himself from Van De Mieroop in understanding the documentation to have facilitated a need for “global economic prognostication or planning” on the part of the “top management” of the Third Dynasty of Ur. In this regard, Steinkeller (2004: 82) highlights the Third Dynasty of Ur’s balataxation system, “which imposed on all the provinces of the Ur III state specific quotas of taxes and other types of economic obligations” and therefore “called for a great deal of budgeting and planning” on the part of the provinces to fulfill.

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The second article deriving from the 2001 conference is Jursa’s (2004) discussion of accounting in the Neo-Babylonian institutional archives of the Ebabbar temple at Sippar and the Eanna temple at Uruk. Jursa argues that these administrative texts possessed a policing (minimalist, in his terminology) function, not a planning one (maximalist, again in his terminology). Jursa (2004: 147) opens with the important methodological observation that “[e]ven if a given archive proves to be a potentially rich source of information useful for economic forecasting, it still must be demonstrated that it was actually used for this purpose.” In other words, Jursa (2004: 147) draws a distinction between what “bookkeeping procedures … could have achieved and what they were meant to achieve.” After a comprehensive introduction to the various primary and secondary accounts found in the two temple archives, Jursa (2004: 170) notes that we lack “the most important documents, namely the real running accounts – the ledgers … as they were written on waxed wooden writing boards.” To the extent that the contents of these can be reconstructed, it seems that “writing boards were used to keep track of transactions of a single type only” (Jursa 2004: 172). In other words, the institution’s income and expenditures of a given commodity were registered on different writing boards. Other types of transactions were not collected onto writing boards at all (Jursa 2004: 177). After considering this scenario, Jursa (2004: 177) concludes that although it certainly was possible without too much effort to get an overview of the main types of income and expenditure of the temple storehouses by consulting the relevant writing boards, it must have been very difficult and time-consuming, if not outright impossible, to get the whole picture by bureaucratic means.

Rephrasing this according to the methodological observation in the article’s introduction, Jursa observes that although one could get an overview of many facets of temples’ economic activities from their institutional archives, the contents of the individual archival documents and the structure of the larger bookkeeping system makes it clear that providing such an overview was not their primary function. Rather, their primary function was to “facilitate the checking of individual obligations,” (Jursa 2004: 180) that is, to police. As this summary of the secondary literature demonstrates, there is currently no consensus answer to the question of whether administrative texts circulated in social space as tools for policing or planning. Nor should we expect there to be, as the texts we label administrative undoubtedly served different functions in different times and places.4 It comes as no surprise then that our 4 Cf. Jursa’s (2004: 177) remark that “it is probably no coincidence that no overall yearly account for a Neo-Babylonian temple household comparable to Ur III texts has been found.”

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three contributors, working with different corpora, reach quite different conclusions. In his contribution, Woods identifies contingency tables among the administrative texts of the Uruk III period. Contingency tables, which are otherwise largely unattested until the twentieth century AD, describe the degree to which two variables are dependent on each other. The historic mutual dependency of commodities would have been of little interest to an ancient administrator who was concerned only with liabilities but of great interest to one who was focused on planning for the future. Therefore, Woods’s contribution places economic forecasting squarely at the advent of writing, in addition to its importance to the history of science more generally. On the other hand, in his contribution on Ur III administrative texts, Garfinkle generally favors a policing function over a planning one for these texts (a large proportion of the documentation is concerned with the delivery of booty, the extent of which should have been difficult to plan for in any given year). But more importantly, Garfinkle is interested in identifying and describing a third, distinct, function for administrative texts. In the entries detailing deliveries and disbursements, he sees the creation in administrative texts of a space where representatives of the newly emergent centralized state and the local authorities on whom they relied comingled. For Garfinkle, then, administrative texts served to create a community that persisted long after the individual texts themselves were discarded. Kozuh’s wide-ranging contribution on the administrative texts of the Eanna temple of Uruk in the Neo-Babylonian period complicates our understanding of policing and planning in a different way. To mention only one example here, Kozuh discusses planning with reference to a group of administrative texts that compare the actual growth of herds to the temple’s own herd-growth model. Because the temple’s model grew at a much greater rate than the herds did in reality, contractor herdsmen were perpetually in debt to the temple. Yet, as long as the herdsmen continued to make their contributions in sheep or wool, they did not suffer any consequences from the temple for this debt. In this way, administrative texts ostensibly composed for planning purposes actually served a policing function.

4 Textual Circulation and the Mechanics of Production The contributions to the third and final section of this volume all address, from different perspectives, the ways in which the social processes in which

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cuneiform texts as objects are embedded influence and are influenced by the mechanics of how the texts considered were produced. Unlike texts that are printed and reproduced mechanically, cuneiform texts, like nearly all textual corpora produced before the invention of the printing press, were composed by scribes who were directly responsible for the nature and quality of the resulting duplicate. The accuracy of the copies compiled by scribes working without the aid of technologies that could reproduce texts perfectly without introducing human error would have been directly influenced by the scribe’s skill in reproducing texts, the degree of attention and care the scribe devoted to the task of reproduction, the means by which the text was reproduced, the nature of the source text from which the reproduction was derived, and the influence of a whole range of other factors, including, among many others, the social and cultural value that was ascribed to perfectly accurate reproductions that replicate in every detail the content of the source text; the expectations of the intended audience, which in some instances may have been more concerned with offering, displaying, or possessing the text than with reading it; the amount of time the scribe had been allotted to reproduce the source text; and the scribe’s own degree of reverence and commitment to the act of copying. In spite of the large number of variables that could have potentially influenced the nature of the surviving reproductions and the extent to which they may or may not represent faithful replications of a source text, however, until recently, the social contexts in which cuneiform texts were compiled has rarely been considered in discussions of how these sources were produced. The examination of individual sources or manuscripts to assess the quality and accuracy of the reproduction in order to reconstruct the content of the texts they contain is one of the primary tasks and goals of textual criticism. Since reconstructing the content of a composition reliably and accurately, so that the reconstruction reflects to as great an extent as possible the content of the text as it was thought to have been composed by its author or authors and read by its intended audience, is essential to interpreting the content of ancient texts correctly, textual criticism, together with lexicography and linguistic analysis, is a fundamental tool for the philological study of cuneiform sources. One of the consequences of assuming that the texts are fixed and stable, and that their content can be studied in isolation from the social processes that produced them, is that in the text critical analysis of cuneiform texts, textual variants tend to be considered with respect to how they are perceived to differ from the hypothetical original version of the text being analyzed. When textual variation is interpreted in this way, however, typically only two variables are taken into account to explain why variants in the preserved sources might have occurred: redactional changes introduced during the process of the text’s

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transmission and scribal errors that were made during the act of reproduction. In both instances, the content of the source being analyzed is assumed to stand in a direct and static relationship either to an earlier written exemplar or to the scribe that compiled the duplicate. In the first of these two relationships, textual change is often treated as if it were a law-like process, in which changes in content can be explained simply by identifying the stage in the text’s transmission when the change might have been made and the presumed redactor’s intention in introducing the change at that stage. In the second, the determining factor in the occurrence of the change is the fallibility of the scribe and the equally law-like errors that can be expected to occur during the mechanical process of reproducing the content of the text from another source. What is overlooked in each of these two approaches to textual change is how textual transmission over time and space and the mechanics of reproduction are dynamic processes that are directly influenced by the social context in which they take place. Redactors of texts never merely redact, they redact in response to socially, culturally, or politically motivated needs to change the content of an existing version of the text; and scribes never simply reproduce, they reproduce for specific reasons, which do not always necessitate producing a perfect and exact reproduction of a source text – for instance, copying a text or excerpt from a text as a scribal exercise to demonstrate the ability to reproduce the content of the text; compiling an archival copy which can be consulted for future reference; or creating a copy for public display, which is intended to be seen, but not read. Different models for the text critical analysis of cuneiform texts that take into account the social context of textual production have been recently proposed by Paul Delnero and Martin Worthington. In contrast to earlier approaches, which attempt to reconstruct the hypothetical original versions of Mesopotamian texts by identifying and emending or eliminating redactional changes and scribal errors in the surviving sources, both scholars move beyond the formal classification of variants to develop approaches to interpreting textual variation which treat variants as the result of a process of reproduction that was directly influenced by social contextual factors. Focusing specifically on Sumerian literary works from the early second millennium, Delnero, in his book, The Textual Criticism of Sumerian Literature (Delnero 2012), identifies five different types of variants that occur in the sources for Sumerian literary compositions: mechanical errors, local and regional variation, diachronic variation, variants in sources compiled by the same scribe or group of scribes, idiosyncratic variants, and interpretive variants. Delnero associates each of these types of variants with a different set of causes, nearly all of which have a social-processual dimension relating to scribal training, the context in which

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many of the surviving copies of the literary works he examines were compiled. For example, Delnero attributes mechanical errors such as transfer mistakes and erroneous semantic substitutions to the process of reproducing a text from memory, which he argues was the primary means by which apprentice scribes reproduced Sumerian literary compositions during the advanced stages of scribal training when these texts were learned. Similarly, he explains interpretive variants as intentional or unintentional deviations from the orthographic and grammatical conventions that had been established for the purpose of reproducing Sumerian literature during the Old Babylonian Period, the period during which most of the preserved copies of these texts were produced. An approach that is equally cognizant of social causes in the occurrence of textual variation has been developed and applied to Akkadian texts by Worthington in his book Principles of Akkadian Textual Criticism (Worthington 2012). Worthington, like Delnero, emphasizes the mechanics of textual production as a determinant influence on the types of variants that occur in Akkadian sources, and identifies social motivations, including making the duplicate being compiled easier to copy, by selecting simpler graphic variants of more complex signs, like “šu2” instead if “šu” or “man” instead of “lugal”, or making the copy easier to read by adding phonetic complements to indicate the presence of a Sumerian logogram, to account for some of the variants that occur in these sources. With the similar goal of interpreting how the content of texts is influenced by the social factors involved in the mechanics of production, the contributions in this section of the volume move beyond textual criticism to consider other ways in which processes of text production are conditioned by the social context in which texts are produced. In her contribution, Milstein offers a new interpretation of the notoriously opaque myth of Adapa. Examining both the Akkadian versions of the myth as well as the newly published Sumerian version from Tell Haddad/Meturan, Milstein negotiates between archaeological and linguistic contexts to draw out the myth’s relationship to healing rituals. In her reading, the myth of Adapa is more a dynamic process than a fixed narrative. The narrative’s connection with magic in the earlier Sumerian text used in magic rituals was seized upon in the Akkadian versions and the narrative itself reshaped so that it echoes ritual procedure even as the text itself may have lost that function. Rutz provides the first delineation of the social spaces in which the understudied corpus of Middle Babylonian extispicy reports was produced and then circulated. His study demonstrates that these reports cannot be seen simply as analogs of Old Babylonian or Neo-Assyrian practices. Rather, Middle Babylonian extispicy reports seem to have originated in a temple or cultic context and

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to have circulated in a regional context, moving from Dur-Kurigalzu, Ur, or Babylon to Nippur. A number of collected reports follow a single line of questioning that were generated on a single day, and Rutz suggests that these and other reports may have been accompanied by a substantial oral component that is now lost. Hess’s contribution focuses on the material features of the tablets on which Old Babylonian Akkadian epics are written. Noting the difficulty of identifying any formal meter based on stress or accent in Akkadian poetry, Hess studies the tablets themselves to see how the physical layout of the text on the tablet might reflect or suggest poetic structures. After providing an overview of the geographic distribution of Old Babylonian Akkadian epic, Hess investigates the tablet types, mise en page, section and line breaks, and the spacing within lines of the tablets from which these epics are known. Hess argues that the diverse manifestations of these material features are witnesses to the heterogeneity of poetic form in Old Babylonian Akkadian epic and furthermore may indicate that the epics circulated in different social spaces. Finally, in his contribution, Lauinger is concerned with the question of whether the various manuscripts of the Neo-Assyrian text known as “Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty” were produced via visual copying or dictation. The question of textual reproduction is particularly relevant for this text because, as Lauinger argues, a minimum of 110 copies, or over 73,000 lines, of this text were reproduced in about a month’s time in 672 BC in what can only be described as an event of mass textual reproduction. By focusing on fragments of Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty that preserve the beginnings of columns, he is able to demonstrate that at least some of the manuscripts were reproduced by scribes who had visual access to the source text.

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Delnero, Paul. 2010. Sumerian Literary Catalogues and the Scribal Curriculum. ZA 100: 32– 55. Delnero, Paul. 2012. The Textual Criticism of Sumerian Literature. JCSSS 3. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research. Feldman, Marian. 2010. Object Agency? Spatial Perspective, Social Relations, and the Stele of Hammurabi. Pp. 148–65 in Agency and Identity in the Ancient Near East, ed. Sharon Steadman and Jennifer Ross. London: Equinox. Foster, Benjamin. 1986. Archives and Empire in Sargonic Mesopotamia. Pp. 46–52 in Cuneiform Archives and Libraries: Papers Read at the 30 e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Leiden, 4–8 July, 1983, ed. Klaas Veenhof. PIHANS 67. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten. Gelb, Ignace J. 1967. Approaches to the Study of Ancient Society. JAOS 87: 1–8. Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hilgert, Markus. 2010. ‘Text-Anthropologie’: Die Erforschung von Materialität und Präsenz des Geschriebenen als hermeneutische Strategie. Mitteilungen der deutschen OrientGesellschaft zu Berlin 142: 87–126. Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Holtz, Shalom. 2009. Neo-Babylonian Court Procedure. CM 38. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Ingold, Timothy. 2013. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. London: Routledge. Jursa, Michael. 2004. Accounting in Neo-Babylonian Institutional Archives: Structure, Usage, and Implications. Pp. 145–98 in Creating Economic Order: Record-keeping, Standardization, and Development of Accounting in the Ancient Near East, ed. Michael Hudson and Cornelia Wunsch. Bethesda: CDL Press. Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Latour, Bruno. 2013. An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Malafouris, Lambros. 2013. How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Malafouris, Lambros and Colin Renfrew. 2010. The Cognitive Life of Things: Archaeology, Material Engagement and the Extended Mind. Pp. 1–12 in The Cognitive Life of Things: Recasting the Boundaries of the Mind, ed. Lambros Malafouris and Colin Renfrew. McDonald Institute Monographs. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Michalowski, Piotr. 2011. The Correspondence of the Kings of Ur: An Epistolary History of an Ancient Mesopotamian Kingdom. MC 15. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Miller, Daniel. 2005. Materiality: An Introduction. Pp. 1–50 in Materiality, ed. Daniel Miller. Durham: Duke University Press. Miller, Daniel. 2010. Stuff. Malden, MA: Polity Press. Robson, Eleanor. 1999. Mesopotamian Mathematics, 2100–1600 BC: Technological Constraints in Bureaucracy and Education. Oxford: Clarendon. Robson, Eleanor. 2001. The Tablet House: A Scribal School in Old Babylonian Nippur. RA 95: 39–66. Selz, Gebhard. 1999. Vom “vergangenen Geschehen” zur “Zukunftsbewältigung”: Überlegungen zur Rolle der Schrift in Ökonomie und Geschichte. Pp. 465–512 in

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Munuscula Mesopotamica: Festschrift für Johannes Renger, ed. Barbara Böck et al. AOAT 267. Münster: Ugarit. Steinkeller, Piotr. 2004. The Function of Written Documentation in the Administrative Praxis of Early Babylonia. Pp. 65–88 in Creating Economic Order: Record-Keeping, Standardization, and the Development of Accounting in the Ancient Near East, ed. Michael Hudson and Cornelia Wunsch. Bethesda: CDL Press. Tinney, Steve. 1998. Texts, Tablets, and Teaching: Scribal Education at Nippur and Ur. Expedition 40: 40–50. Tinney, Steve. 1999. On the Curricular Setting of Sumerian Literature. Iraq 61: 159–72. Van De Mieroop, Marc. 1997. Why Did They Write on Clay? Klio 79: 7–18. Vanstiphout, H. L. J. 1978. Lipit-Eštar’s Praise in the Edubba. JCS 30: 33–61. Vanstiphout, H. L. J. 1979. How Did They Learn Sumerian? JCS 31: 118–26. Veenhof, K. R. (ed.) 1986. Cuneiform Archives and Libraries: Papers Read at the 30 e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Leiden, 4–8 July, 1983. PIHANS 67. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten. Veldhuis, Niek. 1997. Elementary Education at Nippur. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Groningen. Veldhuis, Niek. 2004. Religion, Literature, and Scholarship: The Sumerian Composition Nanše and the Birds, with a Catalogue of Sumerian Bird Names. CM 22. Leiden/Boston: Brill/Styx. Winter, Irene. 2007. Agency Marked, Agency Ascribed: The Affective Object in Ancient Mesopotamia. Pp. 42–69 in Art’s Agency and Art History, ed. Robin Osborne and Jeremy Tanner. Oxford: Blackwell. Worthington, Martin. 2012. Principles of Akkadian Textual Criticism. Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records 1. Boston/Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Textual Circulation and Performance

Daniel E. Fleming, New York University

2 Emar’s entu Installation Revising Ritual and Text Together When I was finishing my doctoral coursework, beginning to be nervous about not having a dissertation topic, William Moran asked me whether I would like to spend a term reading from the newly published tablets from Emar. This Late Bronze Age Syrian city preserved Akkadian texts that reflected a local scene quite unlike those of eastern Mesopotamia and full of alluring new content. Moran started me with the rituals, which were immediately unlike anything already known from Babylonia, Assyria, the Hittites, or even contemporary Ugarit. I intended to write on the rituals as a collection, but they needed more detailed attention, and I never got beyond the first one. In terms of length, wealth of detail, and capacity for reconstruction based on multiple copies, the installation of Emar’s priestess for the storm god represented the best point of entry into this trove of religious practice.1

1 The combination of Akkadian language to describe the religious life of West Semitic speakers in a western Mesopotamian Syrian setting results in a need for constant caution regarding the identities of ritual players. In this case, both the priestess and the deity she serves offer interpretive obstacles. There is no question that we are dealing with the storm god, written d im, which Schwemer (2001: 29–31 generally and for Emar, 548–52) has shown was most likely read as the Sumerian dIškur, regardless of the local manifestation beneath that representation. In theophoric personal names, dIškur can render both the honorific title “Lord” (Ba‘lu), as at Ugarit, and the Semitic divine name in western form, Addu/Adda (Schwemer 2001: 552). We have no way to distinguish between these options in this ritual context, so I will avoid choosing a name. In the title of my book on the ritual, I called the god “Baal” in order to highlight the continuity with Ugarit’s double identity of Ba‘lu/Haddu. The title of the priestess is likewise not straightforward. It is written nin.dingir, as I rendered it in the 1992 book, though one lexical text shows that this could be read by the Sumerian ereš-dingir and in turn by the Akkadian entu, written as if it were pronounced ittu, with assimilation of -nt- to -tt- (Emar 556: 43, 47, text D, Msk 74149; see Fleming 1992: 80–82). Even this identification may be misleading, however, in that the eastern Mesopotamian temple organizations map onto neither the physical forms of the Syrian temples of Emar nor their personnel. Emar’s entu was simply the “priestess” of the storm god; there is no indication that the temple had any other priestess, and probably not even any other full-time personnel. Only she and the maš’artu of the goddess Aštartu demonstrably used their temples as residences (Fleming 2004: 79). It is likewise possible that the storm god’s priestess had a West Semitic title that was equated in ritual writing with the prestigious eastern Mesopotamian entu. In my title, I have enjoyed the alliteration possible with the Akkadian term, but throughout, I will simply call her the “priestess” of the storm god.

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I am still pleased with what I learned from this early study, which resulted in a new edition with commentary and initial orientation to the collection as a whole. At the same time, the degree of my ignorance about Emar and its finds takes my breath away. Although this ritual material has remained relatively untouched through the years since my two book-length studies, it is increasingly evident what could be accomplished simply by posing new questions in light of a generation of investigation into the site as a whole.2 For this occasion, I have decided to return to my Assyriological point of departure as an ideal case study for the interplay of textual production and the contexts of use and life. With the perspective of years gone by, I see much that never crossed my mind twenty-five years ago. The installation (Emar 369) is known in more than one copy, but what was the relationship between the variant texts? Indeed the installation text was copied, and yet only one other ritual event was reproduced in this way: the series of kissu festivals (Emar 385–388).3 It never occurred to me to consider why the text changed and how this related to scribal and ritual concerns as distinct yet intersecting activities. Little work had been done to illuminate the situation of the diviners who generated these ritual documents. With this return to a text long familiar to me, I meet an old friend in a radically new context, and I find myself regarding it quite differently.

1 The Installation Text The first concern of my reexamination of this ritual text is the fact of its existence in more than one copy, with significant variation. While I documented 2 Since the time of my own work in the 1990s, there has been no extended work on Emar ritual life or in-depth reconsideration of the texts I took on in my Installation of Baal’s High Priestess at Emar (Fleming 1992) or Time at Emar: The Cultic Calendar and the Rituals from the Diviner’s Archive (Fleming 2000). Soon after my dissertation was published, Klingbeil (1998) included a general review of the same text in a study with self-conscious attention to ritual studies as a discipline, without extending or changing substantially the interpretations of my edition. More recently Michel (2012) has completed a dissertation at the University of Geneva entitled, Le culte des pierres en Syrie du Nord et en Anatolie aux III e et II e millénaire. Approche philologique et archéologique. This work treats a single feature of Emar ritual in the context of larger regional practice, including what can be known from Hittite Anatolian texts. 3 There is still no consistent form of reference for the Emar texts. When I began my work on the rituals, the newly published material from the excavated site represented the overwhelming majority of the texts, with only a few tablets from the antiquities market presented in a couple of articles. In this context it seemed easiest simply to identify the texts from Arnaud by his numbered entries as “Emar 369,” etc. Although other references have intervened, Cohen (2009) and Rutz (2013) have chosen the same format, and I will maintain it. Nevertheless, there

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the variants between texts, I paid little attention to what these represented, and the details of this ritual reproduction are the focus of my present effort. I distinguished the remains of five copies for the installation text, which I labeled A through E. The last of these was a small fragment that had been published as a separate text (Emar 402). Text A was nearly complete and provided a natural frame for reading the document as a whole. That left three substantial portions of tablets to supply parallel and sometimes alternative readings. Text D covers less than 30 lines, broken throughout and generally closer to the A readings than to B and C, though it is unfortunately unavailable for the most important points of divergence between A and the others.4 There are only two main alternatives to the A text, in the end, and Rutz (2013: 146) now argues that texts B and C belonged to the same tablet.5 While it is galling to think that with the tablets in my hands for collation, it did not occur to me to consider a join, Rutz’s conclusion is highly plausible. The following details favor this interpretation: – Texts B and C end and begin at exactly the same point, with an overlap of lines but not a single sign of overlap in the text itself: lines 20–22 on the obverse and lines 69–70 on the reverse.6 The form of each tablet would curve neatly into the other at the left side. – According to Arnaud’s copy, these are the only two ritual tablets from the excavations that are pierced with small holes in various uninscribed spaces, a practice that otherwise appears only with the large scholarly texts,

is much more Emar material that reflects the appearance of other texts from the antiquities market, much of which can be demonstrated decisively to come from the site. The “Emar” designation of texts therefore draws attention to the secure archaeological provenance. 4 For example, A and D read gišpa zì (še) in line 53, where B omits zì; A and D share the fuller spelling of dḪu-le-e-li in line 71, where B lacks the extra -e-; A and D have re-ši-ša gar-nu in line 72, in contrast to re-ši-ši i-šak-kán-nu in B; both A and D have the G-stem for the verb masû in line 74, vs. the D-stem in B; note also that lines 58–59 in D may be confused in a way that recalls the clear truncation of clauses in text A, though D follows its own path in a broken section that resists decipherment. In contrast to these examples, D joins B with ḫa-ṣí-in-nu ša dingirmeš in line 63, vs. gištukul dingirmeš in A; and B and D share spelling variants in lines 64 and 67, though these are common and difficult to assign a clear pattern throughout the festival text. 5 For the original suggestion, Rutz cites Sallaberger 1996: 142–43. 6 If the lines were combined, they would read roughly as follows, with text B underlined: (20–22) a-na pa-[ni nu-ba]-at-t[i ì.du10.ga ša é dNi]n.kur ù é.gal-lì i-le-qu-nim-ma a-na ká dIškur lú ḫal [i-na sag-du ša ereš.dingir i-tab-bu]-uk [ù] lúmeš ša qí-da-ši [iš-t]u é dIškur uṣ-ṣu-m[a] i-na u4-mi qa-ad-du ša m[a-al-lu-ki dingirmeš uruE-mar gáb-ba-iš-tu nindameš kašmeš ú]-qa-du-šu d Nin.kur ... (69–70) [e]n é [ú-te-e]r-ru-šu-n[u-ti ki-i-me-e lú.mešši-bu-ut uruki kú nag 1 túg sig5 an]a lu-bu-ši-ša [i-na-da-nu 1 gišná 1 gišgu.za 1 gišgìr.gub i-na-di-nu-n]i-iš-ši [i-n]a šà gišná.

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almost entirely from the lexical collection.7 In both texts B and C, the holes are placed especially along the horizontal separation lines. When examined line-by-line in relation to the lineation of text A, the width of texts B and C is comparable, slightly less than A, with all three written as a single broad column in neat script. Text A is distinguished from all the others by the addition of a fifth dignitary when portions are assigned to them at key moments in the progress of the installation festival. All versions include the previous entu, the entu of the town of Šumi, the maš’artu priestess, and the king of Emar, with a second “king of the town of Šatappi” filling out the set in version A.8 Several orthographic preferences are shared by B and C. Although the degree of small-scale textual variation between the different copies demands caution in placing too much weight on these patterns, the continuities between B and C appear more marked than between these and A, and they at least allow the hypothesis of a single tablet, without proving it.9

Aside from these traits that indicate first the identity and then a further graphic continuity between texts B and C, text A stands out as a remarkable and distinct scribal product. Arnaud’s copy presents the tablet in left and right halves, but I confirmed the join between them in 1991, and the whole provides a nearly complete rendition of the installation festival. The script is handsome, entirely clear and not at all cramped, with extra space left at the end of the reverse, yet

7 For texts with substantial piercing of this type, see Msk 731030 (Emar 543–545A, Sa Vocabulary); 731064+ (Emar 537C, Sa Vocabulary); 74105a (Emar 548B, ur5-ra = ḫubullu); 74158a+ (Emar 537E, Sa Vocabulary); 74198b (Emar 558D, 559I, ur5-ra = ḫubullu); 74230a (Emar 553A, ur5-ra = ḫubullu). See Appendix B in Rutz 2013 for proposed joins and texts listed by genre. 8 Text C displays the set of four in lines 16–17; in line 58, text B has only “the king of the land” where A names both “the king of the land of Emar” and “the king of Šatappi” as recipients of the same kidney portion – an awkward assignment in a text that otherwise allots a different meat serving to each dignitary. It is notable that in the concluding section of the festival text, which treats only the allotment of goods after the ritual action is complete, both the A and C texts single out only “the king of the land” as recipient of the kidney (line 77). 9 The points of continuity include the following: use of ša in genitive chains where not required (lines 1C, 63B, 80C); in syllabic writing of 3mp verbal forms, occasional choice of -u, where text A always selects -ú (lines 11C, 27B, 74C); the proliferation of added meš-signs, where they are lacking in A (lines 18C, 47B, 56B, 72C, and 83C; note 26A as an exception); the specific choice of writing the D-infinitive for “consecration” with qa-ad-du-ši rather than qa-du-ši (lines 6C, 22B); more frequent preference for the 3fs pronominal suffix -ši on nouns instead of -ša; while text A also shares this usage in some cases, it does not diverge where B/C show -ša (42B, 44B, 45B, 64B, 72C).

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the text has decidedly more errors than the B/C combination, as I already observed in my 1992 edition.10 Given this primary division of the textual evidence for the installation festival Emar 369, the other important consideration becomes the character of the divergences between two representatives. Above all, it is crucial to keep in mind that through most of their extent, the texts match word for word and often sign for sign. They are scribal variants, impossible to comprehend except as the result of a copying process, though this may have depended on memorization rather than direct copying from another tablet. Delnero (2012) has worked recently to develop a framework for understanding copying variation in the early second-millennium Sumerian literary texts from southern Mesopotamia. It is difficult to make a direct application of his analysis to the reproduction of ritual texts from Emar without establishing the purpose for copying ritual and the mindset that drove this. Delnero contrasts the careful copying of texts by expert scribes with the goal of producing a perfect replica, as in medieval writing of biblical manuscripts for the Hebrew Bible, and the copying of these Sumerian literary texts by students as part of their scribal education. The educational practice appears to have been based on memorization and tolerated a certain fluidity in the text. At Emar, the copies of the installation text are drawn up with impressive clarity and form, as complete renditions, and we cannot simply treat them as student work, even if the student was heir to the diviner’s title. At the same time, the degree of minor variation in versions A and B/C, without the character of what we may identify as “errors,” would suit Delnero’s vision of reproduction from memory.11 Beyond this general fluidity of form, the two texts present larger divergences that are my particular interest here, because they color the ritual procedure itself. Different texts mean different ritual action. Textual variation is entangled with ritual variation. Four points of substantial divergence appear most important for evaluation of the ritual implications of textual variation:12 10 My list of all writing errors (Fleming 1992: 31) includes omitted signs (5 for A, 2 or 3 for B/ C); omitted words (4 or 5 for A, none for B/C); added incorrect signs (2 for A, none for B/C); substituted incorrect signs (2 to 4 for A, none for B/C); and finally the textual confusion in 59– 60A, which involves at least three truncated sentences, resulting in significant uncertainty about the ritual procedure. 11 For discussion of memorization as it relates to education and other practices of textual reproduction, see Delnero 2012: 17–25 and his citations. 12 I set aside the following as having secondary significance, all from the second half of the text. Compared to the truncated references to filling goblets, feasting with the storm god, and raising the goddess dNin.kur in text A, text B begins, “On the last day,” and appears to move directly to the raising and removal of dNin.kur from the priestess’s family home and restoration to her temple, though it is too broken for confidence. At the end of a section devoted to specify-

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In text C, the introductory heading leads directly to “the consecration of the shaving,” the rite that launches the new priestess toward her new home in the storm god’s temple, so that the first substantial section of the C version involves the Shaving Day itself (line 7C, or C3, the third line of that tablet). In the B/C rendition of the installation, the rite begins with the Shaving Day, when the priestess is brought for the first time to the temple and shaved in an apparent act of purification that also may mark her visibly as belonging to this sacred domain. This event is granted such respect that it merits its own “consecration” (qaddušu), a preparatory offering that accompanies several other Emar rites (Fleming 1992: 158–62). Yet for the writer of the A text, this opening of the festivities was not enough. He introduced three further details as necessary even to reach this point of departure. First, we are told that the priestess was to be selected by an act of divination, the only such expression of professional divination in the entire festival that would suit the centrality of the “diviner” (lúḫal) to the entire scribal operation of the building M-1.13 This divination does not, however, belong to any of the scholarly genres that are attested in the texts found in the archive.14 One or more purû are obtained from the temple of dNin.urta, the city god whose seal embodies the religious authority undergirding the community in its collective capacity to act, especially to hold and sell common property.15 Although she is to serve the storm god,

ing the nature and destinations of various offering portions to different participants (lines 76– 83), text C adds a further account of meat for the diviner and for the singers. Finally, text A provides the only reference to an offering for the god Šaḫru (lines 92–93), who otherwise appears only during the seven-day feast, where he likewise receives a sacrifice (line 52). 13 In my Time at Emar, I devoted a section to what I called “The Diviner Who Does Not Divine” (Fleming 2000: 26–35) in order to demonstrate the priority of cult supervision in the work of the building M-1 diviners. Citing my treatment, Rutz (2013: 319–21) argues carefully that the divination texts show actual practice of divination by these figures and cites the procedure with lots in this text as one instance. His point is well taken, and he is surely correct to consider divination as one part of the supervisory role that is reflected in the ritual collection found in his workplace at Emar. We are left to figure out whether the divination texts found in the archive match in any case the procedures of local ritual life, where divinatory practice does not obviously follow the traditions of Mesopotamian or cuneiform written collections. 14 For detailed treatment of the specific divinatory texts found in the M-1 archive, see Rutz 2013: 219–63: extispicy and liver models; celestial omens; calendrical omens (including hemerologies); behavioral omens (including sheep for sacrifice and birth defects); medical diagnostics or prognostics; and oracle reports. 15 For early and insightful treatment of this god in legal exchange, see Yamada 1994. The Sumerian writing dNin.urta covered a local divine name that may have been Il Imari, the “God of Imar/Emar” (Westenholz 1999).

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the priestess is chosen under the auspices of the town in its longstanding collective aspect. The name of the divinatory object closely resembles the pūru “lot” from Akkadian and may perhaps represent the same word with a variant vocalization (Fleming 1992: 175–76). We are told that the divinatory object is grasped (ṣabātu) with the result that the right person is “indicated” (tarāṣu, as “to point”?), both of which seem to be technical descriptions, otherwise unattested in these particular uses. One further burden of this account is to emphasize that “the daughter of any Emar citizen” may be designated. Even if this was not in fact true, and a suitable young woman had been identified in advance, the text introduces a degree of selfconscious concern for the inclusive nature of the selection that has no precedent in any of the other Emar ritual texts, in spite of their repeated assumption that all rites are celebrated by the town as a body. This one line gives text A a political hue that stands out from both B/C and the rest of the diviner’s archive of ritual-administrative writing. The other main component of the opening section unique to version A is the anointing of the priestess immediately after her selection. Oddly, while the oil is carefully accounted for, with both dNin.kur’s temple and the palace as sources, the act itself is assigned no location. We could assume that the rite takes place at the storm god’s temple, where the purû was (or were) held in the god’s presence (line 2A) and where an offering is made after the anointing is described (line 5A), but it never says so explicitly. Later in the ritual text, the priestess’s movements are recounted in detail, so that she never changes location without some kind of procession, which is thus rendered a public and sacred event. The ritual logic of anointing, which may offer symbolic cleansing and a mark of transformed identity, requires only a single performance, so that one of the anointings is superfluous. The material unique to text A concludes with the payment of one silver shekel to the diviner, another reason for the diviner-scribe to include the section, followed by return of the purû to dNin.urta, along with a gift of appreciation. In this case, it is the anointing that represents the key textual and ritual contrast in version A, and we must account for how and why this text duplicates the rite. The installation ritual is structured according to eight principal days, aside from the introductory “consecration” before the shaving day begins. Two main ritual dimensions are joined to produce the event’s full effect: the movement of the priestess from her family home to a new residence in the storm god’s temple, which evokes van Gennep’s (1960) notion of “rites of passage”; and a seven-day block of public feasting during which nothing changes in the condition of the priestess. The seven-day feast begins only

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after the first two transformations of the young woman. First she is introduced to the storm god’s temple by procession from her father’s house for a shaving rite “at the opening of the courtyard gate” (lines 8–9), followed by return to her father’s house. The next day is the “installation” itself (malluku), which takes place in the temple proper at the end of a second procession (line 29). This time, the priestess takes her seat of office and is decked with its insignia (lines 40–42), even as she must still return home for the seven-day feast at the temple, which takes place without her. Finally on the seventh day of the feast, a third procession brings her back to the temple for a permanent move into her new home in the storm god’s personal domain (lines 59–75). Within the framework of these eight days, versions A and B/C maintain the same procedure except at one point, during the procession to the storm god’s temple on the day of installation. Both the A and B texts introduce the second day by the “installation” (line 29) and then line up the participants in a procession ordered around seven sacrificial animals, with singers in front and the priestess bringing up the rear. Here, however, the two texts envision distinct paths to the storm god’s temple. In text B, the procession moves directly through two intermediate stops that bring the priestess toward her destination by attending to sacred sites that somehow prepare her way: the bīt tukli (House of Assistance?), with the goddess Adammatera; and the bīt Gadda (House of Destiny?), with the storm god joined to his Aleppo consort Hebat.16 From the bīt Gadda she approaches the storm god’s temple (é dIškur), where she leads an honorific ceremony of greeting (the kubadu), after which she is brought into the temple. Here, the sacrificial animals from the procession are slaughtered, the offerings placed before him, and feasting fills the day, while the installation itself is reserved for the evening (nubattu). The movement in text A is more difficult to understand in that it breaks the spatial logic of this procession, greeting, and sacrificial feast. After the procession is lined up to begin the day, we are informed immediately that the kubadu rite takes place, according to the same instructions found in B, with the new priestess now permitted to flourish the sacred weapon (gištukul dingirmeš) in the storm god’s presence, a role that her father had to perform on her behalf on the previous day. She is brought into the storm

16 For these locations, see Fleming 1992: 113–16. In Fleming 2000: 40–42, I propose to translate bīt tukli as “house of assistance” and discuss its possible relationship to the city god d Nin.urta. Naturally, the entire procedure reviewed in my description of these rites is evaluated in detail in the book devoted to the installation text.

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god’s temple, and they sacrifice the animals. Then, awkwardly, text A turns back to the processional route, with its stops at the bīt tukli and the bīt Gadda, carried out by the same procedure set forth in text B. In this case, the variation between versions A and B/C involves no difference of ritual elements but only this contrast of sequence. 3. Immediately after the installation of the priestess with her enthronement and investiture, we are reminded of another payment to the diviner, what appears to be the largest and most important of the whole event (line 43). In text A, “they place on the diviner’s hand (wrist?) ten shekels of silver as a silver coil.”17 Text B proposes a similarly substantial payment, equally detailed in its description, yet completely different in nature: “two gold lamassu-figurines of one gold shekel.”18 Here, the texts address the payment to the diviner at exactly the same moment, immediately following investiture of the priestess, and there is no variation of ritual procedure. Only the payments diverge, and they do so in strikingly specific terms that suggest real transactions. 4. A fourth significant difference was mentioned already with my account of continuity between texts B and C: the attention to four dignitaries in B/C, where only text A adds a fifth, the king of Šatappi. This variation does nothing to change the shape of either the text of the procedure but simply expands a list from four to five. Unlike the others, however, by adding the neighboring town, text A introduces an interest into the occasion that is otherwise entirely foreign to it.

2 Textual Variation and Textual Revision At the most basic level, the differences between versions A and B/C represent textual variation in copies of a single ritual document. Either one tablet was produced from a reading of the other, or at least the two represent renditions of the same text known in other versions as well within the same small institutional circle, the office of “the diviner of the gods” in the building M-1. The previously noted divergences show that the copying process allowed considerable room for shifts in content as well as orthography and wording. When I wrote on the installation twenty-plus years ago, I left the character of the textual variation unexamined. On further reflection, however, two questions present

17 10 gín kù.babbar a-na ḫar kù.babbar a-na šu-ti lúḫal i-šak-kán-nu. 18 2 dlama KÙ.GI ša 1 gín KÙ.GI.

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themselves. Is it possible to determine a sequence between versions A and B/ C, in that one represents a later stage of textual reproduction than the other? If so, we would be dealing with textual revision and not just variation. And do any elements of the two versions suggest distinct ritual performances, rather than merely the variation of a copied text? These two questions may or may not be related, in that one could imagine a revision that is purely textual, not based on new performance of the rite. Consideration of these questions must begin with the certainty of a textual relationship between the two main versions of the installation rite, as copies of one document. For example, the first processional day begins in texts A and C matching sign for sign until “house” (é) is left out of text C (line 7): A i-na ša-ni-i u4-mi gal-lu-bu ša ereš.dingir 1 g[ud 6 uduḫi.a] siskur [ša] ereš.dingir C i-[na ša-n]i-i u4-mi gal-lu-bu ša ereš.dingir 1 gud 6 uduḫi.a siskur ša ereš.dingir A a-na é dIškur du-ku-ma d C a-na [ ]

These two documents were not generated as separate records of or responses to ritual performances for two different priestesses of the storm god. At a purely textual level, two of the major divergences between A and B/ C suggest a sequence of change rather than variation with indistinguishable direction. First, the expansion of the introduction in 1A-6A brings to mind the textual critical chestnut, “lectio brevior,” by which a longer text must always be considered a possible elaboration of some originally simpler sequence. Even if the account of divination by purû reflects consistent practice, the addition is in some sense a gloss on the stripped-down introduction of text C. The anointing in line 4A then adds a conceptual difficulty that goes beyond mere explanatory expansion. Double anointing is both unprecedented and ritually nonsensical. Faced with two versions, one of which offers us a single unction on the evening of the shaving day (20–21B/C), both preference for the shorter text and ritual logic indicate that this represented the original text and procedure. The redundant anointing is the first one in text A, which is both out of place and has no explicit place, and it appears that text A has made adjustments to a shorter document that is manifested in text C. The second major divergence, with procession to the storm god temple on the installation day, has nothing to do with length but nevertheless suggests the same direction of change. Here, text A introduces confusion into the procedure that is easier to understand as secondary to the straightforward sequence of text B. For some reason, text A rushes ahead to the rites for the new priestess at the storm god’s temple (lines 31–32A), skipping over the processional stops that bring her there, so that the writer must then double back and insert them

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after the kubadu rite and sacrifice of livestock (lines 33–36A). We are thus forced to wait for the distribution of meat portions in 37A, which follows naturally the sacrifice of the animals in text B. It appears that text A has introduced a change into the cleaner version reflected in B/C. Finally, text A’s inclusion of a “king of Šatappi” in the recurrent list of dignitaries is evidently an addition, piggybacked onto the position of the local king as the fourth figure in the B/C version, as well as in the fragmentary text D (lines 55–56). In every case of significant discrepancy of content, it is text A that has made the change. We are therefore dealing with what should be called “revision” rather than simply with textual variation. This distinction must then inform our investigation of the real-life ritual setting behind the production and reproduction of the installation text.

3 Revision, Writing, and Ritual Once we have determined that there is a logical and chronological direction to the divergences between the A and the B/C versions of the installation ritual text, and that some kind of “revision” has taken place, it remains to decide what we mean by such revision. This is where the relationship between text and context comes to the fore, because the composition and reproduction of the ritual text cannot be disentangled from the performance of the ritual event. No single explanation for this relationship is intrinsic to the written genre of “ritual,” which in itself demands interrogation. At Emar, the preoccupation of the ritual-based texts with accounting for precise quantities and recipients of offerings and distributions leaves a murky boundary between what is “ritual” and what is “administrative.”19 Certainly the introduction of open-ended durative verbs into the descriptions immediately generalizes one set of ritual accounts, though documents such as lists of gods following a bird or sheep (Emar 380 and 381) must in some sense reflect “ritual” distributions. The smaller set of texts with generalized action expressed in durative verbs includes several that are designated “festivals” (ezen) and more than twenty others that are identified individually if at all.20 Many of these are little more than elaborate

19 On the involvement of the building M-1 diviners in cult administration, see Démare-Lafont and Fleming, forthcoming. 20 The “festivals” include the installations for the priestess of the storm god (Emar 369) and the maš’artu (370), the seventh-year version of the zukru (373), and the set of kissu rites at Šatappi (385–388). This still leaves the annual zukru (375), the imištu of the king (392); a list of offerings focused especially on the mysterious Ar’uru (393); a double rite with the second a

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offering lists, with as much interest in the quantities of materials as in the gods who receive them, and little or no interest in the occasions. Most important for our purposes is one fact: in general, such texts are generated in a single copy, apparently ad hoc, without intent to reproduce them. In general, the ritualadministrative texts from Emar cannot be considered school texts or part of some scheme of scribal or professional education. Only two limited blocks of ritual writing were copied: the installation festival for the priestess of the storm god; and the kissu festival set. This textual reproduction must be considered secondary to the first use of the larger genre, a development in itself, and a conceptual revision of the type that was never applied broadly. In considering the two principal copies of the storm god priestess installation, we confront therefore a transformation of textual practice joined to a transformation of content. From the purely textual side, the decision to copy selected festival texts did not carry with it a determination to safeguard a single version of text and ritual together. The question, then, is what informed the written changes, when both text and ritual were in play. We cannot entertain the possibility that the texts represent two separate performances of the installation event, recorded from scratch, because of the close alignment of wording and spelling. At the other extreme, we could imagine the possibility that the differences are purely scribal, with no reference whatsoever to change in ritual procedure. Any revision of the text would be an exercise in scribal imagination. Between these extremes, text and ritual could be somehow intertwined, so that a new written rendition was influenced by changes in procedure even as the very process of reproducing the text, if this was carried out by the person who coordinated the execution of the installation, could have occurred in conjunction with ritual adjustments conceived by this person. Evaluation of the interpretive options depends on return to the raw material of the textual variants. The answer to this question may best begin with the third major contrast between versions A and B/C in earlier discussion: the payments to the diviner ḫenpa of oxen for Dagan (394); collected “rites of the city” for several months (446); rites for the months of Abî (452) and the next month (463); rites for Aštartu of Battle (460); calendar offerings focused on the storm god (461); listed offerings mostly lacking divine recipients (462); listed offerings beginning with Išḫara (464); “rites of the gods of Hatti” (471); offering lists for similar Hittite gods (472 and 473). Also, several significant fragments cannot be read directly into the major texts, in spite of sometimes tantalizingly similar terminology: 371 and 372 with the storm god installation; 374 and 376 with the zukru festival (Rutz [2013: 148] proposes that 374 could join to the festival text 373); rites that also involve the month of Zerati (447); rites for the month of Sag.mu and some “Fifth” month (454); rites that include Aštartu and the month of Sag.mu (459); fragments of various size for sets of offerings with partially unknown recipients (465, 466, 470, etc.); fragments of various size with offerings listed for Hittite-type gods (476, 477, etc.).

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of ten silver shekels in the form of a “coil” (43A) versus two gold lamassu figurines (43B). These substantial gifts are recorded with a precision that pertains most naturally to the keeping of accounts. The materials, the quantities, and the forms are all different, even as neither has the flavor of fantasy. If two gifts are involved, it would seem that these would have accompanied two different performances of the installation. Where text A adds to the schema presented in version B/C, these involve ritual procedure and could be conceived as reflecting a separate performance as well, though each instance must be evaluated individually. The long expansion in lines 2–6A could be understood as adding detail from practice that had simply been omitted from version B/C, an explanation that would be feasible if we take the reference to an extra anointing in line 4A as anticipating the event coming up in lines 20–21. Alternatively, we could be dealing with a separate rite that was only included in the installation of version A. It is likewise difficult to be sure in 92–93A whether the sacrifice to Šaḫru in these lines, after the priestess has died, represents a ritual innovation or the expansion of text A to mention a rite that had been taken for granted in the older version of the installation preserved in text C. As with the anointing, there is concern to record what the diviner takes from the occasion. The change in processional sequence on the day of the installation in 31–36A could be a textual confusion that did not follow procedure for a fresh performance of the installation. Finally, the addition of an extra table for the king of Šatappi in version A presents a conundrum: was a fifth table in fact added for a new performance of the installation, the same one for which the diviner received the ten-shekel silver coil? This would indeed be the sort of concrete contrast that must be more than just the filling in of detail, though the case is a strange one. Is Šatappi really large enough to have a “king,” especially when it seems situated very close to Emar and dependent on it? All the references to placement of tables for dignitaries in the procedural section of text A include the king of Šatappi, but the purely administrative section at the end recalls royal receipt of the kidney as ritual portion without acknowledging that there may be two of them (line 77A). However we read the relationship between textual reproduction and ritual repetition, we must account for the connection between writing and ritual. In this regard, the installation presents an event with very limited use. If a new priestess was put into office only at the death of the previous one, then installations may have occurred only rarely at Emar, more than a generation apart, if girls were chosen at a relatively young age and good health allowed them to reach something like old age. The storm god priestess does not appear to have been permitted to bear children, so far as extant evidence permits judgment, so that she would escape one major risk of death. We cannot know actual

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circumstances, but we must keep in mind that no single diviner need have overseen this event more than once in his lifetime. The decision to copy this installation text appears to have served the training of the diviners who track their financial take from the festivals in view. By remembering and reproducing the text, the heir to the diviner’s office would be prepared to replicate the event. Changes in the text could both reflect distinct performances of the installation and shape them. As the diviner made adjustments to text and conception together, ritual practice may have followed. With formal oversight bestowed on a scholar who textualized the conduct of ritual, such interplay was perhaps inevitable.

4 Revision, Ritual, and the Diviner The diviner himself must be the final object in our revaluation of the installation festival in its textual variety at Emar. Because the rituals of the diviner’s archive have an excavated context that allows consideration of a fixed set of texts as a collected whole, we can know something of the scribes who gave us the installation texts. Daniel Arnaud concluded with his initial publication what further study has confirmed, that the building M-1 was the workplace of a person who called himself “the diviner of the gods of Emar.”21 This was evident from the references to the diviner, his colleagues, and his students in the colophons to Mesopotamian scholarly texts (assembled as Emar 604), from the concentration of legal documents that pertain to four generations of one family sharing the “diviner” title, from the small set of letters that frequently involve members of this family, and from the attention to payments received by “the diviner” in ritual texts, among other details. In his study of Scribes and Scholars of the City of Emar, Cohen (2009: 147–238) examined exhaustively the names preserved in the colophons so as to produce a full portrait of the participants in this scribal operation, who included many more than the diviner alone. The diviner’s authority, if not necessarily his scribal hand, is also visible on various accounting texts regarding the affairs of different sacred sites, some found at the diviner’s own building M-1 and others at the temple of the storm god in Area E.22 21 Arnaud (1980: 247 n. 7) offers this explicit reference. 22 See the discussion of the diviner’s family in Beyer 2001: 447–48, and the individual presentations of A.62 (Ba‘lu-qarrad son of Zu-Ba‘la) and A.69 (Ba‘lu-malik son of Ba‘lu-qarrad). The seal of Ba‘lu-qarrad appears on three administrative texts from the building M-1, Emar 363, 364, and 366, as well as on his will, published with texts from outside the excavations as

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None of the ritual texts bears either a colophon or a seal impression to offer explicit identification of the scribe. Nevertheless, we must wonder where we may find the hand of the diviners themselves. It is clear from their seals on the administrative texts that they were directly involved in tablet production related to local temple business, and the repeated reference to income received by the diviners in some of the ritual texts suggests a direct financial interest. Here, we must weigh the significance of the festival copies in relation to the diviners themselves. Only the installation for the storm god’s priestess and the kissu festival set were reproduced in this way, and it is difficult to understand such need to copy rituals except for some kind of education in the written aspect of the craft. This formation would have nothing to do with divination but rather served the diviner’s ritual oversight of major public events that served the community as a whole and included acknowledgement of the local king. Perhaps the one figure who required such training was the diviner himself, or the young man who would inherit the office. Whether or not the same can be said of the festival collection more generally, the festivals in multiple copies may most directly be the scribal work of the diviners. Based on the use of the diviners’ seals on administrative texts, the two generations most visible in the archive are Ba‘lu-qarrad and his son Ba‘lu-malik, with the older brother Šaggar-abu also a possibility.23 One detail in the storm god installation festival may help locate the generation of version A, which presents a revision of the text known from version B/ C, though not necessarily of this particular tablet. In its rendition of the tables set with honorary meat portions for local dignitaries, text A adds the king of Šatappi. This town has a notable interest for the diviners of Zu-Ba‘la’s family and the building M-1. Outside the rituals, Šatappi appears in six texts from Emar, all found in the diviner’s archive.24 If the town did indeed have a leader who could claim the lugal title, this may be reflected in Emar 257, a legal judgment from a court case involving the theft of a slave. The case is said to be

SMEA 30 no. 7 (see Cohen 2009: 155); Ba‘lu-malik’s seal appears on three texts from the storm god temple (Emar 43, 56, and 61), and on three administrative texts found in the building M-1 (Emar 285, 287, and 305), as well as on three texts from outside the excavations, AuOrS 1 70; BLM 28 and 29 (Cohen 2009: 170). These abbreviations are those from Fleming 2000. 23 For any evaluation of the family’s involvement in drawing up or witnessing documents from Emar, Cohen’s (2009: 147–83) account of all its members is the essential point of departure. 24 For the basic list of references, gathered from Arnaud’s Emar VI.3, see my brief treatment of “the king of Šatappi” in Fleming 1992: 102. To my knowledge, the town of Šatappi is not mentioned in any of the texts found outside the excavations, adding to the impression of a particular interest on the part of the diviner’s family.

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decided in the presence of the king and “the leading men (lúmeš galmeš) of Šatappi” (lines 3–4), though the seals do not indicate any titled ruler.25 KapiDagan and Šaggar-abu, both from the diviner’s family, send a letter that mentions in passing a scribe-on-wood who lives in Šatappi (Emar 261: 21–23). One administrative text lists nine servants and a substantial collection of livestock and dry goods for a woman called the munus lugal, “woman of the king,” who is moving from Kizzu (= Kinza, Qadesh?) to Šatappi. This document appears to confirm the substance of the town, for all that it is known to us only as part of Emar’s political sphere.26 While the concentration of all the Šatappi references in the M-1 archive in itself indicates the interest of the town for the diviner’s family, a more personal and intense connection is displayed in the last three references to Šatappi, all of which relate to a single transaction. In a remarkable exchange that has already garnered considerable attention, Ba‘lu-malik, the diviner who dominates the last generation of the archive’s activity, purchased three very young children for his household from a family in Šatappi. Four texts reflect the exchange: three inscribed footprints in clay for each of the children acquired (Emar 218–220), and a summary document for the arrangement (Emar 217), all of which identify the father as Zadamma of Šatappi.27 Whatever the form of work taken on by these children, they would have been raised in a household shared by the diviner Ba‘lu-malik’s two boys, Ipqi-Dagan and Zuzu (ZuBa‘la).28 The town of Šatappi would therefore have loomed large in Ba‘lumalik’s home. 25 This lack of title recalls the pattern in the Conventional Format legal documents for Emar itself, which are consistently witnessed by figures led by the king, without title. For distinction of two scribal streams for writing Emar’s legal texts as Conventional (formerly “Syrian”) and Free Format (formerly “Syro-Hittite”), see Fleming and Démare-Lafont 2009. Although these are in what Démare-Lafont and I would call the Free Format scribal mode, the lack of title would suit such incorporation of local leaders into a collective political framework. 26 It is noteworthy that the name Šatappi is found only in texts found in the diviner’s archive and not known from the archives of other sites. This fact recalls the oddity of reference to the Emar domain in texts from Ḫattuša by the name Aštata, which does not appear in texts found at Emar. Is it possible that the name Šatappi also comes from foreign Hittite usage? I have not pursued the question in the Hittite evidence. 27 The age of the children is indicated by the size of their feet, which shows them to have been only toddlers; see Zaccagnini 1994 and Cohen 2005. In his study of Emar scribes, Cohen (2009: 132–33) abandoned his interpretation of the purchased children as scribal apprentices, because the names in scribal colophons accompany the wrong script to match the diviner’s family. 28 We know that Ipqi-Dagan and Zuzu were old enough before the destruction of the city to be involved in real estate transactions (Emar 225, 226) and to share some ritual role in connection with a dedication by their father Ba‘lu-malik to the god dNin.urta (BLM 24: 9–11; see the

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In this light, the addition of Šatappi to the list of dignitaries that participate in the installation festival for the storm god’s priestess would represent a natural accompaniment to the introduction of a Šatappi component into the diviner’s family. So far as text A is later than B/C, it is most easily dated to the last generation of the diviner’s archive, when the boys Ipqi-Dagan and Zuzu were growing up with three kids from Šatappi. The same family interest could account for the one other copied ritual text, the set of kissu festivals that are likewise identified with Šatappi. While the diviner’s connection with Šatappi probably predated this transaction, given that Ba‘lu-malik’s older brother Šaggar-abu wrote a letter mentioning the town, text A’s status as latest among the installation’s copies supports its location in a later generation. Are we to conclude that a new ereš.dingir (entu) priestess was put in office during the last period of the Emar archives, when the Šatappi children had become part of the diviner’s household? The strongest evidence for such a conclusion would be the ten-shekel silver coil paid to the diviner instead of the two gold lamassu figurines of text 43B. If so, then the A version that was composed in association with the event may have reflected both the occasion itself and the supervisory mindset that informed its celebration. At least in writing, the diviner may have wanted to highlight the possibility that “the daughter of any son of Emar” could be selected (3A), and he was determined to claim a silver shekel with the girl’s anointing (5A) and an ox-hide from rites for the previous priestess’s death (93A), whether or not these were customary. While the A text of Emar 369 displays an interest in the town of Šatappi that offers a plausible connection to the generation of Ba‘lu-malik as diviner, we can say nothing substantial about the setting for the older B/C text. There is no obstacle, however, to this tablet going back to the leadership of his father Ba‘lu-qarrad, who initiated the administrative activity of the scribal center. Cohen (2009: 156) observed that Ba‘lu-qarrad is linked solidly to the administrative documents found in the building M-1, even as the scholarly interest of the diviners only begins with his sons Šaggar-abu and Ba‘lu-malik.29 It appears

interpretation in my review of this volume (Fleming 2002). The summary document for the purchase of the three young children, Emar 217, is witnessed by Laheya son of Mutri-Teššub, from the line of Overseers of the Land (ugula.kalam.ma) associated with Hittite and Carchemish sovereignty. The last ugula.kalam.ma is Ahi-malik, whose role may have outlasted the local monarchy as an active force at Emar (Cohen 2012), and Laheya appears to belong to a stage just before this. Also, Ba‘lu-malik’s two sons play no role in the transaction. It is likely that they had not yet reached legal adulthood, if they had even been born at this moment. 29 For the crucial initiative of Ba‘lu-qarrad in launching this administrative dimension of the diviner’s work, which is not attested for his father Zu-Ba‘la, see Démare-Lafont and Fleming, forthcoming.

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therefore that the practice of composing ritual texts likewise begins with Ba‘luqarrad, and text B/C of Emar 369 could represent an early example. If so, the idea of identifying certain local events by the “festival” category ezen, well known in Hittite ritual texts found at Ḫattuša, would have originated before the family’s involvement in the reproduction of scholarly literature. The installation festival for the storm god’s priestess at Emar leaves as many questions open as it offers answers to issues of context, yet the detail available for probing the diviner’s archive in the building M-1 allows us to examine with rare tools the interaction of textual production with practical use. Beyond the immediate application of the text to living ritual at Emar, it is possible to consider the diviners themselves as revisers of both text and ritual together. Regardless of the precise interpretation preferred by any modern reader, it is clear that the choice to copy festival texts at Emar was undertaken as more than a scribal exercise, and we must evaluate the revision of ritual and of text as a single process, with both elements interwoven according to the needs of the diviner charged with oversight of Emar’s collective ritual life.

Bibliography Arnaud, Daniel. 1980. Traditions urbaines et influences semi-nomades à Emar, à l’Âge du Bronze Récent,” Pp. 245–64 in Le Moyen Euphrate: Zone de contacts et d’échanges. Actes du Colloque de Strasbourg 10–12 mars 1977, ed. Jean-Claude Margueron. Strasbourg: Université des Sciences Humaines de Strasbourg. Beyer, Dominique. 2001. Recherches au pays d’Aštata: Emar IV. Les sceaux. Fribourg/ Göttingen: Editions universitaires/Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Cohen, Yoram. 2005. Feet of Clay at Emar: A Happy End? OrNS 74: 165–70. Cohen, Yoram. 2009. The Scribes and Scholars of the City of Emar in the Late Bronze Age. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Cohen, Yoram. 2012. Aḫi-malik: The Last “Overseer of the Land” in the City of Emar. Pp. 13– 23 in Looking at the Bible and the Ancient Near East through the Same Eyes: Minha LeAhron. A Tribute to Aaron Skaist, eds. Kathleen Abraham and Joseph Fleishman. Bethesda: CDL Press. Delnero, Paul. 2012. The Textual Criticism of Sumerian Literature. JCSSS 3. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research. Démare-Lafont, Sophie and Daniel Fleming. Forthcoming. Ad Hoc Administration at Emar: Free Format Writing in the Diviner’s Archive. Fleming, Daniel. 1992. The Installation of Baal’s High Priestess at Emar: A Window on Ancient Syrian Religion. HSS 42. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Fleming, Daniel. 2000. Time at Emar: The Cultic Calendar and the Rituals from the Diviner’s Archive. MC 11. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Fleming, Daniel. 2002. Review of J. Westenholz, Cuneiform Inscriptions in the Collection of the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem: The Emar Tablets. JESHO 45: 365–76

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Fleming, Daniel. 2004. Southern Mesopotamian Titles for Temple Personnel in the Mari Archives. Pp. 72–81 in Inspired Speech: Prophecy in the Ancient Near East. Essays in Honor of Herbert B. Huffmon, ed. John Kaltner and Louis Stulman. London: T & T Clark. Fleming, Daniel and Sophie Démare-Lafont. 2009. Tablet Terminology at Emar: “Conventional” and “Free Format”. AuOr 27: 19–26 van Gennep, Arnold. 1960. The Rites of Passage. Chicago: University of Chicago. Klingbeil, Gerald A. 1998. A Comparative Study of the Ritual of Ordination as Found in Leviticus 8 and Emar 369. Lewiston, ME: Edwin Mellon. Michel, Patrick. 2012. Le culte des pierres en Syrie du Nord et en Anatolie aux III e et II e millénaire. Approche philologique et archéologique. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Geneva. Rutz, Matthew. 2013. Bodies of Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia: The Diviners of Late Bronze Age Emar and Their Tablet Collection. AMD 9. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Sallaberger, Walther. 1996. Review of D. Fleming, The Installation of Baal’s High Priestess at Emar: A Window on Ancient Syrian Religion. ZA 86: 140–47. Schwemer, Daniel. 2001. Die Wettergottgestalten Mesopotamiens und Nordsyriens im Zeitalter der Keilschriftkulturen: Materialien und Studien nach den schriftlichen Quellen. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Westenholz, Joan Goodnick. 1999. Emar: The City and Its God. Pp. 145–67 in Languages and Cultures in Contact: At the Crossroads of Civilizations in the Syro-Mesopotamian Realm. Proceedings of the 42 nd RAI, ed. Karel van Lerberghe and Gabriella Voet. Leuven: Peeters. Yamada, Masamichi. 1994. The Dynastic Seal and Ninurta’s Seal: Preliminary Remarks on Sealing by the Local Authorities of Emar. Iraq 56: 59–62 Zaccagnini, Carlo. 1994. Feet of Clay at Emar and Elsewhere. OrNS 63: 1–4.

Gojko Barjamovic, Harvard University

3 Contextualizing Tradition Magic, Literacy and Domestic Life in Old Assyrian Kanesh

1 Introducing Kültepe Almost seventy seasons of archaeological excavations at the site of Kültepe in Central Turkey have revealed the remarkable remains of a thriving Bronze Age city that bore the ancient name of Kaneš. This settlement covered an area of at least 150 hectares, included an acropolis with temples and palatial structures and a surrounding lower town with compact industrial and residential quarters enclosed by a fortification wall. Perhaps as many as 25,000 people lived in the city (Barjamovic 2014). So far archaeologists have unearthed some 9 hectares of narrow winding streets, small squares and more than a hundred multi-storied houses (Hertel 2014). A river possibly known as the Humatum passed through town, providing it with water and an outlet for its sewage (Barjamovic 2011: 238). The houses in the residential quarter date to the years roughly 1950–1710 BCE (Barjamovic, Hertel and Larsen 2012). The term “Old Assyrian” is used as a general designation for this period, as well as for a particular linguistic stage of the Akkadian language, and the material culture associated with it in Anatolia. In broader archaeological parlance, it is coterminous with the early Middle Bronze Age in Central Turkey (Sagona and Zimansky 2009). The best-known feature of the excavations at Kültepe is the discovery of at least 40 private houses that once belonged to Assyrian merchant families living in Kaneš (T. Özgüç 2003). Their settlement here formed a hub for some threedozen Assyrian trading colonies spread across Central and Southern Anatolia (Veenhof 2008). Home to these traders was the oligarchic city-state of Assur, located on the Tigris River some 600 miles to the south in modern-day Iraq (Larsen 2000). Because the Assyrian merchants wrote mainly on clay, and a great conflagration at one point destroyed the settlement, an exceptional corpus of some 23,500 individual records survive from the private archives of these traders (cf. Michel 2003). According to a recent count conducted by Streck (2010), the merchant archives from Kültepe in fact constitute the third largest corpus of texts written in the Akkadian language. Furthermore, some 90 % of this corpus can be shown to belong to a very short period of just 30 years 1895–1865 BCE and to

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have been produced by just around a thousand individuals (Barjamovic, Hertel and Larsen 2012: 55–60). Alongside some 500 texts written by members of the local population at Kaneš, and the well-preserved physical remains of the city, these merchant archives constitute the most detailed evidence for understanding long-distance trade in the ancient world (Barjamovic in press, Larsen in press). Around 19,000 of the Kültepe texts have come out of the houses of the lower town that were dug by archaeologists. Illicit diggings produced another 4500 tablets in the decades prior to the commencement of regulated excavations (Michel 2003). Until recently, the latter group of texts, which for the most part ended up in museums in Europe and the USA, was the only one edited and available for study. Now a collaborative push to publish the much larger excavated corpus has begun to produce results (Bilgiç and Günbattı 1995; Albayrak 2006; Veenhof 2010; Larsen 2010, 2013, 2014; Bayram and Kuzuoğlu 2014). Currently some ten thousand texts are shared within the group of scholars active in the field of Old Assyrian studies. The fact that one can work on the basis of excavated archives opens up the possibility to better reconstruct the lives of individuals, and to get a sense of their personality and function in society at large (Larsen 2008, in press). In a few respects the evidence from Kültepe is so dense that it is comparable to an ethnographic case, which allows us to study the full complexities of life. It is not uncommon to have a few hundred texts relating to the activities of a single individual, and in some cases numbers are higher (cf. e.g., Hertel and Larsen 2010). Predictably, most of the texts deal with the mercantile affairs of the settlers: they are accounts, judicial records and business correspondence. But texts belonging to other genres are known as well. These include (but probably are not limited to) compositions that served in scribal training: two royal inscriptions, a literary text, a model letter, an exercise tablet, and a couple of lexical lists and a practical vocab (Hecker 1993, 1996a; Michel 2008).

2 Incantations In addition to the texts listed above, eleven magical incantations have come out of Kültepe so far. All of them derive from the same basic physical and social context – houses belonging to Assyrian merchants – and all examples are probably contemporaneous – that is, they all belong to the generation that occupied the site 1895–1865 BCE. This distribution of texts differs radically from

For a woman in labor

Against a Lamaštu-demon Against wild dogs For a reed Against jaundice Against the evil eye For a pot Against a palpitating heart

1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8

2 1 1 1 1 1 1

3

# a) Kt 90/k 178; b) CCT 5, 50e, c) kt 94/k 429 a) Kt 94/k 821; b) BIN 4, 126 Kt a/k 611 Kt a/k 320 Kt 90/k 178 Kt 94/k 520 Kt 91/k 502 Kt 91/k 502

TEXT

90/?? 84 84 66 53 56 56

66/??/53

HOUSE# a) Michel 2004, b) Kouwenberg and Fincke 2013, c) Present a) Michel 1997, b) Farber 2014 Veenhof 1996 Hecker 1996a Michel 2004 Barjamovic and Larsen 2008 Unpublished Unpublished

RECENT EDITION // DISCUSSION

Fig. 1: Overview of the corpus of Old Assyrian Incantations (as of spring 2015). The House numbers refer to Fig. 5.

INCANTATION

No.

50 Gojko Barjamovic

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contemporary material in Babylonia, where surviving incantations normally come out of unprovenienced contexts or compilatory works, and where their primary functional context frequently is unclear. This chapter concerns itself with those Old Assyrian incantations, raising three questions based specifically on the texts in their social and physical setting. It addresses the nature of the incantations and the principles according to which they were composed. It explores what can be said about the level of literacy found within the Assyrian community. And it discusses the ways in which text and tradition interacted or reflected back on each other in a society where most people were functionally literate. In contrast to the group of texts associated with teaching, the incantations seem mainly to have fulfilled a utilitarian function. All of them relate by subject to a domestic context, and presumably they reflect the everyday practices of the same individuals we know through the merchant records. What is more, the incantations refer mainly to occupants of the Assyrian houses that do not figure prominently in the commercial records – women and children. Two incantations deal with household objects: reed (No. 4) and a pot (No. 7). The text about the reed is broken and its exact purpose remains unclear. Distant parallels are known from later sources, where in one case the incantation is associated with personal protection (Reiner 1958: 45; Schwemer 2012). The text dealing with the pot opens up with an invocation, which describes the shape and properties of the vessel, and apparently ends with a spell to prevent it from breaking. Incantations for physical items are rare in other contexts, and it cannot be ruled out that the incantation for the pot constitutes a metaphorical reference to e.g., the womb. However, a description of its physical properties and its use in cooking (of porridge) renders this unlikely. The text is unpublished and is paraphrased here by courtesy of Klaas Veenhof. Further analysis will have to await his edition. However, the great majority of the incantations from Kültepe are related to medical complications; particularly those associated with childbirth and the care of infants. One of them is directed against jaundice (cf. Stol 2000: 210), which is a condition typically associated with newborns. Two different incantations are directed against the cradle-robbing Lamaštu-demon (cf. Wiggerman 2000; Farber 2014). One of them (No. 2a) seems to deal with child illness in general, while the second (No. 2b) appears to be directed specifically at helping a child suffering from muscle cramps, possibly as a result of fever.1 The fact that an incantation against jaundice appears on the same tablet as a birth

1 The reading of the last line (24) in the text is problematic, cf. Farber 2014: 315.

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incantation (Nos. 1a and 5) is a further sign of the common use of magic against the many dangers of early childhood. Text No. 8 (also courtesy Veenhof) appears to be a medical incantation against a palpitating heart, and text No. 6 is directed against the detrimental effects of the “Evil Eye” (cf. Dundes 1981). Finally, an incantation against the “black dog” probably also refers to a domestic situation, in spite of the suggestive reference to how it “lies in wait on the mound, lingering for the lonely caravan” (Veenhof 1996). Wild dogs presumably posed a greater danger in the streets of Kaneš than in open countryside, and the statement that the dog’s “eyes peer around for a handsome youth” seems to refer to the threat that such animals constituted to children. Roaming and sometimes rabid dogs are also the subject of Babylonian incantations (cf. Farber 1995: 1901), and their common presence in the streets of Kaneš (and other towns in Anatolia) is proven by skeletal remains as well as a significant assemblage of bones chewed by dogs found in the urban waste (Atici 2006; 2014).

3 Written Tradition All eleven Old Assyrian incantations follow the same general structure and outline of composition. We can recognize some of the standard principles of the genre that are well-attested also in contemporary examples from Babylonia (cf. Wasserman 2002: 181–82). The focus of the incantation is usually given in a performative opening formula. This may be followed by a section of rhetorical questions centered on an invocation (mannam lašpur). Finally, the resolution of the magical predicament is sought through divine intervention. The incantations are all marked by peculiarities in vocabulary, syntactic formation, and an inventive repertoire of stylistic devices. They demonstrate a rich creativity embedded in a framework of traditional stock phrases and topoi that were shared by Assyrian and Babylonian practices of magic. According to a survey undertaken by Bert Kouwenberg as part of his work on the grammar of the Old Assyrian dialect (in prep.), the incantations from Kültepe contain a significant number of Babylonian elements that include single words and phrases, grammatical and syntactic features. The geographical origin of the genre is further proven by the fact that the gods invoked in the incantations mainly come from the south: Anum, Ea, Nin-karrak, Nin-kilil and Šassur. The date of transmission is unknown, but according to Kouwenberg, it would appear to pre-date the Old Assyrian and Old Babylonian linguistic stage. For instance, the bound form of the noun “daughter” appears as mar’uāt in

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three of the Assyrian incantations (1b; 1c; 3), which suggests that it took place before the regular forms OA mer’uātum and OB mārātum were established (Kouwenberg and Fincke 2013: 145). A similar pattern is seen in a substantial number of Sumerian loanwords (Kouwenberg in prep.) that must have entered Assyrian before the vowel contraction took place in the Babylonian dialect – e.g., kirium (orchard), tappā’um (partner) and kussium (chair). Also some of the grammatical borrowings in the Old Assyrian incantations constitute archaic and therefore literary features in the Old Babylonian dialect. This includes the use of the adverbial endings -(i)šu(m) for direction, and -āni for comparison (cf. Farber 1982; Kouwenberg and Fincke 2013), and perhaps also the use of -mi found in Old Babylonian literary texts in general (cf. Wasserman 2012: 188–96). The literary Babylonian dialect is itself closer to Old Assyrian than the written vernacular and shows a tendency to leave out vowel contractions, omit vowel harmony a < e (e.g., epšāti for epšēti) and contract prepositions to the following word (illibbīša, appānīya). All three are ubiquitous in the Old Assyrian dialect. A few later Old Babylonian borrowings of technical terms may also occur in the incantations (Kouwenberg in prep). For instance, one finds the form mê bišrim (“amniotic fluid”) in No. 2a. But in general, the early date of the Assyrian incantations from Kültepe pushes the shared Akkadian tradition back into the 3 rd millennium (Barjamovic and Larsen 2008). Indeed, the texts from Kültepe are distinctly Assyrian, and remain faithful to the dialect also when they contain the exact same phrases shared by their Old Babylonian counterparts. For instance, the “mannam lušpur” formula discussed by Farber (1990a) in the Assyrian texts occurs as “mannam lašpur”. Keeping the elements mentioned above in mind, the incantations from Kültepe constitute a distinct local variation of common tradition that represents Assyrian practices, and not simply direct borrowings from the south. There is a tendency among Assyriologists to portray the Assyrians as passive recipients of a southern tradition, basically throughout their 1500 years of documented history. But the situation was clearly more complex, and Assur in the 20 th c. BCE evidently shared its basic cultural and religious ideas and patterns with the cities in the south – in partnership more than periphery. Thus also the Assyrian community at Kaneš maintained its Mesopotamian cultural identity. This is seen not only by the judicial regulations that guaranteed the Assyrians an autonomous self-governed status (Veenhof 2008), but also through common reference to shared divinities, supernatural beings and cultural heroes (cf. Hirsch 1972; Kryszat 2006; Veenhof 2008: 102–105.). Examples include “the warlike Ištar”, Ištar of Dīm, “Ištar the Star”, “Ištar of the Rainbow,” Adad, Ilabrat, Šamaš, Suen, Nisaba, Bēlum, Anum, Ea, Išhāra, Mīšarum, Pabilšan, Lamassum, “the Šēdu who chases away” (cf. Barjamovic and Larsen

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2008), Tammuz (cf. Larsen 2010, PN Šu-Tammuzi), Gilgameš (cf. Hecker 1997: 646), and Sargon of Akkade (Dercksen 2005 with further references). The incantations from Kültepe demonstrate how these shared cultural elements were continually manipulated, and tradition modified in creative ways, rather than just copied passively. A similar case has recently been made for the visual arts produced at Kaneš (Larsen and Lassen 2014).

4 Oral Tradition Incantations have played an important role in addressing questions of written and oral tradition, transmission and performance within the field of Assyriology (Wasserman 2002: 181–82). Their relative scarcity in Babylonia has been taken to signal that magic in Mesopotamian tradition ultimately related to a domain separate from the “usual” literate world, and that the incantation tablets represent rare physical traces of the work of ritual experts, who would perform most of their duties without the use of writing. The tablets would in some cases be school exercises, the physical remnants of ritual performances, or perhaps even represent talismans, which allowed magical power to function in a client’s house after an exorcist’s visit. The growing number of Old Assyrian incantation tablets shed some light on our understanding of these questions, due to the fact that they come with precise archaeological and chronological provenience. I will show why the texts from Kaneš do not appear to be the products of a tradition transmitted through master copies, but argue that the incantations could and would still be stored in writing for memory or as part of performance; that they were in some cases turned into talismanic form for direct magical properties; and that a few of them may have served as educational tools to teach writing and transmit tradition. In other words, the material from Kültepe supports the notion that incantation texts had several functions, and that they played several roles related also to everyday domestic life in the Assyrian and hybrid community settled at Kaneš. Michalowski (1992) in his article on the early Mesopotamian incantation tradition challenged Farber’s (1990b) view that incantations were part of unwritten folk customs that only sporadically entered into the literary mainstream. He stated that: “at least as far as the Sumerian incantations were concerned, one can reconstruct a written tradition that extends as far back as the earliest literary texts.” However, as pointed out by Wasserman (2002: 181–84.), it is perhaps more a question of emphasis than actual divergence that keeps

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these two views apart. The dichotomy between oral and written tradition is less relevant to the study of Akkadian literary compositions than e.g., Ancient Greek literature for which it was developed, and all cuneiform texts, literary or other, were probably deeply rooted in a written (“scribal”) tradition. It is thus difficult to pinpoint any direct influx from the “pure” oral to the written, as well as any counter-flows. As pointed out by Wasserman, conclusions are formed by each author’s emphasis. Farber on his part highlights the various literary features stemming from oral literature attested in Mesopotamian incantations. Michalowski stresses their mode of transmission. It is difficult to imagine a society in which there would not be an elaborate oral tradition related to the type of subjects covered by Mesopotamian incantations – including explanations for why evil and bad things happen, and prescriptions on how to possibly avert them. But a common notion in the study of Mesopotamian incantations seems to be that the practice of magic and its commitment to writing are somehow contradictory, and that spells ultimately belong to a domain separate from the literate world. Wasserman instead proposes what he calls a “one-person-two-functions” model, in which oral and written practices are not contradictory, but complementary. If not, he says, one has to imagine a situation where practitioners were dependent upon scribes to transform part of their oral lore into writing, or that scribes sought to incorporate magic into their literary curriculum. No matter what, he states, a scribe would hardly record incantations during performance. They had become a part of a scribal domain as well. Also, the incantation tablet itself could be a physical talisman, which might remain in a client’s house after, or even instead of, the exorcist’s visit. There is evidence to suggest that the Assyrian incantations from Kültepe were indeed the written products of a “pool” of traditional magic that combined “master texts” and oral tradition. Written practice might itself be fluid in structure, and altered easily according to need: magic could be stored in writing if desired, or turned into talismanic form to act its spell by itself. Also, some of the incantations may have served a didactic purpose, and thus be part of a scribal domain. This would mean that one would draw from the common pool to teach and transmit tradition. Finally, some of the most common spells may have circulated mainly in oral form, comparable to the “Lord’s Prayer” in medieval magic tradition (Rider 2012: 55, 59–60). The question is the degree to which these different functions required the involvement of what we might call “ritual specialists” and/or “scribes”. The case used to explore this topic will be an Old Assyrian birth incantation that is currently known in three different renditions (cf. Fig. 2 and Appendix 1). Cécile Michel (2004) published one version (1a) that appears on a tablet

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which also held an incantation against jaundice. A second version (1b) appeared in a recent article by Kouwenberg and Fincke (2013). And the third example (1c) is quoted here in a preliminary version. The text comes from a merchant archive held in the Ankara Museum that I am currently working on. A critical edition will appear at some later point. All three exemplars basically carry the same incantation. However, the texts are by no means identical. They all contain elements that they either share with only one other exemplar, or which are unique to it. This is by no means uncommon for incantations, but is of particular interest in the present investigation because all three tablets were produced within the same generation, and were found within just a few hundred yards of one another in the same closed community of perhaps 500 Assyrian merchants and their families settled at Kaneš. Such a tight chronological, social and physical context is particularly appropriate for addressing the problem of the composition and function of incantations. Figure 2 shows the three incantations side by side in transliteration. To make things clearer, the texts are color-coded to mark passages that are unique to each exemplar, those that are shared by two of them, and those that are common to all three. Text 1b is damaged and therefore less easy to relate to the other manuscripts. Yet, even a brief look at the colors implies that only a small part of the incantation (here marked in yellow) is shared by all three exemplars. Essentially, this is the actual invocation, which asks rhetorically to whom the afflicted person should turn for help (the mannam lašpur formula), as well as the appeal to the divine daughters to pick up their tools and come to keep the birth canal open (for a translation, cf. Appendix 1). In the two texts where the opening lines are preserved, the spell begins with a wordplay on its subject, as is characteristic of the Old Assyrian incantations. Presumably this constitutes the sounded chant that focuses the spell (“hocus pocus, filiocus”). In text 1c however, the introduction is abbreviated to the minimum “cow, canal!”, while text 1a has a slightly longer string of four repetitions. Texts 1a and 1b insert the line “with her nose, she draws on the ground,” and text 1a adds “with her tail she sweeps the house,” where 1b instead has “with her tears she steeps the house.” Text 1c omits this part of the introduction entirely. Following the invocation, text 1b breaks off in what seems to be another unique passage, while the two remaining exemplars share a section about the gender of the child with a phrase that echoes passages known since the early Sumerian incantations from Fara (Krebernik 1984: 36–46). It proves that we are dealing with a very ancient core of tradition. Both texts continue with the expected call upon the sisters to clear out the canal, although they phrase this

Contextualizing Tradition

Text 1a (Kt 90/k 178) ar-hu-um a-ra-ah a-ra-ah-tum ar-ha-at ar-hi-iš ta-ri-i : ar-hi-iš tù-lá-ad ar-hi-iš : i-lu-ku ma-ú i-pí-ša : i-na a-pí-ša : qá-qá-ra-am : té-sú-uq?

Text 1b (CCT 5.50e)

[i-n]a ˹a-pí˺-[ša] [q]á-qá-ra-am ˹: té˺-[sú-uq] i-zi-bi-tí-ša : ta-ša-bi-iṭ ˹i˺-na dí-im-a-té-š[a] bé-tám ma-na-mì : lá-áš-pur ta-sà-ra-aq ú lu-we-e-er a-me-er-ú-at ša-sú-ra-tim 7 É-tám : ma-na-ša-/am ù 7-ma : ma-re-ki-/na la-áš-pu-ur ù ta-áp-šu-kà-té-ki-na ma-na-ša-am li-qí-a-nim-ma : ba-áb lu-e-e-er a-ra-ah-tim ha-ba-tum a-na ma-ru-˹a˺-[a]t hu-ub-ta : šu-ma : za-kàr ša-˹su˺-ur ˹7˺ e-tù-da-ni šu-ma ù 7-ma : ma-re-ki-/na sí-ni-ša-at ša-pá-ra-ni ta-áp-šu-kà-té-ki-na šu-ma : sà-ak-pu-um : sà-ki-ip l]í-qí-a-ni-ma i-li-šu : li-ší-lá-ma : k[i? ]-i [x] x x ˹dí˺ : ˹ga˺ ṣa-ru-ú : ki-ra-nim : li-i[m-q]ú-tám … qá-qá-ar-šu : ší-ip-tum lá i-a-tum ší-pá-at Ni-ki-l[i-im] be-el ší-pá-tim ù be-el tí-i-i[m] be-lá-at ša-sú-ra-tim l[i-dí]

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Text 1c (Kt 94/k 429) ar-hu-um : a-ra-ah-tum ar-hi-iš : ta-ri-i [ar-h]i-iš : tù-la-ad ˹ar˺-hi-iš : (x?-)ma-id ma-ú : pu-˹x-x-ša˺ a-ma-ni-mì : la-áš!?-pu-ur a-ma-nim lu-wa-i-ir a-na ma-ru-a-at ša-sú-ra-tim 7 ú 7-ma ma-re-ki-na-mì ú ta-áp-šu-kà-té-ki-na li-qí-a-nim ˹ha x (x)˺ x-ha-am sig5-a-tám šu-ul-ha-nim šu-ma : z[a-k]à-ar e-tù-dá-ni : šu-ma : [s]í-ni-ša-at ša-pá-ra-ni li-ší-lam i-na ṣé-er ki-ra-nim : ki-i : še.gig a-ša-ar-šu li-iṣ-ba-at Five lines fragmentary

Fig. 2: Comparison between the three Old Assyrian birth incantations (No. 1a, 1b and 1c).

differently. In addition, text 1a includes a contingency on stillborn babies that text 1c omits. At this point the two texts part ways. Incantation 1a ends with a standard clause that ascribes its composition to a divine author, whereas text 1c seems to expand the invocation in a series of phrases. Unfortunately the passage is broken. The birth incantations share figurative elements with both contemporary and later Babylonian texts. The Old Babylonian birth incantation VS 17: 34 repeats parts of the passage related to the infant’s gender: “if it is a male (child), like a ram, if it is female, like a free-range calf ?, let it fall to the ground.”2 A later example equates the evacuation of the intestine to the clean-

2 VS 17: 34: 16šumma zikar atūdāni 17šumma sinnišat napṭartāni 18limqutam qaqqaršum.

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ing of an irrigational canal by way of similar phrases,3 and a medical incantation edited by Finkel (1999) also refers to a “wine snake, who does battle with the exorcist”.4 Yet, even a brief glance at the colored passages on Fig. 2 suggests that whoever wrote these tablets operated on the basis of elements that could be assembled and combined in different ways. There seems to have been no single principal manuscript that these incantations were copied from, and at a minimum, a measure of permutation and inventiveness is at play. Perhaps the spells were considered more effective if they were tailored specifically for the given situation, and they would therefore be based on a set of written elements in compendia that one could choose from and combine as necessary. Or perhaps they differ in certain points because they were written down directly from memory. The dialectal archaisms should then be assigned to the technical language of practice, rather than the copying from ancient manuscripts. There are features that are best explained if we propose the latter scenario for the composition of the tablets. An element in its support is the number and nature of the mistakes that appear in incantation 1c. The text is so defective that one gets the impression the author did not fully understand the meaning of what he or she was writing.5 For instance, in versions 1a and 1b, the word mannum of the invocation serves as the direct object. But in 1c the scribe apparently interpreted the phrase “whom shall I send?” as a dative – “to whom shall I send (someone) with instructions?”. Furthermore, the verb liššillam “let it slither forth”6 in 1c seems to refer to the ram and the cow in lines 18–20, whereas it should point to the “wine snake” (Babylonian ṣerrum, Assyrian ṣarrum) that we know from 1a ought to have appeared in the following lines. The author seems to have mistaken the Babylonian word for “snake” as an Assyrian preposition ina ṣēr and produced a sentence that makes no real sense. Additional mistakes are the repetition of the word šumma in l. 18 and the incorrect form SIG5-a-tám in l. 15. Together they add up to the impression that text 1c was written by someone who was not entirely proficient in the genre, or perhaps even in the scribal task. At the same time, it seems questionable whether one would expect this kind of inaccuracy and confusion if the text had been copied off another tab3 BAM 508+ col. ii (and duplicates): 48[man]-nu lu-uš-pur a-na gú.galme lib-bi-ka 49liš-šá-a giš marmeš šá kù.babbar u gi-dim-me-ti ša kù.gi li-pat-ta-a idmeš 50li-pat-ta-a a-tap-pa-ti li-par-šidu-ni lu-ṣu-ú-ni zu-ú-šu. I am grateful to Enrique Jiménez for directing me to this parallel. 4 CBS 7005 l. 14 quoted in Finkel 1999: 223–29. 5 I am grateful to Bert Kouwenberg for sharing his detailed thoughts on the matter with me. 6 From the tri-radical N-stem našlulum with the ventive, corresponding to Bab našallulum, cf. Hecker 2008: 65 n. 24.

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let – either as a school assignment, or in the actual preparation of a magical spell; even as a draft that combines elements from several Vorlage. Granted, the text uses archaic language (mar’uāt), grammar (-āni), and sign forms (la1 in l. 3 and 6, and see below). But the use seems partially random,7 and the type and ubiquity of mistakes would also be consistent with a text that was written down from memory. Beyond this minor variation, all three exemplars of the birth incantation are remarkably similar when compared to the two incantations directed against the demon Lamaštu also found at Kültepe (2a and 2b). Those two texts are different, and share only their subject. The three birth incantations clearly also share a common source. Had they been unearthed in Babylonia without a welldefined provenience, we would presumably not hesitate to ascribe any differences to a diverging use of tradition or an evolution in material and genre (Schwemer 2011: 424). But with the chronologically and geographically tightly linked corpus from Kültepe one gets a glimpse of actual practice and variation within a single community at a single point in time. Perhaps then, the birth incantation circulated in Kaneš in oral form in addition to being taught by copying. And maybe the text was only partially comprehensible to expert as well as layman, with its “otherness” constituting part of its therapeutic force (Michalowski 1992: 311–12.).8 In this context, it is important to emphasize that the birth incantation was presumably one of the most common magical formulas around (with three renditions found at Kültepe alone) and that it was surely one that any expert would be expected to recite on occasion.9 With this in mind, the nature and extent of variation between the three contemporaneous versions of the birth incantation from Kültepe implies that whoever wrote down text 1c possessed only a rudimentary command of the genre. For such an interpretation to work, at least two preconditions have to be met. One is that a high degree of literacy was present in the Assyrian community at Kaneš. The other is that the incantations were found mainly in their primary context of use and do not represent scribal teaching tools. I will address both points below.

7 The text e.g., has la2 in line 29, but la1 in lines 3 and 6. Other incantations show the same pattern, cf. e.g., BIN 4: 126 uses la2 except for the la1 in line 2. This incantation also uses some old and more elaborate sign forms (cf. Kryszat 2008), such as the elaborate forms of IM and UN, as well as a form of MA with two horizontals making up the bottom line in l. 7 and 15, but not elsewhere in the text. 8 See also the wonderfully lucid discussion in Finkel 2014: 30–83. 9 Michalowski (1992: 319) quotes a literary letter in which a practitioner is seemingly mocked for not being able to recite more than ten or twenty incantations, so presumably a decent expert was expected to know more.

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5 Literacy One important observation in regard to literacy and whether or not ritual experts produced the incantations is the fact that texts 1a, 1b and 1c seem not to have been written in the same hand (cf. Appendix 2). In all three exemplars the sign forms are different, and so is spacing, format and the use of dividers. Also the choice of signs is distinctive. Texts 1b and 1c use the archaic set of values sometimes referred to as “Group B” (cf. Kryszat 2008 and see Fig. 3 below: text 1b: la1, su1; text 1c: la1, da2.). Those same two texts also use the older noun form mar’uāt, whereas text 1a uses the usual Old Assyrian form mer’uāt and the more common “Group A” system of shorthand signs. On the other hand, text 1c came out of the same house as the incantation against the Evil Eye (No. 6). A comparison between those two tablets (cf. Appendix 2) suggests that they are sufficiently similar in shape, layout, and hand to have been written by the same individual. Also the use of word dividers in the two texts is similar, both in regard to frequency and their distinctive shape and placement on the top of the line. It has long been clear that the writing system used by the Assyrian traders was the result of a deliberate simplification process, where signs that were composed of as few individual wedges as possible were selected over more complex ones (LAL instead of LA, DI instead of SA, DIN instead of TI, etc.). Distinctions between voiced and unvoiced, emphatic and non-emphatic, simple and doubled consonants were almost always ignored (Larsen 1989). Also, there was a tendency towards the use of one sign to represent several vowels – for example a single sign for /lam/, /lim/ and /lum/. This led to a system where only around 120 signs appear frequently in the texts, where logograms are used almost exclusively in personal names and traditional shorthand writings for objects and values, and where one could make do with as little as 80 signs in most contexts. Although a drop in complexity of script will not by itself lead to a rise in literacy (or vice versa), it was surely a contributing factor to the widespread use of writing that we see in the Assyrian population at Kaneš. It was probably also a primary cause for the substantial variation in expertise found within the group – a sliding scale, from full mastery to restricted literacy (Michel 2008). An obvious place to look for signs that the Assyrians at Kaneš wrote their texts themselves would be in the handwriting found in letters authored by the same individual. This has been proven easier said than done, but the most recent study of the matter conducted by Stratford (2015) suggests that people did in fact write many – but probably not all – of the texts ascribed to their name. There were undoubtedly situations where literate Assyrians chose not

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to write a particular text for one reason or other, especially as people worked in teams. We are also dealing with individuals whose correspondence in some instances cover more than 40 years, and whose hands and habits might change over time. Stratford therefore based himself on a very precisely defined corpus of texts (basically a correspondence between handful of individuals written over a period of less than three years), and found that one particularly discernable trait of people’s handwriting is the exact rendering of the individual signs. Slant, size, wedge order, and attention to detail may vary, but basic features, such as whether e.g., the sign MA has a small vertical “closing the box” on the left-hand side of the sign, appear to be robust identifiers. Using his method, the examples shown in Appendix 2 below suggest that several individuals (and not just e.g., one local expert) wrote the incantation tablets from Kültepe. A different approach to the question of literacy has been to identify preferences for particular signs in texts that can be assigned to specific individuals. Kryszat (2008) proposed a model in which he referred to the most common orthography found in the Old Assyrian texts as “merchant script” and showed that it accounts for about 90 % of the material from Kültepe. This ductus, which Kryszat named “Group A,” is particularly associated with the simplest sign form of any syllable. Given a choice between the LAL sign (2 wedges) or LA (8–9 wedges) to write the sound /la/, the “Group A” author would almost always choose the first option. Likewise, Kryszat showed that users of “Group A” signs tend to use simpler forms that are characteristically different from those individuals who gravitated towards the more complicated “Group B” signs. Whether this difference in writing practice was caused by distinctive educational or generational backgrounds (or both) is not clear, but the fact that one can identify a group of people by their preference for a particular set of signs and shapes can best be explained if those individuals wrote their texts themselves. One could presumably construct a scenario in which “Group B” authors exclusively made use of one particular scribe to write their texts, and that said scribe would have been trained in a different environment from his “Group A” colleagues. This is not impossible, but one would have to accept that people, who relocated from Anatolia to Assur or vice versa several times during their lifetime, would then have brought their scribe with them, and that they would likewise have kept this scribe by their side at all times as they were traveling through Anatolia for business. The enormous diversity in calligraphic ability found in the Old Assyrian corpus likewise seems to suggest that people wrote their own texts (Larsen 1976: 304–307). Texts belonging to certain individuals, such as Šalim-ahum, are recognizable for their beauty and clearly legible hand from five feet away.

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GROUP A

GROUP B

lá tí áb

la ti ab

Fig. 3: The use of sign forms in Old Assyrian (from Kryszat 2008).

Other texts bear all the marks of having been jotted down as needed by the barely initiated. A small dossier of tablets in the archive that I currently work on (Kt 94/k 289–568) record a series of expenses that incurred during a journey through Anatolia. One of these crudely shaped and clumsily written lumps of clay has a piece of gravel embedded in it, which the author had to write around, and which made the tablet fragile (Appendix 2). To me this suggests that the merchant made the record on the spot from whatever clay was available: this was not the work of a trained scribe, but the quick and dirty note of a travelling salesman. With actual archives and tablets in context, it has also become clear that a significant proportion of the texts found in each merchant’s possession are tiny notes – often less than an inch on each side – that record minor debts and outstanding claims with a minimum of information.10 Once again, these seem to represent notes jotted down as personal reminders, and it is hard to see why and how they would have involved a trained scribe. It is evident why the basic knowledge of reading and writing would have been more widespread than usual in a community such as the Assyrian one at Kaneš. Commercial societies based on agency and long distance partnerships had a clear advantage when operating with a high degree of literacy among its members (Spufford 2006: 12–59). But we also find evidence that texts at Kültepe were written by people who were not directly involved in the trade: local Anatolians, servants and slaves (Larsen 2010: 19–21; Kryszat 2008; Michel 2008). Also Assyrian women appear to have written their own records and letters – often in a characteristic rhetoric and style of composition (Larsen 2001; Michel 2009, in prep.). Finally, even some local Anatolian women – whether married to Assyrian merchants, or acting as independent agents – appear to have been literate (Michel 2011). They would also own their own seals (Michel 2009; Lassen 2012). The fact that Anatolians themselves were the authors of their tablets is perhaps best documented by the common presence of grammatical mistakes

10 Volumes AKT 6d and 6e under preparation by Larsen as part of the texts from the house of Šalim-Aššur (cf. Larsen 2010) will contain a number of such brief notes.

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in case and gender of the kind one would not expect from a native speaker (Kryszat 2008). This shows that some training must have been available in Kaneš itself (and not just in Assur), even if we have no textual references to it. Instruction could have been more personal, less formal, and built on apprenticeships. But the technology of cuneiform writing was clearly appropriated by members of the Anatolian community, and so local tutoring must have been available. Local businessmen, such Enišaru and Peruwa (Shi 2013), as well as the Lady Madawada (Albayrak 1998), were capable of setting up and writing legal documents in Akkadian. Also, local administrators used Assyrian cuneiform for internal purposes – not only at Kültepe (Balkan 1957) but also in the small provincial town of Kaman Kalehöyük (Yoshida 2002). It is well known that in some circles and corners of the cuneiform world a high complexity in the writing system became a value in its own right (Gelb 1963; Michalowski 1994). The opposite trend has been less well documented. According to a recent article on cuneiform literacy by Veldhuis (2011), the Old Assyrian system stands out as an example of rigid simplification in Near Eastern tradition. However, as pointed out by Lion (2011) the Old Babylonian writing system was not necessarily much more complex. Her key observation is that one could manage with relatively few signs within certain contexts, and that the sliding scale of literacy should be understood strictly in relation to function and genre. The apparent extent of literacy at Kaneš is therefore perhaps not so much the result of a unique corpus, as the fact that a large part of our ancient written record elsewhere comes from institutional rather than private contexts. Kültepe acts as a reminder that a special set of circumstances need to be in place for archaeology to catch this type of evidence – at least in such abundance. It is difficult to produce any meaningful estimate of the literacy rate during any given period of Mesopotamian history, but recent studies conducted by Wilcke (2000) and Charpin (2004, 2010) have argued that a higher percentage of the population was functionally literate in the Old Babylonian period than traditionally assumed. Veldhuis (2011) proposes that reforms in scribal education and the introduction of new orthographic conventions after the collapse of the Third Dynasty of Ur were driving forces in this a shift toward a more widespread use of the writing system. A key to the discussion is his distinction between functional, technical and scholarly levels of mastery of the cuneiform script: there would have been many more who mastered writing at a functional level, and there may even have been individuals in a place like Kaneš, who could read, but not write. Such situations are almost impossible to prove short of direct references in letters or literature. In spite of its volume and early date, however, the Old Assyrian texts are left outside of Veldhuis’ considerations on cuneiform literacy, except for his

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concluding remark that it stands isolated in respect to its simplicity. The material from Kültepe is shelved with the oddities, as is so often the case in the field (cf. Larsen in press). However, this is presumably not due to the texts from Kültepe being particularly unique. The Assyrian trade network could not have existed without comparable systems of exchange located across Western Asia (Barjamovic in press), and while some of those commercial circuits could certainly have been managed without the use of writing, it is hard to see how and why this would be the case in Southern Iraq and South-Western Iran. Again, the simple fact that most of our written evidence comes from institutional rather than private contexts gives us a twisted sense of what was once there (Westenholz 2002; Matthews 2013). Smaller corpora of texts that are comparable in scope, structure and orthography are known from contemporary Babylonia (cf. also Larsen 1987: 219–220). Examples include the archives studied by Al-Rawi and Dalley (2000: 17–23), Veenhof (2004), and de Boer (2014). Characteristically, all three examples relate to the world of private commercial enterprise. The recent discovery of texts at Kültepe that were neither the product of the Assyrian nor the local Anatolian population highlights this point. These texts, published by Hecker (1996b), Michel (2010), Donbaz (2001) and Erol (2010), show that some resident merchants at Kaneš wrote tablets in a language, layout and ductus that is radically different from the Assyrian and local Anatolian ones. These tablets seem more closely linked to the scribal traditions of Northern Syria, and yet they deal with the usual matters of trade in Anatolia and the legal disputes connected to this commerce. These “foreign” texts make a clearer distinction between voiced, voiceless, and emphatic than those written in Assyrian, but even so, the number of signs required for a basic level of literacy would not have exceeded 150. The existence of comparable shorthand forms of cuneiform script in Babylonia and at Kültepe suggests that we may to some extent be faced with a general feature of private commercial texts, and by implication, that an undercurrent of practical cuneiform literacy came into existence during the first half of the 2 nd millennium BCE in private and non-scribal professions, where a functional skill in reading and writing was required. In Kaneš this group included not only foreign merchants, but also local Anatolian administrators and residents, foreign and local women, and even slaves. Literacy may have remained concentrated in those parts of society where it served a direct economic function, but we are clearly faced with diverse domains of knowledge and levels of training.

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6 Schools and Education The texts from Kültepe contain more than a hundred references to individuals bearing the designation “ṭupšarrum”, but in all cases such individuals appear to be affiliated with the colonial administration, and the title seems to refer to an office (“secretary”) rather than an occupation (“scribe”) (Larsen 1976: 304– 307). The one mention that we have of a person learning how to read and write refers to a school located somewhere other than Kaneš – probably at Assur.11 Most of the training in the basic skills of literacy in Kaneš may have taken place in people’s own homes, as suggested e.g., by the presence of the dozen or so school-texts found around in various houses occupied by Assyrian families (Michel 2003: 139–40; Hecker 1993). However, one building at Kültepe in particular has attracted attention as a possible schoolhouse (cf. Fig. 4). This large structure with a ground area of c. 154 m2 was excavated in 1948 during the first season of Turkish archaeological work at the site (T. Özgüç 1959: 38, Fig. 5, House 84). A substantial number of tablets were found in this house,12 which Landsberger (1948) identified as belonging to man named Uzua.13 Unfortunately, we have no reliable informa-

11 CCT 4: 6e l. 4–8: “We have already learned the scribal craft. Send me an epattu-garment for my teacher” (DUB.SAR-tám wa-dí lá-am-da-ni e-pá-tá-am a-na um-me-a-ni-a šu-bi-lam). For the translation of wadi lamdāni cf. Kouwenberg (in prep.). He also points out that the letter – whose author apparently is fresh out of school – uses the unique Babylonian form šūbilam in place of the regular Assyrian form of the verb: šēbilam. Kryszat (2008: 232) points out that the author also uses the sign bi2 in the introductory formula of the letter (qí-bí-ma), which is rare and associated mainly with correspondence from the rulers of Assur (cf. Kryszat 2004). The passage in the letter AKT 5.51 l. 37–42 may also contain a reference to scribal training rather than the office (although the context suggest that the text refers to an adult with agents of his own): “1 black donkey, which the harnessor of Hanna-Nārum son of Elālī – who seized the scribal art/office in Mamma – led to Ulama to Hanna-Nārum, Aššur-emūqī, and Malahum in order to sell it” (1 e-ma-ra-am ṣa-lá-ma-am a-na ṣé-er Ha-na-na-ri-im A-šùr-e-mu-qí ù Ma-lá-hiim a-na ší-mì-im ta-da-nim a-na Ú-lá-ma-a kà-ṣa-ar Ha-na-na-ri-im DUMU E-lá-li ša ṭup-ša-rutám i-na Ma-ma-a iṣ-bu-tu ir-dé-e). 12 The exact number has not been reported. Inscribed objects (tablets, envelopes, bullae) that are known two have come from the house carry Kt a/k-numbers between 178 and 623 (cf. N. Özgüç 2001: 148–50). 13 In T. Özgüç 1959: 94 and 2003: 34, 90 we are told that: “the house belongs to a native merchant.” Clearly the reason for his statement was related to an uncertainty about the ethnic/ linguistic background of the personal name Uzua. With the growing amount of evidence, even a brief look at the list of patronyms associated with the name now leaves little doubt about its Assyrian origin, cf. e.g., Uzua f. Dan-Ea (Kt 94/k 304), Uzua f. Ennam-Aššur (Kt 94/k 133), Uzua f. Pilah-Ištar (AKT 6: 74), Uzua f. Šu-Kubum (Kt 94/k 1246), Uzua s. Aššur-šamši (Kt 87/k119), and Uzua s. Iddin-Aššur (KTS 1: 22b).

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Fig. 4: The House of Uzua.

tion about the archive or the tablets that it contained, which makes it impossible to ascertain whether it may be related to the people who occupied the structure immediately prior to its destruction. Most likely the archive predates the fire by a generation (cf. Barjamovic, Hertel and Larsen 2012: 64–69). This is important, because, in addition to the commercial archive, the house also contained a small group of texts that appear to have been used in teaching, perhaps around the time the house burned down. These tablets include two incantations (No. 3 “black dog”, and No. 4 “reed”), two copies of a royal inscription from Assur (RIMA A.0.33.1), and a short economic text (Kt a/k 178) written on a lentil-shaped tablet. The latter is known from a later duplicate school text found at Assur,14 and it is the only tablet ever found at Kültepe that is shaped like an Old Babylonian

14 Ass 13058e, cf. Hecker 1996a. The shape and ductus of the tablet is similar to JENS 16: 170 (cf. Barjamovic, Hertel and Larsen 2012: 23), which would probably date it to the 17 th or 16 th centuries BCE.

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“Type IV” school text (cf. Civil 1995: 2308). A photo is published here for the first time (Appendix 2). Hecker (1996a) pointed out that also the incantation No. 4 is slightly rounded, but unlike Kt a/k 178, this inscription runs down the obverse and onto the reverse of the tablet in the manner of an ordinary text (Appendix 2). Similar rounded tablets are now known from commercial texts at Kültepe (cf. e.g., Kt 94/k 568), so the curved shape by itself is not evidence of a given function.15 However, one of the two royal inscriptions (Kt a/k 315) was clearly inscribed in two different hands, which, as pointed out already by Landsberger (1948), supports the conclusion that we are dealing with school texts. The exact find spots of some of these tablets were noted down and published in the archaeological report. Importantly, the evidence seems to connect the school lentil and the two royal inscriptions, but to separate them physically and functionally from the two incantations and the commercial texts. One of the two copies of the royal inscription (Kt a/k 315) was found broken in two pieces about 150 cm apart alongside the northern wall of the central courtyard (cf. T. Özgüç 1950: 133 w. Plan 2B). Landsberger and Balkan (1950: 219) stated that “some distance away” in the courtyard, the excavators also came upon a “commercial archive,” which T. Özgüç (1950: 133) says consisted of “10 to 12 entirely or partially broken tablets and previously shattered and discarded envelopes”. The lentil-shaped economic text is reported by Landsberger and Balkan (1950: 219) to have come from slightly higher up in the fill of the courtyard. The better-preserved copy of the royal inscription (Kt a/k 353) came from a dark patch on the floor next to the oven in the kitchen (Fig. 4, Room 2) located immediately to the north of the courtyard (cf. T. Özgüç 1950: 137 w. Fig. 70, T. Özgüç 1959: 94). It was found alongside a couple of other tablets and a fair amount of kitchenware.16 The likely conclusion is that all three texts had been kept on the first level of the building, and that the collapse of the floor beams

15 Also, Kt a/k 320 is the only incantation tablet from Kültepe that does not make use of word dividers, other than the Lamaštu amulet (No. 2a). Whether this is indicative of skill, length (or nothing at all) is unclear. 16 Additional information appears in T. Özgüç 2003: 88–90. The excavator states that the: “west side of the building consists of two small rooms to one large square room (7 by 7 m). The hearth is at the center of the large room. Tablets were discovered in groups in rooms Nr. 3– 4. Jars filled with wheat stood in room Nr. 3, and the oven and firepot in Nr. 2. Miscellaneous liquids and groceries were carefully and amply stored in a variety of storage vessels. Some of the pithoi were full of wheat.” The plan of the house (which appears unmarked on p. 85) has no room numbers on it, but surely they follow the 1959 publication shown in Fig. 4. N. Özgüç (2001: 148) instead states: “Some of the complete and broken tablets and case fragments [lie] scattered in the courtyard and the kitchen”.

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during the conflagration sent one royal inscription onto the floor of the courtyard in two pieces, caused one to fall directly down into the kitchen, and one to end up higher in the fill. In contrast, most of the commercial texts found in the house were kept in an archival room located in the southeast corner of the building at a level slightly lower than the rest of the house (Fig. 4, Room 3). Along the south wall of this room, which T. Özgüç (1950: 135) calls “the most generous” in terms of tablets, the excavators found texts – apparently still sorted, and perhaps ordered with bullae (his Fig. 132) – as well the discarded remains of envelopes spread throughout the room. No precise record of the find-spots of the individual texts was kept, but importantly, Landsberger and Balkan (1950: 219) report that the two incantations were found here in the archival room, mixed in with the commercial records. Their context is thus different and separate from the school texts found in the opposite end of the house, and it is doubtful whether they should be regarded as educational tools. Their archaeological context instead suggests that they are more likely to be utilitarian – i.e., used by the occupants of the house as part of everyday life. In fact, all incantations tablets coming from Kültepe for which an archaeological provenience is known appear to have been kept in the commercial archives (cf. Fig. 5). This applies to the two incantations from House 56 belonging to Elamma s. Iddin-Suen (Nos. 7 and 8), the amulet from the archive of Šalim-Aššur s. Issu-Arik (No. 2) from House 90), and the two tablets (Nos. 1c and 6) from the archive of House 53 that may have belonged to Irma-Aššur s. Nide-pani. Probably also the tablet carrying the two incantations for birth and against jaundice (Nos. 1a and 5) came from the main archives of House 66 belonging to Šumi-abiya s. Puzur-Ištar, but the quality of archaeological recording in this (and probably most other cases) prevents us from being absolutely certain (cf. Michel 2004: 395). The unpublished commercial archive from Uzua’s house cannot be linked in any way to the school texts, so we have no opportunity to determine whether this individual had any role in teaching. And there is not enough circumstantial evidence at present to prove that the house of Uzua functioned as some kind of school. But it is clear that it (also) functioned as a private house, complete with kitchen, burial chamber, storage and living quarters (T. Özgüç 1950: 151). Hecker (1993: 281) questioned the idea that the building had been used as a school, but this seems mainly to be predicated upon our ideas of what such places should look like. Yet, he is surely correct in pointing out that home schooling would have taken on a special role in this small expatriate and hybrid society. Regardless, the nature of the tablets found in the house of Uzua, and all the other school texts found at Kültepe, could be used to suggest that instruc-

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Fig. 5: Plan of the excavated section of the lower town at Kültepe (from Hertel 2014) with finds pots of the Old Assyrian incantations marked with arrows (cf. Fig. 1 for the house numbers).

tion at Kaneš was conducted differently from contemporary schools e.g., in Nippur, Sippar and Ur in Southern Mesopotamia (Tinney 2011). Not only in terms of volume – which is hardly surprising – but also in terms of curriculum. One manifest difference is the absence of any Sumerian texts from the site. In Babylonian schools the Sumerian language was inextricably linked with education and a main vehicle for passing down tradition. Their presence in the south is ubiquitous. This is not the case at Kültepe, where training instead looks as if it was narrowly focused on practical applicability. This would in some respects correspond to the elementary stages of scribal training in the south (cf. Veldhuis 1997; Robson 2001; Proust 2010: 265), and include the learn-

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ing of signs, business arithmetic and basic legal and administrative phraseology (Michel 2008). It is perhaps telling that the only individual in the Old Assyrian texts who claims to have gone through the scribal curriculum (ṭupšarruttum) by no means seems to have mastered the craft (cf. Kryszat 2008: 232). On the other hand, a really striking feature of the Old Assyrian corpus of texts – as opposed e.g., to the contemporary Old Babylonian one – is its strict physical uniformity and standardized procedures for how to write up, envelop and seal legal documents and letters (Lassen pers. comm.). This by itself suggests a shared teaching template, even if it does not require formalized training. The city of Assur had been under political domination from the south only a few generations prior to the merchant archives of Kültepe, but it is unclear to what extent this left an impression on commercial procedures and technical terminology. Some idiosyncratic writings found in the Old Assyrian texts suggest that signs, which we conventionally transcribe as shorthand sumerograms, such as KÙ.SIG17 = hurāṣum (“gold”), were in fact read and understood as Sumerian proper. One thus finds e.g., the simplified writing “KÙ.KI” for gold,17 which may be indicative of how the word or its signs were sounded out or thought about during writing. In general, though, the Assyrian merchants were seemingly trained in a purely Akkadian linguistic milieu. The situation may be comparable to the one in late Medieval Italy (cf. Chubb and Kelley 2013: 156), where the developing role of traders in civic life meant that merchants not only became important catalysts to the growth of education within the urban environment, but also that they came to play a key role in the increased use of vernacular languages in writing. This by no means excludes familiarity with received tradition. In addition to the various aspects of religion that Assur shared with the cities in the south, close commercial ties linked the city to its downstream neighbors, and the linguistic dialects of Assyrian and Babylonian were about as close as contemporary Irish and American English. Examples of a shared literary culture includes the legend of the Akkadian Sargon found at Kültepe, which presumably represents a local product that belongs to a genre (or a paro-

17 The writing was listed already in Borger’s Zeihenlexicon (AOAT 305) and as an OA variant in the CDA. For a selection of examples from different archives and contexts, cf. CCT 3: 3b: l. 33; CCT 3: 18a l. 12; CCT 3: 23b l. 28; CCT 3: 29 l. 25; CCT 3: 31 l. 22; CCT 3: 45a l. 4; Dalley 11 (RMS 1922.397): 23; OrNS 50: 3 l. 9, 19, 33; OrNS 50: 4, l. 6, 20, 23; Prague I 442: 27; Prague I 447: 3; Prague I 468: 6; Prague I 482: 6’; Prague I 482: 20; Prague I 501: 5; Prague I 580; Prague I 598: 4, 12; Prague I 633: 15, 18; Prague I 723: 23; Prague I 736: 2, 22, 26; WAG 48–1463: 5, 8; Kt 88/k 971: 45, 50; Kt 94/k 952: 16; Kt 94/k 1530: 1’. Note AKT 2: 9 l. 12 w. the typo KU.KI (for KÙ.KI) in the publication, kindly collated by Hakan Erol.

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dy of it, cf. Foster 2002) well-known also in the south. It refers to terms and literary topoi that we can recognize from southern texts (cf. Alster and Oshima 2007). But at the same time, old and new elements are combined so that e.g., issues of direct Assyrian interest in Anatolia seem to be given special prominence. Also the fact that an Assyrian at Kaneš could be named “Gilgameš” (George 2003, I: 78) points to the fact that the merchants were “plugged into” the broader cultural canon. Finally, the letter AKT 6b: 408 quotes a passage known also from the much later classical version of the Gilgamesh Epic vi, 85 (cf. Larsen 2013). It is impossible to decide whether this constitutes a reference to the well-known composition or simply a stock phrase that appears in both contexts. Either way it signals a shared cultural backdrop.

7 Incantations and Daily Life The question of training and literacy at Kültepe raises the question of whether individuals with a comparable basic education produced some of the non-institutional textual corpora coming from Southern Iraq during the Old Babylonian period. The studies by Wilcke (2000) and Charpin (2010) suggests that this was the case and feed directly into the question of the Old Assyrian incantation texts and their primary use context, which will close this discussion. As already stated, all the incantations found at Kültepe seem to have come out of ordinary commercial archives, and not from separate archaeological contexts. As remarked by Veldhuis (1991: 58–59) there is a certain poetry to these texts. Their use of intricate language, mythical allusions, stylistic devices, and semantic creativity may have held an appeal in itself. They might represent keepsakes of some kind, and be a result of the same forces that led Ah-šalim to keep a literary composition about Sargon of Akkade in his archive alongside his 753 commercial records (cf. Günbattı 1998). It seems more likely, however, that the incantation tablets must primarily be understood as utilitarian, everyday objects, which were made for use in concrete situations. In one case (No. 2a) the tablet was even physically shaped as an amulet, surely in order to function as a talisman that could protect or heal an afflicted individual (cf. Wasserman 2002: 181). It seems possible that all the incantations we have were adapted to the specific situation, but due to the character of the Old Assyrian corpus, it is unlikely that we would ever know. The only evidence for any life-changing events would be the presence of the incantations themselves. There is no observable difference between the wealth of those families in whose houses the incantations were found and the other houses in the lower

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town area. And there is nothing to suggest that there was not direct and easy access to the incantations for those who needed them. On the other hand, the fact that all incantations we know of were kept in the (always locked and sealed) commercial archives suggests that their users ascribed some importance or value to them. They were not simply disposed of after use, and were perhaps still considered potent and magical. The end users of the texts are not clear either. By nature, some of them were intended for women. Importantly, this would include Anna-anna, the ethnic Anatolian wife of Ennam-Aššur, or their daughter, who are the two only females known to have resided in the house where Lamaštu-amulet (No. 2a) was found (cf. Larsen 2010). Probably the incantations were considered magically potent across languages and cultural tradition (Michalowski 1992: 310) in Anatolia well as in Mesopotamia, and belong to the same set of shared ritual traditions as the Anatolian “water ordeal” (Larsen 2007). The internal variation between the three birth incantations from Kültepe combined with an apparently high level of literacy in the Assyrian community at Kaneš adds a layer of complexity to the question of who wrote these texts. The internal variation between the three birth incantations could be taken as a sign that most or all of the tablets were imported from Assur at different times.18 But it seems more likely that differences reflect variations in local practice at Kaneš. No matter what, they certainly suggest that there was no single scribe involved in their production, and that there was no “master text” or set of mutually deviating and sometimes flawed “originals” behind them. Their building blocks were drawn from a common pool of tradition, but whether it was oral or written, and who may have been the master of it, is unclear. The number and nature of the mistakes found in manuscript 1b suggest that it was oral. In any case, all three examples display both creativity and adherence to tradition, implying a high degree of flexibility in the performance of magic. One may speculate whether the priests (kumrum) and priestesses (gubabtu), who belonged to the Assyrian community in Anatolia, and who occur with some frequency in the records from Kültepe, could have played a role in private ritual contexts (Erol 2014). Texts also mention female diviners (šā’iltus) and female haruspexes (bāriātum), but there are no references e.g., to exorcists (wāšipum) or other incantation specialists. Also, with one possible exception, all references pertain to individuals who lived in Assur (cf. Barjamovic and

18 I am grateful to Ed Stratford and his team for performing an XRF-scanning of the tablet BIN 4: 126 (NBC 3672) upon my request. Hopefully we will get some sense in the near future of whether this text was written on local Kanešite clay or not.

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Larsen 2008). The one possible mention of a cultic expert in Anatolia is ambiguous, but if read correctly, it refers to “the old woman, the diviner of Kaneš”.19 This would fit into a well-documented pattern of wise women performing household magic (often from a position on the social margins of society), and could even be linked to a local tradition in Anatolia dated to the Old Hittite period that attributes particular incantations to female practitioners, such as “Mallidunna, the old woman of Durmitta” (CTH 403, cf. del Monte 2002) and “Zuwi, the old woman of Durmitta” (CTH 412). It is interesting, and perhaps not coincidental, that all mentions of ritual specialists other that the kumrum-priests in the Old Assyrian corpus refer to women. The observation that the text directed against the Evil Eye (No. 6) and the birth incantation 1c were found in the same house, and seem to have been written in the same hand, could be taken as proof that there was a professional present at Kaneš, whom one could turn to with medical problems. Or one might imagine a situation in which the writing had to be performed by the client herself as part of the ritual act. The defective nature of the birth incantation could simply be a fluke, or it might be taken as indicative of the skills of one local practitioner or client. The presence of several different hands in the corpus of incantation tablets from K might suggest that some of the tablets were imported, and would circulate within the community as the need for them arose. Or it could imply that a fair number of ritual experts were available locally. Taking the general inaccuracy of the texts, the fluctuating skill of handwriting, and the high level of functional literacy in the Assyrian community at Kaneš into consideration, it seems plausible that most of the texts were produced at the site, either by semi-experts, or by their clients, for private needs. Perhaps Wasserman’s (2002) “one-person-two-functions-model” could come into play here, and one may imagine a situation where a certain number of people in the community were considered “knowledgeable” and someone whom you could turn to with magical needs, without all of them necessarily being designated as “experts”. As in many other societies (including the Old Hittite one), some such functions could have been linked to gender. In the end, we do not know who wrote these incantations or exactly why they were committed to clay. But one can make a case that the practice of magic within the community at Kaneš was not restricted to a small group of trained scribes. The records from Kültepe illustrate the use of magic in a highly literate society, where performance and writing could go hand in hand without necessarily involving experts or written compendia. The everyday use of magic

19 ATHE 57, l. 2–3 išti šēbtim šā’ilat Kaneš (following CAD Š/2 392). The passage could equally well be read “the old woman of the goddess of Kaneš” (išti šēbtim ša ilat Kaneš).

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in this remote outpost of Mesopotamian culture may have been different than in Assur, or perhaps the experts and their clients were both equipped with the basic skills in literacy required to administer and make use of these kinds of remedies. Regardless, any fixation on scribes and schools is pushed into the background by the nexus of text and context. The spatial distribution of the incantation tablets in the lower town settlement at Kültepe suggests that these were common objects and formed a part of everyday life. “Folksy or erudite”, and “oral or written” to some extent become immaterial in the study of the close social context of the Assyrian community at Kaneš.

Appendix 1 The Three Birth-Incantations from Kültepe Incantation 1a (Kt 90/k 178)  1

 5

10

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ar-hu-um a-ra-ah a-ra-ah-tum ar-ha-at ar-hi-iš : ta-ri-i : ar-hi-iš tù-lá-ad ar-hi-iš : i-lu-ku ma-ú i-pí-ša : i-na a-pí-ša : qá-qá-ra-am : té-sú-uq? i-zi-bi-tí-ša : ta-ša-bi-iṭ bé-tám ma-na-mì : lá-áš-pur ú lu-wa-e-er a-me-er-ú-at ša-sú-ra-tim 7 ù 7-ma : ma-re-ki-na ù ta-áp-šu-kà-té-ki-na li-qí-a-nim-ma : ba-áb a-ra-ah-tim ha-ba-tum hu-ub-ta : šu-ma : za-kàr e-tù-da-ni šu-ma sí-ni-ša-at ša-pá-ra-ni šu-ma : sà-ak-pu-um : sà-ki-ip i-li-šu : li-ší-lá-ma : k[i? ]-i ṣa-ru-ú : ki-ra-nim : li-i[m-q]ú-tám qá-qá-ar-šu : ší-ip-tu[m] lá i-a-tum ší-pá-at Ni-ki-l[i-im] be-el ší-pá-tim ù be-el tí-i-i[m] be-lá-at ša-sú-ra-tim l[i-dí]

Cow, oh cow! Canal, oh canal! Quickly she becomes pregnant. Quickly she gives birth. Quickly run the waters of her mouth. With her nose she draws on the ground. With her tail she sweeps the house. Whom shall I send with instructions? To the daughters of “the birth goddesses” – seven and seven (saying): “Bring along your spades and your baskets and open up the canal gate”! If it is male, like a ram lamb; if it is female, like a wild calf; if it is stillborn, may it slither forth like one who is rejected by his god; like a snake of the vineyard may it drop onto the ground. This incantation is not mine, it is the incantation of Nin-kilim, the lord of incantations and the master of spells. May the “Lady of the birth goddesses recite!

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Incantation 1b (CCT 5.50e)  1′ [i-n]a ˹a-pí˺-[ša] [q]á-qá-ra-am ˹: té˺-[sú-uq? ] ˹i˺-na dí-im-a-té-š[a] ta-sà-ra-aq  5′ É-tám : ma-na-ša-/am la-áš-pu-ur ma-na-ša-am lu-e-e-er a-na ma-ru-˹a˺-[a]t 10′ Ša-˹su˺-ur ˹7˺ ù 7-ma : ma-re-ki-/na ta-áp-šu-kà-té-ki-na [l]i-qí-a-ni-ma [x] x x dí : ga […]

With [her] nose she [draws? ] on the ground. With her tears she steeps the house. Whom shall I send? Whom shall I instruct? to the daughters of Šassur – seven and seven – (saying): “Bring along your spades and your baskets”. …

Incantation 1c (Kt 94/ 429)  1 ar-hu-um : a-ra-ah-tum ar-hi-iš : ta-ri-i [ar-h]i-iš : tù-la-ad ˹ar˺-hi-iš : (x?)-ma-id  5 ma-ú : pu-˹x-x-ša˺ a-ma-ni-mì : la-áš!?-pu-ur a-ma-nim lu-wa-i-ir a-na ma-ru-a-at ša-sú-ra-tim 10 7 ú 7-ma ma-re-ki-na-mì ú ta-áp-šu-kà-té-ki-na li-qí-a-nim ˹ha x (x)˺ x-ha-am 15 SIG5-a-tám šu-ul-ha-nim šu-ma : z[a-k]à-ar e-tù-dá-ni : šu-ma : [s]í-ni-ša-at

Cow! Canal! Quickly she becomes pregnant. Quickly she gives birth. Quickly … Water is her … To whom shall I send, to whom shall I instruct, to the daughters of “the birth goddesses” – seven and seven (saying): “Bring along your spades and your baskets” … Pull out the good? … If it is male, like a ram lamb, if it is female,

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20 ša-pá-ra-ni li-ší-lam i-na ṣé-er ki-ra-nim : ki-i : ŠE.GIG a-ša-ar-šu li-iṣ-ba-at

like a wild calf, let it slither forth. May it take its place like barley on top of the vineyard.20 Five lines badly broken …

20 This apparently non-sensical passage is discussed in the main text of the article. Apparently the author mistook the Babylonian word ṣerrum: ‘snake’ as part of the common (Assyrian) preposition i(na) ṣēr.

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Appendix 2 Images of Incantation Texts from Kültepe

Incantations No. 1a and 5 (Kt 90/k 178).21

Incantation No. 2a (Kt 94/ k 821).

Incantation No. 1b (CCT 5, 50e).

Incantation No. 1c (Kt 94/ k 429).

Incantation No. 2b (BIN 4, 126).

21 I am grateful to Hakan Erol, Jeanette Fincke, Ulla Kasten, Bert Kouwenberg, Fikri Kulakoğlu and Cécile Michel for allowing me to use their images.

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Incantation No. 3 (Kt a/k 611).

Incantation No. 4 (Kt a/k 320).

Incantation No. 6. (Kt 94/k 520).

Lentil-shaped school text (Kt a/k 178) obverse and reverse.

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Good hand, bad hand: Anatolian marriage contract (Kt k/k 1) and the Old Assyrian Sargon Legend (Kt j/k 98).

Same house, same hand? Kt 94/k 429 and Kt 94/k 520 side-by-side. Note the characteristic elevated dividers.

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Expenses on the road. Note the large stone embedded in the clay in line 4, which the author wrote around (Kt 94/k 509).

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Wiggerman, F. A. M. 2000. Chapter X, Lamaštu, Daugther of Anu. A Profile. Pp. 217–49 in Birth in Babylonia and the Bible: Its Mediterranean Setting, Marten Stol. Cuneiform Monographs 14. Groningen: Styx Publications. Wilcke, Claus. 2000. Wer las und schrieb in Babylonien und Assyrien. Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Philosophisch-historische Klasse. 2000/6. München: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Yosihda, Daisuke. 2002. Ein altassyrischer Text aus Kaman-Kalehöyük. Pp. 133–38 in Anatolian Archaeological Studies 11. Kaman-Kalehöyük 11. Tokyo: Middle East Culture Center in Japan.

Paul Delnero, The Johns Hopkins University

4 Texts and Performance The Materiality and Function of the Sumerian Liturgical Corpus

1 Introduction One question that is frequently raised about literary compositions from the ancient world is whether they circulated orally before being put into writing, and if they did emerge from an oral tradition, how similar the content of the oral and written versions of individual works would have been, if there was a direct relationship between the two versions.1 While being of central importance to studies of texts like the Homeric Epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, this question pertains equally to Sumerian literary compositions, which, without exception, are known entirely from written copies that provide little evidence for what role, if any, orality might have played in the transmission of these works. When the question of the oral history of Sumerian literature is posed, it tends to proceed from the assumption that the written versions of Sumerian versions were fixed and stable, in contrast to the hypothetical oral versions of these texts, whose content presumably would have been more fluid.2 As reasonable as this assumption might seem, however, it is very difficult to sub-

1 References to orality and the hypothetical role it might have played in shaping the content of Sumerian literary compositions can be found in the introductions to many editions of specific texts. Beyond noting the difficulties of identifying how orality might have influenced the transmission of these compositions, however, many of the references appear without extended discussion of the difficulties involved and possible methodologies for approaching them. Significant exceptions include (but are not limited to) the more detailed discussions of the role of orality in the transmission of Sumerian literary texts in Alster (1972), Cooper (1981), and the contributions by Alster, Michalowski, Cooper, and Vanstiphout in Vogelzang and Vanstiphout (1992). For a further discussion of the difficulties associated with identifying the influence of orality on the transmission of Sumerian literary compositions, see also Delnero 2012: 9–10 and 92–95. 2 An important exception to the assumption that written and oral versions of compositions circulated more or less independently is Civil (1999: 189), who observed: “The existence side by side of a long, living version and a short written one would create a constant feeding and counterfeeding of textual variants. Without getting into details, it is easy to see how this could complicate in unexpected, and undetectable ways the genealogy of manuscripts.”

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stantiate on the basis of the content of the surviving written sources, which nearly all date to the same period, and in many instances were compiled centuries later than the texts they contain were originally composed.3 Since in many instances the content of the compositions in these later copies has undergone an extensive process of revision, modernization, and standardization that has left little trace of what the content of the original version might have been, it is not possible to determine what changes may have been introduced since the time the texts were first written.4 Without being able to identify how and to what degree the content of the written versions of Sumerian literary works changed over time, it is even more difficult to identify changes that might have occurred at different stages in the oral transmission of the same texts in order to determine whether the oral versions of these compositions were as unstable as is generally assumed. Another, even more problematic aspect of the assumption that written versions of Sumerian literary works were more stable than their oral counterparts is that it typically presupposes a linear development in which the less stable oral version of a text was replaced at a later stage by a more stable written version, which circulated independently and was no longer influenced by the prior or subsequent oral transmission of the composition. Apart from it being unlikely that Sumerian literary compositions came into being as a result of a seamless, unidirectional evolution from oral to written, assuming that the texts evolved from unstable oral versions into more stable written versions fails to take into account another equally essential aspect of the relationship between oral and written texts: namely, the ways in which the written version of a text might have shaped and influenced the content of the oral version of the same composition after it had already been put into writing. To address the overlooked possibility that written sources may have influenced the oral transmission of Sumerian literary works, just as much as, if not more than the written content of these compositions was shaped by the oral tradition from which they emerged, this paper will examine one group of texts that seem to have been copied primarily to aid in the oral performance of these works, and only secondarily as a means of preserving the compositions in written form. The group of compositions that that will be examined is the corpus of Old Babylonian Balags and Ershemmas, and a group of phonetically written sources within this corpus, which appears to have had a clear performative function.

3 For the date and distribution of the sources for Sumerian literary compositions see Delnero 2012: 61–84, with references to additional literature. 4 For a more detailed discussion of the changes that occurred in the written versions of Sumerian literary compostions over time see, in particular, Delnero 2012: 85–104.

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2 Lamentational Liturgies and Sumerian Literary Compositions During the Old Babylonian Period (ca. 2000–1595 BCE), nearly the entire known corpus of Sumerian literature was copied, and almost all of the preserved copies of Sumerian literary works date to this time. The types of Sumerian literary compositions that were copied during the Old Babylonian Period can be divided into at least two groups: a group of texts that were copied by apprentice scribes as part of their training and another group that was performed during cultic rituals. The compositions in the first group, which will be referred to as curricular texts, comprise all of the well known literary narratives, including the cycles of tales about the legendary kings of Uruk, Gilgamesh and Enmerkar (such as Gilgamesh and Huwawa; Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld; and Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta); the debate poems and diatribes (such as The Debate Between Hoe and Plow; The Debate Between Bird and Fish; and The Dialogue Between Two Scribes); and numerous hymns to deities (such as Enlil Hymn A and Nungal Hymn A), rulers (such as Šulgi A; Lipit-Eštar A; and Iddin-Dagan A), and temples (such as The Keš Temple Hymn and The Collection of Sumerian Temple Hymns). The texts in the group of liturgical texts, on the other hand, include hymnic texts identified in subscripts as adab, tigi, and šir3-gid2-da songs and laments identified with the rubrics balaĝ and er2-sem5-ma. In a recent study, Tinney (2011) outlined the distinguishing features of the compositions in the groups of curricular texts and liturgical texts and approximated the number of compositions in each group. One of the main differences Tinney observed between texts of the two types is in the quantity and distribution of duplicates. Using Miguel Civil’s unpublished catalogue of Sumerian literary sources, as well as his own list of liturgical sources, Tinney estimated that there are approximately 6,000 Old Babylonian tablets containing Sumerian literary works and an additional 700 tablets containing liturgical texts. Among the group of 6,000 literary sources, he identified 550 individual compositions, of which 175 can be classified as curricular. In addition, he noted that as many as 5,000 of these sources are from Nippur, the main scribal center in Mesopotamia at the time, and that 3,580 or 60 percent of the sources are for texts identified as curricular compositions. In contrast, the remaining texts, which Tinney labeled “hymnic liturgies”, occur on 377 tablets, only 50 of which are from Nippur. Most notably, however, the tablets in this group contain as many as 243 distinct compositions, yielding a ratio of 1.5 sources per text, a ratio which is substantially smaller than the ratio of 22 sources per text ob-

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served for curricular compositions. From these figures it can be concluded that Sumerian curricular texts comprise a relatively small group of compositions preserved on a disproportionately large number of duplicates, nearly 90 percent of which are from Nippur, and can be distinguished on these grounds from liturgical texts, which comprise a proportionally larger group of texts preserved on a much smaller number of duplicates of which only 10 percent are from Nippur. As striking as these differences are, the criteria for distinguishing curricular and liturgical texts can be developed even further. In addition to the large number of duplicates, the quantity of copies coming from Nippur, and the ratio of sources to compositions, at least four more characteristic features of curricular texts can be identified. One of these is the existence of sources from a private house at Nippur known as “House F”, where numerous scribal exercise tablets were discovered.5 Another is the occurrence of the compositions in inventories listing only other curricular texts.6 A third feature is the almost complete absence of performative rubrics and subscripts, which, with a few exceptions, occur exclusively in liturgical compositions. Lastly, a substantial number of curricular texts end with doxologies in which the names of the deity, pair of deities, or ruler venerated in the text are qualified with the verbal phrase za3mi2 “be praised”, a doxology which is almost never attested in non-curricular literary compositions. Working with a similar data set and excluding the texts Tinney classified as laments, I counted a total of 389 compositions which can be considered Sumerian literary texts. When all of the distinguishing features are taken into account, 106 texts in this group are securely identifiable as curricular compositions. Among these texts, 46 are preserved in more than 20 sources, 40 are preserved in 5 to 20 sources, and of the 21 remaining texts with less than five sources, only seven are preserved in only one source. Furthermore, 52 of the 106 texts are attested in duplicates from House F; at least 69 of the 96 texts whose incipits are known occur in inventories listing curricular compositions; 43 of the 84 texts whose endings are not broken have za3-mi2-doxologies; and only 10 texts have performative rubrics or subscripts.7 Since all of the composi-

5 For the compositions and exercises found in House F at Nippur and their significance for reconstructing the scribal curriculum at Nippur during the Old Babylonian Period see Robson 2001. 6 For Old Babylonion inventories or “catalogues” listing the incipits of Sumerian literary works as evidence for the sequence of the Old Babylonian scribal curriculum, see most recently Delnero 2010, with references to previous literature. 7 The 10 compositions with subscripts comprise the five city laments (Ur Lament; Lamentation Over Sumer and Ur; Nippur Lament; Eridu Lament; and Uruk Lament), which have ki-ru-

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tions in this group possess more than one, and frequently all of the diagnostic features of curricular texts, they can be distinguished with certainty from the other 283 literary compositions which do not have these characteristics. Among the group of 106 compositions identified as curricular texts, there are 52 texts which have 20 or more sources and at least two more of the above-mentioned features that distinguish curricular from hymnic and lamentational liturgies. Because these 52 texts were frequently copied as scribal exercises, as evidenced by the large quantity of duplicates for each text, the texts in this group can be considered “core curricular compositions”. The texts that have been identified as “core curricular compositions” on the basis of these criteria comprise the following texts: 1. Šulgi A; 2. Šulgi B; 3. Šulgi C; 4. Iddin-Dagan A; 5. Išme-Dagan A+V; 6. Lipit-Eštar A; 7. Lipit-Eštar B; 8. Enlil Hymn A; 9. Exaltation of Inana (Inana Hymn B); 10. Innin-Šagura (Inana Hymn C); 11. Nanše Hymn A; 12. Nungal Hymn A; 13. The Collection of Sumerian Temple Hymns; 14. Enki and the World Order; 15. Enki’s Journey to Nippur; 16. Enlil and Ninlil; 17. Enlil and Sud; 18. Inana and Ebih; 19. Inana’s Descent to the Netherworld; 20. Dumuzi’s Dream; 21. Ninurta’s Return to Nippur (Angim); 22. The Deeds and Exploits of Ninurta (Lugale); 23. Gilgamesh and Agga; 24. Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven; 25. Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld; 26. Gilgamesh and Huwawa (Version A); 27. Lugalbanda and the Mountain Cave; 28. Lugalbanda and the Anzu Bird; 29. Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta; 30. Enmerkar and Ensuhkeshdana; 31. The Curse of Agade; 32. Ur Lament; 33. Lamentation Over Sumer and Ur; 34. Nippur Lament; 35. Uruk Lament; 36. Schooldays (Edubba A); 37. Father and Son (Edubba B); 38. Superviser and Scribe (Edubba C); 39. Debate Between Hoe and Plow; 40. Debate Between Grain and Sheep; 41. Debate Between Summer and Winter; 42. Debate Between Bird and Fish; 43. Debate Between Tree and Reed; 44. Dialogue Between Two Scribes (Dialogue 1); 45. Enkitalu and Enkihegal (Dialogue 2); 46. Enkimansum and Giriniisag (Dialogue 3); 47. Dialogue Between Two Women B (Dialogue 5); 48. Song of the Hoe; 49. The Instructions of Šuruppak; 50. The Farmer’s Instructions; 51. The Keš Temple Hymn; 52. Nanna’s Journey to Nippur

gu2 and ĝiš-gi4-ĝal2 subscripts; Iddin-Dagan A (identified with the rubric, šir3-nam-ur-saĝ); Dumuzi’s Dream (identified with the rubric, šir3-kal-kal); Ninurta’s Return to Nippur (identified with the rubric, šir3-gid2-da); Man and His God (identified with the rubric er2-ša3-neša4); and The Keš Temple Hymn (in which the invididual sections of the composition are numbered with the subscript e2-#-kam “it is the # house”). Although the occurrence of rubrics and subscripts in these compositions is exceptional, the occurrence of some of the same rubrics in compositions that had a clear performative function (see below), is a clear indication that at least some of the Old Babylonian “curricular compositions” had once been, or continued to be performed before, or at the same time, as they were integrated into the scribal curricula of the period. This is particularly clear in the case of the city laments, which are not only similar in content and structure to balaĝ-laments, but also have the rubric ki-ru-gu2, a rubric with a clear performative function, which is also used to label the individual sections of balaĝ-laments.

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Having outlined the distinguishing features of curricular literary compositions, it becomes easier to identify texts that belong to the other main group of Sumerian literary works, the corpus of Sumerian liturgical texts. In determining the aspects that set the group of liturgical texts apart from the group of curricular literary texts it is useful to follow Tinney (2011: 585) in dividing the corpus of liturgical texts into two further groups, which he labels “hymnic liturgies” and “lamentational liturgies”. Although the texts of both types were all clearly intended for performance, there are a number of significant differences between the compositions identified as hymnic and lamentational liturgies which justify considering them to belong to two distinct groups. The first group, hymnic liturgies, consists mainly of hymns to rulers or deities, which are typically written in the normal dialect of Sumerian, except in passages in which a female deity is speaking. Many of these compositions have subscripts in which they are identified with the Sumerian terms adab, tigi, or bal-bal-e; and another, smaller group, have subscripts identifying them with different terms including šir3-nam-šub, šir3-gid2-da, u3-a-di, and kun-ĝar. All of the subscripts in the first and larger group are performative and refer either to the instrument that was played in accompaniment to the text during performance, or to the manner in which the text was intended to be performed.8 The words adab and tigi denote types of drums; and though the meaning of bal-bal-e is still disputed, the occurrence of the word in the subscripts of texts with dialogues seems to suggest that it is associated with a Sumerian verb similar in meaning to inim– bal, which means “to exchange words” or “to converse”. Moreover, adab and tigi compositions very frequently contain rubrics within the body of the text with the additional terms ĝiš-gi4-ĝal2, sa-ĝar-ra, and sa-gid2-da, the latter of which is sometimes subdivided into sections labeled bar-sud and ša3-baTUKU. Although the exact meanings of these rubrics continue to be debated, it is probable that they are also performative. Similarly, the term ĝiš-gi4-ĝal2 has now been shown by Mirelman and Sallaberger (2010) to mean “response”, and indicates the lines a chorus is to sing in response to a passage sung by another singer. Lastly, while the meanings of sa-gid2-da, sa-ĝar-ra, ša3-baTUKU and bar-sud are less certain, the occurrence of the word sa or “string”

8 The meanings and performative connotations of all of the rubrics and subscripts discussed in this section and throughout the article have been discussed in detail most recently by Shehata (2009: 247–306), which includes references to the extensive previous literature on the individual rubrics and subscripts. Earlier, but equally comprehensive studies of the performative function and meaning of many of the same rubrics and subscripts, with similar, but in some instances divergent interpretations, include Wilcke (1975) and the classic study of Mesopotamian music and musical terminology by Hartmann (1960).

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in the former two terms could indicate that these sections were meant to be accompanied by string instruments. Whereas the elements ša3 and bar in the latter two terms, which can mean both “middle” or “heart” and “outside” or “liver” respectively, may refer to either the place on the instrument where the accompanying music was to be performed or to the seat of the emotion the music was intended to evoke. In contrast to hymnic liturgies, the texts that can be categorized as lamentational liturgies are characterized by the consistent use of the Emesal dialect and content in which the mournful themes of destruction and loss are central. The two main types of lamentational liturgies are identified in subscripts with the Sumerian terms balaĝ and er2-sem5-ma, both of which contain the names of the musical instruments which probably accompanied the performance of these types of compositions. Additionally, compositions identified with the rubric balaĝ typically contain sections labeled with ki-ru-gu2, and frequently conclude with the rubric ki-šu2, a term that seems to mean “place of covering”, which has been argued by Wilcke (1975: 261) to refer to the place when or where the balaĝ-instrument is covered at the end of the performance of the composition. The occurrence of terms that refer directly to different aspects of performance in copies of lamentational liturgies, are clear indications that the texts in this group, like hymnic liturgies which also contain performative rubrics and subscripts, were intended to be performed. However, even though both types of texts had a performative function, there are also a number of critical differences which distinguish lamentational liturgies from hymnic liturgies. One is that lamentational liturgies had a different cultic function, and were performed by a class of cultic officials known as gala-priests in rituals which were intended to appease the gods or avert their anger. Another crucial difference, which pertains directly to the question considered in this study, is that lamentational liturgies, at least in the Old Babylonian Period, seem to have belonged less to a fixed written tradition, than to one that was predominantly oriented toward oral performance. To illustrate this, the remainder of the paper will focus on the social and cultural contexts in which lamentational liturgies were copied and performed, and the extent to which one group of phonetically written sources within this corpus contributed to the shaping of the oral versions of the laments that were sung and recited.

3 Lamentational Liturgies and Performance The compositions that can be classified as lamentational liturgies comprise two main types of texts, which are identified with the Sumerian terms balaĝ and

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er2-sem5-ma. Balags and Ershemmas share a number of characteristic features which indicate that they were considered to belong to a distinct group at the time they were copied and performed. Thematically, compositions of both types contain laments concerning the destruction of cities and the abandonment of temples or shrines, or in some instances, particularly in Ershemmas, the separation of Dumuzi from his spouse Inana when he is seized by the gal5la2-demons and taken to the netherworld. Functionally, it can be deduced from the content of Balags and Ershemmas, which evoke the terrifying power of the gods and lament its destructive consequences, that these laments were performed to appease or avert divine anger. The active use of lamentational liturgies in performance is equally evident from the meaning of the Sumerian terms used to identify them, which occur in colophons and subscripts at the end of sources containing the texts as well as in catalogues or lists in which individual compositions of each type are listed together. The Sumerian word balaĝ, which is either a drum or a harp,9 and the expression er2-sem5-ma, which means “lament of the sem5-drum”,10 refer to the musical instruments that were played when the compositions identified with these terms were performed. Furthermore, Balags and Ershemmas are composed in Emesal, a distinct register of the Sumerian language which is used in writing the direct speech of female deities, and otherwise almost exclusively in texts of these two types.11 The composing of Balags and Ershemmas in Emesal, a form of Sumerian which is known to have been the domain of cultic officials identified as gala-priests, seems to indicate that these texts were performed by gala-officials during cultic rituals intended to prevent or avert the anger of the gods.12 9 There seems to be an emerging consensus in recent literature on the subject to identify the balaĝ-instrument with a drum; see, among others, Shehata 2009: 72–74 and Michalowski 2009: 221. However, it has also been argued, more recently by Gabbay (2014: 92–102), and earlier by Hartmann (1960: 55), that the term balaĝ originally referred to a stringed instrument like the harp. For additional references to the interpretation of this instrument see Löhnert 2009: 5 n. 21 and the extensive discussion of the musical instruments associated with laments in Gabbay 2014: 81–154. 10 For this interpretation of the term er2-sem5-ma see Löhnert 2009: 5 and Shehata 2009: 72 with n. 378, which includes references to previous literature. 11 For an extensive overview of the linguistic classification of the Emesal dialect and its use in the composition and performance of Sumerian liturgical hymns see, in particular, Schretter 1990. 12 Löhnert (2011: 413–14) summarizes the cultic functions of Balags at the end of the third millennium BCE as follows: “Contexts for the performance of lamentations include instances of the gods leaving their temples during agricultural ceremonies and royal visits, the gods' bathing rites, mourning rituals on the occasion of the death of rulers, priests, priestesses, and other respected individuals, and ceremonies at the time of the new moon. All these occasions bore an inherent risk that the gods would leave and not return – for instance, because a divine statue might become lost or damaged during a procession or the sun or moon might not be-

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Balags and Ershemmas, which were performed regularly until the Seleucid Period at the end of the first millennium BCE, are attested for the first time at the beginning of the second millennium, during the Old Babylonian Period. While both types of texts are composed in Emesal and are thematically similar, Balags contain multiple sections, which are identified in rubrics with the Sumerian term ki-ru-gu2 or simply with a single dividing line on the tablet (without an accompanying rubric) to mark the beginning of a new section; in contrast to Ershemmas, which, without exception, consist only of a single section. At present there are 463 Old Babylonian tablets that can be identified as lamentational liturgies, but the number is likely to grow as further unpublished tablets in museums are identified as laments or new texts are discovered.13 On the basis of colophons that explicitly identify the tablets as Balags or Ershemmas, and the occurrence of separate sections marked with ki-ru-gu2-notation or dividing lines, which distinguish Balags from Ershemmas, 149 of these sources (or approximately 32 percent) can be identified as Balags and 50 (or approximately 11 percent) can be identified as Ershemmas, leaving 264, or over half, which are almost certainly lamentational liturgies, but lack the distinguishing features needed to identify them as either Balags or Ershemmas. Of the 463 tablets containing Balags and Ershemmas, 264 sources – which include 10 sources in the Yale Babylonian Collection in New Haven, 82 sources in the British Museum in London, 129 sources in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin, 13 sources in the Louvre in Paris, 9 sources in the University Museum in Philadelphia, and 21 sources from other collections – probably come from Sippar and in some instances, possibly also Larsa. Of the relatively few tablets from known proveniences, the majority are from Kiš (98 sources) and Nippur (83 sources), and the remainder are from Šaduppum in the Diyala region (7

come visible again after an eclipse – and thereby endanger or upset the existing world order.” The logical conclusion that can be deduced from this list of uses – namely that laments were performed to appease deities to ensure that the cosmic order was kept in balance – has been stated explicitly (among others) by Krecher (1966: 40–41) and Cohen (1974: 15 and 1988: 21). Although, as these and other authors have noted, the function of Balags was undoubtedly complex (as well as subject to change over time) and by no means limited to divine appeasement, the unambiguous references to the usage of Balags (in many, if not all instances) in contexts directly associated with grieving or threats to the cosmic order, together with the frequent appeals to deities in Balags and other laments to turn back their anger, leave little doubt that at least one of the functions of these texts was divine appeasement. For an extensive and conclusive presentation of the evidence that the primary function of laments was to appease deities, see now Gabbay 2014. 13 The figures cited in this section are drawn from a catalogue of all the published and unpublished Old Babylonian lamentational liturgies known to and compiled by the author.

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sources), Girsu (6 sources), Uruk (3 sources), Meturan (1 source), and Susa (1 source). In addition, approximately 15 liturgical texts (not included in the total of 463 laments because they remain unpublished) were found in a merchant’s house at Larsa.14 The concentration of sources containing laments at sites like Kiš and Sippar, which are both located in northern Mesopotamia, might indicate that in contrast to curricular Sumerian literary compositions, which were found primarily at southern Mesopotamian cities like Nippur and Ur, laments were performed more regularly in the north of Mesopotamia than the south. But since a substantial number of laments (approximately 42 percent of the laments from known proveniences) are from Nippur, and were also found in smaller numbers at southern Mesopotamian cities such as Girsu, Uruk, and Larsa, the liturgical tradition was clearly not confined to the north, and the presence of fewer tablets in the south may simply be due to the accident of discovery as opposed to regional differences in the use of these compositions. One of the characteristic features of Balags and Ershemmas that distinguishes them from the Sumerian curricular literary compositions, which were also copied extensively during the Old Babylonian Period, is that unlike curricular literary texts, which were copied by apprentice scribes as part of their training to read and write Sumerian, and were probably not known or used (at least in the form in which they are preserved in the surviving duplicates) beyond the small circles of scribes who compiled the copies, lamentational liturgies were actively performed and were not bound to a static written tradition. Although the evidence for how, why, and when Balags and Ershemmas were performed in cultic rituals is much more abundant for the first millennium (for the cultic use of laments during the first millennium, see now Gabbay 2014: 155–92), there are numerous indications that these laments also had a performative function during the Old Babylonian Period. The most direct evidence that Balags and Ershemmas were performed during this period is a text from Mari, a city on the Middle Euphrates, which contains a description of a ritual to the goddess Ishtar which included a performance of the Balag Uruamairabi and an Ershemma to the god Enlil.15 During this ritual, which was performed in the evening and on the morning of the first day of the ninth month, a harp (or drum), which was personified as a divinity and given the name Ninigizibara

14 See Charpin 2003 for a description of this group of texts and a discussion of its archaeological context. These texts and the evidence they provide for the contexts in which laments were copied during the Old Babylonian has been discussed more recently by Löhnert (2009: 80). 15 For the original edition of this text see Durand and Guichard 1997, and Ziegler 2007: 55–64 for a more recent interpretation. The use of Uruamairabi in the Mari Ishtar ritual is also discussed by Löhnert (2009: 63–67).

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(written dnin-gi-zi-ip-pa-ra in the ritual), was installed in Ishtar’s temple in front of an image of the goddess. A group of musicians was seated to the right of the instrument and to the left were gala-priests (Akkadian kalû), the cultic officials known to have been solely responsible for the performance of Balags and Ershemmas during this period. The text then describes how at different points during the ritual the gala-priests sung different sections, or ki-ru-gu2s, of the Balag Uruamairabi, a lengthy composition with as many as 33 sections,16 which is preserved in Old Babylonian sources from Kiš, Meturan, Sippar, Susa, and other locations, indicating that the same text was also performed throughout Mesopotamia during this period.17 The different sections of the composition are identified in the text by the beginning of the first line, or incipit, of each section of the composition along with the time during the ritual when they were performed. Three of the four incipits that are identified in the ritual correspond directly to the incipits of different sections of Uruamairabi in the preserved Old Babylonian sources for the composition.18 The section identified in the text with the incipit ĝa2-e u2-re-men2 (= me-e ur-re-men3), which according to the ritual was sung at the moment the musicians set out on a procession (Akk. lismu), corresponds to the incipit for the fifth section of Uruamairabi.19 Similarly, the incipits of the sections identified as gi-ni gi-ni (= gi4-in-e gi4in-e) and mu-gi-im mu-gi-im (= mu-gi17-ib mu-gi17-ib), which were performed at the moments before the assembly is purified and before the high priest (šangûm = Sumerian sanga) made libations to Ishtar, are identical to the incipits of later sections of the composition.20 Furthermore, between the 16 This estimate is based on the numbering of the preserved kirugus in H 2, an Old Babylonian source from Meturan containing sections from Uruamairabi. See Volk 1989 for a partial edition and discussion of this source and its relation to the 1 st millennium version of the composition. 17 A complete edition of the Old Babylonian and first millennium versions of Uruamairabi based on a preliminarly list of sources was published by Cohen (1988: 536–603), with important corrections and additions by Cavigneaux (1993: 254–57). A revised list of sources for both versions of the text was published by Volk (1989: 5–8) together with a new edition of tablets 18–21 of the first millennium version of the composition, and the sections of the Old Babylonian source H2 (cited above), which correspond to these tablets. A new edition of the first five kirugus of Uruamairabi as preserved in the source NCBT 688 is being prepared by the author and will appear in a forthcoming book on the subject of lamenting during the Old Babylonian Period. 18 For the first identification of these incipits see Cavigneaux 1998. 19 This incipit is preserved in Sb 12436, a source from Susa, where it occurs as a catch-line following the end of the fifth section of Uruamairabi, indicating that this incipit corresponds to the beginning of the sixth kirugu of the composition. 20 As noted by Cavigneaux (1998), the incipit gi4-in-e gi4-in-e corresponds to the beginning of the 23 rd kirugu of the text as it is preserved in H 2 and mu-gi17-ib mu-gi17-ib corresponds to the beginning of the 33 rd kirugu in the same source.

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performance of two of the sections of Uruamairabi an Ershemma to the god Enlil with the incipit an-nu-wa-še21 was sung by a single gala-priest to the accompaniment of a large halhallu-drum, confirming that the practice of pairing Balags and Ershemmas as it is known from the first millennium was also already being done as early as the Old Babylonian Period. In addition to the Mari ritual, another indication that Balags and Ershemmas were intended to be performed and that the performance of these texts was not limited to Mari, but occurred throughout Mesopotamia during the time when the Mari ritual was performed is the extensive documentation for the activities of gala-priests in texts from many different Mesopotamian sites dating to this period.22 Although the association between gala-priests and the performance of laments is known primarily from first millennium sources, there are numerous indirect indications that Balags and Ershemmas were also performed by these officials in the Old Babylonian Period. The figure of the gala is associated with liminality and the crossing of borders in many Sumerian texts, including the Sumerian literary narrative, Inana’s Descent to the Netherworld, in which the god Enki creates a liminal entity called the gala-tur explicitly for the purpose of crossing the threshold at the entrance to the netherworld to rescue Inana. In a discussion of the liminal status of galas, Shehata (2009: 66–72) connected the liminality of galas in texts like Inana’s Descent, with the liminal functions of gala-priests, who acted as intermediaries to prevent the gods from visiting their wrath on people and their cities. Tracing the textual evidence for gala-priests and tracing the development the tradition of performing laments back to as early as the late Early Dynastic Period (ca. 2500–2350 BCE), Cooper (2006: 44–45) goes as far as to argue that because galas were originally responsible for performing functions, like lamenting at funerals, which were traditionally carried out by women, and even sung in Emesal, a

21 Cavigneaux (1998) suggests that this incipit is to be interpreted as am nu2-a-še3, the beginning of an otherwise unknown Ershemma to Enlil. In support of this interpretation it can be noted that the image of Enlil as a bull who lies down occurs frequently in Sumerian laments and would be an appropriate beginning to a lament to Enlil. For this image, compare in particular the beginning of the 12 th kirugu of the Balag to Enlil, Oh Angry Sea, as it is preserved in YBC 4659 obv. 67–68, which read: am nu2-de3 de3-en-zi-zi // dmu-ul-lil2 nu2-de3 de3-en-zizi “May the bull who is lying down rise up! // May Enlil who is lying down rise up!”. 22 The function and professional responsibilities of gala-priests are discussed in extensive detail in Shehata (2009: 55–93 and 117–222), which includes an exceptionally valuable synthesis of the activities of specific gala-priests in different Mesopotamian cities, drawn primarily from Old Babylonian administrative sources. Additional literature on the status and professional responsibilities of gala-priests include Gabbay (2008), Löhnert (2009: 78–82), Cooper (2006), and Michalowski (2006).

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dialect associated with female speech, their liminal statues was expressed in part through the ambiguity of their gender as males who possessed feminine attributes.23 While the gala-priests are only directly associated with performing laments in the Mari Ritual, since their liminal attributes, and particularly their association with Emesal, would accord well with the function of Balags and Ershemmas, which would have been performed by human intermediaries, like the galas, who sang in Emesal to appease and avert the anger of the gods, it seems probable that gala-priests were the cultic officials solely responsible for singing these types of laments in the Old Babylonian Period, just as they were in the first millennium. Once it has been established that one of the principle duties of the cultic officials known as galas was to perform lamentational liturgies, the extent to which Balags and Ershemmas were performed throughout Mesopotamia during the Old Babylonian Period can be estimated from the number and distribution of administrative records documenting their activities. In a study of the administrative documents pertaining to gala-officials from the period, Shehata (2009: 58) was able to show that there was one head gala-priest, or gala-mah-official, associated with every temple devoted to the main city god in every important cultic center in Mesopotamia. The officials identified as gala-mahs had a wide range of responsibilities, which, included overseeing the activities of other gala-priests, and, as shown by Shehata (2009: 59), their high standing is reflected by their frequent appearance in legal documents pertaining to temple offices and prebends, loans, fields, and different types of property. The importance of the position, and the occurrence of gala-mah-officials in administrative documents from many cities, including Ur, Larsa, Nippur, Isin, Sippar, Dilbat, and Kiš,24 is a clear indication that cultic activities involving galas were widespread in Mesopotamia and that Balags and Ershemmas were probably performed regularly at many of the cultic centers in and beyond Sumer during the Old Babylonian Period. Texts like the Mari ritual and administrative records documenting the activities of gala-officials, together with evidence from other sources for the liminal status of galas and their association with Emesal, provide a direct link between Balags and Ershemmas and their use in cultic performance. Moreover, the performing of lamentational liturgies in rituals is evident not only in their

23 For an even more explicit argument for galas possessing a liminal gender status, see Gabbay (2008), who argues that they belonged to a “third gender”. 24 See Shehata 2009: 63–66 for a description of the geographic distribution of gala-mahofficials during the Old Babylonian Period, which includes a table of all of the cities and temples with which they were associated.

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themes and content, which suggest they were intended to appease and avert the anger of gods, but also more directly in the rubrics and performative notation which occur in some of the sources containing these compositions. Although the precise meaning of the term ki-ru-gu2, which occurs in rubrics at the end of separate sections of Balags, is still disputed, it is certain that its meaning refers to an aspect of how texts of this type are performed. Since the verb ru-gu2 means “to encounter” or “to oppose”, it seems likely that the term ki-ru-gu2 refers to different places during the performance of the Balag where this action took place,25 a meaning which is supported by the use of the Balag Uruamairabi in the Mari ritual, where separate sections or ki-ru-gu2s of the texts are performed at different places and times during the course of the ritual. However, an even clearer indication of the performative functions of Balags and Ershemmas within the sources themselves is the occurrence of notes that even more explicitly describe how the text or an aspect of the text was to be performed. One such performative note is the Akkadian phrase ka-lu-šu-nu i-za-ma-ru “(then) all of them will sing”, which occurs after one of the lines in CBS 475,26 an Old Babylonian lament with the same incipit (e2 gul-la ki-bi) as an Ershemma listed in two Ershemma lists (or “catalogues”) from the same period.27 The phrase is clearly intended to indicate a time during the performance of the lament when a choir and/or the other participants in the ritual were supposed to sing as a group. A similar, and equally decisive indication of the performative function of Balags and Ershemmas, is the occurrence of the phrase šud3-bi še-eb T(emple)N(ame)-a-ta ki-na dingir gi4-gi4-ra and slight variants of it at the end of at least four sources containing Balags.28 Although the phrase could also be read šud3-bi šeb TN-a-ta ki na-an-gi4-gi4(-ra), which would mean “this is the prayer for restoring the brickwork of the TN”, Löhnert (2009: 27–28) has argued convincingly that the phrase is to be rendered with the element -na as the third-person possessive suffix with the locative element /a/ affixed to ki, an as dingir “god”, and gi4-gi4-ra as a non-finite verbal form with the dative suffix -ra and translated “for the one who returns

25 For a similar interpretation of this term see Löhnert 2009: 42–43, as well as earlier discussions by Falkenstein (1950: 105); Hartmann (1960: 235–36); Wilcke (1975: 260); and Ludwig (1990: 30–31). 26 CBS 475 (BE 30/1: 12 = PBS 10/2: 15) obv. i 24. 27 BM 23771 (Kramer 1975: 142–146), l. 50 and BM 23701 (Kramer 1975: 152–55), l. 58. For the attribution of this incipit to CBS 475 see Cohen 1981: 13, who lists this as “Ershemma no. 106”. 28 BM 96933 (CT 36: pl. 35–38), MAH 16066 (unpublished), Babyloniaca 3: pls. XV–XVI, and CBS 11359 (PBS 1/1: 8); for a list of these sources and an interpretation of the meaning of the phrase see Löhnert 2009: 24–29.

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the god to the brickwork of TN”.29 In either interpretation, but particularly the one proposed by Löhnert, the occurrence of the note in these four sources, two of which identify the TN to whose brickwork the god is to be returned as Utu’s temple at Sippar, the e2-babbar (in MAH 16066) and Enlil’s temple at Nippur, the e2-kur (in Babyloniaca 3: pl. XV–XVI), explicitly identifies the performative function of the Balags, which in this case, is on the occasion of either restoring the temple (in the earlier interpretation) or of returning a cultic statue to its temple, presumably after it has been taken out for a procession or been repaired. The occurrence of notation with a directly performative function including this phrase and the rubrics ki-ru-gu2 and ki-šu2-bi, which are also associated with performance, together with the evidence discussed above, demonstrates that in contrast to curricular literary compositions, which circulated primarily, if not exclusively, in writing, the corpus of lamentational liturgies had a strong oral component which was more closely bound to performance than it was to writing.

4 Laments and the Interface between Oral Performance and Writing Returning to the question of the relationship between the written sources for Sumerian liturgical compositions and oral performance posed at the beginning of the article, the combined evidence that lamentational liturgies belonged to an active cultic tradition and were performed regularly throughout Mesopotamia during the Old Babylonian Period raises the very likely possibility that the surviving written sources for these texts were compiled to aid in oral performance and not to create written copies of the compositions. To demonstrate this, however, it is necessary to turn to the content of the written sources for the Balags and Ershemmas. In examining the content of the preserved copies there are at least two strong indications that many, if not most of the written sources for these texts are part of a tradition of oral performance in which the

29 However, see now Gabbay 2014: 35 with n.24–25, who argues, on the basis of the 1 st millennium equivalent of the verb in this phrase, which reads de3-en-gi4-gi4, that na in the older formulation cannot be the suffix -na, but only the verbal prefix na-, corresponding to the modal prefix de3-, and proposes to translate the phrase “may the prayer cause the heart not to turn (away) from the brickwork of TN” (arguing that ki is an dialectical variant of ša3 “heart”, and not the word for “place” in the verb ki–gi4 “to return”).

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copies were used to help create the oral versions of the texts as they were performed and not for the purpose of ensuring that the content of the compositions was fixed in writing so that it remained stable during the course of its written transmission. The first indication is the almost complete absence of identical duplicates of the same text, calling into question whether the content of any of the laments was fixed in writing at all during this period. The second is the relatively large number of phonetically written duplicates, which would have been substantially more useful in helping a performer pronounce the words in the compositions than they would have been for fixing the content of the texts in writing. In contrast to curricular literary compositions, which are frequently preserved in numerous duplicates that are nearly identical in content and contain only minor orthographic and grammatical variants, but only rarely substantial differences in content, the content of the preserved sources for laments almost always diverges to such a significant extent that no two duplicates can really be claimed to contain the same text. One of the distinguishing features of Balags and Ershemmas is that they very frequently contain lines and passages that occur in more than one text. In a discussion of this feature of laments, Volk (1989: 46) identifies these repeated lines and passages as “Versatzstücke”. Common Versatzstücke, which can be from two to as many as thirty or more lines, include a seven-line passage of “heroic epithets” of the god Enlil, which occurs verbatim in numerous sources for different compositions including sources for the Balags “Oh Angry Sea” (a-ab-ba hu-luh-ha) and “Come Forth Like the Sun” (dutu-gin7 e3-ta) 30; similar groups of epithets for the goddesses Ninisina31; and a litany of abandoned temples and shrines, which is over 30 lines in length.32 A typical example of a frequently occurring Versatzstück, is the epithets of Inana, which appears in the following form in BM 96933 (CT 36: pl. 35–38), a source with lines parallel to lines from “Oh Angry Sea”, but which contains an independent composition identified in the colophon simply as a balaĝ dinana-kam (“Balag of Inana”):

30 For a discussion of the epithets of Enlil and the sources in which they occur see Kutscher 1975: 44–51. The same epithets also occur in BM 13963 (CT 15: pl. 10), obv. l. 3–8, a parallel source to the Balag dutu-gin7 e3-ta (and zi-bu-u3 zi-bu-u3, which contains a repetition of the same passage in dutu-gin7), which was published with the title “Enlil the Merchant” by Civil (1976). 31 For the Ninisina epithets and the sources in which they occur see Krecher 1966: 119–20. 32 For this litany, which occurs in the Balags dutu-gin7 and zi-bu-u3 zi-bu-u3 and other compositions, see Löhnert 2009: 429–30.

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BM 96933 (CT 36: pl. 35–38), col. i 2–6: 2 ama mu-gi17-ib ša3-zu a-še-er en3-še3 i3-kuš2-u3 3 mu-gi17-ib ga-ša-an-na ša3-zu a-še-er-bi 4 ga-ša-an e2-an-na ša3-zu a-še-er-bi 5 ga-ša-an ĝi6-par3-ra ša3-zu a-še-er-bi 6 ga-ša-an-an-na zabalamki ša3-zu a-še-er-bi 2 3 4 5 6

Mother, mistress, when will your heart finally cease its bitter lamenting? Mistress, Inana, your heart its bitter lamenting? Lady of the Eanna, your heart its bitter lamenting? Lady of the Gipar, your heart its bitter lamenting? Inana of Zabalam, your heart its bitter lamenting?

Similar lines, which begin with an identification of Inana as a mu-gi17-ib (Emesal for nu-gig, a common epithet of Inana in contexts in which her power is emphasized 33) followed by lines that list Inana three main temples and shrines in Uruk, Ur, and Zabalam, also occur in “The Fashioning of the Gala” (BM 29616 = Kramer 1981) obv. 2–8, BM 96680 (Kramer 1987) col. i. 39–44,34 and at the beginning of an Ershemma to Inana and Dumuzi, in addition to many other sources.35 In addition to the occurrence of the same or similar passages in different texts, which often makes it difficult to determine whether copies of Balags and Ershemmas with Versatzstücke should be attributed to the same composition or whether they should be considered “parallel sources”, is the relatively small number of sources with laments that can be shown to contain the same text. As with Sumerian literary compositions of other types, Balags and Ershemmas were identified in Mesopotamia by their first line or incipit. Along with the Mari Ritual, which refers to the Balag Uruamairabi and the individual sections or ki-ru-gu2s of the text by the incipits, the incipits of Balags and Ershemmas

33 For a detailed discussion of the meaning of nu-gig and the contexts in which it occurs see Zgoll 1997, who argues that the term, when used as an epithet of Inana, is “ein herrschlicher Hoheitstitel”. 34 Another source, like BM 96933, with lines that are parallel to lines in “Oh, Angry Sea”, but are from a different independent composition identified in the colophon as a Balag of Inana. 35 For this Ershemma, which is preserved in three sources (VAT 617 = VS 2: 2; AO 7697 = TCL 16: 78; and RA 8: 161–69), see Cohen 1981: 71–84, who publishes this text as “Ershemma no. 97”.

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also occur in catalogues or inventories listing compositions of the two types.36 While the incipits of some of the Balags and Ershemmas listed in these catalogues also occur in the sources containing laments, there are also numerous sources in which the same incipits do not occur. There are at least two features that can be used to determine whether the individual sources in the corpus of lamentational liturgies contain Balags or Ershemmas. The first and most decisive feature is whether the source contains a colophon with a subscript identifying the content of the tablet as either a Balag or Ershemma. Since the ends of many of the tablets containing laments are not preserved and not all of the sources for the texts in this corpus contain identifying colophons, however, the other distinguishing feature which must be used to distinguish between texts of the two types is the presence or absence of dividing lines and/or kiru-gu2-subscripts on the tablet indicating that the composition had multiple sections. The sources in the corpus of lamentational liturgies can be identified as Balags when they contain dividing lines or ki-ru-gu2-notation because Ershemmas never have more than one section.37 When these criteria are applied to the 463 sources in this corpus, there are 149 sources (or approximately 32 percent) which can be securely identified as Balags and 50 sources (or approximately 11 percent) which can be identified as Ershemmas, leaving 264 which can only be identified more generally as lamentational liturgies (on the basis of their content and the use of Emesal), but not more specifically as either a Balag or an Ershemma. In the group of sources identifiable as Balags or Ershemmas, 174 have preserved incipits or colophons with identifying incipits.

36 For a discussion of the known Balag and Ershemma catalogues see Löhnert 2009: 12–15, with references to their place of publication and previous literature, and Delnero 2010: 41–49. To this list can be added CUNES 50-07-13, a list of Balags published by Gadotti and Kleinerman (2011), as well as AO 8848 (TCL 15: 17; TCL 16: pl. 152), published by Peterson (2010), and BM 96740, published by Ludwig (2012), which may also contain lists of liturgical compositions. 37 The only instance in which dividing lines occur on tablets containing Ershemmas is when the source is a collective tablet containing multiple Ershemmas. However, there are only four sources in the corpus which can be securely identified as collective tablets containing Ershemmas, and in three of these sources (BM 15793 = CT 42: 7, a collective tablet containing Ershemmas to Gula and Martu; BM 96927 = Cohen (1988: 804–808), a collective tablet with 12 Ershemmas to different deities; and CBS 15908, an unpublished tablet with at least one Ershemma and a composition identified in a subscript as an er2-ša3-ne-ša4), there are subscripts identifying each of the individual texts as Ershemmas, while in the remaining source (VAT 617 = VS 2: 2) each of the Ershemmas on the tablet have content and incipits which correspond to known Ershemmas listed in Ershemma lists and preserved in other sources. The small number of collective sources, together with the presences of features that facilitate determining that the tablets contain multiple Ershemmas, increase the likelihood that most, if not all of the remaining sources in this corpus with dividing lines contain Balags and not Ershemmas.

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Among this group of 174 only 39 have incipits that also occur in one or more of the known incipit lists, and 16 of these sources contain Balags and 23 contain Ershemmas. The identifiable Balags and Ershemmas in these sources comprise the following texts: Balags: 1. e-lum gu4-sun2 (NBC 1315); 2. zi-bu-u3 zi-bu-u3 (YBC 9838, VAT 1465+); 3. e-ne-eĝ3ĝa2-ni i-lu i-lu (YBC 16392, BM 87518); 4. uru2 am3-ma-i-ra-bi (NCBT 688, PRAK C 52+, PRAK B 396); 5. egi2-re a-še-er-re (BM 54823); 6. a u3-li-li (BM 78983); 7. dingir pa e3-a (BM 96568); 8. a da-ru-ru (BM 96681); 9. el-lu ama mu-gi17-ib (CBS 8086); 10. ab2-gin7 gu3 de2-de2 (CBS 6890); 11. dutu-gin7 e3-ta (CBS 11359); and 12. eden lil2-la2 (RA 17: 50 and BM 23696, which contains a catch-line with this incipit) Ershemmas: 1. ĝuruš dab5-ba (BM 15795, VAT 6085); 2. am mur-ra nu-un-ti (BM 15821); 3. ul-e papa-al-ta (BM 23584); 4. ša3-zu a-gin7 du3 (BM 23696); 5. dilmun niĝin-u3 (BM 29623); 6. d suen sa mar-mar (BM 29644, VAT 617 col. iii 23–col. iv 8); 7. i-bi2 ku3 a-lu-lu (BM 96639); 8. gu4 mah pa e3-a (BM 96927); 9. ir2 na-mu-un-ma-al (BM 100111, PRAK C 47); 10. uru2 a gi16-sa (VAT 617 col. iv 10–44); 11. dutu e3-ma-ra (VAT 1314, Babyloniaca 3: 75–78); 12. i-in-di i-in-di (VAT 1541); 13. ma-ra e2 zi-ĝu10 (VAT 1548); 14. in-di tu-ra (VAT 7760); 15. na-aĝ2-dam-a-na (Ni 2273); 16. e2-ĝu10 uru2-ĝu10 (PRAK B 184); 17. tumušen aše-er (L. 1501, O. 17); 18. im kur-ra šeĝ3-ĝa2 (LCM 565); and 19. e-en gig-bi (RA 8: 161– 69, VAT 617 col. i 1–col. iii 20)

Furthermore, in addition to there being few sources with identifiable Balags or Ershemmas, the number of sources containing the same Balag or Ershemma as at least one other source is even smaller. Of the 12 Balags and 19 Ershemmas identified in these sources only four Balags and six Ershemmas are attested in more than one duplicate containing the same identifying incipit: Balags: 1. zi-bu-u3 zi-bu-u3 (YBC 9838, VAT 1465+); 2. e-ne-eĝ3-ĝa2-ni i-lu i-lu (YBC 16392, BM 87518); 3. uru2 am3-ma-i-ra-bi (NCBT 688, PRAK C 52+, PRAK B 396); and 4. eden lil2la2 (RA 17: 50 and BM 23696, which contains a catch-line with this incipit) Ershemmas: 1. ĝuruš dab5-ba (BM 15795, VAT 6085); 2. ir2 na-mu-un-ma-al (BM 100111, PRAK C 47); 3. tumušen a-še-er (L. 1501, O. 17); 4. en-zu sa mar-mar (BM 29644, VAT 617 col. iii 23– col. iv 8); 5. e-en gig-bi (RA 8: 161–69, VAT 617 col. i 1–col. iii 20); and 6. dutu e3-ma-ra (VAT 1314, Babyloniaca 3: 75–78)

The instability of the written versions of Balags and Ershemmas during the Old Babylonian Period is most apparent however, when the content of the few duplicates containing compositions identified by the same incipit is compared. In contrast to the individual copies of Sumerian curricular literary compositions, which, with few exceptions, are typically identical or nearly identical in

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content, and vary only with respect to minor orthographic, grammatical, and in rare instances, semantic details, the copies of the Balags and Ershemmas containing the same incipit diverge much more substantially. The extent to which there are not only minor differences in orthography and grammar, but also in words, phrases, lines, and even entire passages which either diverge significantly, or are omitted or added in one duplicate but not in any of the others is particularly evident in the sources containing Balags. In the case of the Old Babylonian sources for the Balag Uruamairabi, for example, all three of the preserved duplicates with the beginning of the composition (NCBT 688, PRAK C 52 + 121, and PRAK B 396 + 444) contain numerous differences.38 To cite only a few: 1. Even though all three sources begin with similar lines, there are significant differences in the renderings of individual words and forms. NCBT 688 renders the first line as uru2 am3-i-ra-bi a di4-di4-la2-bi, in contrast to PRAK C 52 + 121, in which the verbal form at the beginning of the line is rendered a-am-i-ra-bi (writing the prefix am3- as a-am) and the form di4-di4-la2-bi is written phonetically as de3-[de3-la-bi]; and in contrast to PRAK B 396 + 444, which renders the verb am3-ma-i-ra-bi (adding -ma- to the form) and writes a2 instead of a before the phrase di4-di4-la2-bi. 2. Source NCBT 688 adds two lines at the beginning of the text that are not present in either of the other two sources: (2) ama mu-gig uru2 am3-i-rabi a di4-di4-la2-bi // (3) kul-aba4ki uru2 am3-i-ra-bi a di4-di4-la2-bi. 3. In the first line in the group of lines containing epithets of Inana that follow (NCBT 688: l. 3–8; PRAK C 52 + 121: l. 2–5; and PRAK B 396 + 444: l. 2– 4) the first epithet reads mu-gig-an-na in NCBT 688, but nu-gi-a-na in PRAK C 52 + 121 and [mu]-gi17-ib-an-na in PRAK B 393 + 444. 4. In the second line in the same group of epithets the epithet kur gul-gul is followed by the epithet ga-ša-an-e2-an-na-ke4 in NCBT 688, but by ga-šaan-hur-saĝ-kalam-ma in PRAK C 52 + 121 and PRAK B 396 + 444. This difference, in particular, directly reflects the local traditions in which the two sources were produced: PRAK C 52 + 121 and PRAK B 396 + 444, which are both from Kiš, add an epithet that associates Inana with a temple at Kiš in place of Inana’s shrine at Uruk, the Eanna. 5. The third line in the same group of epithets reads an dub2-ba ga-ša-anĝi6-par3-ra-ke4 in NCBT 688, but an tu-pa ama gal ki! sig3 in PRAK C 52 + 121.

38 For transliterations of the beginnings of these sources and a similar discussion of some of their differences see Volk 1989: 18–20.

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6. NCBT 688 adds a line at the end of this group of epithets that does not occur in either of the two other sources: ama unugki-ga ga-ša-an-sun2na-ke4. When viewed in isolation, all of these differences are similar to the types of variation attested in the sources for Sumerian curricular literary compositions, but the frequency with which the variants occur and the degree to which the content of the individual sources diverge in the copies of Uruamairabi demonstrates that the written version of this text, as well as the other Balags and Ershemmas with more than one preserved duplicate, was much less stable than the content of most curricular literary texts. The second substantial indication that the written content of Balags and Ershemmas was not fixed and that the sources containing these texts were intended to aid in oral performance and not to ensure their faithful written transmission is the number of duplicates written phonetically instead of in conventional Emesal orthography. In contrast to sources for laments written in normal Emesal orthography, in which the standard writings or spellings that are used to write the same words and forms throughout the corpus are used consistently throughout the duplicate (examples of standard Emesal forms include the writings dmu-ul-lil2 to write the name of the god Enlil; e-ne-eĝ3 to write the word meaning “word”, which is written as inim in normal Sumerian orthography; and ma-al to render the verb ĝal2 “to be” or “make exist”), sources written in a phonetic orthography contain many writings which differ significantly from the standard spellings of specific words and forms and render them instead with different signs that indicate more closely how they were to be pronounced. Examples of phonetic writings include the writing ni-mi-ir to render nimgir “herald” (Emesal li-bi-ir), ha-an-du-ur-sa-ĝa2 to write the god name typically written dhendur-saĝ-ĝa2, and šu-šu for šu2-šu2 “to cover”. In nearly every instance in which they occur phonetic writings break down words like nimgir (one of the readings of the cuneiform sign mir) and hendur (written with the pa sign, which has the reading hendur, as well as pa, sig3, ugula, and ĝidru) into their constituent syllabic units so that the phonological structure of the word is laid bare or make clearer the pronunciation of the word by using a more common sign with the same phonetic reading, and were almost certainly intended to serve as mnemonics to make the words and forms in the text easier to pronounce. While phonetic writings are sometimes attested in isolation in sources which are otherwise written entirely in the conventional Sumerian or Emesal orthography, there are also sources with a substantially larger number of phonetic writings than sources with isolated phonetic writings. Because phonetic

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writings occur with greater frequency and appear consistently throughout each duplicate, phonetic sources of this type seem to form a distinct group, which can be distinguished from sources written in standard Sumerian or Emesal. Phonetic sources belonging to this group are particularly common for lamentational liturgies. Although phonetically written sources are also attested for curricular literary texts, they are much fewer in number and are almost always confined to specific sites in the Mesopotamian periphery, suggesting that the phonetic writings in these sources are not associated with performance, but instead reflect local orthographies. By contrast, the number of phonetically written sources for lamentational liturgies is substantially larger and the geographic distribution of these sources is broader. There are probably less than 30 phonetic sources among the 3,400 curricular literary sources that are currently known, and these, with only one or two exceptions, are from Susa, Meturan, and Šaduppum. However, in addition to 21 sources with isolated phonetic writings, there are at least 162 sources containing lamentational liturgies which are written in a highly phonetic orthography. The large number of sources in this group encompasses nearly 35 percent (or nearly 40 percent, when the sources with isolated phonetic writings are included) of the total number of sources containing Balags and Ershemmas. Moreover, the phonetic sources for laments are from a wider range of sites, including Nippur, Kiš, Sippar, Girsu, Uruk, and probably also Larsa, which are much closer to the Mesopotamian heartland than the few phonetic duplicates of curricular texts. It has been argued by Civil and others that the existence of literary sources written in a highly phonetic orthography reflects a general decline in the understanding of Sumerian as it was replaced by Akkadian as the main spoken language of the period.39 Although this may very well have been true of the few phonetic sources for curricular compositions, particularly since many of these come from places, where, unlike scribal centers such as Nippur and Ur, training in Sumerian was less extensive, it is less likely to be the case for liturgical compositions. The strongest indication that the phonetic writings in liturgical sources served a practical purpose is the manner in which these writings are rendered in the duplicates containing them. As illustrated by the writings cited above, and the numerous phonetic writings in these sources, including

39 See, for example, Civil, in Reiner and Civil 1967: 209, who, commenting specifically on the writings in CNMA 10051, an Old Babylonian phonetic source for the Balag am-e bara2-na-ra, writes: “Comparison of the rest of the tablet with the standard version of the series makes inescapable the conclusion that the Copenhagen tablet (CNMA 10051) represents the work of some scribe unfamiliar with the rules of Sumerian orthography, who knew by heart, and not very well at that, the series am-e bara2-na-ra.”

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writings such as u3-nu for unu2, maš for maš2, su-bi for suba(za.muš3), suku-da for sukud, ama-u3-šu-gal-la-na for ama-ušumgal-an-na, and many others, the phonetic writings in these sources reveal a consistent tendency to make clearer the syllabic structure, and with it the pronunciation of words and forms whose syllabic units are not as clearly or unambiguously expressed in their standard orthographic rendering. One particularly clear indication that the phonetic writings in this group of sources were intentional and not the result of scribal incompetence is that in many instances the signs used to write the phonetic forms would have been just as difficult to remember and render than the signs conventionally used to write the same words. For example, in VAT 1419 (VS 2: 94), a source for an Ershemma to Inana, the scribe writes nearly every word in the text phonetically.40 The words in this source deviate from their standard forms to such a large extent that it would be impossible in most instances to identify the intended words without the other duplicates containing the same lines written in conventional orthography. Examples include the forms u3-ki maš for ud5-gin7 maš2 in l. 13 and a-ya-gu-ra nam-taar for a-a-ĝu10-ra nam-tar in l. 23. Throughout the source the scribe uses signs like ya, gu, nam and others that were probably no less difficult to write or remember than the signs used to render the corresponding words in normal orthography, suggesting that it was not a lack of knowledge of cuneiform that motivated the phonetic writings, but rather a need to write the words the way they were intended to be pronounced. This is especially evident in the many instances in which e2, a very common sign used to write the word “house” which would have been known to any scribe, is replaced with the sign e, which would have been no easier to write, but was presumably chosen because it less ambiguously indicated the pronunciation of the word. Even more decisively, however, the source itself contains direct evidence that it was intended as a mnemonic aid for performance and not merely as a copy of the text. After the first two or three words in every line there is a blank space where the remainder of the line has been omitted, indicating that the scribe knew the content of the whole line but chose not to write it out completely. Since this source follows line-by-line without deviation the content of VAT 1367, another source for the same text from the same collection, it is not difficult to imagine that the two sources were intended to form a pair with the more complete source written in normal orthography serving as a library or reference copy and the abbreviated source written in phonetic orthography serving as an aid to performance.

40 For a discussion of this composition see Krecher 1967, which includes an edition of the entire text with a transliteration of VAT 1417 and the other sources containing the composition.

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The same principles that were applied to render the words and forms in VAT 1419 are also evident in many of the other phonetic sources for lamentational liturgies. The types of principles underlying the phonetic writings in these sources can be further illustrated by examining the writings that occur in one group of phonetic sources, in particular. Among the 162 preserved phonetic sources containing Balags and Ershemmas, there is a group of 28 sources with distinct features that distinguish them from other sources containing texts of this type. All of the sources share at least four distinguishing characteristics: 1. They are all written on single column tablets (as opposed to tablets with two or more columns per side) which are irregularly shaped and have very thin left edges. 2. Many contain lines in which all of the signs are written closely together and little or no space is left between individual words and forms to indicate word or phrase divisions. 3. The ductus of every source is similar and distinct, and comprises numerous idiosyncratic sign forms that occur in these, but not other sources from the same corpus or period. 4. They contain dividing lines between sections which have ten-marks (which are written with a single Winkelhaken) in the middle of each dividing line. The presence of all four of these features, none of which occur together or individually in other phonetic and non-phonetic sources containing laments, indicate that that the sources with these features form a coherent group and that they were almost certainly compiled at the same time and place by the same scribe or group of scribes. The tablets in this group, which for the purpose of this study will be identified as “Highly Phonetic Single Column Tablets” (henceforth HPSC), all contain lamentational liturgies to different deities, and comprise the following sources: 1. VAT 1414 (VS 2: 96), a Balag to Utu 2. VAT 1416 (VS 2: 66), a Balag to Enki 3. VAT 1417 (VS 2: 76), a Balag to Martu 4. VAT 1420 (VS 2: 38), a lament to Inana and Dumuzi 5. VAT 1442 (VS 2: 53), a Balag to Inana 6. VAT 1472 (VS 2: 59), a Balag to Inana 7. VAT 1509 (VS 2: 69), a lament to Utu 8. VAT 1533 (VS 2: 85), a lament to Inana and Dumuzi 9. VAT 1541 (VS 2: 67), a Balag to Enki 10. VAT 1542 (VS 2: 56), a lament of uncertain content 11. VAT 1543 (VS 2: 86), a lament of uncertain content 12. VAT 1546 (VS 2: 49), a lament to Inana and Dumuzi

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13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

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VAT 1548 (VS 2: 62), an Ershemma to Enlil VAT 1555 (VS 10: 176), a lament with parallels to the Balag “Asher Gita” VAT 1556 (VS 10: 178), a Balag to Inana VAT 1557 (VS 2: 71), a lament to Utu VAT 1558 (VS 2: 55), a Balag to Inana VAT 1576 (VS 2: 57), a Balag to Inana VAT 3526 + 3540 (VS 10: 149), a Balag to Utu VAT 3530 (VS 10: 114), a Balag to Utu VAT 3531 (VS 10: 115), a lament of uncertain content VAT 3544 (VS 10: 150), a lament to Utu VAT 3547 (VS 10: 146), a lament of uncertain content VAT 3548 (VS 10: 130), a lament of uncertain content VAT 3552 + 3562 (VS 10: 129), a lament to Ninisina VAT 3558 (VS 10: 131), a lament to Martu VAT 3576 (VS 10: 148), a lament to Utu VAT 3580 (VS 10: 113), a lament to Utu

Like many of the other phonetic sources containing Balags and Ershemmas, the sources in the HPSC group are characterized by a high percentage of phonetic writings. When words are counted separately from single-sign grammatical elements, which include all of the nominal cases endings and possessive suffixes (such as -ta, -e, -da, -a and -ĝu10, -zu, and -ni) and all of the verbal prefixes, infixes, and suffixes (including mu-, -ni-, -ne, and -eš), there are a total of 790 words and 403 grammatical elements (which for the purpose of this study will henceforth be identified as “word units”) that are preserved in all the HPSC sources combined. Of these, 412 of the 790 (or approximately 52 percent) words and 52 of the 403 (or approximately 13 percent) word units in the corpus are written phonetically. When it is taken into account that the lower percentage of phonetic word units is probably the result of most grammatical elements being written with a single cuneiform sign which already represents the minimal syllabic unit (i.e., that for most grammatical elements there are not any alternative writings that would make the pronunciation of the element any clearer than it already is with the sign conventionally used to write it), over half of the words and forms in the corpus which are possible to write phonetically are written phonetically. Moreover, the number of phonetic writings per source is also more or less evenly distributed across the individual sources in the group. Once the outliers at both ends are removed – at the low end VAT 1541, which contains only 3 phonetic words (or approximately 13 percent) out of a total of 24, and VAT 1548 and VAT 1557, which both contain approximately 21 percent phonetic writings; and at the high end, VAT 1543 and

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VAT 3548, which both contain only phonetically written words (or 100 percent) – almost all of the remaining sources contain between 30 to 60 percent phonetic writings, with none of the other sources which fall outside this range containing less than 30 percent and only four containing over 70 percent (VAT 1533, VAT 1414, VAT 1546, and VAT 3547). The total number and percentage of phonetic versus non-phonetic words and word units per source is summarized in table 1.

Tab. 1: Number and Percentage of Phonetic Writings in HPSC Sources. Phonetic Words/ Word Units

Non-Phonetic Words/ Word Units

Total Words/ Word Units

Percentage of Phonetic Word/ Word Units

VAT 1414 VAT 1416 VAT 1417 VAT 1420 VAT 1442 VAT 1472 VAT 1509 VAT 1533 VAT 1541 VAT 1542 VAT 1543 VAT 1546 VAT 1548 VAT 1555 VAT 1556 VAT 1557 VAT 1558 VAT 1576 VAT 3526+ VAT 3530 VAT 3531 VAT 3544 VAT 3547 VAT 3548 VAT 3552+ VAT 3558 VAT 3576 VAT 3580

 43/ 4  19/ 1   5/ 3  32/ 1  14/ 3  35/ 7  36/ 1  12/ 0   3/ 0  19/ 4  20/ 0  22/14   4/ 0  13/ 0   8/ 1   5/ 0   6/ 1   3/ 0  12/ 1   8/ 0  18/ 0  10/ 1  20/ 2   6/ 0  12/ 3  11/ 5   4/ 0  12/ 0

 15/ 28  41/ 34  11/  6  37/ 38  26/ 43  18/ 16  33/ 25   5/ 18  21/ 13  13/ 14   0/  0   8/  8  15/ 11  21/ 19   6/  7  19/  1  14/  2   6/  2   7/  5   5/  0   8/ 21   7/  6   5/  1   0/  4  15/  9  10/  9   6/  0   6/ 11

 58/ 32  60/ 35  16/  9  69/ 39  40/ 46  53/ 23  69/ 26  17/ 18  24/ 13  32/ 18  20/  0  30/ 22  19/ 11  34/ 19  14/  8  24/  1  20/  3   9/  2  19/  6  13/  0  26/ 21  17/  7  25/  3   6/  4  27/ 12  21/ 14  10/  0  18/ 11

 74 %/13 %  32 %/ 3 %  13 %/33 %  46 %/ 3 %  35 %/ 7 %  66 %/30 %  52 %/ 4 %  71 %/ 0 %  13 %/ 0 %  59 %/22 % 100 %/ 0 %  73 %/64 %  21 %/ 0 %  38 %/ 0 %  57 %/13 %  21 %/ 0 %  30 %/33 %  33 %/ 0 %  63 %/17 %  62 %/ 0 %  69 %/ 0 %  59 %/14 %  80 %/67 % 100 %/ 0 %  44 %/25 %  52 %/36 %  40 %/ 0 %  67 %/ 0 %

TOTALS

412/52

378/351

790/403

 52 %/13 %

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In addition to the relatively large number of phonetic writings per source, nearly all the phonetic writings that occur in the sources in the HPSC group are of one of five different types: 1. Phonetic writings in which the standard writing of a word is substituted with a homophonous (phonetically identical) sign. 2. Phonetic writings in which polysyllabic words normally written with a single sign are written with two or more signs to render individual syllables. 3. Phonetic writings in which consonant reduplication is avoided. 4. Sandhi writings. 5. Writings in which determinatives are omitted. Examples of writings of each of these types include the following: 1. Homophonous Signs: – a-ša for a-ša3 (VAT 1420 obv. 7′) – am- for am3- (VAT 1417 obv.? 3′) – ku for ku2 (VAT 1546 rev. 2′) – ni for ni2 (VAT 3547 obv. 4′) – mu-mu for mu2-mu2 (VAT 1442 rev. 11′) 2. Polysyllabic Word Written with Multiple Signs: – tu-ur for tur3 (VAT 1576 rev. 4′) – ši-im for šim (VAT 1414 obv. 3′; VAT 3526 obv. 7) – sa-aĝ2 for saĝ (VAT 1509 obv. 7′) – su-ku-da for sukud-da (VAT 1420 rev. 4–5) – ab-ka-le for abgal-e (VAT 1416 rev. 11) – ĝa-ar for ĝar (VAT 1546 obv. 8′) 3. Consonant Reduplication Avoided: – ha-ra-na for har-ra-an-na (VAT 1472 obv. 6′) – ku-la for gul-la (VAT 1414 obv. 7) – a-še-re for a-še-er-re (VAT 1546 rev. 2′) – li-la for lil2-la2 (VAT 3547 obv. 6′) – di-ma for dim2-ma (VAT 3548 obv. 5′) 4. Sandhi Writings: – ya-li-lil2 for a-a den-lil2 (VAT 1541 obv. 1) – ga-ša(-)nu-me-a for ga-ša-an nu-me-a (VAT 1509 obv. 9′) – ga-ša(-)mu-lu for ga-ša-an mu-lu (VAT 1558 obv. 4′) – ga-ša-bi for ga-ša-an-bi (VAT 1556 obv. 6′) – ma(-)ya-ba for ma-a a-ba (VAT 1555 obv. 6′) – du-bu-ra(-)na for dubur an-na (VAT 1509 obv. 1′) – e2-gi(-)bi-a for a-gin7 bi2-AK (VAT 1472 obv. 12′)

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Determinative Omitted: – dumu-zi for ddumu-zi (VAT 1546 obv. 7′) – tu for tumušen (VAT 1555 obv. 4′) – ha-šu-ra for ĝišhašur (VAT 3580 obv.? 4′) – uru2-ze2-eb-ba for uru2-ze2-ebki-ba (VAT 1416 obv. 5′) – nu-dim2-mud for dnu-dim2-mud (VAT 1541 obv. 4)

As is clear from each of these types of writings and the consistency with which they occur systematically across the group of HPSC sources as a whole, the scribe(s) who compiled the sources knew the content of the compositions well and did not write the forms in the text phonetically because they were incompetent, but instead did so intentionally to indicate how the forms were supposed to be pronounced. In the case of many of the words that are written with homophonous signs, the words are common and would have been easily recognizable and would not have been difficult to write in standard Sumerian orthography by scribes with even rudimentary knowledge of the language and the writing system. Furthermore, breaking down polysyllabic words like sukud, daĝal, and lugal into their constituent syllables and then writing each of these syllables with different signs actually requires more knowledge of the language and the writing system, in most instances, than would be required to write the words correctly with the conventional signs used to render them. With words like sukud and daĝal (which is written phonetically as da-ĝa2-lu for daĝal-e in VAT 1420 rev. 6) the scribe would have not only had to know how the word was pronounced, but would have also had to been able to write three equally complex signs correctly, instead of just one, to render the word phonetically in this form. Moreover, it is very difficult to imagine that any scribe who was able to produce copies of texts as complex as these would not have known how to write a word as common as lugal, which in its standard form is already a ligature of the signs lu2 and gal and would have been much easier to write in its conventional simplified form than by writing each of the two signs separately in their full form. Similarly, most of the forms in which consonant reduction is avoided or which are rendered as Sandhi writings are immediately recognizable as the words they represent and would have required not only a detailed knowledge of the writing system, but also the ability to go beyond this basic competence to use cuneiform creatively to avoid reduplicating consonants by using, for instance, u3 instead of ur3 to write ki-ur3ra or gu instead of gur to write gur-ra, or to bridge the syllabic boundaries between separate words by writing forms like dam-mu-ga-na for dam ug5-gana and du-bu-ra-na for dubur an-na. Lastly and most decisively, however, the more or less systematic omission of determinatives, which were not part of

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the pronunciation of the word, but instead indexical markers of the class to which the word with the determinative belong (deities in the case of the divine determinative d, wooden object in the case of ĝiš, etc.), provide direct evidence for the purpose of the phonetic writings in these sources. If the scribe or scribes were able to write the complex names of deities like dnu-dim2-mud and cities like uru2-ze2-eb (the Emesal form of Eridu) correctly, then it is very unlikely that the determinatives with these words were omitted because the scribes were not aware that they were supposed to write them. Instead it is much more probable that the determinatives were omitted intentionally because they do not contribute to the pronunciation of the forms. All of this indicates that the phonetic writings in the HPSC group, and many of the other phonetic sources containing Balags and Ershemmas which have similar writings, were not errors resulting from scribal incompetence, but instead deliberate attempts to make the words and forms in the text easier to pronounce when the compositions were performed.

5 Conclusions: Writing Speech and Performing Language The cumulative evidence from the written sources containing Balags and Ershemmas strongly suggests that the corpus of lamentational liturgies, at least as it is preserved in the surviving sources from the Old Babylonian Period, had a very different relationship to writing and orality than Sumerian curricular literary compositions. Unlike curricular literary works, which are typically preserved in numerous written sources, many of which are nearly identical in content and differ only in minor orthographic and grammatical details, indicating that the written versions of these compositions were more or less fixed, the written versions of lamentational liturgies were much less stable. As shown in the preceding section, there are very few Balags and Ershemmas that are preserved in more than one duplicate, and in these instances, the content of the individual duplicates diverge to such a substantial extent that it could even be argued that they do not contain the same text, particularly when the criteria for sameness are the same as those used to determine whether the content of the sources for curricular literary compositions is identical. The absence of written sources containing the same lament, along with the frequency with which more or less identical passages (Versatzstücke) recur in different compositions indicates that the content of Balags and Ershemmas was not at all rigid, but could be, and frequently was, adapted and modified to

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accommodate how they were to be performed orally. It is evident from compositions like the Mari Ritual, which describe in detail how one such lament, the Balag Uruamairabi, was performed during a cultic ritual, and from the presence of numerous gala-officials, who are directly responsible for the performance of Emesal laments, at nearly every important urban center in Mesopotamia, that lamentational liturgies were regularly performed during the Old Babylonian Period. It is therefore not surprising that the content of the texts in this corpus was flexible and could be changed in accordance with the demands and constraints of each particular ritual in which it was performed. The way in which the written sources for Balags and Ershemmas were compiled to fulfill the needs of a performance is particularly clear in the case of the phonetically written duplicates in the HPSC group, which were compiled explicitly for the purpose of making clear how the words in the texts were to be pronounced before or while they were performed. The close relation the written sources for laments have to oral performance completely reverses the usual and expected relationship between the written sources for literary works and the compositions they contain: instead of being static copies of texts that bear witness to a fixed written tradition, the written sources for laments are the byproducts of a dynamic performative tradition which were actively used in creating and shaping the oral versions of the texts that would be performed.

Bibliography Alster, Bendt. 1972. Dumuzi’s Dream: Aspects of Oral Poetry in a Sumerian Myth. Mesopotamia 1. Copenhagen: Akademisk. Cavigneaux, Antoine. 1993. Review of Cohen (1988). JAOS 113: 251–57. Cavigneaux, Antoine. 1998. Sur le balag Uruammai'irabi et le Rituel de Mari. N.A.B.U. n.43: 46–47. Charpin, Dominique. 2003. La politique immobilière des marchands de Larsa à la lumière des découvertes épigraphiques de 1987 et 1989. Pp. 311–22 in Larsa: Travaux de 1987 et 1989, ed. J.-L. Hout. Bibliothèque archéologique et historique 165. Beyrouth: Institut Français d’Archéologie du Proche-Orient. Civil, Miguel. 1976. Enlil, the Merchant. Notes to CT 15, 10. JCS 28: 72–81. Civil, Miguel. 1999. Reading Gilgameš. AuOr 17: 179–89. Cohen, Mark. 1974. Balag-compositions: Sumerian Lamentation Liturgies of the Second and First Millennium BC SANE 1, 2. Malibu: Udenna Publications. Cohen, Mark. 1981. Sumerian Hymnology: The Eršemma. HUCA Supplements 2. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College. Cohen, Mark. 1988. The Canonical Lamentations of Ancient Mesopotamia. Potomac: Capital Decisions Limited. Cooper, Jerrold. 1981. Gilgamesh and Agga: A Review Article. JCS 33: 224–41. Cooper, Jerrold. 2006. Genre, Gender, and the Sumerian Lamentation. JCS 58: 39–47.

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Delnero, Paul. 2010. Sumerian Literary Catalogues and the Scribal Curriculum. ZA 100: 32– 55. Delnero, Paul. 2012. The Textual Transmission of Sumerian Literature. JCSSS 3. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research. Durand, Jean-Marie, and Michel Guichard. 1997. Les rituals de Mari. Pp. 19–78 in Recueil d’études à la mémoire de Marie-Thérèse Barrelet, ed. Dominque Charpin and Jean-Marie Durand. FM 3 and Mémoires de N.A.B.U. 4. Paris: SÉPOA. Falkenstein, Adam. 1950. Sumerische religiöse Texte. ZA 49: 80–150. Gabbay, Uri. 2008. The Akkadian Word for “Third Gender”: The kalû (gala) Once Again. Pp. 47–54 in Proceedings of the 51 st Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale held at The Oriental Institute of The University of Chicago, July 18–22, 2005, ed. Robert Biggs et al. SAOC 62. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Gabbay, Uri. 2014. Pacifying the Hearts of the Gods: Sumerian Emesal Prayers of the First Millennium BC. Heidelberger Emesal-Studien 1. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Gadotti, Alhena, and Alexandra Kleinerman. 2011. “Here is what I have. Send me what is missing”. Exchange of Syllabi in Ancient Mesopotamia. ZA 101: 72–77. Hartmann, Henrike. 1960. Die Musik der Sumerischen Kultur. Dissertation: Frankfurt am Main. Kramer, Samuel Noah. 1975. Two British Museum iršemma “Catalogues”. Studia Orientalia 46: 141–66. Kramer, Samuel Noah. 1981. BM 29616. The Fashioning of the gala. ASJ 3: 1–9. Kramer, Samuel Noah. 1987. By the Rivers of Babylon. A Balag-Liturgy of Inanna. AuOr 5: 71– 90. Krecher, Joachim. 1966. Sumerische Kultlyrik. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. Krecher, Joachim. 1967. Die sumerische Texte in “syllabischer Orthographie”. ZA 66: 16–65. Kutscher, Raphael. 1975. Oh Angry Sea (a-ab-ba hu-luh-ha): The History of a Sumerian Congregational Lament. YNER 6. New Haven: Yale University Press. Löhnert, Anne. 2009. “Wie die Sonne tritt heraus”: Eine Klage zum Auszug Enlils mit einer Untersuchung zu Komposition und Tradition sumerischer Klagelieder in altbabylonischer Zeit. AOAT 365. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag. Löhnert, Anne. 2011. Manipulating the Gods: Lamenting in Context. Pp. 402–17 in The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture, ed. Karen Radner and Eleanor Robson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ludwig, Marie-Christine. 1990. Untersuchungen zu den Hymnen des Išme-Dagan von Isin. SANTAG 2. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. Ludwig, Marie-Christine. 2012. BM 96740 − eine altbabylonische Liste von Textanfängen. Pp. 201–13 in Altorientalische Studien zu Ehren von Pascal Attinger, ed. Catherine Mittermayer and Sabine Ecklin. Fribourg: Academic Press. Michalowski, Piotr. 2006. Love or Death? Observations on the Role of the Gala in Ur III Ceremonial Life. JCS 58: 49–61. Michalowski, Piotr. 2009. Learning Music: Schooling, Apprenticeship, and Gender in Early Mesopotamia. Pp. 199–239 in Musiker und Tradierung: Studien zur Rolle von Musikern bei der Verschriftlichung und Tradierung von literarischen Werken, ed. Regine Pruzsinszky and Dahlia Shehata. Wiener Offene Orientalistik 8. Münster: Lit Verlag. Mirelman, Sam, and Walther Sallaberger. 2010. The Performance of a Sumerian Wedding Song (CT 58: 12). ZA 100: 177–96. Peterson, Jeremiah. 2010. A New Old Babylonian Sumerian Literary “Catalogue”?. ZA 100: 169–76.

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Reiner, Erica, and Miguel Civil. 1967. Another Volume of Sultantepe Tablets. JNES 26: 177– 211. Robson, Eleanor. 2001. The Tablet House: A Scribal School in Old Babylonian Nippur. RA 95: 39–66. Schretter, Manfred. 1990. Emesal-Studien. Sprach- und literaturgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur sogenannten Frauensprache des Sumerischen. Innsbruck: Verlag des Instituts für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck. Shehata, Dahlia. 2009. Musiker und ihr vokales Repertoire: Untersuchungen zu Inhalt und Organisation von Musikerberufen und Liedgattungen in altbabylonischer Zeit. Göttinger Beiträge zum Alten Orient 3. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag. Tinney, Steve. 2011. Tablets of Schools and Scholars: A Portrait of the Old Babylonian Corpus. Pp. 577–96 in The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture, eds. Karen Radner and Eleanor Robson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vogelzang, Marianna, and Herman Vanstiphout (eds.). 1992. Mesopotamian Epic Literature: Oral or Aural? New York: Mellon. Wilcke, Claus. 1975. Formale Gesichtspunkte in der sumerischen Literatur. Pp. 205–316 in Sumerological Studies in Honor of Thorkild Jacobsen, ed. Stephen Lieberman. AS 20. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Zgoll, Annette. 1997. Inana als nugig. ZA 87: 181–95. Ziegler, Nele. 2007. Les Musiciens et la musique d'après les archives de Mari. FM 9 and Mémoires de N.A.B.U. 10. Paris: SÉPOA.

Textual Circulation and Administrative Praxis

Christopher Woods, University of Chicago*

5 Contingency Tables and Economic Forecasting in the Earliest Texts from Mesopotamia The humble summation is at the root of all accounting – this is as true for digital spreadsheets as it is for the earliest cuneiform bookkeeping texts from Mesopotamia dating to the latter half of the fourth millennium BCE. Indeed, evidence for the calculation of summations predates writing itself. Numerical tablets, which make their appearance immediately before the invention of writing, occasionally bear witness to numerals expressed as a series of hierarchical units that are only interpretable through summation (e.g., Englund 1998: 50– 56). No doubt, basic sums making use of fingers, calculi, and tally sticks were calculated thousands of years prior to these developments. In the long, early history of the summation, I focus here on a particular type of calculation that has relevance for the mathematical thinking that underlay early bookkeeping praxis at the dawn of writing. The small group of texts under consideration attest complex summations that cross-classify two categorical variables, and speak to the sophistication of Uruk III (c. 3200–3000 BCE) accounting practices. I argue that these texts are the archaic equivalents of contemporary contingency tables, constituting the earliest known evidence for the organization of data in a manner that suggests an incipient statistical consideration. These texts record the interaction between economically significant categories, and present this data, I suggest, in a way that past correlations could be marshaled as a barometer for future performance. Specifically, I contend that the purpose of these texts, which occupy a high rung on the administrative bookkeeping hierarchy, was to facilitate economic planning and forecasting. This evidence bolsters the assertion made increasingly in recent years that one of the principal driving pressures behind the use of writing in Mesopotamia was not simply bookkeeping, but bookkeeping for the purpose of economic planning.

* I would like to thank our organizers, Paul Delnero and Jacob Lauinger, as well as my fellow symposium participants for their comments and suggestions. A particular debt of gratitude is owed to my colleague Stephen Stigler of the University of Chicago’s Department of Statistics, whose research expertise includes the history of the development of statistical methods. I have had the opportunity to discuss the statistical significance of the texts considered in this paper with Prof. Stigler on several occasions. The understanding of these texts presented here draws heavily upon our conversations and his insights. Needless to say, any errors are mine alone.

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1 Contingency Tables Constituting a basic building block of statistical analysis, contingency tables describe the association between two categorical variables, specifically, the degree to which these variables are dependent – or contingent – upon one another. Contingency tables are a common feature in the landscape of contemporary data presentation, even if the name may be unfamiliar to those unacquainted with statistical analyses. The data set is tabulated into a matrix in which each cell represents a point of intersection between the two variables; referred to as the joint frequencies, the cells record the combinations for all observed outcomes of these variables (Agresti and Finlay 2009: 221). Consider, for example, the following contingency table, which tabulates data of gender and political identification based on a 2004 political survey (NORC General Social Survey): Gender

Party Identification Democrat

Independent

Republican

Total

Females Males

573 386

516 475

422 399

1,511 1,260

Total

959

991

821

2,771

Party Identification and Gender (Agresti and Finlay 2009: 222)

This table addresses the question of whether there is a gender bias, or correlation, with respect to political affiliation – that is, whether party identification is dependent on gender (Agresti and Finlay 2009: 222). This is a 2 × 3 contingency table in which the two rows correspond to the two categories of the gender variable, female and male, while the columns correspond to three categories of the party identification variable. The grand total of 2,771 (the sample size of the survey) is cross-classified by the two variables of gender and political identification. The two-row and three-column totals for each variable are the marginal sums (also referred to as the marginal distributions or frequencies), so-called because they occupy the right and lower margins respectively; the grand total marks the intersection of the two marginal sums. While the example given here is a 2 × 3 contingency table, the most basic cross-classification of this kind is the simple 2 × 2 table, describing two variables with two categories apiece. These data can be converted to percentages of the marginal sums in order to show the relative frequencies for rows or columns. The former represents the probability that each gender will identify as either Democrat, Independent, or Republican. These conditional distributions describe how party identification is contingent – or conditional – upon gender (Agresti and Finlay 2009: 222).

Contingency Tables and Economic Forecasting in the Earliest Texts

Gender

123

Party Identification Democrat

Independent

Republican

Total

Females Males

38 % 30.6 %

34 % 37.7 %

28 % 31.7 %

100 % 100 %

Total

34.6 %

35.8 %

29.6 %

100 %

Conditional Distributions by Row: Party Identification Probabilities for Gender

Conversely, the conditional distributions of the columns display the probability that the members of each party will be either male or female. The critical point here is that the marginal totals, which represent the cross-classifications, are the statistical backbone of contingency tables, allowing for the calculation of the simple probabilities given here to more sophisticated tests, such as the chisquared (Χ2 ) test, which provides a measure of the degree of dependence, or independence, between the variables.

Gender

Party Identification Democrat

Independent

Republican

Total

Females Males

 60 %  40 %

 52 %  48 %

 51 %  49 %

 54.5 %  45.5 %

Total

100 %

100 %

100 %

100 %

Conditional Distributions by Column: Gender Probabilities for Party Identification

2 Archaic Contingency Tables Summations of various kinds are a basic feature of the archaic administrative corpus, comprising the most commonly attested mathematical operation of these texts. Summations, in general, demonstrate that the items summed are at some level comparable and belong to a common semantic class (Englund 1998: 61). In terms of format, summations are typically isolated from the itemizations, or summands, by being inscribed on the reverse of the tablet after the tablet was rotated on its horizontal axis (Englund and Grégoire 1991: 11–12). Generally, these are of the simple variety such as that represented by MSVO 1: 208 (Jemdet Nasr). The final summation of 13 (8 + 5) small cattle (udu) on the reverse represents a tally of individual sub-classifications on the obverse; the lower obverse case includes a subtotal of 1 udunita and 4 maš2, contained in

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the smaller sub-cases. The syntax and hierarchical ordering of the entries is expressed by tablet format and the relative spatial organization of the cases.

Fig. 1: MSVO 1: 208

The summations that are our concern involve two categorical variables and exhibit cross-classifications of those categories. I have to date identified 5 Uruk III tablets (nos. 1–5) that are prototypical of this category: they concern the relationship between variables of two to four categories each and attest summations that yield complete marginal totals. Two additional texts are described here (nos. 6–7) that are representative of summations that are similar to the cross-classifications, but deviate from the prototype by omitting certain totals, which were evidently of secondary importance. It comes as no surprise that the texts described here are limited to the Uruk III paleographic stage – a diagnostic of the Uruk III corpus is an increased complexity in terms of both format and content compared to their Uruk IV predecessors. Although provenance for some of these texts is not known with certainty, it is likely that centers beyond Uruk and Jemdet Nasr, including perhaps Larsa, are represented, bearing witness to that fact that a common set of accounting practices and procedures accompanied the spread of early writing. Three of these texts (nos. 1–3) have been described by Englund in various publications as “complex summations” (e.g., Englund and Grégoire 1991: 11).1

1 Monaco (2005: 3–4, 7) refers to these texts as “double-entry” accounts, while Friberg (1979: 47) describes this organization as “double book-keeping.”

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No. 1 − MSVO 1: 185 (Jemdet Nasr) Englund 1998: 63 Englund and Grégoire 1991: 11 Friberg 1994: 133

Fig. 2: MSVO 1: 185

MSVO 1: 185 is a composite ledger that clearly belongs to a high rung of the archaic bookkeeping hierarchy. The text records a commodity, durb, of unknown meaning but necessarily representing a discrete object as it is quantified by the basic sexagesimal system (S), over a three-year period. Although damaged, the format of the text as well as the values of the summations on the reverse can be reconstructed with confidence, as Englund has shown, based upon the extant portions of the obverse and reverse. An identical format is also encountered in nos. 2–4, further supporting this reconstruction. The commodity durb is qualified with the frequently attested archaic designations ba and gi, representing administrative actions that are typically assumed to mean ‘disbursement’ and ‘delivery’ respectively on the basis of third-millennium texts. The interpretation assumes that gi is a rebus for gi4, one of the few widely accepted rebus writings for the proto-cuneiform writing system. However, these meanings are not assured, particularly since objects qualified as such are often summed together, as in this text.2 Monaco has suggested that the terms refer to two types of expenditures: disbursements of rations to personnel belonging to the temple household (ba), and deliveries beyond its sphere (gi).3 2 See Englund 1988: 76-77. Plausibly, gi could also represent gin, qualifying items that are confirmed to be on hand. Note that the designation gi is often reduplicated, i.e., gi+gi, whereas ba is never reduplicated, to my knowledge. 3 Monaco 2007: 11 n. 69.

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Double-ruled lines, which are commonly used in these texts to separate different classes of transactions and logically distinct sections of complex transactions, distinguish the yearly accounts and the ba and gi itemizations on the obverse. Subsequent to the recording of the individual yearly accounts, the tablet was rotated, with four levels of summations recorded on the reverse beginning with the grand total. The four hierarchical summations include in increasing order: 1. subtotals of ba+durb and gi+durb for each year; 2. totals of ba+gi for each of the three years; 3. totals of ba and gi respectively for the three-year period; and, finally, 4. the grand total of ba+gi itemizations. The double-ruled lines of the reverse demarcate the cross-classifications – distinguishing the simple totals of ba+gi itemizations for each year from one another and from the totals of ba+gi itemizations for the cumulative three-year period. Note that the copy omits small details that corroborate the reconstruction; for instance, the heading for the subtotal for year two, ud+2n57 ( ), is clearly extant on the tablet as is clear from the CDLI photograph.4 Englund and Grégoire (1991: 11) offer the following reconstruction in diagrammatic form:

Fig. 3

4 See http://cdli.ucla.edu/dl/photo/P005252.jpg.

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Remarkably, these quantities can be mapped into a 2 × 3 contingency table with each case corresponding isomorphically to a cell in the table and complete marginal totals that sum perfectly. The table provides a cross-classification of the categorical variables of durb (ba and gi) and time (years 1–3). In other words, assuming the traditional understanding of the terms ba and gi, the table describes the yearly frequencies for disbursements and deliveries of durb (the rows) and the disbursement and delivery frequencies for each year (the columns). Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

Total

durb ba Transactions “Disbursements” gi Transactions “Deliveries”

 9 13

12 19

165 15

37 47

Total

22

31

31

84

MSVO 1: 185 reflects the consolidation of at least three individual yearly accounts. Representative of the type of lower-level bookkeeping text that may have served as the source data for such consolidated accounts is MSVO 1: 21, which shares the same core structure as MSVO 1: 185 (see Friberg 1994: 133). MSVO 1: 21 contrasts gi and ba itemizations for a commodity, possibly in con-

Fig. 4: MSVO 1: 21

5 This is the only number for which there is some doubt: 2–3 N1 graphs are possibly missing in the break, in which case the number may be 17–19 for this case, and the totals would have to be adjusted accordingly.

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nection with cultivation (to judge from the appearance of (ud) apina in obv. i 2 and the grand total, rev. ii 1), for “year 2” (obv. ii 3). The two types of administrative action are separated by the double-ruled line on the obverse, with the individual cases representing quantities in association with particular individuals or officials. The designations di.gir3-gunûb, paa.gir3-gunûb, and ena.gi are designations that appear elsewhere in the archaic corpus – indeed, ena.gi appears several times in the consolidated ledger under discussion, MSVO 1: 185. The reverse gives the subtotals of ba (20) and gi (6), and the grand total (26). It appears likely, therefore, that MSVO 1: 185 is an aggregate of three yearly accounts of the type represented by MSVO 1: 21 (Friberg 1994: 133). Nos. 2–3 – MSVO 4: 43 and 45 (Larsa?) Englund 1998: 188, 190–192 Friberg 1997: 47–51 Friberg 1997/98: 43 MSVO 4: 43 and 45 are parallel grain accounts that clearly are to be considered in conjunction with one another. Both represent barley and emmer calculations in connection with two designations that either represent individuals or, perhaps more likely, professional titles – paa.an.mara6 and bua.papa.nam2, both of which are well attested in the archaic corpus. Assuming that the designation gi, given in no. 45, also applies to no. 43, then these parallel texts consolidate transactions of barley and emmer, perhaps deliveries, with respect to these officials. As expected, barley is measured in the basic, unmarked capacity system (Š-system), while emmer is given in the marked Š″ system. Analogous to logograms that encode for meaning and sound, the proto-literate numerical systems code for two types of data as well: quantitative information and, to a more limited extent, qualitative information. The advantage of these systems was that accountants could simply glance at the number to ascertain what was being counted. The marked numerical systems, which include Š′ and Š* in addition to Š″, likely only had a graphic reality, as is suggested by the fact that the bundling rules for comparable units of these systems are identical and that sums could be expressed either in terms of mixed notations or with recourse to the basic, unmarked capacity system (Š). These numerical systems are then analagous to later graphic disjuncts of the type pa.lugal and pa.diŋir, both of which have the pronunciation /ŋarza/ but differ semantically. In these cases, the writing system, in a rare turn, provides more information than that given by speech. In MSVO 4: 45 the grand total is rendered in the basic Š

6 For the possible identification of AN.MARa with a temple household in the region of Larsa, see Englund 1998: 30-31.

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system, whereas MSVO 4: 43 displays a mixed notation (see also nos. 4 and 5), which indicates that the grand total contains both barley and emmer (see Monaco 2005). The sums provided in the nine cases on the reverses of both texts can be tabulated, resulting in perfectly symmetrical 2 × 2 contingency tables. As with text no. 1, double-ruled lines distinguish the subtotals that correspond to the marginal sums. Note that grain measures for these and the following texts, nos. 4–7, are given in the basic unit of capacity for grain product, bariga or N1 (corresponding to roughly 25 liters). Damage to MSVO 4: 43 prevents a direct reading of two of the subtotals, i.e., 264 + x bariga and 626 + x bariga, however, these are easily reconstructed beyond a doubt with resort to the itemizations and grand total.

Fig. 5: MSVO 4: 43

Grain (in bariga)

paa.an.mara

bua.papa.nam2

Total

Barley (Š) Emmer (Š″)

  700   455

124 174

  824   629 (626 + x)

Total (Š+Š″)

1,155

298 (264 + x)

1,453

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Fig. 6: MSVO 4: 45

Grain (in bariga)

paa.an.mara

bua.papa.nam2

Total

Barley (Š) Emmer (Š″)

163  72

 4 12

167  84

Total (Š)

235

16

251

These texts describe how barley and emmer transactions (possibly deliveries from subordinates or administrative units) vary with respect to these two highranking officials. The timeframe of these deliveries is not known, but the existence of two parallel texts, presumably representing different administrative cycles, suggests that this variation was deemed significant to warrant recording on some regular basis. That MSVO 4: 43 tallies considerably greater quantities than MSVO 4: 45 may point to a meaningful variation. In fact, a comparison of the two conditional distributions of each text would suggest that the archaic accountants were interested in measuring how the quantities of different grains varied for the two officials in relation to the total amounts of grain delivered. Grain probabilities for each official: MSVO 4: 43

paa.an.mara

bua.papa.nam2

Total

Barley Emmer

 60.6 %  39.4 %

 41.6 %  58.4 %

 56.7 %  43.3 %

Total

100 %

100 %

100 %

Contingency Tables and Economic Forecasting in the Earliest Texts

MSVO 4: 45

paa.an.mara

bua.papa.nam2

Total

Barley Emmer

 69.4 %  30.6 %

 25 %  75 %

 66.5 %  33.5 %

Total

100 %

100 %

100 %

131

Official probabilities for each grain type: MSVO 4: 43

paa.an.mara

bua.papa.nam2

Total

Barley Emmer

85 % 72.3 %

15 % 27.7 %

100 % 100 %

Total

79.5 %

20.5 %

100 %

MSVO 4: 45

paa.an.mara

bua.papa.nam2

Total

Barley Emmer

97.6 % 85.7 %

 2.4 % 14.3 %

100 % 100 %

Total

93.6 %

 6.4 %

100 %

No. 4 − CUSAS 1: 98 (unprovenanced) CUSAS 1: 98 represents a complete and perfectly calculated 3 × 2 contingency table involving relatively large amounts of grain – specifically, barley, emmer, and an emmer qualified lagabb.te, a designation that is encountered elsewhere in the archaic corpus particularly in connection with emmer (Š″) and, more rarely, barley (Š′) accounts.7 Two sets of double-rule lines on the reverse respectively separate the remaining itemizations (carried over from the obverse) from the first level of subtotals and demarcate the two totals that correspond to marginal sums as in texts nos. 1–3. Similar to text no. 2 (MSVO 4, 43), the grand total is given in a mixed notation, Š+Š″. Whereas the reverse of the table preserves the summations in their entirety, the obverse is completely effaced, complicating an understanding of this remarkable text, which speaks to the economic interactions between city-states in the archaic period. Monaco has demonstrated that the designation tara in the archaic corpus denotes interest on a loan, typically of grain and calculated at a rate of 10%.8 The qualifi7 See now Bramanti 2014. 8 Monaco 2012; see also the earlier discussion by Englund 1988: 150–154, where tara is shown to have an added value of 1/10.

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cation šea.unuga.tara then likely represents interest due to Uruk,9 an interpretation consistent with the mention of other place names in the text, including Larsa. More tentatively, the designation apina.ena.nagaa may refer to the cultivation under the control of the en of Eresh.10 Although the underlying interdependence is obscure, the totals possibly relate interest in grain owed to Uruk by various city-states to grain income from nearby Eresh.

Fig. 7: CUSAS 1: 98

Grain (in bariga)

apina.ena.nagaa

šea.unuga.tara

Total

Barley (Š) Emmer (Š″) Emmer lagabb.te (Š″)

1,706 5,475    48

  114 1,643    60

1,820 7,118   108

Total (Š + Š″)

7,229

1,817

9,046

No. 5 − MSVO 3: 42 (Uruk?) MSVO 3: 42 presents a 2 × 4 table that, again, records barley and emmer for what are probably four personal or professional designations. In two instances, the transactions only involved barley. Consequently, the totals are not recorded in these cases (indicated in the below table within parentheses) as they would 9 Monaco 2012: 169 n. 24, and 175. 10 I owe this suggestion to S. Monaco, who interprets this designation as an office, literally, “the farmer of the en of the town Eresh” (personal communication).

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be redundant, being identical to the respective barley entries. The totals for each individual, as well as the grand total, are given in a mixed Š + Š″ notation.

Fig. 8: MSVO 3: 42

Grain (in bariga)

lu2.mud3d

unuga.e2a

paa.šubur.sug5

ti-tenû.zaga Total

Barley (Š) Emmer (Š″)

36 18

30 30

30  0

24  0

120  48

Total (Š + Š″)

54

60

(30)

(24)

168

In contrast to the above examples, the following two texts do not conform to the contingency table prototype. Yet they exhibit structural similarities with the above texts in terms of comparing two categorical variables and providing one set of marginal totals as well as a grand total in the case of no. 7. These texts should therefore be considered in light of the cross-classifications and the various types of complex summations attested in the archaic corpus.

No. 6 − MSVO 3: 11 (Uruk?) Englund 1998: 192, 194 Nissen, Damerow, and Englund 1993: 44, 46 As is the case with many of the Erlenmeyer texts, MSVO 3: 11 concerns ingredients for beer – in this particular case, amounts of barley groats and malt measured for four different types of beer. The sums given on the reverse are heterogeneous in that in lieu of cereal totals for each beer, the text records the total number of vessels for each beer that these quantities of barley and malt pro-

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duce (Englund 1992: 192); the individual itemizations of vessels, organized perhaps as deliveries to households or officials, are recorded on the obverse. Whereas the beers designated šenb, both “large” (gala) and “small” (tur) varieties, are brewed with equal parts of barley and malt, the beers described as šenc-tenû and duga are brewed at a ratio of 1 : 1.5.11 Since the number of jars and the measures of grain are incongruous quantities, a cross-classified grand total is not given.

Fig. 9: MSVO 3: 11

Grain (in bariga)

šenb.gal “Big” Beer

šenb.tur “Small” Beer

šenc-tenû Beer

duga Beer

Total

Barley Groats (Š*) Malt (Š′)

 6.3  6.3

 19.2  19.2

 19.4  29.4

 2.4  1.6

47.3 56.5

Total (S)

2112

160

378

10

11 On the basis of MSVO 3, 2, Nissen, Damerow, and Englund (1993: 46) argue that this ratio represents a calculation error for the beer designated šenc-tenû, and that the correct barley to malt proportion for this beer type is 1 : 1 (see also Englund 1998: 192 n. 439). 12 This is a scribal calculation error. The correct total number of vessels for this beer is 26; the scribe overlooked one of the four entries of 5 vessels on the obverse.

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No. 7 − MSVO 3: 51 (Uruk?) Englund 1998: 187–188 Monaco 2005: 4 Nissen, Damerow, and Englund 1993: 41, 43 MSVO 3: 51 is representative of a relatively common type of summation account (cf. MSVO 3: 55 and 67 [without grand totals]). It is essentially a 2 × 2 crossclassification account, but with only one marginal total (including a grand total) explicitly given. As in the case of no. 6, the text concerns the relationship between barley groats and malt for beer production, in this instance according to two qualifications, naga and duba, of unknown meaning. That totals of grain were recorded, while totals for the designations nagaa and duba were not, suggests that the qualifications nagaa and duba were a secondary bookkeeping concern, perhaps representing supplemental ingredients used in preparation of cereals for beer production (see Englund 1993: 188 n. 432; cf. 1993: 187).

Fig. 10: MSVO 3: 51

Grain (in bariga)

nagaa

duba

Total

Barley groats (Š*) Emmer Malt (Š′)

42.8 46.8

12.8 12.13

 55.6  58.8

Total (Š)

114.4

13 A scribal dittography either in this case or in the case for malt designated as naga (46 4/5) owing to the presence of the 4/5 fraction in other cases (see Monaco 2005: 4).

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3 Discussion The most salient feature of these texts are the cross-classifications, representing a level of mathematical thinking and abstraction markedly beyond the simple sum. This fact alone has broad significance for mathematical thought and the cognitive organization of information in the archaic period – a period for which we can now claim to have the earliest evidence for mathematical texts (Monaco 2011; 2014: 4–5). More broadly, the recognition of these texts as essentially early contingency tables, predating their more typically formatted successors by millennia, has obvious importance for the history of mathematics and statistics. Cross-classifications describe the relationship between two variables detached from the individual data points given by the empirical data. In short, the decomposition of inherently composite data into distinct, analyzable components represents in itself a statistical act. The obverses of these texts provide the discrete data points of the individual transactions. The reverses, on the other hand, are dedicated to the cross-classified sums, which are essentially smoothing operations that capture important generalizations and patterns across the dataset at the expense of foregoing the fine-grained information that is recorded at the level of the individual transactions of the obverse. That the archaic accountants intuitively understood the difference between these two types of information is shown by the isolation of the summations, whenever possible, on the rotated reverse of the tablet, thereby physically marking their special status as quantities distinct from those of the individual transactions that comprise the obverse. The use of double-ruled lines, which distinguish totals that correspond to marginal sums, in addition to hierarchical cases and subcases gives further organization and structure to the data. More practically, the representation of these sums on the rotated reverse was a physical arrangement that facilitated a bookkeeping review of the most salient information – the marginal and final totals. The evidence for archaic texts that correspond to the contingency tables of modern statistical analysis must be considered within the historical context of this particular form of data presentation. Obviously, these texts do not represent a table in the traditional sense. As has been pointed out by Robson, the first experiments with tabular format occur only in the Fara period,14 several

14 VAT 12593 (see Nissen, Damerow, and Englund 1993: 136–138; Robson 2003: 27–30). The table only becomes a standard, if not particularly common, format for the presentation of data in the early Old Babylonian period. The history and typology of tables in Mesopotamia has been discussed extensively by Robson (2003, 2004).

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hundred years after our texts, while tables with calculations along the horizontal and vertical axes, similar to ours, first appear in the early Old Babylonian period.15 However, the standardized format, which constitutes the mathematical syntax of these accounts, is in fact, a type of tabulation. And, as observed above, there is an identity between text and table not only in terms of content but also structure – there is a complete isomorphism between the cases on the tablet and cells of the table. Stigler (2002) has observed that evidence for contingency tables is very rare prior to 1900, the year in which Karl Pearson published the chi-squared test.16 While the simple 2 × 2 table has antecedents in probability and logic, tables exhibiting more than two categories are almost entirely a product of 20 th century statistical analysis (Stigler 2002: 564). Stigler hypothesizes that this apparent lack of an early history of the contingency table is primarily due to conceptual difficulties owing to a lack of appropriate models, which restricted the statistically significant questions that could be asked (Stigler 2002: 571–72). In turn, the square symmetry of the modern contingency table, once instituted as a regular means of data presentation, invited further statistical application, shaping the types of queries that could be made as well as the development of the tools to address them. It is in this light that we must appreciate the archaic cross-classified accounts from the end of the fourth millennium – with the notable exception of their Old Babylonian successors, there is virtually no record of data presentation of this kind until the turn of the 20 th century AD. Moreover, the format of these Uruk III tablets – their particular form of tabulation – does not immediately invite analysis. That is to say, the sums are not in themselves a simple and obvious byproduct of geometric table symmetry, where horizontal and vertical sums might be a secondary consideration as one suspects is the case with the Old Babylonian examples. Their inclusion in our texts is purposeful. Indeed, the fact that these texts have not been previously connected with contingency tables highlights the power of geometric symmetry in the presentation of data. However, questions remain as to the meaning of these texts, their ultimate use, and the role they played in the larger bureaucracy. Surely, no one would seriously make the anachronistic suggestion that archaic accountants were engaged in calculating probabilities even of the simple type I presented earlier,

15 Tables with vertical and horizontal summations – that is, marginal sums – are rare. One particular example, dating to the reign of Rim-Sin is YOS 5, 103 [YBC 4721] (Robson [2004: 128–129]), of which Robson observes, “We could almost say that YBC 4721, dating to 1822 BC, is the world’s earliest attested spreadsheet” (2004: 128). 16 The terms contingency and contingency table were introduced in Pearson 1904.

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let alone anything approaching the sophistication of the chi-squared test. Furthermore, the evidence for this genre is limited, to my knowledge, to less than ten examples, only five of which can be claimed to represent a prototypical contingency table. And, as is so often the case with the proto-cuneiform corpus, decipherment obstacles, ignorance of the broader administrative context, and the laconic nature of the records themselves prevent anything approaching a full understanding of these texts, even if the quantities can be interpreted unambiguously. Yet, any suggestion that the sole purpose of these texts was merely for accountability – for subordinates to justify their activities to their superiors – is, in my view, unconvincing. It is difficult to conceive why such a rarely attested and complex account type would be necessary for so basic a purpose. But more importantly, the fact that the cross-classifications represent abstractions, data untethered to specific transactions and – as is the case in nos. 1 and 6 – unconnected to the responsible officials, makes accountability, at least as the sole explanation, unlikely. More plausibly, these texts bear witness, on some level, to a statistical approach to issues of central economic importance to the city-states of the Late Uruk period.17 It is certainly not coincidental in this regard that these texts center primarily upon the dispensation of grain, in some cases in large quantities, and how these transactions relate to high officials of the administrative bureaucracy. The basic assumption here is that the ancients collected and structured data in this way for the very same reasons that motivate the modern contingency table – namely, that it facilitates data analysis and the understanding of the relationships between categorical variables. That is, although the contexts are obscure and we cannot fully know how these texts were exploited, this specific organization of data is highly significant and revealing in itself, reflecting an interest in understanding the degree to which related economic variables were dependent, or contingent, upon one another. Economic activity is predicated on expectations, projections based on past experience. Indeed, economic forecasts of a rudimentary kind that took account of anticipated consumption, sowing requirements, and agricultural yields must have been practiced since the Neolithic Revolution. The texts presented here may represent the first attempts to systematically uncover correlations between variables that would facilitate such projections. The administrative importance of these texts would appear to be assured by fact that they belong to a relatively high echelon of the administrative bookkeeping hierarchy, representing consolidated accounts that sub-

17 See Steinkeller 2004: 79, with respect to the motivations behind Ur III documentation; cf. Van De Mieroop 1997.

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sumed the data recorded in lower-level texts. This fact alone suggests that the corpus of these texts will never be particularly large. By necessity, an understanding of the relationship between two economic variables requires multiple data points so that long-term patterns can be detected through an averaging, or smoothing, process. The temporal account MSVO 1: 185 (no. 1) is particularly telling in this regard. The cross-classified summations of ba and gi transactions of the commodity durb reveal a threeyear pattern that supersedes – or “smoothes out” – the fluctuations of any individual year. Texts nos. 2 and 3 similarly reflect a repeated sampling of the very same variables: barley and emmer deliveries to two high officials; such texts may have fed larger cross-classification ledgers that described the longterm relationships between variables. Plausibly, the purpose of these data collection exercises was for economic planning – the belief that properly understood trends of the past could be marshaled as predictors of future performance. The small group of cross-classifications described here would not have served this purpose alone. Other archaic administrative texts – such as those that represent multi-year accounts18, some stretching as much as eight years into the past, and those that exhibit theoretical calculations (Nissen, Damerow, and Englund 1993: 35) – are easily accommodated in a framework that sees economic forecasting as a prime motivation behind the administrative bookkeeping of the archaic period. This proposal is consistent with the argument put forth by both Selz (1999) and Steinkeller (2004) that economic forecasting was the main motivation behind administrative record keeping in the third millennium. This claim reflects a position, increasingly held in recent years, that challenges the assumption that complex administration is only made possible through the agency of writing. For the Ur III period, Steinkeller argues that the majority of administrative records were executed post factum, in an administrative context often far removed from the coordinates of person, place, and time of the actual transaction (2004: 77). That is, administrative texts, despite their ostensible specifications of who received what from whom and where, actually occupied a distinct, virtual bookkeeping reality. It therefore follows that written records were not essential – in fact, were anomalous – to day-to-day administration, but rather occupied an optional, supplementary layer of bureaucratic practice. The purpose of compiling written administrative records, Steinkeller concludes, “was to enable a given office to provide the top management with the summary (or even statistical) information, presented in a form intelligible to an outsider,

18 E.g., MSVO 4: 1–2 (see Englund 1998: 183), MSVO 1: 89 and 90 (Monaco 2004: 4); similarly ATU 6: pl. 6 (W14133).

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which would permit global economic prognostication or planning” (2004: 79). This claim finds support in the observation that estimates, particularly those involving agricultural production, constitute a substantial percentage of thirdmillennium economic records (Steinkeller 2004: 80–81). Selz similarly concludes that prosaic administrative texts serve the more ambitious, forwardlooking purpose of economic planning: “Selbst wenn in einem Bereich nur Abrechnungen und Bestandskontrollen vorgenommen bzw. überliefert sein sollten, so verfolgen sie innerhalb dieser Wirtschaftsform einen auf die Zukunft gerichteten Zweck: sie sind Unterlagen für eine Planung” (1999: 489). The archaic contingency tables provide plausible albeit speculative evidence for an incipient statistical consideration of the relationships between economic variables, and may suggest that economic planning, as has been persuasively argued for the third millennium, was already a concern of the archaic city states. Needless to say, the ability to make reasonable economic projections and to plan accordingly is of paramount importance to centralized economies and their long-term stability. It may therefore not be overreaching to suggest that economic planning – the object not only of the cross-classifications discussed here, but arguably of the broader matrix of administrative texts to which these belonged, representing the various echelons of a bookkeeping hierarchy – was one of the driving pressures behind the rapid development of writing between the Uruk IV and III periods, and perhaps even the very invention of writing itself.19 Writing played no role in ushering in the momentous socio-economic changes that defined the Uruk period. Rather writing appears during a period of retrenchment, just as the institutions that served as the crucible for its invention begin to falter. What writing did provide, however, was a more robust, flexible, and permanent accounting apparatus that went beyond the simple mnemonic devices that preceded it – the new technology provided unprecedented data storage capabilities that could be exploited for the purpose of economic planning.

Bibliography Agresti, Alan and Barbara Finlay. 2009. Statistical Methods for the Social Sciences, 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. Bramanti, Armando. 2015. A Jemdet-Nasr Fragment in the Collections of the Oriental Institute of Chicago. CDLN 2015/4. Englund, Robert. 1988. Administrative Timekeeping in Ancient Mesopotamia. JESHO 31: 121– 185. 19 Extrapolating to the Uruk period, Steinkeller observes that “what the written records did enable was the possibility of engaging in forward economic planning” (2004: 83). Selz, on the

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Englund, Robert. 1996. Proto-Cuneiform Texts from Diverse Collections. MSVO 4. Berlin: Gebr. Mann. Englund, Robert. 1998. Texts from the Late Uruk Period. Pp. 15–233 in Mesopotamien: Späturuk-Zeit und Frühdynastische Zeit, ed. J. Bauer, R. Englund, and M. Krebernik. OBO 160/1. Freiburg/Göttingen: Universitätsverlag/Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. Englund, Robert. 2001. Grain Accounting Practices in Archaic Mesopotamia. Pp. 1–35 in Changing Views on Ancient Near Eastern Mathematics, ed. J. Høyrup and P. Damerow. BBVO 19. Berlin: Reimer. Englund, Robert and J.-P. Grégoire 1991. The Proto-Cuneiform Texts from Jemdet Nasr. MSVO 1. Berlin: Gebr. Mann. Friberg, Jöran. 1979. The Early Roots of Mathematics: II. Metrological Relations in a Group of Semi-Pictographic Tablets of the Jemdet Nasr Type, Probably from Uruk-Warka. Göteborg, Sweden: Chalmers University of Technology and the University of Göteborg. Friberg, Jöran. 1994. Review of R. Englund and J.-P. Grégoire, The Proto-Cuneiform Texts from Jemdet Nasr. ZA 84: 130–135 Friberg, Jöran. 1997–98. Round and almost round numbers in proto-literate metromathematical field texts. AfO 44–45: 1–58. Goody, Jack. 1986. The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Monaco, Salvatore. 2004. Revisiting Jemdet Nasr Texts: IM 55580+. CDLB 2004/3. Monaco, Salvatore. 2005. Unusual Accounting Practices in Archaic Mesopotamian Tablets. CDLJ 2005/1. Monaco, Salvatore. 2007. The Cornell University Archaic Tablets. CUSAS 1. Bethesda: CDL. Monaco, Salvatore. 2011. Two Archaic Mathematical Tablets. SEL 28: 1–5. Monaco, Salvatore. 2012. Loan and Interest in the Archaic Texts. ZA 102: 165–178. Monaco, Salvatore. 2014. Archaic Bullae and Tablets in the Cornell University Collections. CUSAS 21. Bethesda, MD: CDL. Nissen, Hans, Peter Damerow, and Robert Englund. 1993. Archaic Bookkeeping: Early Writing and Techniques of Economic Administration in the Ancient Near East. Chicago: University of Chicago. Pearson, Karl. 1900. On the Criterion that a given System of Deviations from the Probable in the Case of a Correlated System of Variables is such that it can be reasonably supposed to have arisen from Random Sampling, Philosophical Magazine, 5th Series 50(302): 157– 175. Pearson, Karl. 1904. On the Theory of Contingency and Its Relation to Association and Normal Correlation. Drapers’ Company Research Memoirs. Biometric Series I. Mathematical Contributions to the Theory of Evolution 13. London: Dulau and Co. Robson, Eleanor. 2003. Tables and Tabular Formatting in Sumer, Babylonia, and Assyria, 2500 BCE–50 CE. Pp. 19–47 in The History of Mathematical Tables: From Sumer to Spreadsheets, ed. Martin Campbell-Kelly, Mary Croarken, Raymond Flood, and Eleanor Robson. Oxford: Oxford University. Robson, Eleanor. 2004. Accounting for Change: The Development of Tabular Book-keeping in Early Mesopotamia. Pp. 107–44 in Creating Economic Order: Record-keeping,

other hand, reserves judgment, remarking “Über die Funktion der frühesten Verwaltungsdokumente innerhalb des wirtschaftlichen Planungsablaufs können wir heute noch kaum etwas ausmachen” (1999: 489).

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Standardization and the Development of Accounting in the Ancient Near East, ed. Michael Hudson and Cornelia Wunsch. Bethesda: CDL. Selz, Gebhard. 1999. Vom “vergangenen Geschehen” zur “Zukunftsbewältigung”: Überlegungen zur Rolle der Schrift in Ökonomie und Geschichte. Pp. 465–512 in Munuscula Mesopotamica: Festschrift für Johannes Renger, ed. Barbara Böck et al. AOAT 267. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag. Steinkeller, Piotr. 2004. The Function of Written Documentation in the Administrative Praxis of Early Babylonia. Pp. 65–88 in Creating Economic Order: Record-keeping, Standardization and the Development of Accounting in the Ancient Near East, ed. Michael Hudson and Cornelia Wunsch. Bethesda: CDL. Stigler, Stephen. 1999. Statistics on the Table: The History of Statistical Concepts and Methods. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Stigler, Stephen. 2002. The Missing Early History of Contingency Tables. Annales de la Faculté des Sciences de Toulouse 11: 563–573. Van De Mieroop, Marc. 1997. Why Did They Write on Clay? KLIO 79: 7–18.

Steven J. Garfinkle, Western Washington University*

6 Ur III Administrative Texts Building Blocks of State Community

1 Introduction The archives from the Third Dynasty of Ur (Ur III period, 2012–2004 BC) are famous among Assyriologists and ancient historians for two reasons: first, the tremendous number of surviving texts; second, the laconic nature of the majority of these texts. Tens of thousands of texts survive documenting the last century of the third millennium BC, and these are mostly the records of the state administration. The writing surface of most of these administrative texts was quite small, most often no taller or wider than a modern credit card, consisting of 10–20 lines of text.1 For the most part, these tablets record deliveries and disbursements of moveable property or of labor. As a result of this proliferation of texts, the Ur III period is often considered a paradigm for the early development of bureaucracy and absolute state control. Explaining the sudden appearance of so many texts in this era is one of the most pressing questions facing observers of early Mesopotamia. Unless this abundance is an accident of discovery or preservation, then it is evidence for significant social, economic, and political developments at the end of the third millennium BC.2 A common response presumes that the archives were by-products of government growth, and in particular of centralization. In addition, according to the old evolutionary understanding of the growth of the state in

* I extend my warm appreciation to Paul Delnero and Jacob Lauinger for organizing and guiding the successful symposium at Johns Hopkins University at which this contribution was first presented. The published version of my paper benefited from the insight of the participants, and especially from the critique that I received from Chris Woods who had the task of reading my contribution at the symposium. 1 According to Molina (2008: 43) more than 90 % of the catalogued tablets from this period include fewer than 30 lines, and nearly 75 % contain 5–15 lines of text. 2 Adams (2009: 2–3) pointed out that the nature of the Ur III corpus is not merely the accident of discovery or preservation: “My personal belief, having walked over many thousands of ancient mounds in southern Mesopotamia (not a few of them with Ur III periods of occupation), is that a major alteration in the presently observed huge preponderance of state records, is surely subject to some reduction but not necessarily to fundamental change.”

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Mesopotamia, the Ur III texts document the triumph of the secular state over its temple city precursors. The view that I develop below suggests that the texts themselves facilitated state formation, rather than being a result of it; and that this process was both less radical than supposed as well as more negotiated than imposed.3 The wealth of surviving texts from the last century of the third millennium BC has encouraged us to imagine the kingdom as a highly organized and expansionist state. The Ur III period is significant to our broader understanding of ancient Mesopotamia not only because of its extensive documentary record, but also because, as Adams (2006: 134) recently noted, “the Ur III bureaucracy has gone on to become a virtually iconic example in comparative studies of early states and empires generally.” The kings of Ur ruled over a territorial state that extended from the Persian Gulf up through most of southern Mesopotamia. These endeavors required a significant amount of record keeping. We have come to regard the explosion of text production as the result of the growth of the state and increased centralization. My view is that we need to explore the ways in which this record keeping enabled that growth in a community increasingly characterized by a tributary economy based on royal patronage. In this contribution, I address a series of related questions regarding the administrative corpora of the Ur III period. Under what circumstances were the texts created and preserved? Who had access to the texts and how did they circulate? What can we learn about the Ur III state, and about early state formation, from these inquiries? In the next section, I provide an overview of the Ur III corpus, focusing on the nature of the surviving texts, their provenance, and the chronology of the archives. In the third section, I examine what we know about the principles for creating, distributing, and storing the archives of the Third Dynasty of Ur and how we use this knowledge to reconstruct those archives. In the fourth section, I turn to the questions of why the administrative texts were drafted and how they circulated among the literate officials of the kingdom of Ur. In the fifth section, I use a discussion of the evidence for the delivery of tribute from outside of the kingdom as an example of how the state’s use of texts was focused on facilitating patronage rather than planning. Finally, I offer some conclusions on the basis of this analysis. The essence of these conclusions is that the production and storage of texts was an exercise in power. The officials of the state used texts to appropriate resources for the crown and its clients. A significant goal for the participants in the texts was to document their involvement in the tributary economy that

3 See Selz 2010 for the view that the administrative reforms of the Ur III period had their origin in practices developed in earlier eras.

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characterized the patrimonial system under the kings of Ur. Textuality was therefore about creating a statewide community. The crown simultaneously exerted control over resources and people from across the kingdom and brought them together on tablets for the benefit of the royal elite. The texts also linked elites from various parts of the kingdom. The circulation of the texts was as important to the creation of statewide community as the circulation of the goods documented in those texts.4

2 The Corpus of texts from the Ur III period In this section, I survey the size, content, distribution, and chronology of the surviving texts from the kingdom of Ur.5 Nearly 100,000 texts from the last century of the third millennium BC are preserved in museums, libraries, and private collections.6 A majority of these texts has been published over the course of the last century and most are available to scholars online courtesy of the Database of Neo-Sumerian Texts in Madrid and the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative in Los Angeles.7 Two things immediately stand out when we attempt to classify the texts from the Ur III period. First, the various extant corpora overwhelmingly document the activities and concerns of the state.8 What we have are primarily the records of provincial administrations (in Umma, Girsu-Lagaš) and royal centers

4 In the third millennium BC, writing did not create the dynamics of social change; but recordkeeping did more than simply reflect those changes. In the case of administrative documents, we need to focus on how they were used, that is, what did they accomplish at the time of their creation. In the third millennium BC they were an instantiation of abstract processes not immediately visible either to modern historians or, in my opinion, to the administrators themselves. They helped to create the idea of community among those administrators and among the elites in Mesopotamian communities. I am not going to go so far as to say that the texts created the state instead of the other way around, but I would say that the texts facilitated the idea of the territorial state in ways that were both conscious and unconscious to contemporary observers. 5 For a more detailed overview of the corpus, see Molina 2008, and see the remarks in Garfinkle 2013. 6 The data included in this section is drawn from the Database of Neo-Sumerian Texts (BDTNS). As of October 2013, BDTNS listed approximately 93,000 Ur III texts in its records. 7 BDTNS: http://bdts.filol.csic.es; CDLI: http://www.cdli.ucla.edu. 8 On the “public” nature of the corpus, see, for example, Adams 2009: 2. Elsewhere, I wrote extensively about the problems associated with using the vocabulary of public and private in connection with the communities of early Mesopotamia, see Garfinkle 2012 and in press-a.

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(such as Puzriš-Dagan/Drehem, Iri-Saĝrig). Records survive from the individual households of entrepreneurs and members of the elite (see Garfinkle 2012), but these are relatively rare.9 Even in the texts from Nippur, which are known for their less official character, the records related to institutional and administrative activity outnumber those related to the commercial activity of individual households. Second, as a consequence of the preponderance of records from the state sector, most of the Ur III archives consist of administrative texts.10 Observers of the Ur III state routinely acknowledge this fact, but we need to develop a useful definition of this type of text. I define administration as a term relating to the running of an organization or institution. For early Mesopotamia this can encompass a great variety of enterprises of varying size, such as a craft workshop, a temple household, a royal estate, the office of a provincial governor, etc. Essentially, administrative texts are the records of the operation of the institutional households of the kingdom, including temples, royal estates, and the offices of the provincial governors who managed the formerly independent city-states. Most of these texts took the form of receipts and disbursals of property owned or controlled by provincial and royal officials who were ultimately responsible to the kings of Ur.11 We must also include the more rare but very significant accounts, summaries, and balanced accounts that brought together and organized hundreds if not thousands of the smaller administrative texts (see Van De Mieroop 1999/2000 and 2004). In addition, significant numbers of messenger texts and letter orders survive and were also produced by the Ur III administrators.12

9 The records of the individual households primarily come from the estates of well-connected members of the elite. This is certainly the case for the texts from Garšana (see Owen and Mayr 2007, Heimpel 2009, and Owen 2011). This fact reinforces the extent to which the Ur III archives document the patronage activities of the kings and their court. 10 Our documents relate almost exclusively to the state sector, and yet we do not have the royal state archives from the capital, see Englund 2012: 41. 11 These texts are identifiable on the basis of a relatively standardized administrative vocabulary. Receipts featured the operative terms šu ba-an-ti (for inanimate objects) and i3-dab5 for animate objects. The disbursals used the terms zi-ga or ba-zi to indicate withdrawals from available stock. The deliveries, especially prominent at Puzriš-Dagan, featured the term muDU. The texts from non-institutional households regularly mimicked this vocabulary. Loans between individuals used the same terminology as other kinds of receipts but with the added indication of interest and repayment clauses. This mirroring of the state terminology is probably indicative both of the standardization of scribal training achieved during the reign of Šulgi, and of the fact that the same scribes often served all players in the local economies. 12 For a breakdown of the available numbers of some of these smaller groups of text types, see Molina 2008: 45. The messenger texts constitute more than 5 % of the extant corpus of Ur III texts.

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Messenger texts form an important part of the extant material and large archives of such texts survive from Umma, Girsu-Lagaš, and Iri-Saĝrig.13 The messenger texts provide a wealth of information about both textual transmission and state business under the kings of Ur. The tablets are usually quite small, listing rations for a handful of individuals for trips on behalf of the state that might take them from one city to another but often took them into the periphery. A great variety of notables appeared in these texts from ordinary messengers to soldiers to princes of the realm. According to Pomponio’s (2013) reconstruction, the messenger texts were produced at the “resthouses” that organized the activities of the messengers within the provinces. Three or four such resthouses were in place in the territory of Umma. The texts written at, or possibly for, these centers were eventually bundled together into baskets and transferred to the central office of the Umma province so that the accounts of the expenditures could be generated. The messenger texts were produced entirely in the state sector, but additional types of economic and administrative texts survive from both institutional and non-institutional households including significant numbers of loans and sales.14 Of course, other types of texts are also extant from the Third Dynasty of Ur, such as court documents (see Molina 2010), legal texts (including the famous Laws of Ur-Namma), royal inscriptions, hymns, and ideological texts (such as the Sumerian King List), as well as letters. These texts survive in later copies or in very small numbers and this is surely related to the fact that we have not recovered the royal archives from the capital at Ur. As Adams (2006) and others have noted, the Ur III texts form a largely urban corpus.15 Therefore, the majority of our texts come from the ancient cities of southern Mesopotamia, such as Umma, Girsu-Lagaš, Nippur, and Ur, as well as the administrative centers created by the kings of Ur, such as PuzrišDagan.16 More recently, scholars have had access to large corpora of texts from

13 Recent discussions of the messenger texts appear in Pomponio 2013 (Umma texts), Notizia 2013 (Girsu-Lagaš), and Owen 2013c (Iri-Saĝrig). 14 BDTNS lists approximately 1,400 loans and 200 sale documents in the corpus of Ur III texts. 15 This observation is reinforced by Steinkeller’s (2004) conclusions that the texts were not created at the point of a transaction or record-keeping moment, for example at the threshing floor of a village, but only in the “offices” of the urban institutions responsible for the transaction. Steinkeller’s conclusion may be a bit too broad, but it was certainly the case that the texts were stored in urban contexts and created for the use of urban and literate elites. 16 According to BDTNS, approx. 28,600 texts are known from Umma, 26,700 from Girsu-Lagaš, 14,700 from Puzriš-Dagan, 4,300 from Ur, and 3,500 from Nippur. Roughly 60 % of the extant corpus comes from either Umma or Girsu-Lagaš, and these texts constitute nearly 70 %

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other centers of royal activity, such as the city of Iri-Saĝrig and the royal estate at Garšana.17 With very few exceptions, these texts were looted or purchased. Therefore, the Ur III texts were not discovered under controlled and documented circumstances in modern archaeological excavations.18 We can usually establish a provenance for the texts based on their contents. Many of the cities of the kingdom of Ur continued to rely on local calendars. Some of our texts refer to their city of origin or to specific topographic features within the provinces of the kingdom. We also are able to place texts within certain communities on the basis of prosopographic analysis. These are often very broad notions of provenance. We can say that a text came from Umma or from Nippur, but we often cannot say much more than that.19 Therefore, we have only the roughest ideas of where many of our texts came from within the cities of their origin and how they were stored in antiquity. The chronology of the different Ur III archives mirrors the successes of the kingdom, in particular the military success of its kings. In many of the larger urban centers (Umma, Girsu-Lagaš, Nippur, and Ur) the survival of significant numbers of texts begins in Šulgi 25 and only continues to the early years of Ibbi-Suen.20 The exception is the capital city of Ur, from which significant numbers of texts survive down to Ibbi-Suen 17. Therefore, our abundance of texts really documents a little more than forty years, or two generations, at the height of the kingdom’s power and success. The texts tapered off right when this experiment in state formation became a failed state. The diminution in text production early in the reign of Ibbi-Suen can be anticipated by the fact that the texts themselves are evidence for successful centralization (see Steinkeller 2004) as well as being signifiers of dynastic success. When the king

of the tablets for which we can establish a provenance. Smaller groups of texts survive from Adab and other cities. 17 Approx. 1,100 texts are known from Iri-Saĝrig, and 1,500 from Garšana. For Iri-Saĝrig, see Owen 2013a and 2013b, a summary of the archive appears in Owen 2013c. For Garšana, see Owen and Mayr 2007, Owen 2011, and Heimpel 2009. 18 The small archive from Susa is a welcome exception, see De Graef 2005 and 2008. Many of the texts from Nippur were excavated in the middle of the last century and a great deal of information survives at least for their place of origin on the archaeological site. 19 For example, a recent article by Tsouparopoulou (2013) highlighted how little we still know of the actual physical layout of Puzriš-Dagan. 20 Umma, Girsu-Lagaš, Nippur: Šulgi 25 – Ibbi-Suen 3; texts survive in great numbers from Puzriš-Dagan following its founding by Šulgi as an administrative center: Šulgi 39 – Ibbi-Suen 2. The smaller royal archives similarly show the decline of the kingdom early in the reign of Ibbi-Suen: Iri-Saĝrig: Amar-Suen 7 – Ibbi-Suen 3; Garšana: Šu-Suen 5 – Ibbi-Suen 3. Pomponio (2013: 226) noted the close correlation between the disappearance of the messenger texts at Umma in Ibbi-Suen 2 and the broader chronology of the Ur III archives.

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could no longer ensure that success, the entire system of patronage began to break down and with it the record-keeping apparatus.

3 The organizing principles for creating, distributing, and storing texts: archival reconstruction In order to determine the principles of textual transmission in the Ur III period, we need to reassemble the archives that have been dispersed in the modern era. An enormous amount of information has been lost through the separation of the tablets from their archaeological contexts. We often sort the tablets on the basis of their contents. This allows us to draw conclusions about categories of texts, such as loans, and the information that they provide about the economy and society of Mesopotamia; but we only gain limited insights into the processes of textual transmission from these types of assemblages. A number of tools are available for the reconstruction of the Ur III archives in addition to the surviving information about the provenance of the tablets. Probably the most useful of these tools is prosopography.21 The study of the individuals who appear in the texts, along with their professional and family affiliations, allows us to connect texts that have been separated. The social networks that we can establish among the participants in our texts suggest bonds between the texts themselves. This information is reinforced by the administrative practices that developed under the Third Dynasty of Ur. The predominance of state records among the surviving texts provides a multitude of titles and professional and administrative hierarchies. In many of our archives, senior officials receive goods and services from subordinates. The texts allow us to see both the performance of work and the registering of that performance by state officials.22 We should pay careful attention here to the distinctions 21 Van De Mieroop (2004: 47–48) cautioned that the variability in accounting practices and conventions in the Ur III corpus make it difficult to rely on technical terminology to sort the texts into archives, and he noted, “The personal names of the officials provide the best clue for the identification of offices and a good prosopography is a necessity for any archival analysis.” The size of the Ur III corpus continues to make a full prosopography a daunting task. Scholars have done an excellent job on some of the small and well-defined groups of Ur III texts, but a full prosopography of the available texts will require a coordinated effort that has not yet emerged. 22 The interactions among the various offices at Puzriš-Dagan provide a good example of these officials at work and allow us to better understand the practices that led to the creation

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between professional titles, administrative titles, and temporary titles that identified an individual’s function in a transaction rather than their professional identity. Professional titles, like those for merchants, smiths, potters, etc., were handed down within families and located individuals within the social network of their immediate urban environment.23 Administrative titles were those awarded within the hierarchies of regional and statewide institutions, such as šabra “chief household administrator” and nu-banda3, often translated as “captain”. The titles in this group frequently became inheritable and were passed down within powerful families.24 In the military sector and elsewhere, these families were closely tied to the royal household (see Michalowski 2006; Michalowski 2013; and Garfinkle in press-b). The final category includes the temporary titles that indicated an individual’s function in a transaction recorded on our texts, but did not indicate a permanent occupation or role.25 The best examples of this group are ugula, “overseer”, and ĝiri3, “conveyor”. The former title indicated responsibility for a certain transaction, or for a group of laborers performing work. Senior members of professional associations routinely adopted this title in our texts to indicate their standing within the group. Junior officials often used the latter title in transactions that they undertook in their official capacity. These distinctions are significant not only because they help us to understand the connections among our texts, but also because the differences in their use will help us to gain knowledge of the principles behind text transmission and storage. The sealing of texts was among the most significant administrative practices for our understanding of these processes. A large number of the administrative texts were sealed. For Girsu-Lagaš, Puzriš-Dagan, and Ur, between 14–19 % of the extant tablets were sealed. The numbers were much higher at Nippur

and distribution of texts. For the administrative practices at Puzriš-Dagan, see, most recently, Tsouparopoulou 2013. 23 These professions had important hierarchies that governed their operation, and which usually resulted from family or extended family connections, see Steinkeller 1987, 1996; Widell 2009; Dahl 2010; and Garfinkle 2015. 24 Tsouparopoulou (2013: 10) pointed out that significant offices at Puzriš-Dagan were “organized in families”. 25 We can also connect this observation with a larger statement about the way in which the offices and their administrations worked in early Mesopotamia in the absence of rational bureaucracy. In many cases the function of an office remained constant while the individuals associated with that office might change based on issues connected to patronage. This is especially apparent at Puzriš-Dagan.

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(47 %), Garšana (48 %), Umma (56 %) and Iri-Saĝrig (77 %).26 These differences may relate to local practices, but they are also indicative of the nature of these particular archives. The transfer of property outside of an administrative or household unit often required the creation of a sealed document. The use of seals is a good indication that more than one household unit was involved in a transaction, and again this is valid in both the institutional and non-institutional sectors of the economy. The use of seals in administrative archives increased over time, becoming more prominent late in Šulgi’s reign and peaking late in the reign of AmarSuen and throughout the early years of Šu-Suen.27 Di Ludovico (2013: 132) pointed out that seal use, and sealing practices, as part of administrative organization, helped to determine the size and structure of the tablets, and brought about significant changes beginning late in the reign of Šulgi. The presence of seal impressions on the tablets is not only a great aid in archival reconstruction, but it can help us to understand the principles behind the use of our texts as well. Tsouparopoulou (2008: 145) noted that some of the archival bullae used as tags on tablet baskets at Puzriš-Dagan were sealed while others were not. The seals that were used for this archival purpose belonged to the highest ranking individuals present and this may be an indication to us that the records in active use had their containers sealed while the dormant records were kept in unsealed containers and preserved in the administrative archives. This brings us to a final piece of evidence for our reconstruction of the Ur III archives, the pisan-dub-ba, or tablet basket tags. Considerably more than 600 of these texts are known. The survival of the pisan-dub-ba mirrors our knowledge of the corpus as a whole. They are extant from all of the major Ur III sites from which we have tablets, but they are most abundant in the larger administrative archives, with nearly 90 % coming from Girsu-Lagaš, Umma, and Puzriš-Dagan. The tablet basket tags are significant not only for their immediate practical information, but also because they give us our best indication as to the organizing principles used by the Ur III scribes. The tablet basket tags also bring together the tools outlined above. The tags customarily labeled tablets that had been organized and placed in woven baskets and leather containers. The tablets stored together usually involved named individuals acting in their profes-

26 See Molina 2008: 45, where he also noted that about 36 % of all available Ur III texts were sealed. 27 Tsouparopoulou (2013: 8) stated that by late in the reign of Amar-Suen, “the sealing of tablets … seemed now to have become almost obligatory when documenting transactions internally within the offices …”.

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sional roles who had interacted with the state administration for set periods of time. Steinkeller (2003: 54) described the handling of merchant balanced accounts in Umma, “At the end of the accounting chain they would be sent back to the fiscal office, where, after being sorted according to the merchants’ identities, they would be stored in individual pisan-dub-ba containers.” Elsewhere, I (Garfinkle 2010: 138) noted that, the institutional archives were somewhat fluid. The economic and administrative realities of the Ur III state made the storage and retrieval of these documents a necessity; they were also passed around within the administration, frequently being sorted and resorted. Ultimately, the reason why the tablets were stored in baskets was so that they could best be moved from office to office, expanding and contracting according to need.

The survival of the tags highlights the need to make administrative tablets temporarily available even if they did not need to be kept on hand indefinitely. Of course, our reconstructions of these archives are essentially artificial (see Garfinkle 2010). Steinkeller (2003) effectively labeled these groupings “assemblages”. Such reconstructions are quite useful, but in the end they tell us the “what and how” of text production and dissemination, but they do not really tell us the “why”. We may think that the why is obvious: records were created to keep track of stuff. The surviving texts document the record-keeping apparatus and its significance as much as they track the basic activities that they were created to record. This is an important observation, but many historians have used this as the basis for making generalizations about the central authority of the Ur III kingdom.28 We need to back away from such sweeping statements. Yes, the texts are a by-product of greater centralization but they also bear witness to the continuing significance of local and regional social, economic, and political networks. Perhaps the most important aspect of textual production was its ability to define, and sometimes to create, new social networks. Different parts of the state could regularly be brought together in texts in ways that they often could not be brought together in reality. The different communities were represented on the texts by local elites who sought participation and inclusion in the new royal elite, and that participation was registered in the texts. These local elites frequently held titles to hereditary professions while they also pursued positions with the royal court.29 At the same time, the central

28 This is what leads to the routine imagining of the Ur III kingdom as a bureaucratic nightmare of totalitarian control. 29 Šu-Kabta, the doctor and general married to princess Šimat-Ištaran, who together controlled the Garšana estate, is a fine example of this sort of individual (see Kleinerman 2011).

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administration under the Third Dynasty of Ur was characterized by the absence of professionalism. This is the essence of the critique of applying the term “bureaucracy” to the Ur III period (see Garfinkle 2008b). Bureaucracy relies on the application of rational principles and professionalism to administrative officeholding. In a functioning bureaucratic system the hierarchy in a bureau is based on training and order in an environment in which decisions are made without respect to individuals and their broader social networks. In the Ur III period, the crown relied on existing hereditary models for succession to offices in the urban centers of the state, and it used similar models to reward functionaries in the statewide social networks that the kings were creating. This did not mean that officials failed to pay significant attention to their responsibilities to the state and to their superiors within an institution. The way that administrative texts were handled showed a commitment to demonstrating a clear chain of custody. My view of this process suggests that custody of the tablets was as significant as custody of the goods and services to which the tablets referred. This fits in with Steinkeller’s (2004: 79) notion that the texts formed part of an “administrative reality”. My contention is that this administrative reality was also a critical part of the factual reality for the functionaries and administrators of the kingdom of Ur. For the most part, the administrative texts did not have a long life of active usage. In contrast to some other assemblages of texts, for example, omen texts, epic literature, and astronomical texts, the receipts, disbursals, and accounts of the administrative archives were not consulted and re-consulted over long time periods. In the Ur III era, there were often regular accounting periods for the different institutions and the offices within those institutions. The records of daily life were kept in order to produce accounts on a monthly, bi-annual, or annual basis.30 The smaller records were stored in case those accounts needed to be verified, but we presume that the tablet baskets gathered dust after the immediate importance of the records they contained had lapsed. Therefore, most of our texts had an active life that was seldom more than one year. The archives of which they formed a part spanned great lengths of time, but the individual records did not. The existence of multi-year accounts and of tablet basket tags spanning long periods indicates that the texts were occasionally consulted after their immediate purpose had expired. The accounts of lengthier periods likely had a slightly longer life during which they were actively consulted, but the vast

30 The same principles for text transmission and preservation were at work in the accounts of non-institutional players as well. For example, smaller tablets can be connected with larger accounts among merchant groups, see Garfinkle 2008a.

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majority of our tablets would not have been subject to regular consultation. Indeed, we can imagine that in most cases only a handful of individuals would have consulted a particular tablet: the author of the tablet, the tablet’s recipient, perhaps officials in related offices, the scribe who prepared a larger account on the basis of that smaller tablet, and finally a senior member of the responsible institution may have examined the individual smaller tablets but more likely that individual only examined the larger account.31 We cannot even be certain that the conveyors (ĝiri3) mentioned in the texts could always read the tablets themselves. These processes are made clear when we connect large groups of small administrative tablets with the summary accounts they helped to produce.32 Clearly a scribe was involved in the preparation of the original, usually daily, records of activities. These texts were then consolidated in central offices where it was likely that another, more senior administrator created the summary accounts. In many scenarios the daily records might be shared among several related offices and this slightly increased the number of literate administrators who handled the texts. The data from sites like Garšana demonstrates that this system of administration was also in place on large estates. Therefore, the reconstructions that we make and the artificial archives that we create highlight two critical points. First, the active lives of the administrative texts were often quite short and involved a fairly limited number of officials. Second, the value of these archives to those officials was immediate. In his important study of the function of written documentation, Steinkeller (2004: 81) noted that the volume of documentation correlates to the level of centralization and planning. This is certainly true of the increased centralization under the kings of Ur, but I am not convinced that the texts document such an enormous emphasis on planning. I will return to this point below, but we need to recognize how many of the surviving administrative tablets, for example, messenger texts, had minimal value for future planning as compared

31 For the records that belonged to non-institutional households we can surmise an even smaller cycle of transmission. In loans and sales the intended audience may have been as small as only the immediate participants in the transaction. It is possible that even the witnesses to the transaction who were recorded on the texts were never in the presence of the texts themselves. Of course, these records were of some interest to the heirs of the participants and this explains why they were kept for long periods of time. 32 Several recent studies of the handling of the texts successfully illustrated these connections. See Van De Mieroop’s (1999/2000 and 2004) reconstruction of the accounting practices in a craft workshop, Englund’s (2003) examination of labor records, and Tsouparopoulou’s (2013) discussion of administration at Puzriš-Dagan.

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to their immediate value to the administrators competing for patronage under the kings of Ur.

4 Administrative texts: documenting past, present, and future Van De Mieroop (1997) and Steinkeller (2004) both considered very carefully the question of why administrative texts were created in early Mesopotamia. They reached related conclusions about the chain of custody of the records, but they differed in the concerns that they thought such records addressed. For Van De Mieroop (1997: 18), the interest was largely focused on liability, This article postulates that Mesopotamian records were only drawn up when two requirements were fulfilled: first, a transfer of property with a monetary value had to be involved, and second, there had to exist a perceived need for a record in order to counter future claims on the commodity or to justify the activities of an administrator to higher authorities.

Steinkeller (2004: 79) determined that the overriding goal for administrative text production was to allow for greater efficiency through forecasting, In my view, the main reason why written records were compiled was to enable a given office to provide top management with the summary (or even statistical) information, presented in a form intelligible to an outsider, which would permit global economic prognostication and planning.33

Both of these analyses focus on recording the past performance of activities for future benefit. Steinkeller regarded the production of administrative texts in many cases as a luxury for central planning and not a necessity for the institutions that created the archives. In his view, writing did not help to create initial state formation, but its use was accelerated by centralization and it played a

33 One of my concerns about this scheme is that so many of our texts were of limited value for future planning. Certainly, the agricultural records of the state’s provinces fit in very well with Steinkeller’s focus, but many of the administrative texts from Puzriš-Dagan, from estates like Garšana, as well as the various archives of messenger texts provide information unique to a moment in the relevant institutional history and not likely to aid in accurate forecasting. The great concern for recording the names of officials and notables in the texts is more readily explained by the obligations and opportunities associated with patronage rather than as an aid in long-term forecasting by bureaus.

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key role in creating efficiencies necessary for the states to function at a higher level in terms of the size and scope of their economic activity.34 Steinkeller (2004: 77) also suggested that the drafting of texts was optional.35 This might be the case if their only purpose was to record past actions or future obligations, but this could not have been the case if functionaries needed evidence of their participation in the system of patronage established by the kings of Ur. The immediate, i.e., present, significance of the administrative texts is my focus in this contribution. The performance of the tasks identified in our texts, whether receiving or disbursing goods on behalf of institutions or delivering goods to those institutions, was critical not only to the maintenance of the state’s economic system but also to its social networks. As a result, the texts themselves created larger notions of community than would have been possible in their absence. This is especially true in the archives recording the performance of labor obligations. The work referenced in those texts was critical to state formation (see Steinkeller 2013), and the overseers in those texts were eager to have their contributions recognized as well. The administrative texts also evince a tremendous concern for accuracy that we should not ignore (see Van De Mieroop 2004: 62). The inter-textuality of the administrative corpora is something that took place in their present, or at least over the relatively short periods of time during which the texts were in use. Their value was certainly in confirming that work had been done and goods had been delivered; this was the responsibility to higher authorities to which both Van De Mieroop and Steinkeller referred. For many of the texts, especially at the level of provincial management, they clearly added value to the economic forecasting that must have been necessary in order for governors

34 Steinkeller (2004: 82) addressed the fact that fewer texts were produced in the Old Babylonian period, “The fact that the surviving body of economic documents from that period is comparatively small is almost certainly not an accident of discovery. Rather, this fact is directly related to the relative insignificance of central economic planning in Old Babylonian times.” It is difficult to generalize across the Old Babylonian period given the tremendous variability both in political stability and in the size of the relevant polities during the first half of the second millennium BC. Moreover, I am not convinced that the change Steinkeller noted is related to a lack of central planning or to a change in the mechanisms through which that planning was accomplished. 35 Steinkeller (2004) pointed out that there were numerous ways to preserve information for the production of records without writing that information on tablets in intermediate steps. At the same time, we know that such information was often written down in an Ur III kingdom in which the emphasis on written documentation was increasing. See Widell 2009 in which he highlights the practice within the Ur III administration of creating both drafts and copies of the administrative tablets. This practice, in my view, was present in both institutional and noninstitutional households.

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and their offices to meet their responsibilities to the crown. We cannot overlook, however, the immediate impact of the texts in an era of larger state formation. The state needed to know not only that work had been done, or that goods had been supplied, but also who had overseen those tasks. This is especially true in new arenas of socio-economic activity and particularly those related to the military adventures of the kingdom.

5 gu2-na ma-da: Tribute or tax? Patronage or planning? In his groundbreaking article on Ur III administration, Steinkeller (1991) argued that the reforms begun under Šulgi led to the establishment of a tax on the conquered periphery of the Ur III state. The levy was called gu2-na ma-da, according to Steinkeller (1991: 25) “tax on the provinces”. The soldiers delivered the obligation, most often in livestock, to the Ur III administration at Puzriš-Dagan. The soldiers and their officers delivered amounts commensurate with their rank in the military hierarchy. Michalowski (1978) and Maeda (1992) also examined the gu2-na ma-da in some detail. According to both Steinkeller and Maeda, the gu2-na ma-da itself is first attested in the reign of Šu-Suen, but Steinkeller identified numerous deliveries beginning late in the reign of Šulgi and continuing until early in the reign of Ibbi-Suen that fit the characteristics of this delivery of “tax” from the “provinces”. Not surprisingly this matches the broader pattern of Ur III military activity and success as evidenced in the royal year names and inscriptions. If the gu2-na ma-da was a tax on the provinces, then its delivery, recorded on so many texts, would lend additional support to the idea that the texts were created for the purpose of central economic planning. I am not convinced that we should view these texts as evidence for a tax, nor that we should view the places from which they came as provinces. I will briefly survey this topic in order to highlight the connection of these texts with the system of patronage established under the kings of Ur, a system in which these texts fulfilled a critical role at the moment of their creation. This view is ultimately compatible with many of the conclusions scholars have previously drawn about the gu2-na ma-da, but it focuses our attention on the ways in which texts helped to form social networks, and why the participants in those networks were eager to see their deliveries recorded. I have no doubt that here, as elsewhere in the Ur III corpus, the texts could be used for planning purposes, but I see no evidence that this was a primary, or even a con-

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scious, purpose at their creation. Instead, tablets that recorded the delivery of gu2-na ma-da, like those that listed other deliveries of animals to PuzrishDagan, were proof of the successful participation by soliders and their officers in controlling non-urban areas that were home to large herds and pasture lands. In his reconsideration of the gu2-na ma-da texts, Maeda (1992) used them to describe a defense zone east of the Tigris river and northwest of the core of the Ur III kingdom. In doing so he was expanding on, but also modifying, Michalowski’s (1978: 46) notion of the area as a defense line, and Steinkeller’s (1991: 28) explanation of the periphery of the kingdom as akin to the Roman limes. What both Maeda and Steinkeller assume as a background to their analysis is that these neighboring regions were conquered outright by the Ur III kings and then subjected to direct administration. Hence, the soldiers who delivered the gu2-na ma-da were resident in military settlements in the region from which their generals presumably oversaw the governing of subject peoples and lands.36 My own view is that the campaigns of the Ur III kings had far more modest goals than the conquest and incorporation of new territory.37 Maeda (1992) sought a more nuanced view of the periphery and separated the areas of vassal states (Simanum and Mari in the northwest, and the states in Elam to the east) from the broad designation of periphery submitted to tribute. We need to recognize that much of the attention paid to different regions by the kings of Ur was specific to local political, environmental, and economic conditions. Hence, Susa could be considered in a very similar light to the urban centers of heartland of the kingdom, while upland areas in the Diyala were treated very differently. In the reigns of Šulgi and Amar-Suen the upland areas of the Diyala and Lower and Upper Zab river valleys were not a defense zone, instead these areas were targets of opportunity that would better be described as an offense zone. Places like Simurrum, Lulubum, Karahar, Kimaš, Hurti, and Urbilum were subjected to repeated defeat in order to extract booty and tribute (largely in the form of herds) and in order to control access to key pasture lands on which these herds had to feed for much of the year.38 36 Maeda (1992: 140–143) sought to distinguish between gu2-na, tribute from rulers in the periphery, and gu2-na ma-da, tribute from soldiers stationed in the periphery. 37 See Garfinkle 2013. This is an issue that I plan to address in greater detail elsewhere. The usual notion of core and periphery does not lend itself to easy explanations in southern Mesopotamia. We need to pay greater attention to the topography of the region and recognize that there is greater utility in the dichotomies between alluvial and pastoral zones, as well as between urbanized and non-urbanized areas. 38 Steinkeller (1991: 32) noted that he found no evidence for the soldiers in the gu2-na mada area receiving grants of land in those regions, and he commented that for these areas “the amount of grazing land significantly exceeding that of agricultural land.” Porter (2012: 296)

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In his recent discussion of ma-da in connection with the wall building activities of both Šulgi and Šu-Suen, Michalowski (2011: 122 ff.) described the ma-da as a military frontier that shifted over time depending upon the strategic situation in southern Mesopotamia. Ultimately, the distinction between gu2-na and gu2-na ma-da was likely also a distinction between urban and rural areas,39 with the emphasis in the latter zone on pasturelands in the upland areas of the Diyala and Lower and Upper Zab rivers as well as parts of Elam. The gu2-na ma-da, along with the royal deliveries (mu-DU) of animals that were so common in the reigns of Šulgi and Amar-Suen, were obligations required of soldiers who were on campaign or who were charged with protecting the herds in the vast pasturelands on the eastern boundaries of the state. Therefore, the ma-da was both a military staging area as well as a protected pasturage zone. Both the gu2-na and the gu2-na ma-da should be understood as tribute not tax.40 Hallo (1960: 88–89) interpreted gu2-na ma-da as “territorial tribute”; Hallo as well as Michalowski (1978) linked the gu2-na ma-da with the territory from which it came as tribute. Gelb (1973: 85) associated it collectively with military settlers. What I propose is to connect it much more directly with the individual office holders in much the same way that Steinkeller associated it with their ranks. However, instead of seeing it as a regular obligation that arose from their presence in the countryside, I see it as an obligation derived from their possession of military office. The military officers delivered gu2-na ma-da as tribute when their office coincided with service outside of the core of the state. The frequent raids of the eastern periphery were aimed at securing booty and defending pasturage. The campaigns took place with enough regularity that the office holders could expect frequent opportunities to deliver the gu2-na ma-da, but at the same time, these opportunities and the obligations that came with them could not be formalized or predicted. In between campaigns the Ur III state also had to commit military resources to protecting pas-

stated that these lands “were, and still are, prime pastoralist territory.” The wall built by Šulgi to protect the ma-da may have created in practice a very large sheepfold (cf. Michalowski 2011: 122–129). 39 A text from Amar-Suen 9 supports this distinction, and it may turn out to be the earliest direct reference to gu2-na ma-da. MVN 14 558: 14 gu4, 622 udu, 280 la2 2 maš2, udu gu2-na uru, 35 udu, 17 maš2, udu gu2-na eš3 didli ma-da, Uš-mu i3-dab5, mu en ga-eš3ki ba-hun. Ušmu received 14 oxen, 622 sheep, 287 goats, the tribute of the city, 35 sheep, 17 goats, the tribute of various shrines in the countryside. Year: Amar-Suen 9. 40 gu2 was equivalent to Akkadian biltu, which is best understood as tribute or even rent.

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turelands outside of the heartland of southern Mesopotamia,41 and this created additional opportunities and responsibilities for the military elites. A larger body of texts listing the delivery of single animals, or small groups of animals, by members of the state elite (see Garfinkle 2013: 161) is closely related to the gu2-na ma-da texts studied by Steinkeller and Maeda. Both groups of tablets come from Puzriš-Dagan and they both bore witness to the significant transfer of animals to the state administration, both for royal and ceremonial use, especially at neighboring Nippur. There was a great deal of overlap among the officials who appeared in the latter lists and the officers who oversaw the delivery of gu2-na ma-da. A good example of this is a captain named Šuruškin. He is widely attested delivering animals as tribute at PuzrišDagan from late in the reign of Šulgi until late in the reign of Šu-Suen. In Amar-Suen 5 he appeared in seven texts.42 Military men like this presided over infrequent but recurring deliveries from soldiers in the ma-da and from the areas subjected to military raids, and they made frequent and recurring deliveries of small numbers of animals in the company of other elites and professionals. In both cases, the documenting of these deliveries through text production reinforced their participation in state level activities and confirmed their presence among the royal elite. This was the immediate value of these texts and the impetus for their creation.

6 Conclusion The administrative texts and their transmission tell us how the scribes and administrators of the kingdom of Ur ordered their knowledge of the world around them. The order was based significantly on hierarchy and wealth, and on the maintenance of these two factors both by traditional urban elites and by the royal household and its clients. Ur III administrative texts helped to

41 Porter (2012: 243) highlighted the fact that only a small percentage of the vast herds of the Ur III period could be herded locally in the neighborhood of the urban centers of the state. 42 In Amar-Suen 5, Šuruškin delivered single animals (most often one lamb) in four texts: MVN 11 156 (AS 5/3/10), OIP 121 243 (AS5/7/24), CST 328 (AS 5/8/15), TCL 2 5504 (AS 5/10/9); he delivered (mu-DU) what Steinkeller would identify as gu2-na ma-da in one text: SET 10 (AS 5/9/11); in YOS 15 158 he was listed as a deliverer on two days of an unidentified month of Amar-Suen 5. Finally, he delivered 3 mana of silver, identified as gu2-na-ne-ne in one text: OIP 121 588 (AS 5/9). This last text is especially remarkable as it recorded the delivery by two men of a total of 7 mana of tribute, received in Puzriš-Dagan. This is likely an indication of the “monetization” of the tribute by the crown.

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create state identity rather than simply being a by-product of the prior creation of that identity. The kingdom of Ur was an edifice built on practical concerns that acquired an ideological component. The texts themselves were records of participation in the patrimonial endeavors of the royal household. Steinkeller is certainly correct that the administrative archives allowed for a certain amount of planning and forecasting. Van De Mieroop also must be right when he suggests that ongoing liability was a key component in text creation, transmission, and preservation. At the same time, control and possession were fundamental aspects of the socio-economic system in early Mesopotamia that not only required documentation but actively encouraged text production. Control was more significant than forecasting in a large part of the tributary economy. Indeed, forecasting was not possible in large measure in that area of the economy. No one could predict how much booty might be brought home from campaigns outside of southern Mesopotamia, but the delivery of that booty was actively recorded, as was the submission of tribute from the military units that I highlighted above. As Tsouparopoulou (2013: 7) pointed out, “Most of the animals delivered to Puzriš-Dagan were part of the tribute from the peripheries …” Adams (2006: 166) observed that this obsession with acquisition was a feature of the Third Dynasty of Ur, “To be blunt, the state appears to have been less comprehensively managerial and more narrowly extractive in its primary orientation.” Throughout this era, the local and regional administrative apparatuses were able to function relatively free of central interference. The major innovation of the state was in creating a space for the central authority to operate alongside, and oftentimes above, the regional institutions. This space was primarily achieved through the centralization of tax collecting authority in the form of the bala (and the implementation of tax farming) alongside the reinforcement of a tributary economy based on the growth of the military sector. This growth included the appropriation of space within the kingdom. Conceptually, this included space on texts, which were a place in which the new elite (generals, royal functionaries, foreign allies) could be joined with traditional local notables (governors, priests, merchants) to accomplish the crown’s goals. The palace economy, which we usually associate with the succeeding Old Babylonian period, was born out of this negotiation between traditional authority and the growing needs of the king. As the crown sought to establish a dominant place for itself in the management of the economy, it had to yield repeatedly to the knowledge and abilities of local agents. These local agents were embedded in the social hierarchies of their communities, and as such they were both difficult to dislodge and difficult to incorporate directly into the administrative structures of the new kingdom. The kingdom created by this

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dynasty played a large role in the shift towards the formation of larger states in the ancient Near East. This shift involved greater centralization of key functions in state administration, in particular in the areas of revenue collection and the military. The performance of these tasks had to be documented. This led to the creation of massive administrative archives where this information was recorded. Very few individuals read these texts, which were only actively used for relatively short periods of time, but they detailed the inception of a new and larger idea of community.

Bibliography Adams, Robert McC. 2006. Shepherds at Umma in the Third Dynasty of Ur: Interlocutors with a World beyond the Scribal Field of Ordered Vision. JESHO 49: 133–169. Adams, Robert McC. 2009. Old Babylonian Networks of Urban Notables. CDLJ 2009: 7. Dahl, Jacob L. 2010. A Babylonian Gang of Potters: Reconstructing the Social Organization of Crafts Production in the Late Third Millennium BC Southern Mesopotamia. Pp. 275–306 in City Administration in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the 53 e Rencontre Assyrilogique Internationale, Vol. II, ed. Leonid Kogan et al. Babel und Bibel 4b. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. De Graef, Katrien. 2005. Les Archives d’Igibuni: Les documents Ur III du Chantier B à Suse. Mémoires de la Délégation Archéologique en Iran, Tome LIV. Ghent: University of Ghent. De Graef, Katrien. 2008. Rest in Pieces. The Archive of Igibuni. Pp. 225–234 in The Growth of an Early State in Mesopotamia: Studies in Ur III Administration, ed. Steven J. Garfinkle and J. Cale Johnson. Biblioteca del Próximo Oriente Antiguo 5. Madrid: CSIC. Di Ludovico, Allesandro. 2013. Symbols and Bureaucratic Performances in the Ur III Administrative Sphere: An Interpretation through Data Mining. Pp. 125–152 in From the 21 st Century BC to the 21 st Century AD: Proceedings of the International Conference on Neo-Sumerian Studies Held in Madrid 22–24 July 2010, ed. Steven J. Garfinkle and Manuel Molina. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Englund, Robert K. 2003. The year: “Nissen returns joyous from a distant land”. CDLJ 2003: 1. Englund, Robert K. 2012. Equivalency Values and the Command Economy in Ur III Mesopotamia. Pp. 427–458 in The Construction of Value in the Ancient World, ed. J. K. Popadopoulos and G. Urton. Los Angeles: Cotsen Insititute of Archaeology Press. Garfinkle, Steven J. 2008a. Silver and Gold: Merchants and the Economy of the Ur III State. Pp. 63–70 in On Ur III Times: Studies in Honor of Marcel Sigrist. Journal of Cuneiform Studies Supplementary Studies 1, ed. Piotr Michalowski. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research. Garfinkle, Steven J. 2008b. Was the Ur III State Bureaucratic? Patrimonialism and Bureaucracy in the Ur III period. Pp. 55–61 in The Growth of an Early State in Mesopotamia: Studies in Ur III Administration, ed. Steven J. Garfinkle and J. Cale Johnson. Biblioteca del Próximo Oriente Antiguo 5, Madrid: CSIC. Garfinkle, Steven J. 2010. The Organization of Knowledge in Early Mesopotamia: Information, Wealth, and Archives in the Ur III Period. Pp. 131–141 in Why Should Someone Who

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Knows Something Conceal It? Cuneiform Studies in Honor of David I. Owen on his 70 th Birthday, ed. Alexandra Kleinerman and J. M. Sasson. Bethesda: CDL Press. Garfinkle, Steven J. 2012. Entrepreneurs and Enterprise in Early Mesopotamia: A Study of Three Archives from the Third Dynasty of Ur. CUSAS 22. Bethesda: CDL Press. Garfinkle, Steven J. 2013. The Third Dynasty of Ur and the Limits of State Power in Early Mesopotamia. Pp. 153–167 in From the 21 st Century BC to the 21 st Century AD: Proceedings of the International Conference on Neo-Sumerian Studies Held in Madrid 22–24 July 2010, ed. Steven J. Garfinkle and Manuel Molina. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Garfinkle, Steven J. 2015. Family Firms in the Ur III Period. Pp. 517–524 in Tradition and Innovation in the Ancient Near East. Proceedings of the 57 e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale at Rome 4–8 July 2011, ed. Alfonso Archi. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Garfinkle, Steven J. in press-a. Private Economic Enterprise in Early Mesopotamia. In A Handbook of Ancient Mesopotamia, ed. Gonzalo Rubio. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter. Garfinkle, Steven J. in press-b. Land and Office-Holding: Pathways to Privilege and Authority under the Third Dynasty of Ur. In Land and Power in the Ancient and Post-Ancient World, ed. Bernhard Palme et al. Vienna: Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Gelb, Ignace J. 1973. Prisoners of War in Early Mesopotamia. JNES 31: 70–98. Hallo, William W. 1960. A Sumerian Amphictyony. JCS 14: 88–114. Heimpel, Wolfgang. 2009. Workers and Construction Work at Garšana. CUSAS 5. Bethesda: CDL Press. Kleinerman, Alexandra. 2011. Doctor Šu-Kabta’s Family Practice. Pp. 177–181 in Garšana Studies. CUSAS 6. ed. David I. Owen. Bethesda: CDL Press. Maeda, Tohru. 1992. The Defense Zone During the Rule of the Ur III Dynasty. ASJ 14: 135–172. Michalowski, Piotr. 1978. Foreign Tribute to Sumer in the Ur III Period. ZA 68: 34–49. Michalowski, Piotr. 2006. Love or Death? Observations on the Role of the Gala in Ur III Ceremonial Life. JCS 58: 49–61. Michalowski, Piotr. 2011. The Correspondence of the Kings of Ur, An Epistolary History of an Ancient Mesopotamian Kingdom. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Michalowski, Piotr. 2013. Networks of Authority and Power in Early Mesopotamia. Pp. 169– 205 in From the 21 st Century BC to the 21 st Century AD. Proceedings of the International Conference on Neo- Sumerian Studies Held in Madrid, July 22–24, 2010, ed. Steven Garfinkle and Manual Molina. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Molina, Manuel. 2008. The Corpus of Neo-Sumerian Texts: An Overview. Pp. 19–54 in The Growth of an Early State in Mesopotamia: Studies in Ur III Administration, ed. Steven J. Garfinkle and J. Cale Johnson. Biblioteca del Próximo Oriente Antiguo 5. Madrid: CSIC. Molina, Manuel. 2010. Court Records from Umma. Pp. 201–17 in Why Should Someone Who Knows Something Conceal It? Cuneiform Studies in Honor of David I. Owen on his 70 th Birthday, ed. Alexandra Kleinerman and J. M. Sasson. Bethesda: CDL Press. Notizia, Palmiro. 2013. Prince Etel-pū-Dagān, Son of Šulgi. Pp. 207–220 in From the 21 st Century BC to the 21 st Century AD. Proceedings of the International Conference on NeoSumerian Studies Held in Madrid, July 22–24, 2010, ed. Steven Garfinkle and Manual Molina. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Owen, David I. ed. 2011. Garšana Studies. CUSAS 6. Bethesda: CDL Press. Owen, David I. 2013a. Cuneiform Texts Primarily from Iri-Saĝrig/Al-Šarrākī and the History of the Ur III Period. 1: Commentary and Indexes. Nisaba. Studi Assiriologici Messinesi 15/1. Bethesda: CDL Press.

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Owen, David I. 2013b. Cuneiform Texts Primarily from Iri-Saĝrig/Al-Šarrākī and the History of the Ur III Period. 2: Catalogue and Texts. Nisaba. Studi Assiriologici Messinesi 15/2. Bethesda: CDL Press. Owen, David I. 2013c. The Archive of Iri-Saĝrig / Āl-Šarrākī: A Brief Survey. Pp. 89–103 in From the 21 st Century BC to the 21 st Century AD, Proceedings of the International Conference on Neo-Sumerian Studies Held in Madrid, 22–24 July, 2010, ed. Steven J. Garfinkle and Manuel Molina. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Owen, David I. and Rudolf H. Mayr. 2007. The Garšana Archives. CUSAS 3. Bethesda: CDL Press. Pomponio, Franco. 2013. The Ur III Administration: Workers, Messengers, and Sons. Pp. 221– 232 in From the 21 st Century BC to the 21 st Century AD. Proceedings of the International Conference on Neo- Sumerian Studies Held in Madrid, July 22–24, 2010, ed. Steven Garfinkle and Manual Molina. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Eastern Civilizations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Selz, Gebhard. 2010. “He put in order the accounts …” Remarks on the Early Dynastic Background of the Administrative Reorganizations of the Ur III State. Pp. 5–30 in City Administration in the Ancient Near East, Proceedings of the 53 e Rencontre Assyrioliogue Internationale, Vol. II, ed. Leonid Kogan et al. Babel und Bibel 4b. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Steinkeller, Piotr. 1987. The Foresters of Umma: Toward a Definition of Ur III Labor. Pp. 73– 115 in Labor in the Ancient Near East, ed. Marvin A. Powell. New Haven: American Oriental Society. Steinkeller, Piotr. 1991. The Administrative and Economic Organization of the Ur III State: The Core and the Periphery. Pp. 15–33 in The Organization of Power, Aspects of Bureaucracy in the Ancient Near East, ed. McGuire Gibson and Robert D. Biggs. SAOC 46. Chicago: The Oriental Institute. Steinkeller, Piotr. 1996. The Organization of Crafts in Third Millennium Babylonia: The Case of Potters. AoF 25/2: 232–253. Steinkeller, Piotr. 2003. Archival Practices at Babylonia in the Third Millennium. Pp. 37–56 in Ancient Archives and Archival Traditions, Concepts of Record-Keeping in the Ancient World, ed. Maria Brosius. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Steinkeller, Piotr. 2004. The Function of Written Documentation in the Administrative Praxis of Early Babylonia. Pp. 65–88 in Creating Economic Order: Record-Keeping, Standardization, and the Development of Accounting in the Ancient Near East, ed. Michael Hudson and Cornelia Wunsch. Bethesda: CDL Press. Steinkeller, Piotr. 2013. Corvée Labor in Ur III Times. Pp. 347–424 in From the 21 st Century BC to the 21 st Century AD. Proceedings of the International Conference on Neo- Sumerian Studies Held in Madrid, July 22–24, 2010, ed. Steven Garfinkle and Manual Molina. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Tsouparopoulou, Christina. 2008. The Material Face of Bureaucracy: Writing, Sealing, and Archiving Tablets for the Ur III State at Drehem. Ph.D. diss. University of Cambridge. Tsouparopoulou, Christina. 2013. A Reconstruction of the Puzrish-Dagan Central Livestock Agency. CDLJ 2013: 2. Van De Mieroop, Marc. 1997. Why Did They Write on Clay? Klio 79: 7–18. Van De Mieroop, Marc. 1999/2000. An Accountant’s Nightmare: The Drafting of a Year’s Summary. AfO 46/47: 112–129.

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Van De Mieroop, Marc. 2004. Accounting in Early Mesopotamia: Some Remarks. Pp. 47–64 in Creating Economic Order: Record-Keeping, Standardization, and the Development on Accounting in the Ancient Near East, ed. Michael Hudson and Cornelia Wunsch. Bethesda: CDL Press: 47–64. Widell, Magnus. 2009. Two Ur III Texts from Umma: Observations on Archival Practices and Household Management. CDLJ 2009: 6.

Michael Kozuh, Auburn University

7 Policing, Planning, and Provisos The Function of Legal Texts in the Management of the Eanna Temple’s Livestock in the First Millennium BC

1 General Introduction/The Eanna Archive The Eanna was the main temple of the Babylonian city of Uruk in the NeoBabylonian and early Achaemenid periods. Legal and administrative texts from the Eanna archive mostly date from the reign of the first Neo-Babylonian king Nabopolassar until the second year of Darius I (ca. 625 to 520 BC); the largest numbers of known texts date to the reigns of Nabonidus, Cyrus, and Cambyses (ca. 555 to 522 BC). It is estimated that about 9,000 published and unpublished texts and fragments related to the functioning of the Eanna’s economy during the Neo-Babylonian and early Achaemenid period are scattered among many museums and private collections today (Beaulieu 2003; Jursa 2005). Of these, I am aware of just under 1,000 published and unpublished texts relating specifically to the management of the Eanna’s sheep and goats. Of particular interest, though, is the fact that the temple contracted out the raising of its sheep and goats to outsiders. Like other forms of income contracting (Janković 2004; Jursa 1995; Jursa 1998; Wunsch 2012), the temple placed capital under the control of one man (or group of men) in exchange for a guaranteed fixed income. This relationship produced particular types of written records. Most of our information about these contractors comes in the form of legal texts – that is, texts with agreements, orders, or transactions that required witnesses and mark the creation, or end, of specific obligations. This documentary regime, it is thought, reflects the position of the contractors as temple outsiders. The temple dealt with its own personnel and their obligations in administrative texts (i.e., unwitnessed memoranda, receipts, notes, ledgers, inventories, and audits). This paper aims to fit the documentary relationship between the temple and these outside contractors into the larger discussion of the function of institutional cuneiform texts. This raises particular challenges, as most prior discussions specifically omit legal texts. Jursa, for example, has written about the function of institutional administrative texts. Van De Mieroop’s conclusions seem to refer to the same. As a result, we will take the conclusions that those scholars draw and discern if and how they apply to legal texts. Specifically, we

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shall view legal texts with an eye toward the use of texts in a “police function” and for planning and prognostication.

2 The Minimalist Position: The Police Function of the Documentation Due to misplaced optimism, the police function, or minimalist, understanding of Mesopotamian administrative writing has long been downplayed. As Van De Mieroop (1997) discusses, most who study the economy of the ancient world confront a paucity of evidence; cuneiformists, by contrast, have an abundance (at least on certain subjects). That abundance, he argues, often leads some to overestimate the information that cuneiform texts can reveal. In his sober understanding, which largely follows Finley (1985: 33), Mesopotamian administrative texts served only two purposes: first, to mark the transfer of property with “monetary value;” and, second, to document a transaction for which there was a “perceived need for a record in order to counter future claims on the commodity or to justify the activities of an administrator to higher authorities.” (Van De Mieroop 1997: 18) Writing specifically about administrative texts in Neo-Babylonian temple archives, Jursa further delimits the police function of documentation. For him, temple documentation allowed “temple administrators to ascertain whether producers had met their obligations … [and] to allow an efficient control over the performance of individuals, be they members of a temple household who were under obligation to the temple for this reason, or be they outsiders” (Jursa 2011: 195–96). In contrast to Van De Mieroop’s perceived need and administrative justification, Jursa’s police function moves top-down – the temple generated texts so that authorities could efficiently track temple goods under the control of temple departments or outside contractors. In this understanding, the police function of texts culminates at the audit (Jursa 2004a: 156–57). There, the temple weighed its expectations (variously derived) against the production of its personnel or contractors. The Neo-Babylonian institutional audit in theory derived most of its assessment information from texts. To take the simplest of examples, the temple put raw commodities under the control of a producer over a period of time – e.g., wool to weavers and spinners, grain to brewers, metal to smiths, wood to carpenters – and marked each dispersal with a text.1 The producers transformed that raw com1 For wool and weavers, see Zawadzki 2002 and Zawadzki 2006; for grain and brewers, see Bongenaar 1997 and Waerzeggers 2010; for metal see Bongenaar 1997, Payne 2008, and Zawadzki and Jursa 2001; for wood see Bongenaar 1997.

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modity into finished goods (such as, respectively, garments, beer, jewelry, and doors), which the temple then took back from the producers as needed, marking each transaction with a receipt. At the audit, then, temple authorities compared its give against its take – raw commodities (debits) against finished products (credits). For livestock management, the temple leased out herds of sheep and goats to outside contractors, whom I will refer to as herdsmen (Bab: nāqidū). Animals that the temple put in the possession of the herdsmen counted as debits – roughly speaking, the sheep and goats were the raw material. Lambs and wool that the temple took back from the herdsmen were credits – roughly speaking, the finished products. Once the temple received the lambs, the debiting and crediting then repeated itself for an internal temple department.2 The temple put lambs it took from the herdsmen under the control of its internal branches for fattening – so it debited them to another account. As it took fattened animals back, mostly for sacrifice, it credited those animals to the account of the internal manager.3 Schematically, then, for the police function we should expect to find texts that mark (i) the transfer of animals to the herdsmen (ii) the receipt of lambs and wool back from the herdsmen Moreover, juncture (ii) should have been especially prolific; at that point the temple both received lambs as credits to its herdsmen and then debited them against its internal managers. That juncture required the drawing up of both a receipt to mark a credit from outside and a text to mark an internal debit. Yet animal husbandry has another administrative dimension. The herdsmen not only took animals from the temple on contract, but (unlike, say, grain or metal) the female animals under their control reproduced themselves. So the herdsmen’s debits, as it were, increased exponentially over time. Here, the temple used a model to set expectations for herd growth. That model, which is standard for Neo-Babylonian herding contracts of the time (van Driel 1993), can be simplified for our purposes here: for every 100 ewes, the herd grew at 66 2/3 rds young per year, with a yearly 10 % death allowance. In accordance with the police function of the texts, then, we should expect to find texts concerned with three aspects of livestock management:

2 Presumably the same thing happened with wool, but we do not have good information about it. For what we do know, see Kleber 2008. 3 See Kozuh 2011 for more on texts associated with these transactions.

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(i) the transfer of animals to the herdsmen (ii) the receipt of lambs and wool back from the herdsmen (iii) the monitoring of the growth of the herd 4 As it stands, the textual evidence for livestock management at the Eanna does not complement the schema very well, even with categories as broadly conceived as these. With some caveats, we can line up one common set of texts with (i), yet (ii) and (iii) are almost completely missing from the textual record. Partial explanation for the minimal representation of (ii) and (ii) comes, I believe, with the nature of institutional sheep husbandry. As others have noted,5 between roughly late March and early June the temple sheared the flocks of its herdsmen, either on site or remotely. At the shearing, I argue, the temple did four things: first, the temple audited the herd (on this see below); second, it took wool dues from the herdsmen, which effectively amounted to all of the wool of the herds (Kozuh 2014); third, it took lambs from the herdsmen (on which see below); and, finally, the temple renegotiated with the herdsman the contractual size of the herd, based upon the growth of the herd from the previous year and the extractions taken from it at the shearing. Going back to the schema, I would argue that for (i) the temple gave “raw materials” to the herdsmen annually, in the sense that, at the shearing, the temple and its herdsmen came to an agreement on the size of his herd going into the next season – while most of the same actual animals carried over from one year to another, contractually the herdsman had a new “resized” herd. For (ii) the receipt of products happened in the herdsman’s presence at the shearing, but before the renegotiation of the new herd size. This transaction did not require texts, in that taking these animals from the herdsman was not a credit that had to be applied at a later time – the temple took the animals and then gave the “new” herd to the herdsman. Monitoring the growth of the herd (iii), then, happened from one year to the next; contractually speaking, the herdsman came into the shearing with one herd and left with another. In effect, (i), (ii), and (iii) happened face-to-face at the shearing. One common text type does emanate from this juncture, the livestock inventory text.6 This text type lists sheep and goats, differentiated by sex and

4 Compare this schema to Selz 1999: 489. 5 On the shearing of Mesopotamian sheep in general see Ochsenschlager 2004; van Driel 1993; Waetzoldt 1972; Williamson 1949. 6 On these texts see Gehlken 1990; Kozuh 2014; van Driel 1993); for similar texts at the Ebabbar temple see Da Riva 2002.

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age,7 under the responsibility of (ina pān) a particular herdsman. Texts of this sort almost always date to the time of the shearing, and they characteristically list more female than male animals. Given this, they must mark the size of the herd after the temple took its due in lambs at the shearing8 – that is, they mark the size of the herd going forward, which formed the basis of the assessment at the next year’s shearing. This text type, then, squarely serves a police function under (i) of the schema. The problem is that, despite their ubiquity, I am only aware of three herdsmen who appear on more than one of these texts, the second occurrence years apart from the first (Kozuh 2014). In other words, if we operate under the assumption that the temple drew up these texts year-after-year for each herdsman as he renegotiated the size of his herd following the shearing, we should expect multiple herdsmen to reappear in these texts. This is simply is not the case. While more may turn up in later investigations of the Eanna archive, I rather think that these texts were drawn up only once for most herdsmen; those few herdsmen who appear in a second text may have had significant additions or subtractions in their herds to warrant a new text. Thus, I believe that a partial explanation for why the documentation for livestock management does not quite conform to the police function schema is the fact that transfers between the producers and the institution happened at the shearing, from which the herdsmen left with animals unencumbered with obligations. Apart from the initial text marking the size of the herd, the policing was text-free and face-to-face. That said, we know the temple did not take all (or even most) of its lambs from its herdsmen at the shearing. In fact, the Eanna had limited on-site storage. I estimate that the Eanna could store and feed about 1,200 lambs locally in its pens. It sacrificed around 4,300 animals per year, so it could only hold 1/4 to 1/3 of its annual sacrificial needs on site. Assuming the temple filled its storage to capacity at the shearing, it would still need to collect the remaining 2/3 rds to 3/4 ths of the sacrificial lambs from its herdsmen during the course of the year. It is precisely those collections that should have generated texts, as the temple counted animals taken after the shearing as credit at the next shearing. A herdsman who gave, say, twenty five lambs to the Eanna over the course of a year would expect credit for them when audited at his next shearing.

7 For age they simply differentiate between young (i.e., newborn) and mature, not the differentiation by year that we find in earlier such accounts (Kraus 1966). 8 If they marked the size of the herd going into the shearing, one would expect nearly equal numbers of male and female young – i.e., the natural result of the lambing.

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Yet these texts are largely missing as well. In my first attempt to explain this significant gap in documentation (Kozuh 2006: 53–54), I reasoned that, when herdsmen delivered animals to the temple, the temple generated receipts that the herdsmen retained. Those texts would be found in the private archives of the herdsmen, which we do not have. However, it now occurs to me that not only do we lack the actual receipts, we also have no reference to the issuance of receipts. For example, none of the five audits of which I am aware mention the use of receipts to document deliveries.9 Moreover, when we find evidence for how the Eanna documented between-shearing transactions, it most often mentions the use of wooden ledgers. BM 114561 (Kleber 2008) provides the clearest evidence for this. In this text a sheep and goat herdsmen states to the Eanna’s officials that: 1 gu4.pu-hal kù […] 2 túg.kur.ra.me ina re-e-hi šá ṣe-e-nu ù sík.hi.a šá muh-hi-ia a-na m gi-mil-lu A-šú šá mdin.nin-mu-dù at-ta-din lú.qí-pa-nu ù lú.dub.sar.me šá é.an.na giš.da šá re-ha-a-an-šú šá dinnin unug.ki i-mu-ur-ma mim-ma al-la 1 gu4.pu-hal kù ina giš.da la ša--ṭár pu-ut lú.mu-kin7-ú-tu šá mšu mdù-ia na-ši e-lat 6 gu4.me šá mdù-ia iq-bu-ú um-ma ina mu.9.kam mku-ra-aš ina re-e-hu-ia a-na mgi-mil-lu at-ta-din giš.da.me šá ina tin.tir.ki a-na a-ma-ru [In the 2 nd year of Cambyses] I gave one ritually pure bull, […], and two kurra-garments against the balance of sheep, goats, and wool due from me to Gimillu/Innin-šuma-ibni. The residents and scribes of the Eanna checked the wooden ledger with his balance to (lit: of) the Ishtar of Uruk, but nothing other than one ritually pure bull was written in the ledgers. Bānia takes responsibility (for securing) the testimony of Gimillu [to verify the complete transaction]. [This matter] is apart from six bulls about which Bānia said “in the 9 th year of Cyrus I gave (those bulls) to Gimillu against my balance.” (However) the wooden ledgers [for that year] are under inspection in Babylon.

Bānia claims to have made payments against his balance on at least two past occasions, separated by three years. Explicitly in the first case, and assumed in the second, he claims that he should have received credit for paying off or down his balance in sheep and goats with other property; and, in each case, that property passed from him through Gimillu (more on him below) to the Eanna to be recorded in the Eanna’s wooden ledgers. At issue, then, is proof of transaction. One party claims to have turned over items of property to the temple as payment; after discovering that he did not receive full credit, that party sought to prove the transaction actually hap-

9 This is in contrast to, say, the texts for agricultural account settlements, which call for texts to be brought to the audit, see Jursa 2004a. The five livestock audits are: LAUSD, NBC 4847, NBC 4846 obv., NBC 4846 rev., NBC 4897. For the lattermost, see Kozuh 2014; Sack 1979; van Driel and Nemet-Nejat 1994; Zawadzki 2003.

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pened. This is exactly a situation where one expects a clay receipt, issued to the party upon delivery, to enter into evidence. The value of a bull greatly exceeded that of a sheep,10 so this instance in particular would seem to demand redundant documentation; the herdsmen relinquished property of real “monetary value,” to use Van De Mieroop’s words. The second transaction amounted to at least 90 sheep. Yet the temple’s wooden ledgers contained the only record of the transaction. Other texts complicate the matter further. As is well known (Jursa 2004b; Kozuh 2014; Ragen 2006), the Gimillu mentioned in BM 114561 both worked to police the Eanna’s system of livestock management and, at the same time, stole the temple’s animals. Every accusation of theft against Gimillu takes a similar form: a person states that he “gave x animals/y items to Gimillu against a balance in sheep, but that Gimillu did not give those animals/items to the Eanna.” In no case do they bring forth receipts to prove the transaction. Indeed, the accusations against Gimillu assume that the transaction from the contractors to the temple did not produce documentation. What is more, Beaulieu (2003: 352) has noted other undocumented transfers from contractors to the temple. In YOS 7: 15 we find, following Beaulieu’s translation, the following accusation: “when PN took me away with him as a hired man, he had the Divine Staff (Bab: huṭāru) with him, and he collected the ewes (which are) the income of the Lady-of-Uruk but sheared them in his own house and unlawfully branded them with the ownership mark (used) for his own ewes.” In another text (YOS 7: 146, see Beaulieu 2003), a herdsman carried the divine staff “without the permission of the upper level temple authorities,” claimed some grazing sheep, but did not give them to the Eanna. Beaulieu’s conclusion, probably correct, is that the staff travelled “as a symbol with which representatives of the temple assert[ed] their authority in the countryside of Uruk.” Other texts bear this out – and, as Jursa (2010: 96–97) discusses, at times they are associated with the aforementioned Gimillu. Putting the evidence together, it seems clear that the temple did not issue clay receipts (or other forms of portable proof) to its herdsmen when they delivered animals to the Eanna between audits.11 Instead, the temple tracked its relationship with its contractors in wax on wooden ledgers. Consequently, this

10 YOS 6: 220 mentions a substitution of a heifer for 25 sheep and goats, and in BM 114448: 9 1 bull substitutes for 15 sheep and goats. 11 Indeed, we may find a similar situation within the Eanna. The transfer from the offering shepherd, one of the main branches of storage for the Eanna, to the temple itself does not appear in many texts, although it would have been a common occurrence (the temple took at least four animals per day from that bureau). See Kozuh 2011.

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lack of texts caused issues to arise exactly in ways one might expect: corrupt officials stood in, abused the power the temple gave them, and stole animals. Had the temple issued receipts (or, alternatively, had the contractors demanded them), the texts would have served a type of police function not considered in the literature, almost the opposite of what Jursa and Van De Mieroop suggest: policing corrupt officials. Indeed, both the herdsman and the institutional temple would have benefitted from the issuance of receipts at this juncture, the herdsmen to back up claims of delivery and the Eanna to monitor and thwart embezzlement. By assuming that the temple tracked most of the business of the herdsmen in wax on wooden ledgers, we solve the problem of the missing texts – and certainly find administrative police function – but then must rethink the textual relationship between the herdsmen and the temple. By consenting to this method of accounting, the herdsmen relinquished their ability to challenge temple claims with textual evidence and, essentially, had to turn over animals as temple officials demanded them. Yet we are still left with a diverse lot of legal texts on clay, none of which evince a police function in the sense of efficiently monitoring debits and credits. Indeed, when we examine what type of policing the texts do show, policing exchange was potentially the least contentious. In rough categorizations, legal texts mentioning contractors can be divided up as follows:

Tab. 1 Type of legal text 1. Use of temple authority to settle disputes/problems/make people act in a certain way/prove undocumented transfers/record of testimony

Examples AnOr 8: 56, AnOr 8: 61, BM 113293, BM 113485, BM 114561, BM 114577, FLP 1530, FLP 1584, Iraq 59: 1, NCBT 685, Spar, Studies in Neo-Babylonian economic and legal texts: n. 2, TCL 12: 119, TCL 13: 132, TCL 13: 133, TCL 13: 134, TCL 13: 147, YBC 9257, YBC 11619, YOS 7: 7, YOS 7: 9, YOS 7: 35, YOS 7: 41, YOS 7: 55, YOS 7: 97, YOS 7: 118, YOS 7: 128, YOS 7: 132, YOS 7: 140, YOS 7: 141, YOS 7: 161, YOS 7: 189, YOS 19: 90 2. Temple orders to make people AnOr 8: 15, AnOr 8: 28, AnOr 8: 43, AnOr 8: 5, AnOr appear, settle accounts, pay debts 8: 57, AnOr 8: 58, AnOr 9: 15, BM 113250, BM of another, pay arrears, confis113399, BM 113480, BM 114463, BM 114582, BM cations for arrears 114639, BM 114569, FLP 1528, GCCI 1: 15, GCCI 1: 113, GCCI 1: 394, NCBT 386, PTS 2434, TCL 12: 50, TCL 12: 77, TCL 13: 137, TCL 13: 165, TCL 13: 179, YOS 6: 77, YOS 6: 123, YOS 6: 137, YOS 6: 156, YOS 6: 169 (dup: YOS 6: 231), YOS 6: 174, YOS 6: 219,

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Tab. 1: (continued) Type of legal text

3. Orders to deliver lambs or wool

4. Sales between herdsmen 5. Proof of status 6. Herd divisions/subdivisions 7. Lease of land

Examples YOS 6: 221, YOS 7: 25, YOS 7: 31, YOS 7: 103, YOS 7: 111, YOS 7: 144, YOS 7: 146, YOS 7: 164, YOS 7: 198, YOS 17: 30, YBC 9648 AnOr 8: 67, BM 113407, BM 113415, BM 114440, BM 114492, BM 114543, BM 114557, BM 114593, BM 114614, GCCI 1: 63, GCCI 2: 120 (dup: BM 113339), NCBT 648, TCL 13: 162, YOS 6: 217, YOS 7: 43, YOS 7: 81, YOS 7: 85, YOS 7: 123, YOS 7: 127, YOS 7: 138, YOS 7: 160, YOS 7: 163 BM 114469, BM 114663, Iraq 59: 2, PTS 2105, PTS 2978, PTS 3010 UCP 9/1, II: 36, YOS 6: 116 PTS 2045, PTS 2073, PTS 2169, PTS 2286, PTS 3049, YOS 6: 155, YOS 7: 145 YOS 6: 26

The first category of legal texts involves stolen animals, disputes between herdsmen, and the like – that is, problems arising in the normal course of dealing with herds of animals. The second set involves temple confiscations for debts, the procedures to set in place such a confiscation, and surety agreements and the like. The third most numerous would appear to fall into the normal understanding of the “police” understanding of texts: legal texts concerning the delivery of products from the herds of the external management. But a closer look at those texts reveals a more complex background: Tab. 2 Orders to deliver lambs or wool

Examples

Those that date to Cambyses years 2−4

AnOr 8: 67, BM 113415, BM 114557, GCCI 2: 120 (dup: BM 113339), NCBT 648, TCL 13: 162, YOS 7: 123, YOS 7: 127, YOS 7: 138, YOS 7: 160, YOS 7: 163 BM 113407, BM 114492(?), BM 114543, BM 114593, BM 114614(?), YOS 6: 217(?), YOS 7: 43, YOS 7: 81, YOS 7: 85 BM 114440 (broken), GCCI 1: 63 (Promissory note to bring in sheep, against pledge)

Those that involve branding

Other:

The two most common subjects in texts of this type involve, first, the branding of animals and, second, deliveries made late in Cambyses year 2 through year

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4. The temple usually took care of branding – that is, marking new animals as temple property – at the shearing. I (Kozuh 2014) argue that, after the initial branding of the herd, thereafter the temple mostly branded female lambs (i.e., those that the herdsmen retained in the herd for reproduction). It probably also branded stud rams. Like the collecting of wool and lambs at the shearing, this action was routine and needed no documentation. Hence, when issues associated with branding appears in legal texts, they are often as a result of an unusual situation, such as new herds incorporated into the Eanna’s property, herdsmen who failed to show up for the shearing, and so on (Kozuh 2014). For the other set, we know that in late in the second year of Cambyses the temple was faced with an extraordinary set of demands on its livestock stores when it supplied a royal banquet at Abanu (Kleber 2008; Kleber 2012; Kozuh 2014). On account of the unusual demand, the temple’s livestock operations were thrown into disarray for eighteen months, during which time tabular sacrifice records evince problems with the temple’s internal stock, with one branch of internal managers consistently short of animals (Robbins 1996). As a result, the Eanna’s administration pressed its external contractors to supply more animals and brought some of them in for out-of-season audits. Hence, most of the legal texts that seem to document the regular business of the herdsmen – that is, giving lambs to the temple between audits – actually date to a period of economic stress at the Eanna. Thus, when we begin to tease out the police functions of the texts, it is important to note that the temple tracked the regular business of the herdsmen – that is, debits and credits – on wooden ledgers. When it came to drawing up legal texts, it seems that the Eanna only turned to clay tablets in exceptional situations, such as dealing with problems in herd management and in times of economic stress. This moves us away from the minimalist definition of texts as commonly understood – among other things, few of the texts in the tables above make reference to a specific debt of the herdsmen. Instead, they reference obligations only in a general fashion (i.e., only that obligations exist, without specific enumeration of them). Although these observations raise speculative questions – namely, why specific situations necessitated clay documents – I would first use them to expand our understanding of the police function of texts. Rather than just assessing, top-down, whether producers met their obligations to the temple, legal texts could function to police producers as people. Here “to police” takes both senses of the verb: to enforce obligations and to maintain order. Texts that document the incorporation of a new herd as the Eanna’s property through branding, the temple’s investigation of a sale, the agreement to deliver an extraordinary number of lambs in times of stress, the obligation to appear (or

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make another appear) before temple authorities, a challenge to one’s status vis-à-vis the temple, the need to draw on temple authority to remedy a wrong, and, indeed, a record of an accusation of embezzlement against a temple official, all deal with situations that fell outside the basic business that the contractors conducted with the temple. We can speculate as to why instances such as these produced clay tablets. We have mentioned Gimillu a few times, the famous Eanna embezzler. For over two decades, scribes at the Eanna meticulously documented with legal texts both his deviant behavior and the fines the temple levied against him. Over that same period, Gimillu rose in prominence, eventually becoming the most powerful large-scale agricultural contractor at the Eanna (Jursa 2004b; Kozuh 2014; Ragen 2006). This vexing disconnect has led many to speculate that his connections to the royal court at Babylon rendered him effectively unassailable in Uruk (van Driel 1998). Whatever the case may be, van Driel suggested that the Eanna archive as we know it today is in part a product of the eventual case that finally put an end to Gimillu’s career – that “we are dealing with a clean up of the office after certain problems had been resolved and a kind of tabula rasa had been created. In turn that would require a general making up of accounts which would have been retained and which are, indeed, not present” (van Driel 1998: 68). I take van Driel to mean that the texts eventually fed a large-scale institutional audit; I rather think, following Jursa (2004a), that the Eanna’s methods of documentation would have rendered an audit of such a type impossible. Nonetheless, van Driel might be correct in the sense that decades of documentation on Gimillu’s crimes, formulated in legal texts witnessed by Uruk’s elite, might have been collected and turned over to authorities whose patience with Gimillu had run thin. If this is the case, the documentation, however belatedly, worked to police people and maintain order. Other examples suggest themselves. We know that the royal administration repeatedly requested that the Eanna relinquish the results of inspections to Babylon and sent envoys to oversee temple livestock inspections.12 Indeed, we know from Assyrian letters that systems of sheep management at Babylonian temples could go awry quickly without (or, indeed, even with)13 royal oversight.14 Much like, then, van Driel’s assumption about Gimillu, the Eanna’s

12 See AnOr 8: 43, AnOr 8: 61, BM 114565 (Kleber 2008). 13 SAA 10: 353: “the shepherds have (however) bribed both the [royal] commandant [and the] pr[elate]: up till now no account [of] the bulls and sheep has been made, nor have they supplied the regular ram offerings.” (translation from http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/ saa10/corpus). 14 See the discussion of Mār-Ishtar in Holloway 2001.

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legal texts might have served the purpose of ultimately justifying temple actions when the temple was, in whatever fashion, called to account. The Eanna’s herdsmen might have had royal protections or connections (Jursa 2002; Kozuh 2014; van Driel 1993), in which case temple actions with them might have come under greater scrutiny. In summary, then, I would expand our understanding of the “police function” of legal texts beyond the efficient assessment of meeting obligations. In point of fact, very few legal texts dealing with livestock management explicitly fall under that definition – that aspect of their business, somewhat surprisingly, seems to have been attended to on wooden ledgers. Instead, legal texts seem to cover every other issue that involved the Eanna’s herdsmen. These texts definitely served a police function, but of a different sort.

3 The Maximalist Position: Texts for Planning and Prognostication This leads us to what Jursa dubs the maximalist position: documentation for planning and prognostication. Both Selz (1999) and Steinkeller (2004) argue for this function of cuneiform documentation, based mostly on second millennium archives. Steinkeller’s argument hinges upon his assertion, perhaps of limited value for Neo-Babylonian period (cf. Jursa 2004a), that “the overwhelming majority of [Ur III] administrative documents were written post factum,” and thus that texts do not in fact serve as testimony to economic or administrative activity in the most basic sense: marking a transfer of property as it happens. They were drafted later, he argues, in order “to enable a given office to provide the top management with summary (or even statistical) information, presented in a form intelligible to an outsider, which would permit global economic prognostication or planning” (Steinkeller 2004: 79). For justification, he turns briefly to the Ur III bala system, which he contrasts with the documentation of the Old Babylonian period. Thus, to simplify some, planning-oriented documentation should manifest itself in two ways: first, it should have some sense of an all encompassing economic scope – that, in effect, it works up toward a meta-assessment of its subject; second, there should be some sense that the purpose of the that metaassessment was planning in an effort to deal with future expenditures. Jursa takes issue with these views vis-à-vis Neo-Babylonian institutional documentation, offering two criticisms. For the first, he argues that “the type of data that were collected by temple administrators, and the specific way in

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which they were collected, would seem to preclude that the system was intended to furnish the chief temple officials with a complete overview of their institution’s economic performance, or even that of certain of its sectors only.” The information on wooden ledgers – i.e., where one might expect to find a metaassessment – was incomplete, as temple administrators only wrote down certain types of income and expenditure. To the extent we can tell, ledgers focused on the “legal/administrative background of the transactions accounted for rather than on the commodities involved.” (Jursa 2004a) That is, ledgers did not work to assess the total amount of any particular commodity in the temple’s stores, but instead recorded who had charge over that commodity and what transactions he made. In effect, writing boards functioned to buttress the “police function” of documentation as Jursa understands it. The Eanna’s documentation for livestock management challenges this view. One set of administrative texts I call scribal daybooks – mostly unpublished 15 – does seem to take a yearly meta-assessment of the Eanna’s livestock industry. All texts of this sort date to the time of the shearing and, in tabular form, record the following information:16 Tab. 3 column 1 column 2 column 3 column 4 column 5 column 6

u8.udu.hi.a ga-zi-iz-ti udu.tur.me/udu.ka-lum síg.hi.a [usually unlabeled]17 udu.sá.dug4.me mah-ra šit

shorn ewes (male) lambs wool [wool deficiency] sacrificial lambs received, counted

Under each column, then, are the results for individual herdsmen, whose name appears in the rightmost column of the tablet. These texts provide a fascinating snapshot of what the temple deemed important at the shearing – the one point in the year that it had full control over its animals. At that time, the Eanna became interested in essentially four counts: − How many actual adult animals, in this case mostly females, were in the herd

15 Gehlken (1996: 4) discusses unpublished versions of these texts. 16 For variants in column labels, see Kozuh 2014. 17 Although it is not mentioned in the heading of the standard version of these texts, most of them nonetheless contain a column that computes deficiencies in wool.

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How many male lambs came to the shearing, and thus remained with the herdsmen afterwards How much wool those animals produced, against how much they were supposed to produce (i.e., 1.5 mina of wool per sheep) How many lambs the temple took from the herdsmen at the shearing for sacrifice

Most interestingly, the Eanna kept running totals of each of these counts usually on the reverse of the texts. These totals appear in the form x kà-ti-i y, where x is the total of the column in the text, kà-ti-i = babtī, and y is the running total of that season. For example, the table below lists the babtu-totals of adult animals (i.e., those from column 1), which get bigger as the shearing season went on: Tab. 4: babtu-totals of shorn sheep in texts with preserved month names.18 Text

babtu-total for number of sheep shorn

Date

NBC 4829 NCBT 2312 PTS 3122 NCBT 339 NCBT 318 PTS 2254 NCBT 319 NBC 4818 NBC 4944

 5,029 10,604 26,301 26,981 44,129 2˹2˺,440 49,969 51,194 48,[x x]7

NPL 13 / II / 18 NPL: 16 / II / 23 NPL: 13 / III / 04 NPL: 20 / III / 04 NBK: 03 / III / 03 NBK: 14 / III / 09 NBN: 13 / IV / 09 xx: 15 / IV / 06 xx: 10 (?) / IV / 02

These babtu-totals are found for all the counts in Table 3. Whether the Eanna used these running totals for planning and prognostication depends on what time frame we grant them. On the one hand, the Eanna only collected wool at the shearing, so knowing exactly how much wool it collected might have influenced its dealings with the royal administration in the wool trade (Kleber 2008; Kleber apud Jursa 2010) until the next shearing. On the other hand, with these running counts the scribes confirmed in person that the Eanna’s herdsmen had enough lambs to meet the sacrificial requirements for the upcoming year. If, for example, severe cold, drought, disease, or

18 In addition to these, Gehlken (1996: 4) cites two unpublished texts with babtu-totals of 37,539 and 52,292.

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famine in the winter pastures had severely depleted he total offspring, the shearing provided the one attempt to assess the actual increase. Keeping a running total told the administrators at minimum that enough lambs existed to meet the temple’s yearly needs. Indeed, when it comes to the Eanna’s overall planning strategy in sheep, it seems to have involved keeping a massive reserve of animals on hand with the contractors. Multiple perspectives show that, on average, the temple took only about 25 % of the male lambs from its contractors each year (Kozuh 2014). On average, then, the herdsmen kept three-quarters of their males to sell off as profit. One imagines that temple administrators saw that three-quarters as reserves they could draw on for unanticipated expenditures (such as a visit from the king); moreover, nature or climate could severely diminish one year’s massive reserves the next, at which point the temple could hope that enough lambs remained at all to meet its sacrificial requirements. All of this assumes that the temple planned no further than one year in advance. Given that the scribal daybooks specifically do not count female lambs, they seem to have made no effort to garner information to predict herd sizes for the subsequent year. It is one thing to know that a surplus of lambs existed to meet the annual needs; it is another to procure them. Perhaps it is too simplistic – or perhaps it is only possible with the nature of livestock management 19 – but Jursa’s understanding of the function of writing boards (i.e., that they were not concerned with the commodity itself but the “legal/administrative background of the transactions accounted”) seems to work as an administrative complement to the scribal daybooks quite well. To wit, at the shearing the Eanna’s administrators filled local storage and assessed that its contractors held enough lambs to meet the Eanna’s annual sacrificial requirements; from then until the next shearing, as local storage dwindled, the Eanna utilized wooden ledgers to book the process of taking more lambs from the contractors. In other words, at least in this case, the writing boards focus on the legal/administrative background of the transactions precisely because such transactions involved legal/administrative issues for the temple beyond just drawing animals from its own stables. Thus, I am not convinced that we can dismiss Steinkeller and Selz’s arguments as quickly as Jursa might like, at least in spirit. We do have texts that attempt to come to terms with the Eanna’s future needs in sacrificial animals in the upcoming year – any prognostication beyond that time, i.e., into the

19 The issue for most commodities involves taking them from a storehouse, which was under the temple’s administrative control (Jursa 2004a; Kleber 2005). For livestock, the Eanna had to continuously replenish its stables by drawing animals from its contractors.

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next lambing and shearing, would have been foolhardy. And these texts give us information that fits the understanding of the limits of the Eanna’s storage capacity quite well: they tell us both how many animals the temple took at the shearing and, more importantly, how many animals remained with the contractors that the Eanna could draw on to replenish its stocks until the next shearing. In other words, writing boards might not have concentrated on the commodity itself precisely because the temple knew from the shearing that it had enough animals in remote storage with its contractors; every between-shearing demand, though, would have involved additional legal and administrative steps. Jursa’s second critique involves methods of calculation. Steinkeller highlights the estimative nature of Ur III documentation, and indeed his description of those estimates involves a process much more complex than what we find in the Neo-Babylonian period. Jursa, by contrast, argues that Neo-Babylonian administrators “relied primarily on rules of thumb rather than on a ‘rational’ analysis of available data” (Jursa 2004a: 183–184).20 For Jursa (2004a: 183), a rule of thumb involves a bureaucrat’s use of simplified math and standardized procedures, such that “the norms … all involve figures which are very easy to handle arithmetically within the metrological and numerical system used.” But, as he notes, that simplified math contained perplexing administrative provisos.21 For example, “bird-breeding contracts … make no allowance for losses [i.e., dead birds do not factor into the calculation], but compensate for this by postulating rather low reproduction rates [and s]ome lease contracts prescribe very high ploughing obligations for individual plough teams, but off set this by postulating yields that were sub-average” (Jursa 2011: 196). Notwithstanding issues of rationality, these provisos show some sort of analytical process that involves a comparison between projections and results. This differs considerably from medieval English agricultural manuals, which (as Jursa notes) do give something like rules of thumb for estate managers but, to my knowledge, never compare those rules of thumb with actual results.22 When Babylonian scribes assume lower than average yields to compensate for 20 The data, he argues in another publication, came from “very basic arithmetic models … developed to simplify the complex realities considerably to make them appear controllable by the means at the bureaucrats’ disposal,” and “in any case it is obvious that in such a system accounting was generally not used as an analytical tool to arrive at quantifying prognostications on the basis of records of earlier performance” (Jursa 2011: 196). 21 Adams 2006; Kozuh 2014; Liverani and Heimpel 1995. 22 Jursa (2004a), for example, cites Dyer 2002 for rules of thumb in medieval English estate management manuals, yet these were one method of many that the lord’s auditors used to check results. The manuals also refer “to a survey of the manner, which, for example, listed the rents, and they consulted the accounts for previous years. Th[e auditors] would keep them-

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draconian plowing demands, or that birds do not reproduce at rates one expects in order to compensate for a lack of administrative mortality, they introduce a level of calculation beyond folksy observations about production. Instead, Jursa’s description seems to describe flawed predictive models, calibrated in light of the flaw, against actual results. With this in mind, I think a more fruitful line of inquiry involves not whether administrators used these models to give themselves a veneer of control (as illuminating as that might be), or whether we should contrast those models with rational analysis, but instead whether the models carried authority and, if so, how that authority manifested itself through them. It is fairly easy to dismiss Babylonian institutional administrative culture as oversimplified, not rational, and, as configured, incapable of arriving at useful prognostications – this is tantamount to analyzing the usefulness of rules of thumb against practice. If, however, coupling a model with authority was sufficient to run institutional operations, a modern inquiry into how well the model intersected with reality may be a red herring. Ultimately, we might not find the usefulness of the model in its predictive ability. Instead, the employment of a model in itself, however tenuous its connection to reality, may have served as the medium through which an institution created the legitimacy to draw from its producers. In this sense, institutions did not use models to prognosticate exactly what producers might or should have at some future point in time; instead, models created obligations by means of which an institution could collect from its producers, irrespective of their actual production. I point this way because investigators have long noticed a disconnect between institutional targets (also called “goals”) and actual results. For temple agriculture, the discussion has mainly taken the form of trying to fit the socalled “Edict of Belshazzar” into what we know about date harvests at various temples (Kleber 2008; van Driel 1987–88; van Driel 1999; van Driel 2002). For livestock management, we have a very rich set of texts to compare actual results with the model the temple used for herd growth (given above). When we lay out the information, the few certainties seem to work against each other. On the one hand, we have herd audits that utilize the temple’s

selves informed about local conditions such as the performance of crops and the price of corn … if the reeve could not provide a satisfactory answer [scil. for why his account was short] the item on the account would be crossed out, the auditors would substitute their version, and the reeve would be expected to pay the difference” (Dyer 2002: 123). This suggests a process more fluid than turning to rule-of-thumb mathematics for targets. Moreover, those rules of thumb are much more specific than the models given in Babylonian texts (they take into account, for example, type of pasture and time of year), and, in the general manuscript tradition of medieval field manuals, quite variable (Oschinsky 1971: 180 n. 2).

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herd-growth model against the realities of herd growth over a given period of time (in known examples, it is six years, seven years, and ten years). These show unambiguously that the model failed to capture reality with any sort of workable accuracy. The number of animals that the herdsmen brought to the Eanna often missed the expectations of the model by large amounts. In addition to this, despite (like other models) some unusual calibration,23 the overestimation of adult animals threw wool projections way off. One herdsman who failed to have his herd audited for ten years missed institutional wool targets by close to 80 %. On the other hand, the model did not exist solely in the scribal realm of appearances, generating results without meaning. The results of herd modeling made their way into channels of authority, both temple and royal. The Eanna’s herdsmen appear to be in perpetual debt and, at times, that that debt was actionable (Jursa 2002; San Nicolò 1948; van Driel 1993). The temple often demanded post-shearing deliveries of lambs to be paid ina rēhi, “against the balance” – that is, to be counted at the next year’s audit, when the herdsman’s credits were compared against the model. The royal administration, who probably promoted the model, demanded to see lists of balances – i.e., lists of how short each herdsman was against the model; it also apparently promoted an authority figure (Gimillu) to administer them, who then drew up lists of herdsmen with balances (all of them, namely). These lists were toxic: in one text (Jursa 2004b) the temple administration tries to give the lists to Gimillu, but he ran away and issued threats; another text (YOS 7: 198) has Gimillu running away again when confronted with the lists. In other words, the temple generated its demands by means of an oddlycalibrated model, yet those demands failed to intersect reality in an administratively useful way, oftentimes dramatically missing the mark. Yet the model itself still provided the means of extraction – herdsmen made payments of lambs and wool against the model’s projections, and the temple used the model as the basis for a herd inspection. Indeed, the result of this flawed model

23 Similar to the models that Jursa mentions, the herd-growth model also uses unusual calculations – to wit, it regularly divides the total offspring of a herd into 2/3 rds female and 1/3 rd male rather than the natural 50/50 ratio. The reason for this, I argue, came from the Eanna’s attempt to deal with the fact that their herdsmen raised their animals for meat. In a herd geared for wool production, herdsmen retain animals for the quality of their coat, so the sex ratios remain about equal; in a meat herd, the herdsmen harvest all the males, save a few of proven virility. In light of this, the Eanna’s administrators calibrated the model by reducing the number of rams to the lowest level they could while both attempting to gauge the number of females with accuracy and working within the confines of the model.

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continually left the herdsmen with a balance or debt – a rēhu – in both animals and wool. Despite all this, livestock operations carried on. The temple collected animals and wool, “indebted” herdsmen continued their business with the temple for years, and, to all appearances, livestock operations worked as expected (Kozuh 2014). It would seem, then, that in the regular course of events the model did not carry authority in the sense that the herdsmen had to live up to it or invariably suffer the consequences. Instead, I see the model as a type of leverage, its authority coming largely in the threat of its implementation. The temple freed from the model’s miscalculations those herdsmen who came to the shearing, managed their herds correctly, and delivered lambs throughout the year as requested; those who absconded with animals, sold them on market, failed to appear at the shearing, or generally mismanaged their herds became subject to it. Hence, contra Steinkeller and Selz, the model certainly served no purpose in planning or prognostication. In fact, taken at face value, it would have been highly misleading. Rather, the model belongs to another aspect of the police function of documentation: policing not in the sense of comparing debits to credits, but rather in establishing a framework, heavily favoring the institutional authority, whereby those who cooperate were rewarded (or, at least, left alone) and those who ran afoul were subject to fines and punishment. The leverage the model gave the temple – i.e., the threat of its implementation – allowed the institution to maintain order, keep the herdsmen showing up spring after spring, and filled the temple’s storage with wool and lambs. It also created an administrative regime where those herdsmen, in control of tens of thousands of animals, existed on clay in perpetual debt to the Eanna; this gave the temple a deep reserve of animals, however difficult to access, should it be hit with famine or unusual demands. However, I also think that Jursa’s “rules of thumb” slights the authority behind institutional mathematics. As he himself notes, “entrepreneurs who had entered into contractual relationships with the temples did incur substantive debts regularly – possibly because the temple’s demands were occasionally unrealistic … [and s]ometimes these debts had consequences,” which has led him to endorse van Driel’s idea that well-connected herdsmen were able to escape the “ambitious stipulations of the original contracts” (Jursa 2004: 184 n. 104). While there may be something to this, the larger point remains: the temple created debt when it compared the actual results of the herdsmen to its highly flawed predictive model. In effect, rather than rules of thumb, the herdsmen worked against weighted institutional numeracy. Indeed, if, as I have argued, the temple used its calculations less for prognostication and more for

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building an administrative system, however idiosyncratic, to collect animals from its herdsmen, then the authority behind those calculations deserves much more scholarly attention.

4 Conclusion In general, I would argue that the documentation for the Eanna’s livestock management suggests that equating “minimalist” with “police function” obscures just how expansive the police function might be. Indeed, with the texts under consideration, it is most difficult to substantiate the “ideal type” scenario, whereby texts monitor intake, growth, and outlays in order to render operations more efficient and producers more responsible. This may be bundled into the textual record as a whole (especially when one includes wooden ledger boards), but most of the texts have us expanding the police function of texts quite widely: to produce records of actions associated with order and authority; to build files on individuals; to gain an annual assessment of the total resources under temple control, along with deliverables (both received and potential); and, perhaps most tellingly, to put authority behind administrative metrics. While none of these categories forms a discrete unit of texts, they all speak more to issues of institutional power and control rather than, as might appear at first blush with these texts, neat bookkeeping

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Oschinsky, Dorothea. 1971. Walter of Henley and Other Treatises on Estate Management and Accounting. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Payne, Elizabeth E. 2008. The Craftsmen of the Neo-Babylonian Period: A Study of the Textile and Metal Workers of the Eanna Temple. Ph.D. diss., Yale University. Ragen, Asher. 2006. The Neo-Babylonian širku: A Social History. Ph.D. diss., Harvard University. Robbins, Ellen. 1996. Tabular Sacrifice Records and the Cultic Calendar of Neo-Babylonian Uruk. JCS 48: 61–87. Sack, R. H. 1979. Some Notes on Bookkeeping in Eanna. Pp. 111–118 in Studies in Honor of Tom B. Jones, ed. Marvin A. Powell and R. H. Sack. Kevelaer/Neukirchen-Vluyn: Butzon and Bercker/Neukirchener Verlag. San Nicolò, Mariano. 1948. Materialien zur Viehwirtschaft in den neubabylonischen Tempeln I. OrNS 17: 273–293. Selz, Gebhard. 1999. Vom “vergangenen Geschehen” zur “Zukunftsbewältigung”: Überlegungen zur Rolle der Schrift in Ökonomie und Geschichte. Pp. 465–512 in Munuscula Mesopotamia: Festschrift für Johannes Renger, ed. Barbara Böck et al. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag. Steinkeller, Piotr. 2004. The Function of Written Documentation in the Administrative Praxis of Early Babylonia. Pp. 65–88 in Creating Economic Order: Record-Keeping, Standardization, and the Development of Accounting in the Ancient Near East, ed. Michael Hudson and Cornelia Wunsch. Bethesda: CDL Press. Van De Mieroop, Marc. 1997. Why Did They Write on Clay? Klio 79: 7–18. van Driel, G. 1987–88. The Edict of Belšazzar: An Alternative Interpretation. Jaarbericht Ex Oriente Lux 30: 61–64. van Driel, G. 1993. Neo-Babylonian Sheep and Goats. BSA 7: 219–258. van Driel, G. 1998. The ‘Eanna Archive’. BiOr 55: 60- 79. van Driel, G. 1999. Agricultural Entrepreneurs in Mesopotamia. Pp. 213–223 in Landwirtschaft im Alten Orient (CRRAI 41, 1994), ed. Horst Klengel and Johannes Renger. Berlin: D. Reimer. van Driel, G. 2002. Elusive Silver: In Search of a Role for a Market in an Agrarian Environment. Aspects of Mesopotamia’s Society. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten. van Driel, G., and Karen R. Nemet-Nejat. 1994. Bookkeeping Practices for an Institutional Herd at Eanna. JCS 46: 47–58. Waerzeggers, Caroline. 2010. The Ezida Temple of Borsippa: Priesthood, Cult, Archives. Leiden: Nederlands Insituut voor het Nabije Oosten. Waetzoldt, Hartmut. 1972. Untersuchungen zur neusumerischen Textilindustrie. Roma: [Istituto per l’Oriente]. Williamson, Graiiame. 1949. Iraqi Livestock. Empire Journal of Experimental Agriculture 17: 48–59. Wunsch, Cornelia. 2012. Neo-Babylonian Entrepreneurs. Pp. 40–61 in The Invention of Enterprise: Entrepreneurship from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern Times, ed. David S. Landes et al. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Zawadzki, Stefan. 2002. Payment in Wool in the Economy of the Ebabbar Temple at Sippar. RA 96: 149–167. Zawadzki, Stefan. 2003. Bookkeeping Practices at the Eanna Temple in Uruk in the Light of the Text NBC 4897. JCS 55: 99–123.

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Zawadzki, Stefan. 2006. Garments of the Gods: Studies on the Textile Industry and the Pantheon of Sippar according to the Texts from the Ebabbar Archive. Fribourg/ Göttingen: Academic Press/Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Zawadzki, Stefan, and Michael Jursa. 2001. Šamaš-tirri-kuṣur. A Smith Manufacturing Weapons in the Ebabbar Temple at Sippar. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 91: 347–363.

Textual Circulation and the Mechanics of Production

Sara J. Milstein, University of British Columbia*

8 The “Magic” of Adapa In recent years, scholarship on OB literature has largely centered on its pedagogical function. Drawing on tablet typology and literary catalogues, scholars have managed to reconstruct both elementary and advanced phases in the OB scribal curriculum.1 These studies represent a major breakthrough in our perception of Near Eastern literature and help situate it within its broader sociocultural landscape. The archaeological context for the two Tell Haddad (= ancient Meturan/Sirara) copies of Adapa (= Adapa in Akkadian), however, offers one point of entry in a different direction. Like the school texts, these copies are in Sumerian and date to the OB period, with a terminus ad quem of the 31 st year of Hammurabi’s reign, or approximately 1760 BCE (Cavigneaux 1999: 252). The tablets are each four columns long and were apparently copied by different

* This essay would not be possible without the insights and generosity of Antoine Cavigneaux. Not only did his 1999 essay on magical texts at Tell Haddad inspire this line of reasoning in the first place, but he also provided me with advance access to his much-anticipated edition of the Tell Haddad version of Adapa (Cavigneaux 2014). To him I offer my sincerest gratitude. All references to the Tell Haddad version derive from his translation. I also wish to thank Daniel Fleming for offering swift and crucial and feedback on this essay at multiple stages in its development, and the participants in the symposium for their helpful comments. 1 Much rests on the foundational work of Civil (1969), who analyzed collections of tablets at multiple locations and divided them into four types of formats. Type I tablets are large multicolumned tablets; Type II are large “teacher-student copies” that contain extracts with one side inscribed by the teacher and the other inscribed by the student; Type III are single-column extracts of compositions; and Type IV are round tablets, or “lentils,” that consist of 2–4 lines of a composition and show signs of inscription by teachers and students, like Type II. The first major application of this data was by Veldhuis (1997), who used it to reconstruct four phases in the elementary scribal curriculum at OB Nippur. Scribes, he proposed, started with the acquisition of basic writing techniques (e.g., sign exercises; syllabic value lists); moved on to learn Sumerian nouns and nominal phrases; then turned to complex sign lists and mathematics; and finally advanced to copying full sentences. Tinney (1998 and 1999) then determined that advanced scribes learned two sets of literary compositions: the “Tetrad,” a group of four relatively simple hymns, and the “Decad,” a set of ten more advanced hymns and narratives. Robson (2001) provided confirmation for this hypothesis in her analysis of tablet finds at House F, a school house at Nippur dating to the 1740s BCE that yielded about 1,400 tablets. Numerous exemplars of texts from the Tetrad and the Decad were found at House F alongside school exercises, a situation that matches the data from other OB school houses, both inside and outside of Nippur. For a comprehensive analysis of variation in the Decad, see Delnero 2012.

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hands (Cavigneaux 1999: 253 n. 13).2 Notwithstanding some semantic variation, the two are close enough to warrant the label “the Tell Haddad version” (TH). It does not appear, however, that the myth of Adapa functioned either in this context or in the OB period more broadly as a “school text.”3 Not only is Adapa absent from the OB literary catalogues, but its attestations in this period are limited to the two TH copies and to a small fragment of the myth from Nippur.4 According to Cavigneaux (2014), there are only limited points of overlap between TH and the Nippur fragment, indicating that Adapa was not fixed in the OB period. Until this discovery, the myth was known only in Akkadian.5 The best known version is a large MB tablet from the “Records Office” at Amarna (“Fragment B” in Izre’el’s [2001] nomenclature). We also have five NA fragments from Assurbanipal’s library, including an unparalleled prologue to the myth (Fragments A and A1) and a substantially different conclusion than what we find at Amarna (Fragment D). Much is missing from this late version (or versions), but what we do have suggests a longer rendition than Fragment B by at least 40 lines, if not more. With the Tell Haddad discovery, we then have evidence for a fairly complete version that predates the oldest Akkadian material by about 400 years! This offers a wholly new and much earlier context in which to understand the raison d’être and/or “use” of the tradition in Mesopotamian society.

1 Text in Context: The Tell Haddad Version Both OB and NB tablets were discovered at multiple locations at Tell Haddad (Cavigneaux 1999: 252). Among the OB finds was a concentration of tablets in 2 Cavigneaux (2014: 1–2) refers to the two TH copies as “A” and “B.” He notes that the ductus of A is similar to the most common ductus in the collection of texts in Area II, including nonliterary texts, while the rarer ductus of B is limited to literary and magical texts. 3 See Delnero (this volume) for a list of texts in the OB core curriculum; Adapa is not represented. Although TH does conclude with the zà-mí doxology, this is directed at “Father Enki” (line 190) rather than the scribal goddess Nisaba, as is customary in the school texts. After the OB period, we do find one reference in a literary catalogue to “Adapa, in the midst of heaven …”; for Picchioni, this represents the incipit of the myth (1981: 87). 4 While a limited number of attestations need not rule out the usage of texts in curricular contexts, this is more the exception than the rule. Delnero (this volume) points out that for the 106 compositions that may be identified as “curricular compositions,” 86 of 106 are attested in 5 or more copies, with 46 of these attested in 20 or more. Moreover, at least 69 of the 96 texts whose incipits are known are referenced in inventories that list curricular texts. 5 Due to the widespread familiarity with the Akkadian version(s), I have elected to use the Akkadian terms for the myth as default, rather than the Sumerian (e.g., Anu vs. An; Ea vs.

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“Area II,” a small unit that may have belonged to a destroyed private residence. The cache included administrative documents, contracts, letters, mathematical texts, school texts, and a substantial group of Sumerian literary, liturgical, and magical texts (Cavigneaux 1999: 251). Notably, Area II was the only location that yielded magical tablets, including three versions of what appears to have been a “classic” collection in its time (Cavigneaux 1999: 253–54).6 The literary texts that were discovered at Area II are classified by Cavigneaux (1999: 253) into four genres: myths and legends, didactic literature, religious texts, and royal hymns/literary letters. In the category of “myths and legends,” the house contained only a handful, and all Sumerian: Adapa, Inanna and Ebih, and four Gilgamesh stories: Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld, Gilgamesh and Huwawa, the Death of Gilgamesh, and Gilgamesh and the Bull.7 The literary tablets were largely clustered in Room 30, a room that also included about half of the magical tablets that were found at the house. The other half, which were almost identical to those found in Room 30, were found in Room 10, prompting Cavigneaux (1999: 253) to treat the two groups as a unit. This relatively small group of literary texts – and of myths and legends in particular – raises the question as to why these texts were present and not others. This question is further compounded by the fact that the literary tablets were stored alongside magical texts. These questions were not lost on Cavigneaux, who posited a possible explanation in his essay on what he calls the Tell Haddad “library.” For Cavigneaux (1999: 256–57), the owner of the

Enki, etc.). When referring to details that are singular to the Tell Haddad version, however, I use the Sumerian terms so as to emphasize the distinction, though the term “Adapa” (versus “Adaba,” as it appears in the Sumerian) is retained for the sake of consistency. See also Cavigneaux’s (2014: 36–37) note on the name. 6 The collection (H 97, H 179, and H 84) includes formulations against human aggression, a piece of “magic poetry,” and texts with “academic overtones” that appear to have included literary quotations or resonances. The longer versions of the collection include additional apotropaic texts. Other tablets outside of the collection then yield content of various types, such as rites against vermin (H 103 and 74), praise of the tamarisk, which was used by the exorcist (H 62 + 94), execution of a special goat used in magical house-cleaning (H 66), formulae against ghosts (H 144 B), and formulae against scorpions (H 60 and H 146). With the exceptions of H 72 and the medical prescriptions H 170, the magical texts were all in Sumerian (Cavigneaux 1999). 7 With the exception of Gilgamesh and Huwawa, the other Gilgamesh tales were represented in two copies each (Cavigneaux 1999: 253 n. 12). Notably, there was found here an early effort to join Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld with Gilgamesh and Huwawa; at least, an appendix at the end of the former suggests that the latter was meant to be read afterwards (Cavigneaux 1999: 256–57). For a list of the other literary texts in the collection, see Cavigneaux 1999: 253.

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house was perhaps an exorcist, and more probably an intellectual who was “sensitive in the realms of religion and literature” and who was preoccupied by matters of life and death.8 Regarding the presence of these myths in the collection, he notes that this set of Gilgamesh stories was largely concerned with death and the netherworld, while Adapa is “the paragon of the exorcist, the model of the sage, who … had a choice between life and death, and came back with some experience useful for his fellow humans.”9 The question remains, however, as to whether the Area II context at Tell Haddad indicates a stronger link between magical texts and the Adapa tradition. Namely, might the structure of magical rituals provide the key to a fresh understanding of the long-perplexing myth?

2 The Opaque Nature of Adapa Notwithstanding substantial overlap in parts, the three sets of evidence are distinct enough to warrant independent descriptions. I shall begin with the Akkadian material before moving on to TH.

2.1 The Middle Babylonian Version of Adapa (Fragment B) In addition to the substantial collection of letters written to the Egyptian court that were found at Amarna, there is a much smaller group of “scholarly” tablets that is comprised of lexical texts, syllabaries, exercises, and literary tablets

8 Regarding the interest in matters of life and death, Cavigneaux (1999: 257) attributes this more broadly to the people who lived in Meturan. 9 The figure of Adapa appears in a wide range of sources outside mythic literature (e.g., letters, royal monuments, incantations, and catalogues), where he is commonly portrayed as an exorcist and/or sage. For a useful survey, see Picchioni (1981: 82–101) and more recently, Sanders (forthcoming). With several exceptions, most date to the first millennium BCE. For the OB period, see the Sumerian forerunner to Udug-Hul (“Evil Demons”) from Nippur: “I am Adapa (sage of Eridu) / I am (the man of (?) Asalluhi” ([FAOS 12: 22 lines 60–61], following Geller’s [1985] reconstruction and translation. I thank Seth Sanders for providing me with a draft of his manuscript). The notion that Adapa had a “choice between life and death” represents Cavigneaux’s own interpretation of the available literature. Adapa’s “useful” experience surely refers in some way to his association with the seven sages who were said to “ensure the correct functioning of the ordinance of heaven and earth” (for discussion, see Izre’el 2001: 2); the sentiment is echoed in Fragment A: 2′.

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(including Adapa).10 The combination of letters and scholarly tablets suggests that the Records Office (= Q42.21) was the locus both for letter-writing and interpretation and for the education of Egyptian scribes in cuneiform (Kemp 2012: 126 and Izre’el 1997: 8–9).11 Given that Akkadian was the lingua franca of the region in the second millennium BCE, training in cuneiform would have been crucial for diplomatic correspondence. Although the scholarly tablets may be only a fraction of the tablets used at Akhetaten, they may indeed provide some sense of the scribal curriculum that was used toward this end (Izre’el 1997: 9). A number of the scholarly tablets exhibit parallels with material either from Hatti or Ugarit, which itself was influenced by the Hittito-Akkadian school. Such suggests that this content was imported from these regions (Izre’el 1997: 11).12 At the same time, a small subset of the tablets, including EA 356 (Adapa), EA 357 (Nergal and Ereshkigal), EA 358 (an unparalleled narrative), and EA 372 (another small fragment), differs from the other scholarly tablets with regard to their form, script, and language. Izre’el (1997: 11) notes that these tablets feature a ductus that is similar to that of Babylonian letters that were sent to Amarna. This suggests that these texts were imported from a region with access to Babylonia proper.13 It is worth adding that all but one display the Egyptian practice of applying red points to the tablet at intervals.14

10 Izre’el (1997) published the full collection of 29 numbered tablets and fragments. The majority is comprised of syllabaries and lexical and other practice tablets; nine are literary texts of some sort (2). 11 See also Artzi 1990: 152, who refers to a small “edubba” that was transferred to Akhetaten from elsewhere, most likely from Thebes. 12 For support concerning the hypothesis that it was the Hittites who originally taught the Egyptians cuneiform, see Beckman 1983: 112–14. Two literary tablets (the šar tamhāri epic and the story of Kešši) have direct parallels with literature from Hatti. The linguistic peculiarities of these texts are linked to Boghazköy Akkadian and thus prompt Izre’el (1997: 10) to conclude that they may be copies of original Boghazköy tablets. The syllabaries and lexical lists then show more parallels with material from Ugarit. Artzi (1990: 143–45) charts the parallels between the pedagogical texts of Akhetaten and those found in Canaan, Ugarit, Boghazköy, and Alalakh. More recently, see also Rutz 2013: 158–276, who adduces evidence for Emar as another western site with scholarly texts that overlapped with those found at Hattusha, Ugarit, and Amarna. 13 Izre’el (2001: 11) posits the Syrian periphery of Mesopotamia. With regard to form, the obverse of these tablets is the convex, rather than the flat side; they also display both Middle Babylonian and Peripheral Akkadian features. Again, this need not mean that the tablets themselves were imported into Egypt, as Izre’el (1992: 184) concluded early on. For further discussion, see Izre’el 2001: 49–54. 14 Izre’el (1992: 181; 2001: 81–91) takes the view that these points were used to divide a text into meaningful units, and that for Adapa, they mark metreme boundaries. Yet see also Goelet

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With only a few lines missing at the beginning of the obverse and at the end of the reverse, it appears that Fragment B once covered the tale in about 75–80 lines (Izre’el 1997: 47). While there is a possibility that Fragment B once belonged to a series of tablets, this seems unlikely. Firstly, Fragment B is marked by a clear beginning, middle, and end. Notwithstanding the few missing lines at both ends, the tablet opens with the key conflict – Adapa cursing the South Wind and breaking its wing – and closes with its resolution, opaque and broken though it may be. Moreover, Fragment B has only one column per side. If the narrative were twice or three times as long, we might expect the scribe to have copied it onto a multicolumn tablet. It thus appears that the tablet was intended to function independently as a complete copy of the narrative.15 The first legible lines of Fragment B show Adapa breaking the “wing” of the South Wind. This bold speech act – one that may have halted vegetation – prompts Anu to send for Adapa.16 Before the messenger even arrives, Ea pre-

2008: 109, who considers that the general system may denote “check marks” that were applied by the student or the teacher when the document was checked against a master copy. These points appear most frequently in two types of literature – didactic texts and late copies of Middle Kingdom literature – but with irregular usage. Goelet (2008: 109 n. 37) notes further that the points do not always appear where one might expect (e.g., hymnic material) and instead are present in some “mundane, un-poetic letters and similar documents.” Although he allows for the possibility that the red points in Adapa signify metric units, ultimately he contends that the “didactic/scribal” usage is more likely. 15 Another possibility is worth noting, however. This pertains to EA 357 (Nergal and Ereshkigal). Like the Amarna copy of Adapa, EA 357 has one column per side and does not appear to have belonged to a series of tablets. It is possible, however, that EA 357 does not contain a complete version of the myth. In line 87, Nergal kisses Ereshkigal and responds to her request that he marry her. In line 88, however, the phrase “till here” appears. While Dalley (2000: 181) reads the phrase as an emphatic close to Nergal’s statement: “It shall certainly be so,” others have taken these words to be extraneous to the text, perhaps representing oral instructions by the teacher to the student to stop inscribing the tablet due to space constraints (Izre’el 1997: 60–61). In that sense, the words would have been copied by accident. Whether or not the tale would have continued, however, is unclear. The SBV is sufficiently different from the Amarna version so as to obfuscate the question further. What this might mean for the end of Fragment B is difficult to say. Was this tablet also not long enough to contain the entire tale? Is it possible that the incantation against the South Wind, which is present in both the OB and NA evidence, was simply eliminated due to space constraints? For further discussion, see Milstein 2015. For Cavigneaux (2014: 39), the scholars responsible for Fragment B appear to have eliminated the incantation in favor of a conclusion that served no utilitarian function. However we interpret the evidence, it is important to emphasize that Fragment B may only give the appearance of not knowing the South Wind incantation. 16 After examining Iraqi meteorological reports from 1956–1958, Roux (1961: 19) concludes that the southern wind, more than the others, plays an essential role with regard to vegetation

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pares Adapa for his ascent to heaven by dressing him in mourner’s clothes, prepping him with a joke to charm the divine gatekeepers, Dumuzi and Gizzida, and coaching him for his upcoming exchange with Anu. Anu, Ea anticipates, will offer him “the food of death” and “the water of death” (29′–30′), and he must not partake. He will, however, also offer clothing and oil, both of which are acceptable. Adapa ascends to heaven and pitches the joke to the gatekeepers, who are amused. When they bring Adapa to Anu, Anu interrogates Adapa: “Come, Adapa, why did you break the wing of the South Wind?” (48′–49′). Adapa explains: while fishing at sea for his lord, “he” (presumably Ea) cut the sea in half and the South Wind blew, causing him to drown. The statement prompts a shift in outlook for Anu, as it dawns on him that Ea “is the one who has done this” (59′). In response, Anu demands that Adapa be brought the food of life and the water of life. But Adapa, assuming their toxicity, refuses (60′–63′). He does, however, accept the oil and clothing. Anu responds by laughing, asking why he did not eat or drink, and exclaiming, “Alas, poor people!” (line 68′). Adapa reports that Ea told him not to eat or drink, but at this point it seems to be too late. In the last visible line, it appears that Anu returns Adapa to the qaqqaru, a term that signifies either earth or the underworld. At this point, unfortunately, the tablet breaks off, leaving Adapa’s fate unknown.

2.2 The Neo-Assyrian Version(s) of Adapa Five fragments of Adapa bearing a NA ductus were found among the 30,000 clay tablet fragments discovered at Assurbanipal’s libraries at Nineveh. In the 7 th C BCE, the king called for the mass acquisition of tablets from Babylonian and Assyria for his collections.17 It appears that Assurbanipal’s goal was to collect and/or copy all tablets that were worthy of preservation, with no attempt to create an “official” collection (Lieberman 1990: 306).18 We thus can

in the region: “Sans lui, non seulement les dattes mûrissent mal, mais la sécheresse s’abat sur le pays et les récoltes sont compromises.” Despite the attractiveness of this theory, it is important to note that such is not made explicit in the myth in any of its versions, even in TH or Fragment D, both of which conclude with incantations that appear to associate the South Wind with both the onset and removal of disease. 17 Given that texts were found in a number of locations at Kuyunjik, including two or three palaces and at least two temples, Michalowski (2003: 116–17) notes that it is only fitting to refer to the “libraries of Assurbanipal.” 18 Lieberman notes further that the “normative, divinely-sanctioned quality of the term ‘canon’ cannot be applied to ancient Near Eastern literature.” By extension, he rejects the use of the term “official” to describe the tablets in Assurbanipal’s library (308). Cf. Oppenheim 1977:

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make no assumptions about the status of the Adapa material found there, which includes two variants (Fragments A and A1) and three fragments that cover different parts of the tale (Fragments C, D, and E). As is clear from the existence of Fragments A and A1, the library preserved more than one copy of the myth.19 Beyond this, however, it is difficult to determine how many distinct versions are represented by the NA fragments and to what degree these versions would have overlapped or diverged with one another. The best preserved among them are Fragments A and D, each of which features about twenty legible lines. It appears that Fragments A and D belong to the same basic rendition (Izre’el 2001: 59).20 Fragment A apparently once had two columns on each side, though only a fraction of the second column on the obverse is visible, and the reverse is broken. It is unclear as to whether or not the others were also originally multicolumn tablets. Fragment A provides a backdrop to the narrative, one that details Adapa’s duties and his relationship with Ea.21 Ea, it appears, gave Adapa “wisdom, but he did not give him eternal life” (4′). Adapa is identified as a sage and exceedingly wise among the Anunnaki. At Eridu, the ancient cultic center associated with Ea, we learn that the pure, anointed Adapa cooked, set the (cultic) table,

244, who upheld the view that Assurbanipal decided which tablets were to be preserved in the library and which were not. For critique of this stance, see Lieberman 1990: 309–314. 19 Whether or not these copies were complete, however, is a different question. Michalowski (2003: 118) observes that of all of the belles-lettres found in the libraries, not a single composition is complete. Given that the same situation occurs in other first-millennium libraries, Michalowski concludes that it was not “important” to collect whole compositions. At the same time, even an expanded version of Adapa would be relatively short, and it is thus reasonable that such a myth would have been originally preserved in its complete form. 20 A set of linguistic and thematic links shared by Fragments A and D suggest that they belong to the same version. For one, the two exhibit strikingly similar references to speech. In D: 6′, Anu asks who could have made his speech “like the speech of Anu?” (qí-bit-su ša ki-ma qí-bit da-nu). Though broken, Fragment A: 2′ apparently anticipates this phrase with its reference to “his speech like the speech of [DN]” ([q]í-bit-su ša ki-ma qí–bit d [x x x]). Both also make similar references to Adapa’s relationship to Ea. In Fragment A: 5′–6′, the narrator states, “In those days (ina ūmešuma) … Ea made [Adapa] his son among the people,” while in Fragment D: 9′–10′, the narrator states, “In those days (ina ūmišu) … Anu established [Adapa’s] freedom from Ea.” There is some variation in the restoration of the phrase in Fragment D; here I follow Picchioni (1981: 122); von Soden (1976: 432) and later, Izre’el (2001: 41) reconstruct the contracted form inūmišu. It seems, moreover, that the statement in A: 4′ regarding Ea’s refusal to give Adapa eternal life is used to set up Fragment D: 11′, where Anu decrees that Adapa’s lordship be resplendent “in future days” (arkat ūmê). Read together, Fragments A and D exhibit a tug-of-war between Ea and Anu over Adapa, with Anu the final victor. 21 Though broken, the obverse of Fragment A1 appears to overlap closely with A: 15′–23′ (Izre’el 2001: 15–16).

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fished, and checked the gate-bolt.22 The last lines of Fragment A then feature Adapa at sea, some version of which could have launched Fragment B. The introductory language of this fragment (e.g., “In those days, in those years,” A: 5′) suggests that what is preserved must have been fairly close to the actual beginning of the tablet.23 Fragment C overlaps the most with Fragment B and features 18 lines, some of which parallel Fragment B: 12′–20′. Enough is visible here to indicate that Ea is preparing Adapa for his encounter with Anu by dressing him like a mourner. Fragment D then overlaps in part with Adapa and Anu’s exchange in B: 61′– 66′. Here Adapa anoints and dresses, but again appears to reject food and drink.24 Anu then muses, “Who made his speech exceed the speech of Anu?” (6′). Adapa, however, reports nothing more. In what appears to be a radically different resolution from that of Fragment B, Anu then establishes Adapa’s “freedom” from Ea (10′) and offers him protection. He further invokes Adapa as “a seed of humanity” who broke the wing of the South Wind and “ascended to heaven” (12′–14′). Whether this refers to his initial trip or to a prolonged or

22 The association of Adapa with Eridu recurs six times, a noticeable difference from Fragment B, which has no visible reference to the city. The focus on Eridu, also part of TH, imbues the tale with antiquity. Eridu was said to be the oldest city in the world (as, e.g., in “The Bilingual Creation of the World by Marduk”), and there is indeed literary and archaeological evidence that indicates an early date for the city’s manifestation of political and religious authority early on. When the religious center shifted to Nippur in the OB period, the influence of Eridu waned, though its priesthood continued to be under royal authority through the NeoBabylonian period (Green 1975: 379). Given this context, how do we account for the quantity of references in Fragment A to Eridu? Are they merely a late effort to imbue the tale with antiquity? Are they embellishments on a received tradition that indeed mentioned Eridu? Or do they date back to an “old” prologue that put special emphasis on Adapa and his role at Eridu? The problem cannot be solved simply with recourse to TH. There are two visible references to Eridu in TH, but both are merely part of epithets used to define Adapa (“son of Eridu” and “citizen of Eridu”). While we do see a parallel epithet in use for Adapa in Fragment A (“son of Eridu,” in 5′ and 16′), this is in conjunction with a greater focus on Adapa’s cultic role at Eridu. 23 Notably, TH launches with a similar set of phrases (“In those days … in those nights … in those years …,” lines 1–3), yet what follows differs substantially from the contents of Fragment A. The trope appears at the beginning of other Sumerian works (see, e.g., the Instructions of Shuruppak; the Birth of Man). See Cavigneaux 2014: 39, who notes the prelude-like character of Fragment A and rejects the possibility that it was preceded by another tablet. 24 In fact, only Adapa’s anointing and dressing are visible (lines 2′–3′), though it appears that Anu “commanded” something and Adapa in turn did/did not do something (line 1′). The likelihood that Adapa first rejected food and drink is apparent from Anu’s response. After laughing loudly at “the act of Ea,” Anu asks: “Who made his speech exceed the speech of Anu?” (lines 4′–6′).

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even permanent stay is difficult to determine.25 The fragment finally concludes with an incantation against the South Wind that appears to reference it as an agent of disease.

2.3 The Old Babylonian Version of Adapa At about 190 lines, TH is more than twice the presumed length of the version represented by Fragment B. This is due in large part to the inclusion of a 100line introduction in TH that is absent from Fragment B. This introduction is set in the period after the Flood and focuses on the feeding of the gods and the organization of mankind (Cavigneaux and Al-Rawi 1993: 92). It appears to have more to do with humanity in general than with Adapa in particular. On the one hand, Adapa must have been mentioned before line 101, where he takes to the sea without introduction. On the other hand, it is not clear to what extent he has been described prior to this point, given the fragmentary nature of this section.26 At the very least, it is notable that 100 lines precede Adapa’s actual voyage, a noticeable difference from what appears to be the case in the MB and NA evidence. Lines 101–162 then share a number of parallels with what we find in Fragment B: 1′–46′. Adapa is fishing for Enki at sea when the South Wind raises (?) its storms. In response, Adapa curses and breaks its “wings.” An then summons Adapa to heaven, and Enki prepares him for the exchange. In this version, Enki first warns Adapa not to partake of the deadly food and water that An offers him. He may not accept clothing, but he may accept oil. Enki then sends Adapa on his way by disheveling his hair, infesting it with lice, and providing him with comic material to amuse Dumuzi and Ningishzida. Once in heaven, Adapa delivers the joke successfully, and the gatekeepers realize that Adapa “paid attention to Enki’s orders” (line 162).27 They then deliver Adapa to An. Here, however, An does not interrogate Adapa, but instead brings him

25 Sanders (forthcoming) argues that in Mesopotamian literature, the reference to someone “who ascended to heaven” denotes a round trip, not a permanent stay. It is true that in nonmythic writings, Adapa does not reside in heaven. At the same time, while Dumuzi and Gizzida are chthonic gods in other texts, they are heavenly gatekeepers in the myth of Adapa. As such, the reality invoked by the myth may not parallel precisely the conceptions that lie beyond it. 26 Cavigneaux (2014: 25) considers that the creation of Adapa is situated in the greater cosmological context and is described in the vicinity of line 63. While Adapa’s name is not actually visible, there are two references to “intelligence,” a trait elsewhere associated with him. 27 It remains a question as to whether the gatekeepers say this aloud or this is an aside from the narrator, as Cavigneaux (2014: 27 n. 17) notes.

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“bread to eat” and “water to drink,” both of which he refuses (lines 167–168). He then offers clothing and oil. Adapa rejects the former but accepts the latter. An urges him to eat and drink, smiles, and then states that Enki “… prevented me from giving Adapa my life” (line 172). He then asks the gods why Adapa broke the wings of the South Wind. In contrast to Fragments B and D, nothing more is said of Adapa’s fate. Enki “fixes the destiny” of the South Wind, and the text concludes with an incantation that is to be said by a (sick?) man, with the plea that the South Wind not “touch the skin” (line 182; see Cavigneaux 2014: 28).28 The impression of the incantation is that the South Wind is responsible both for the onset of disease and for its departure, a notion that resonates with its role in Fragment D.29

2.4 The Muddy Waters of the Adapa Tradition Together, the diverse expressions of the myth provoke a number of questions, many of which revolve around Enki/Ea, the god who elsewhere is known to assist individuals in a bind. Did Ea intentionally trick Adapa by telling him that Anu would offer deadly food? If so, why would Ea trick his own “son,” as Adapa is called in Fragment B? 30 Alternatively, did Ea not realize that Anu 28 While the action is clearly negative, no verb is visible in the line. Surely some sort of contact is implied, given that the speaker then pleas for its removal. If “touching” is indeed implied, it is possible that this is meant to contrast with the potential reference to the South Wind in lines 34–35. According to Cavigneaux’s (2014) reconstruction and translation, these lines read: “[Le …] l’humanité ne ‘touchait’ pas … Le vent du [sud (?)] durant son règne (à Etana?) une main (un effet) bénéfique …” While such may imply a shift in the role of the South Wind from beneficial to harmful, the broken context of lines 34–35 prevents us from drawing any solid conclusions. 29 Different readings have been proposed for the role of the South Wind in Fragment D, however. See, e.g., Izre’el 2001: 43, who interprets the incantation as something that is meant “to protect against maladies caused by the striking of the South Wind”; see also Bottéro 1969–70: 110. 30 Such seems to contradict the role of Ea in other myths, where he is often portrayed as working in opposition to other gods in order to save specific individuals. To cite but a few examples: in Atrahasis, when Enlil attempts to wipe out humanity, Ea provides Atrahasis with instructions to save his life. In Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld, Enki enlists the help of Šamaš to bring up Enkidu’s ghost from the netherworld. In the Descent of Inanna/Ištar, Enki/Ea rescues the goddess from the underworld by creating a figure to trick Ereškigal. In the SBV of Nergal and Ereškigal, Ea provides Nergal with a set of instructions designed to protect him in the underworld: he must not sit on a chair, eat meat, drink beer, wash his feet, or copulate with Ereškigal. This last example is most striking in light of Fragment B, where Ea likewise provides Adapa with a specific set of instructions regarding his journey to another realm. In the case of Fragment B, however, Ea’s advice pertains to Adapa’s visit to heaven, not

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would offer Adapa life-giving food? If so, how could the god of wisdom not anticipate this? 31 Anu’s “food of life” in Fragment B (cf. TH line 172, cited above) is also ambiguous: was this meant to provide Adapa with eternal life, or was it simply intended to revive him? If the latter, does this mean that Adapa was dead, or at least in some sort of limbo state? Moreover, how should we understand An’s offerings in TH, where it is not clear that Adapa has even drowned? The various conclusions are also perplexing. Why is nothing reported of Adapa’s fate in TH? In Fragment B, is Adapa sent to the underworld or back to earth? In Fragment D, does Adapa remain in heaven, or is he simply granted lifelong protection? And why do TH and Fragment D close with an incantation against the South Wind? While the OB archaeological context may not offer answers to all of these questions, it may help us chip away at the opaque nature of the Adapa tradition, bit by bit.

3 Magical Ritual and its Application to Adapa Before considering the relationship between magical ritual and the Adapa tradition, let us outline a general framework for Mesopotamian rituals that were used to combat illness or personal crisis. The best sources for these healing rituals are texts that describe an individual’s symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment, though other sources include the forty-tablet Diagnostic Handbook SA.GIG (“Symptoms”), select treaties and dedicatory texts, literary compositions concerned with theodicy, miscellaneous texts that refer to healers and patients, and court letters that report illnesses and treatments (Abusch 2004: 456).32 In the brief summary that follows, I draw on a variety of both “magical” and “medical” texts to reconstruct the broadest outlines of Mesopotamian healing practice, with special emphasis on details that may have parallels in the Adapa material.33 the underworld, and only here do Ea’s instructions appear to be misleading. For a brief but excellent overview of Ea/Enki’s role in Mesopotamian mythology, see Bottéro 1991. 31 Nonetheless, see Furlani 1929: 160, who proposes that Ea does not anticipate Anu’s change of heart. 32 On the Diagnostic Handbook, with particular attention to its “rational” elements and structural development, see Heessel 2004. The division of the handbook into forty tablets apparently represents a tribute to Ea. Ea, who is said to be responsible for providing humanity with diagnostic knowledge, is associated especially with the number forty (Heessel 2004: 101–102). 33 The division in labor between the āšipu (“exorcist”) and the asû (often translated as “physician,” though “herbalist” [Abusch 2004: 456] or “pharmacist” [Scurlock 1999: 78] may be more apt) was not always clear. For Ritter (1965: 301–302), the āšipu viewed disease through

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Naturally, the healing ritual would be set in motion by the fact that an individual had been struck by illness or crisis. This was thought to have been brought on either by “the hand of a god” or from the personal god’s abandonment of the individual, leaving him vulnerable to attacks by demons and the like (Heessel 2004: 99). At this point, the seriously threatened victim was in a limbo state between life and death (Ritter 1965: 303). He or she would summon an exorcist (wāšipum/āšipu), whose first task was to examine symptoms and signs in order to determine the responsible party (Heessel 2004: 100).34 The importance of this component deserves emphasis: until the supernatural cause was identified, the person could not be healed, for part of the therapeutic process involved reconciliation with the angry god (Heessel 2004: 99). As Ritter (1965: 304) notes, the exorcist would then make a prognosis in the form of a positive statement (most commonly, iballuṭ, or “he will live/recover”) or negative one (most commonly, imât, or “he will die”).35 In favorable cases, the illness would be combated through various ritual and/or medicinal means (Abusch 2004: 456). In terms of medicinal treatment, the victim might be directed to ingest, absorb, or come into contact with various solids (commonly made from trees/plants, grains, vegetables, stones, etc.) and liquids (e.g., water, beer, blood, urine, etc.).36 Other materials, such as strips of clothing and oil, were also used (Ritter 1965: 309).37 In Akkadian medical texts, the

the lens of supernatural causes; he made a diagnosis and a prognosis; he then instituted treatment to free the patient from the malevolent forces that attacked him. The asû, in contrast, did not ascribe symptoms to supernatural causes; he did not make prognosis before treatment; and his therapy was directed toward the relief of short-term symptoms. At the same time, she notes that some texts indicate either the overlap of the two professions or their cooperation (Ritter 1965: 314–15). In a number of cases, after one failed to cure the patient, the other would step in. The complementary and overlapping aspects of the two professions are emphasized by Scurlock (1999: 78–79). To Scurlock’s (1999: 76) mind, “If we cannot separate asû from āšipu, it is because we are looking for binary opposites where there are not any.” 34 This process was not limited to examination of the physical symptoms of the afflicted individual. The exorcist might also consult liver omens, dreams, and/or terrestrial omens, especially those viewed on the way to the patient’s house or those observed by visitors (Heessel 2004: 100–102). 35 The first phrase is documented 176 times; the latter, 423 times. Other phrases were utilized less commonly (Ritter 1965: 302). 36 Ritter (1965: 308) notes that the asû compounded drugs into a wide range of remedies, while the āšipu used a more limited selection of materials (preferring stones, wool, and aromatics) to promote healing. 37 The wool was apparently used to wrap the herbs and affix the bundle to the patient (Ritter 1965: 311). Oil could be used to massage the medicinal blend into the skin (313) or for anointing (321).

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healing prescription is termed the bulṭu, from the verb balāṭu, “to live.” This treatment was often accompanied by recitation of an incantation by the āšipu (Abusch 2004: 457).38 He would also provide protection to ward off future attacks (Ritter 301).39 Let us now examine the plot of Adapa in its various manifestations so as to explore its potential kinship with magical healing rituals.

3.1 The South Wind Although the first visible act of Fragment B is Adapa cursing the South Wind, Adapa’s subsequent exchange with Anu indicates that another act precipitated his. When Anu asks Adapa why he broke the wing of the South Wind, he reports: “I was catching fish in the middle of the sea for my lord’s house. He cut the sea in half (tâmta ina mešēli inšilma), the South Wind blew, and me, she drowned” (50′–52′) The dense nature of these lines is compounded by the fact that the translation “he cut the sea in half” (51′) is uncertain.40 It is clear, however, that an unnamed “he” performed some sort of act (inšilma) on the sea (tâmta, in the accusative case). Given that “my lord” (50′) is the last antecedent, and we know Adapa to be “Ea’s son,” it appears that Ea is the referent, as noted already by Knudtzon (1916) and later Izre’el (2001: 26). Moreover, this act was accompanied by the blowing of the South Wind, and Ea is associated with the South Wind in several other texts. In an incantation, the South Wind is identified as the “beloved of Ea” (naramti Ea). A Middle Assyrian text refers to the South Wind as “serving” Ea; and in a third text, the South Wind is assigned to “Ea, father of the gods.”41 It thus appears that in Fragment B, Ea is the agent who acted upon the sea and prompted the South Wind to capsize Adapa. This is further supported by

38 Although the origin of the incantation recitation was likely in the domain of the āšipu, the asû was also known to recite incantations “as an ancillary or reinforcing therapeutic measure” (Ritter 1965: 309). 39 For future protection in the context of namburbi ritual, see Caplice 1974: 12 and Maul 1999: 124. 40 Here I follow Izre’el (2001: 26), who prefers “He cut the sea in half,” to the translation “The sea was (smooth) like a mirror,” which is grammatically problematic for a number of reasons. Reading the verb inšil (← imšil) as denoting “cut in halves,” Izre’el identifies ina mešēli as an emphasizing tautological infinitive, though notes that such a solution is imperfect. 41 For the first text, see AfO XII pl. 10 rev. col. ii 24–7 (= K 9875); cf. JCS 29: 53; for the second, see RA 60: 73 rev. 3–6. For the third, see STT 400: rev. 37–40 // TIM 9: 60 iii 2–5 // K 8397 1–4 (Livingstone 1986: 75). Izre’el (2001: 145) notes that the South Wind “is a tool in the hands of Ea.”

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Anu’s response: “Why would Ea show mankind what is bad in heaven and earth ... he is the one who has done this; and we, what can we do for him?” (B: 57′–60′). In the context of crisis and magical ritual, this sequence of events correlates with the initial attack inflicted on the victim by the (hand of the) god and the identification of the responsible party by the āšipu. The South Wind functions as the vehicle by which the god acts, and as is evident in magical texts, such an act could be inflicted with or without just cause. Anu’s response indicates that he has now identified Ea as the catalyst of the attack. It is not clear that the same scenario can be assumed for TH. Here, likewise, Adapa is fishing at sea when the South Wind blows and he curses it. Nowhere is it stated that he drowns, however, and neither Adapa nor Anu identifies Enki as the agent of the South Wind. While Enki does “fix the destiny” (line 180) of the wind at the end, there is no indication that this represents a punishment for his actions. Rather, it seems that Enki is simply the best god for the job, either because he is already associated with the South Wind, or because he is the god who typically fixes things. Alternatively, the myth may provide an etiology for the Enki/South Wind partnership. In any case, it appears that the South Wind carries negative associations in this version. Not only is the Sumerian term for the South Wind (tumu-ulu3 or tumu-ulu2) related to a term for “demon” (u18-lu, without the tumu determinative for wind), but the concluding incantation makes explicit the link between the South Wind and disease. The word turns up in Akkadian as alû, a type of demon associated with sickness, with another term (šūtu) used exclusively for the South Wind. Although the South Wind is not generally associated with demons or sickness in Akkadian literature, the incantation in Fragment D preserves the old link between the South Wind and disease. In both TH and Fragment D, the lifting of the South Wind is required for the disease to depart.

3.2 Between Life and Death In magical and medical texts, certain patients are identified as being in dangerous or serious conditions. In her seminal essay on the āšipu and the asû, Ritter (1965: 303) categorized these conditions as “shadings between life and death.” In Fragment B, Adapa likewise appears to be in a limbo state between life and death.42 According to Adapa’s account of events, the South Wind submerged

42 Michalowski (1980: 80–81) understands Adapa to be in a liminal state, but reads this within the context of a rite of passage. In a short but influential essay, he asserts that Adapa stumbled upon magical powers when he broke the wing of the South Wind. This prompted a sequence of separation (Adapa travels to heaven), existence in a marginal state (in heaven),

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him and he was “plunged into the lord’s house” (53′). The reference appears to be to the apsû, the subterranean cosmic waters that constitute Ea’s residence.43 What it means for a human being to descend to the apsû is unclear, partly because the apsû is represented in such different terms throughout Mesopotamian literature. In some cases, the apsû is clearly an independent cosmic region; in others, it overlaps with rivers and marshes; in still others, it is identical with or connected to the oceans. There is even some evidence that the apsû was occasionally confused with the underworld or that it represented an underworld in some form (Horowitz 2011: 336–44).44 Given that both were envisioned to be underground, such conflation is not surprising. What all of this implies for Adapa is difficult to say, though the myth does draw heavily on underworld themes in all of its versions. For one, Dumuzi and Gizzida, the gatekeepers in heaven in TH and Fragment B, are traditionally chthonic gods. Second, Ea’s instructions to Adapa to avoid Anu’s offerings are redolent of Mesopotamian accounts of journeys to the underworld, where the individual is instructed not to partake of various items lest he remain trapped there. Indeed, part of the myth’s appeal appears to be the fact that Ea, the god who elsewhere instructs individuals regarding their travels to the underworld, here provides his charge with instructions regarding his ascent to heaven. Third, in Fragment B: 70′, after Adapa rejects the food and water, Anu returns him to the qaqqarīšu. While the term qaqqaru may be translated either as “earth” or “underworld,” the use of other terms for “earth” (erṣetu) or “land”

and reaggregation into society. He contends that Ea tricked Adapa into not accepting immortality so that Anu would have to provide an institutionalized form for the magical power of words: ašipūtu. In the end, Adapa’s chance discovery was institutionalized and granted approval by the gods. 43 The Mesopotamians envisioned three earth regions: the Upper Earth, or the earth’s surface, the Middle Earth, or the apsû of Ea, and the Lower Earth, or the underworld, where 600 Anunnaki are imprisoned (Horowitz 2011: 274). The origins of Ea’s association with the apsû are given in Enuma Elish I 61–78, where Ea defeats the deified Apsu and establishes residence atop him; Marduk later assigns the apsû to Ea in IV 137–46. See also Atrahasis, which portrays the gods as drawing lots, a process that results in Ea descending to the apsû, with Anu ascending to heaven and Enlil remaining on the earth’s surface. The SBV of the Gilgamesh Epic likewise makes reference to Ea in the apsû (XI 41–42). In “Enki and Ninmah,” Enki is said to lie in the “deep engur (= apsû), in the flowing water.” See also Green 1975: 160–85 for a comprehensive list of various references to the abzu in Sumerian literature. 44 In some texts, underworld gods and demons reside in the apsû, and the commentary to Ludlul bēl nēmeqi may indicate that human ghosts were located there as well (Horowitz 2011: 344). Horowitz (2001: 344) explains that the overlap likely came from empirical observation: when one dug a well, one reached the waters of the “apsû,” not the underworld, but graves of the dead were located above groundwater.

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(mātu) elsewhere in Adapa may suggest that here, a different region is implied (Izre’el 2001: 141). It is worth adding that in the tale “Adapa and Enmerkar,” Adapa and Enmerkar, king of Uruk, descend nine cubits into the qaqqaru and enter a tomb; and in NA Fragment A, Adapa is identified as “exceedingly wise among the Anunnaki,” gods typically associated with the underworld.

3.3 Food, Water, Oil, and Clothing: Adapa’s “bulṭu”? In response to the crisis at hand, Anu presents Adapa with food, water, oil and clothing, apparently in all versions. This response has traditionally been viewed in the context of hospitality (Jacobsen 1976: 115). In TH, this may well be the case: An offers these items immediately upon meeting Adapa, with no dialogue between the two. These items represent “life” (line 172) but the rejection of them does not entail death. In Fragment B, however, Anu’s role seems to surpass that of the good host, with his effort to “do” something for Adapa, once he has learned what Ea “has done” (59′–60′). Just as the healing professional would provide his patient with a bulṭu, so too Anu offers Adapa a “remedy” of life-giving food and water, oil, and clothing. As noted above, both grain and water were common elements in prescriptions. Oil and clothing were likewise used in magical ritual, where occasionally we find reference to individuals anointing themselves or shedding old garments and donning new ones (Caplice 1974: 14).45 In this case, Adapa’s refusal to take his “medicine” provokes an outcry from Anu. Whereas the optimistic āšipu would announce iballuṭ, “He will live!” Anu bemoans lā balṭāta: “You will not live!” A further note is in order. Many scholars presume that Anu’s “food of life” in Fragment B represents immortality, which he rejects.46 The assumption is that because Adapa already has wisdom, the only thing left for Anu to offer

45 In namburbi ritual, the removal of the old garments was a symbolic act that was designed to remove the impurity from the individual (Maul 1999: 128). 46 Jacobsen (1930: 202) figured that the gods naturally ate the food of immortality, and thus Ea, who did not want Adapa to become immortal, prevented him from eating by lying about the food. For a similar stance, see Kramer and Maier 1989: 115–16, who assert that Adapa would have gained immortality not only for himself but “for humankind generally.” Polak (1993: 138– 39) asserts that Ea wished to retain Adapa as his servant and thus provided deceptive instructions with regard to Anu. Yet cf. Liverani 2004: 8–10, who notes that the clothing and oil are “external” while the food and drink are “internal,” and that the acceptance of the first set is as crucial as the rejection of the second. For Liverani, Ea did not anticipate that Adapa’s acceptance of the external items would actually change the course of events, so that Anu would offer Adapa “good” food, not harmful food.

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him is eternal life. As Sasson (2008: 7) points out, however, there is no indication that this is the case. For Sasson, “balāṭum has to do with life, but also with vigor and health; so we may presume that had Adapa partaken of it, he might have felt renewed and refreshed; but not otherwise changed in a permanent way … .” Indeed, as Izre’el points out (2001: 31), the term balāṭu (“to live”) carries a range of meanings, none of which are associated with immortality: “to be well,” “to be healthy,” “to obtain food for keeping alive,” “to stay alive,” and “to live long.” In and of itself, there seems to be no linguistic basis for reading Anu’s statement lā balṭāta as “You shall not live eternally!”47 It is only in NA Fragment A: 4′ where we find direct mention of immortality, or more precisely, the lack thereof: “To him [Ea] gave wisdom; he did not give him eternal life” (napištu dārītu). While this may suggest that Anu would later offer Adapa what he lacks, it is important to note that this is not explicit in Fragment D. In any case, the contents of Fragments A and D represent a secondary framework for the myth, one that must not be read onto the other versions (Milstein forthcoming).48 In Fragment B, at least, it appears that the food and water of life are simply the items needed to revive the drowned Adapa.

3.4 Future Protection In apparent contrast to both TH and Fragment B, Fragment D features an alternative “happy” ending. After Adapa rejects the food and water, the narrator remarks: da-nu šá a-da-pa e-li-šú ma-ṣar-ta iš-k[un] / [x (x)] ki šá dé-a šu-ba-rašú iš-kun (lines 9′–10′). The first line is slightly opaque. Izre’el (2001: 39) reads “Anu set Adapa at his service.” He notes (41) that ša adapa elīšu, literally, “of Adapa on him,” is an inverse genitive construction with a preposition that essentially means “on Adapa.” Given the fact that the maṣṣartu (“watchman, guard”) is set “over” Adapa, (elîšu), however, it seems more likely that Anu promises here to provide Adapa with a protective guard.49 This indeed accords better with line 10′, where Anu establishes Adapa’s “freedom from Ea.” Together, these statements parallel the effort of the āšipu to shield the vulnerable victim from future attacks.

47 For Izre’el (2001: 32), however, it is the next statement in line 68′ (“Alas for inferior humanity!”) that implies the loss of immortality, not simply life. 48 With this statement, I do not include the concluding incantation in Fragment D, which apparently had its origins in the OB period. 49 Izre’el (2001: 41) also considers the possibility that Anu offers Adapa protection “against Adapa’s again misusing his powers against the South Wind.”

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3.5 Concluding Incantation Unlike Fragment B, TH and Fragment D close with an incantation against the South Wind. In both cases, the incantation appears to be somewhat detached from the narrative that precedes it. In TH, as stated above, after Enki “fixes” the South Wind, we find an incantation that was designed to prevent the South Wind from touching the body and bringing disease. The addressee (“lord”) appears to be Enki. In contrast to TH, the incantation in Fragment D has no speaker and no visible reference to a deity. Here, too, however, the invocation appears to be used to mitigate the power of the South Wind, “who wickedly set her blowing upon the people” (line 15′, here, Izre’el’s [2001: 39] translation).50 While the two incantations differ in length and in content, the presence of the incantation already in the OB period suggests that Fragment D proceeds from a line that retained the incantation throughout the process of transmission. The appearance of the incantation in these two versions suggests that the myth may have been utilized in magical rituals pertaining to illness, at least in some contexts.

4 Playing the Victim: The Magic Mirror of Akkadian Adapa I have attempted to demonstrate that the archaeological context for TH reveals a hitherto unrecognized link between the plotline of Adapa and magical healing rituals. One realization that emerges, however, is the fact that the best parallels with healing rituals are present in the Akkadian versions, not TH. While the incantation in TH indicates that the myth was tied to magic at an early phase and was likely employed in magical ritual, these ties are fairly conventional. The South Wind operates as the demon that must be held in check; the concluding incantation makes this explicit. In this version, however, we do not encounter the playful spin on magical healing rituals that marks the Akkadian renditions. In TH, Adapa does not drown – and is hence not a proper “victim”; Enki is not explicitly identified as his “attacker”; and subsequently, An does not operate as “healer” per se. We learn nothing of Adapa’s fate, precisely because the narrative is not even about Adapa in the end. Rather, the

50 Cf. Bottéro 1969–70: 110; Labat 1970: 294; and Izre’el 2001: 43, however, all of whom propose that the incantation is used to protect against sickness caused by the striking of the South Wind.

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text is concerned with the South Wind, a force that appears to be both necessary and destructive to humans. In this context, the cosmological introduction that sets the myth in the wake of the Flood makes sense, in that the tale seeks to account for the origins of things, including that of the winds.51 We have, then, a story that may have been used in magical healing rituals, but not one that plays with the protocol of these rituals in any sort of innovative or unexpected way. The raw material of the narrative represented by TH, however, seems to have inspired a new take on the tale that took the connection with magic in a different direction. This was facilitated especially by An’s statement that Enki prevented him from giving Adapa “life,” a term that takes on new meaning in the Akkadian literary heirs. In Fragment B, and later, in the NA evidence, we find Adapa – not the South Wind – at center-stage.52 Accordingly, the lengthy cosmological introduction is absent from Fragment B, and in the version represented by Fragment A, it is replaced with a prologue that puts Adapa newly at the fore. In the process, as exemplified by Fragment B, the roles of the three main figures in the narrative undergo a major shift, though all with roots in their original representations. Adapa is recast as victim and is drowned by the South Wind. His exchange with Anu inadvertently reveals that Ea, the manipulator of the South Wind, was responsible for the attack. And in a dramatic twist, Anu and Ea are newly pitched against one another, with Anu cast (ironically!) as the quasi-āšipu who must reverse Ea’s plot and restore Adapa’s life. In Fragment B, where the incantation is not represented, this play on the procedure of magical ritual may have superseded any practical function the myth served in other contexts. Thus, while the “magic” of Adapa is grounded in a tale that is concerned with the South Wind, it ultimately provided the backdrop for a new narrative that could mirror magical ritual, whether it was actually utilized in ritual or not.

51 Cavigneaux (2014: 38) notes that the lengthy introduction of TH reframes the myth in the ecology of Mesopotamia and highlights the role of the South Wind, which operates not merely as “a foil for Adapa.” TH includes several fragmentary references to winds and blowing, suggesting that the South Wind was introduced early on. Cavigneaux (2014: 29) considers that the South Wind is contrasted with the North Wind, which plays a destructive role: “Le vent du nord joue un rôle destructeur. Sa présence ici doit contraster avec le vent du sud et confirme indirectement l’importance essentielle du vent du sud dans l’histoire.” It is important to note, however, that there is no preserved reference to the South Wind, and any assumption of this remains hypothetical. 52 Cavigneaux (2014: 39) considers the possibility that the version represented by Fragment B could have omitted both the prelude of TH and the concluding incantation in order to focus on the hero and his adventure. See also Milstein (2015) for a more extensive expression of this line of thought.

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Bibliography Abusch, Tzvi. 2004. Illnesses and Other Crises. Pp. 456–59 in Religions of the Ancient World, ed. Sarah Iles Johnson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Artzi, Pinḥas. 1990. Studies in the Library of the Amarna Archive. Pp. 139–56 in Bar-Ilan Studies in Assyriology: Dedicated to Pinḥas Artzi, ed. Jacob Klein and Aaron Skaist. BarIlan Studies in Near Eastern Languages and Culture. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press. Beckman, Gary. 1983. Mesopotamians and Mesopotamian Learning at Hattusha. JCS 35/1–2: 97–114. Bottéro, Jean. 1969–70. Antiquités assyro-babyloniennes. Annuaire de l’École Pratique des Hautes Études (Sciences historiques et philologiques) 102: 95–124. Bottéro, Jean. 1991. Intelligence and the Technical Function of Power in the Structure of the Mesopotamian Pantheon: The Example of Enki/Ea. Pp. 145–55 in Mythologies, vol. 1, ed. Yves Bonnefoy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Caplice, Richard I. 1974. The Akkadian Namburbi Texts: An Introduction. SANE 1. Malibu: Undena Publications. Cavigneaux, Antoine. 1999. A Scholars’ Library in Meturan? With an Edition of the tablet H72 (Textes de Tell Haddad VII). Pp. 251–73 in Mesopotamian Magic: Textual, Historical, and Interpretive Perspectives, ed. Tzvi Abusch and Karel van der Toorn. Ancient Magic and Divination I. Groningen: Styx. Cavigneaux, Antoine. 2014. Une version sumérienne de la légende d’Adapa. ZA 104: 1–41. Cavigneaux, Antoine, and Farouk Al-Rawi. 1993. New Sumerian Literary Texts from Tell Haddad (Ancient Meturan): A First Survey. Iraq 55: 91–104. Civil, Miguel. 1969. Old Babylonian Proto-Lu: Types of Sources. Pp. 24–73 in The Series lu​2 = ša and Related Texts, ed. Miguel Civil and Erica Reiner. MSL 12. Rome: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum. Dalley, Stephanie. 2000. Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Delnero, Paul. 2012. The Textual Criticism of Sumerian Literature. JCSSS 3. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research. Furlani, Giuseppe. 1929. Il mito di Adapa. Rendiconti della R. Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei 6/5: 113–71. Geller, Markham J. 1985. Forerunners to Udug-hul. Sumerian Exorcistic Incantations. FAOS 12. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Goelet, Ogden. 2008. Writing Ramesside Hieratic: What the Late Egyptian Miscellanies Tell Us about Scribal Education. Pp. 102–110 in Servant of Mut: Studies in Honor of Richard A. Fazzini, ed. Sue H. D’Auria. Probleme der Ägyptologie 28. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Green, Margaret. 1975. Eridu in Sumerian Literature. Ph.D. Dissertation. The University of Chicago. Heessel, Nils P. 2004. Diagnosis, Divination, and Disease: Towards an Understanding of the Rationale Behind the Babylonian Diagnostic Handbook. Pp. 97–116 in Magic and Rationality in Ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman Medicine, ed. H. F. J. Horstmanshoff and Marten Stol. Studies in Ancient Medicine 27. Leiden: Brill. Horowitz, Wayne. 1998. Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography. MC 8. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Izre’el, Shlomo. 1992. The Study of Oral Poetry: Reflections of a Neophyte. Can We Learn Anything on Orality from the Study of Akkadian Poetry, Especially in Akhetaton?

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Pp. 155–225 in Mesopotamian Epic Literature: Oral or Aural?, ed. Marianna E. Vogelzang and Herman L. J. Vanstiphout. Lewiston, NY: Mellen. Izre’el, Shlomo. 1997. Amarna Scholarly Tablets. CM 9. Groningen: Styx. Izre’el, Shlomo. 2001. Adapa and the South Wind: Language Has the Power of Life and Death. MC 10. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Jacobsen, Thorkild. 1930. The Investiture and Anointing of Adapa in Heaven. The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 46/3: 201–203. Jacobsen, Thorkild. 1976. Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion. New Haven: Yale University Press. Kemp, Barry. 2012. The City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Amarna and Its People. London: Thames and Hudson. Kramer, Samuel Noah and John Maier. 1989. Myths of Enki, the Crafty God. New York: Oxford University Press. Knudtzon, Jørgen Alexander. 1915, repr. 1964. Die Amarna Tafeln. Vorderasiatische Bibliothek 2. Aalen: Otto Zeller. Labat, René, et al. 1970. Les religions du Proche-Orient asiatique: Textes babyloniens, ougaritiques, hittites. Paris: Fayard and Denoël. Lieberman, Stephen J. 1990. Canonical and Official Cuneiform Texts. Pp. 105–134 in Lingering Over Words: Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Literature in Honor of William L. Moran, ed. Tzvi Abusch et al. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Liverani, Mario. 2004. Myth and Politics in Ancient Near Eastern Historiography, ed. Zainab Bahrani and Marc Van De Mieroop. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Livingstone, Alasdair. 1986. Mystical and Mythological Explanatory Works of Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars. Oxford: Clarendon. Maul, Stefan M. 1999. How the Babylonians Protected Themselves against Calamities Announced by Omens. Pp. 123–129 in Mesopotamian Magic: Textual, Historical, and Interpretive Perspectives, ed. Tzvi Abusch and Karel van der Toorn. Ancient Magic and Divination I. Groningen: Styx. Michalowski, Piotr. 1980. Adapa and the Ritual Process. Rocznik Orientalistyczny 41: 77–82. Michalowski, Piotr. 2003. The Libraries of Babel: Text, Authority, and Tradition in Ancient Mesopotamia. Pp. 105–129 in Cultural Repertoires: Structure, Function, and Dynamics, ed. Gillis J. Dorleijn and Herman L. J. Vanstiphout. Leuven: Peeters. Milstein, Sara J. 2015. The Origins of Adapa. ZA 105: 30–41. Milstein, Sara J. Forthcoming. Tracking the Master Scribe: Revision through Introduction in Biblical and Mesopotamian Literature. New York: Oxford University Press. Oppenheim, A. Leo. 1977. Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization, revised ed. completed by Erica Reiner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pedersen, Olof. 1998. Archives and Libraries in the Ancient Near East 1500–300 BC. Bethesda: CDL Press. Picchioni, Sergio A. 1981. Il poemetto di Adapa. Budapest: Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem. Polak, Frank. 1993. Some Aspects of Literary Design in the Ancient Near Eastern Epic. Pp. 135–146 in kinattūtu ša dārâti: Raphael Kutscher Memorial Volume, ed. Anson F. Rainey. Tel Aviv: Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, Occasional Publications 1. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, Institute of Archaeology. Ritter, Edith K. 1965. Magical-Expert (= āšipu) and Physician (asû): Notes on Two Complementary Professions in Babylonian Medicine. Pp. 299–321 in Studies in Honor of Benno Landsberger on His Seventy-Fifth Birthday April 21, 1965. AS 16. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Robson. Eleanor. 2001. The Tablet House: A Scribal School in Old Babylonian Nippur. RA 95: 39–67. Roux, Georges. 1961. Adapa, le vent et l’eau. RA 55: 13–33. Rutz, Matthew. 2013. Bodies of Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia. Ancient Magic and Divination 9. Leiden: Brill. Sanders, Seth. Forthcoming. Heavenly Journeys and Scholarly Knowledge: The Transformation of Scribal Cultures in Judah and Babylonia. Sasson, Jack. 2008. Another Wrinkle on Old Adapa. Pp. 1–10 in Studies in Ancient Near Eastern World View and Society Presented to Marten Stol on the Occasion of His 65 th Birthday, ed. R. J. van der Spek et al. Bethesda: CDL Press. Scurlock, JoAnn. 1999. Physician, Exorcist, Conjurer, Magician: A Tale of Two Healing Professionals. Pp. 69–79 in Mesopotamian Magic: Textual, Historical, and Interpretive Perspectives, ed. Tzvi Abusch and Karel van der Toorn. Ancient Magic and Divination I. Groningen: Styx. von Soden, Wolfram. 1976. Bemerkungen zum Adapa-Mythos. Pp. 427–33 in Kramer Anniversary Volume: Cuneiform Studies in Honor of Samuel Noah Kramer. AOAT 25. Kevelaer: Butzon and Bercker. Tinney, Steve. 1998. Texts, Tablets and Teaching: Scribal Education in Nippur and Ur. Expedition 40: 40–50. Tinney, Steve. 1999. On the Curricular Setting of Sumerian Literature. Iraq 59: 168–72. Veldhuis, Niek. 1997. Elementary Education at Nippur: The Lists of Trees and Wooden Objects. Ph.D. Dissertation. Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.

Matthew T. Rutz, Brown University*

9 The Text after the Sacrifice Divination Reports from Kassite Babylonia Every handwritten text has a physicality that makes it a material product of, a participant in, and a witness to a nexus of social events anchored in time and place: “Writing’s preservative potentiality turns it into a technology with material effects on past societies” (Moreland 2006: 141). Far from being disembodied texts, cuneiform tablets are reminders of that potentiality in that they constitute a durable residue of what preceded and followed the moment wedges were first impressed on clay. Because the contexts in which cuneiform tablets functioned were manifold, it is necessary and profitable to focus on specific circumscribed settings or genres that provide glimpses of the rituals, figurative as well as literal, around ancient textual production in Mesopotamia. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the dynamic between the practice of divination, a powerful, ubiquitous, and long-lived ideological construct attested throughout the ancient Near East, and the varying social mechanics by which cuneiform divinatory texts were produced. Babylonian sources from in the latter half of the second millennium BCE provide an opportune case study and point of entry for examining the topic at hand.

1 Making, Reading, and Recording Signs: Mesopotamian Divination by Extispicy and its Textual Forms In ancient Mesopotamia the practice of extispicy, reading a sacrificial animal’s entrails for divine signals, existed at a culturally productive intersection of cul-

* Support for my research has been provided by Brown University’s Richard B. Solomon Faculty Research Award and Department of Egyptology and Assyriology. I am grateful to Steve Tinney and Grant Frame for open access to tablets in the Babylonian Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and to the Trustees of the British Museum for permission to cite unpublished material from their collection. John A. Brinkman was generous in sharing with me his knowledge of the Kassite-period text corpus. I am grateful the editors of this volume and to the other contributors for their critical comments.

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tic behaviors, mantic techniques, and specialized traditions of written of knowledge.1 Evidence scattered across more than two millennia points to socio-political elites, especially though not exclusively royal elites, actively engaging with a multifaceted divinatory system that claimed the ability to detect and interpret signs encoded with communications from the gods. A vast array of literature documents the theory and practice of divination by means of simple observation, that is, divinatory techniques that focused on what are now commonly referred to as unprovoked signs, happenings in the world that were viewed as portentous and intelligible, from celestial phenomena, to birth defects, physiognomies, animal behavior, events in the social world, and so on. A parallel approach preserved in a similarly rich body of material illustrates how technical specialists manipulated elements of their material world to initiate contact with the gods seeking answers to specific questions of social or political import. Media such as oil (lecanomancy), smoke (libanomancy), and flour (aleuromancy) were among the vehicles used provoke signs, but using the bodies of sacrificial animals (extispicy),2 particularly sheep but also birds, enjoyed a uniquely wide-spread prestige in antiquity, both in Mesopotamia proper and throughout the Near East. One textual tradition found in the NeoAssyrian text corpus succinctly conveys the range of questions for which answers were sought via provoked signs, instructing the diviners: [šumma tê]rtu(ur]5.úš u šamnu(ì+giš) iš-tal-mu ana šulum(silim) šarri(lugal) kakki (gištukul) sà-kap nakri(kúr) šalmāt(silim-at) [ummāni ana ṣabāt āl]i(ur]u) ana epēš(dù-eš) ṣibûti(áš) zanān(sur) šamê(an) ana šulum(silim) murṣi(gig) ṣummirāti(šà.sì.sì.ke.meš) [u mimma m]a-la te-ep-pu-šú ta-qab-bi ina šalimti(silim-ti) qība(me-a) tašakkan(gar-an) [If the ex]tispicy and the oil (omens) are favorable, you may say (that it is so) for the wellbeing of the king, battle, repelling the enemy, the well-being of [the troops, for seizing a cit]y, for attaining a goal, rain in the sky, for the well-being of a sick man, endeavors, [and what]ever (else) you do; in a favorable divination result you may make a (divinatory) pronouncement.3

1 There are many surveys of cuneiform divinatory literature that enumerate the core sources of evidence in diachronic perspective and situate Mesopotamian extispicy in its various historical and cultural settings (e.g., Maul 2003; Rochberg 2004: 44–97; Veldhuis 2006; Annus 2010; Koch 2011; Rutz 2013: 1–10, 15–29, 219–63; George 2013: xv–xxi; Maul 2013; Rutz 2014). 2 For a discussion of the role of the animal’s body in extispicy, see Glassner 2011. 3 KAR 151 (= KAL 5: 70) rev. 49–51 (Koch 2005: 295; Heeßel 2012a: 232); parallel passages are found elsewhere in Assyrian compendia (e.g., CT 20: 44 obv. i 59–61; Koch 2005: 114) and rituals (e.g., BBR 79–82: 18–24; Zimmern 1901: 196; Heeßel 2012a: 241).

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Still other topics ranged from predicting lunar and solar eclipses to agricultural concerns and family matters.4 A divinatory method like extispicy provides the means to elicit a divine answer to virtually any question and thus substantially multiplies the possible contexts of divinatory practice. Bearing in mind the usual empirical biases and limits of the textual evidence as a whole, it is thus worth investigating the specific contexts of extispicy as they are actually represented in the historical record. The purpose of this contribution is to examine the contexts of the Babylonian extispicy reports that date to the latter half of the second millennium BCE, a corpus that is particularly well suited to shedding light on aspects of the circulation of cuneiform divinatory texts as well as the social dynamics behind their production. The core genres that show evidence of the theoretical basis and practical application of extispicy consist of rituals that are preparatory or apotropaic in nature,5 collections of omens, commonly referred to as compendia, two- and three-dimensional models of the animal’s organs rendered in various media (usually clay), as well as various letters, queries, and reports that describe and sometimes interpret the results of a particular act of extispicy. In addition idealized representations of extispicy occur in literary accounts (e.g., hymns, royal inscriptions, etiological myths),6 and administrative records occasionally make it possible to trace the economic dynamics of extispicy both in terms of animal husbandry and the socio-economic roles of the specialists who engaged in the practice of divination, the diviner, Akkadian bārû, “seer, one who observes.” The archaeological contexts in which these textual sources were found are very unevenly known, with information about each individual datum’s find-spot

4 For these and other examples of the range of questions posed in extispicy, see the firstmillennium tāmītu texts (Lambert 2007). 5 Examples of preparatory rituals and prayers are known from the OB period (Dossin 1935; Starr 1983; Horowitz and Wasserman 1996; Horowitz 2000; Wilcke 2007: 224–29) as well as from the first millennium (BBR 1–20 and 75–101; Lambert 2007). In some instances only prayers or verbal recitations associated with the ritual are preserved in the textual record. Apotropaic rituals (namburbû) for extispicy are attested in the first millennium (Maul 1994: 432–44, extispicy namburbis, and 494–97, a universal namburbi from Assur). 6 To give a few salient examples scattered across space and time: a famous passage from the Sumerian royal hymn edited as Šulgi B credits that Ur III king with knowledge of extispicy (ETCSL 2.4.2.02: 131–49); extispicy plays a vital role in the wider divinatory and prophetic rhetoric of Esarhaddon’s building project in Assur represented in the so-called Assur A inscription (RINAP 4: 57); and a first-millennium etiological myth explains how the divinatory techniques of extispicy and lecanomancy were gifts bestowed by the gods Šamaš and Adad on Enmeduranki, the antediluvian king of Sippar who is referred to as En-me-en-dúr-an-na in SKL (BBR 24+ and dupls., see Lambert 1998).

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falling somewhere on a broad spectrum: at one extreme, there are significant groups of unprovenienced sources that give little indication of where, by whom, or even when they were copied;7 at the other end of the spectrum, there are a handful of instances in which sources related to extispicy were recovered in clearly defined and carefully excavated archaeological deposits.8 The scholarly collections or compendia of omens, the theoretical divinatory literature, compile observations of signs in the world and intentionally decontextualize them for interpretation, manipulation, and transmission. Omen compendia consist of lists of entries on the model “If P, Q,” where the protasis P describes a sign, i.e., some feature of the exta (presence/absence, color, marks, configuration, relationship with other features, etc.), and the apodosis Q contains some non-obvious correlation between that sign and the wider phenomenal world.9 Texts of this kind are first attested in the Old Babylonian period, and there is evidence already in the early second millennium for the creation of an extispicy series (e.g., Jeyes 1989; cf. Glassner 2009). Sources from the latter half of the second millennium are found scattered across the Near East, from Anatolia in the west to Elam in the east.10 The large-scale iškar bārûti, “series of the diviner’s craft,” in its various versions (frequently with extensive textual commentaries) is attested in the major repositories of scholarly tablets in first-millennium Assyria and Babylonia, including Assur, Ḫuzirina, and Nineveh as well as Sippar, Uruk, and elsewhere in Babylonia.11

7 Inferring an approximate date is typically less fraught and thus less controversial than attempting to recreate an unrecoverable provenience. 8 E.g., see the recent treatment by George (2013) of important unprovenienced reports, compendia, and models from various periods versus the meticulously excavated, but still largely unpublished, extispicy reports from the Old Babylonian household archive of Ur-Utu in SipparAmnānum (Tanret 2011). I discuss elsewhere the problems associated with locating diviners and divination in the archaeological record (Rutz 2013; Rutz 2014). 9 On the logical and linguistic characteristics of the omen compendia, see Rochberg 2010: 373–409; Cohen 2012: 153–70; cf. Winitzer 2011. 10 For the extensive literature, see Sassmannshausen 2008: 269–87; Rutz 2013: 221–26; Heeßel 2012a: 10–15, 316; George 2013: 229–47, No. 34. 11 E.g., see Koch-Westenholz 2000; Koch 2005; Heeßel 2011a, 2011b. Assur: KAL 5: passim (= Heeßel 2012a); Ḫuzirina: STT 308–320; Nineveh: the sources, many of which are published in the series CT, are too numerous to list here (see provisionally Maul 2003: 72–74; cf. Fincke 2003–2004: 145); interestingly, in Kalḫu excavators recovered an inscribed clay lung model (CTN 4: 60) as well as a few tāmītu prayers (CTN 4: 61+62; 63; CTN 2: 214) but, to my knowledge, no compendia related to extispicy. Sippar: Starr and Al-Rawi 1999; Uruk: SpTU 1: 80– 81; SpTU 2: 45–47 (SpTU 2: 46 bears a colophon from Assurbanipal’s library in Nineveh); SpTU 4: 156–158 (while not a compendium per se, SpTU 4: 159 lists associations between parts of the liver, gods, and months of the year); TCL 6: 1–8; BRM 4: 12–13; BagM Beih. 2: 63, 65–68.

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Models and drawings of the exta are preserved from the early second millennium on, with examples stretching from the Anatolia, Cyprus, and the Levant in the west to Assyria and Babylonia in the east.12 These objects, examples of which are both inscribed and uninscribed, are usually readily identifiable because of their careful if sometimes schematic representation of the animal’s organs. Indeed, the likeness of these models is clear enough that they have played an important role in the project of making connections between the technical lexicon of Mesopotamian extispicy and the modern vocabulary of scientific anatomy.13 However, the Mesopotamian terminology should not be construed as anatomical in the strictest sense because its interest was in macroscopic morphology alone, not physiology, and certain physiologically insignificant features of the liver and lungs were assigned technical names for the purpose of divination. A more productive analytical approach is to view this specialized lexicon as the conventional means of describing the semiotic topography of the organs, which have favorable and unfavorable zones and features on which favorable, unfavorable, or indeterminate signs can appear, often in highly complex combinations. In any case, the models used visual and, in some instances, textual means to convey either a specific instance or, as with the compendia, a group of possible cases with broader application beyond the slaughter of a specific sheep in a specific moment in response to a specific question. In contrast, specificity is a hallmark feature of the extispicy reports. In these documents, some of which are dated, the practitioner(s) attempted to record the state of the animal’s organs in light of the client’s particular question. It should come as no surprise that the order and formal characteristics of the extispicy reports changed over time, but the core elements of the procedure behind their production consisted of the following: the formulation of the question(s), the ritualized slaughter of the animal, an inspection of the internal organs with a tally of positive/negative/indeterminate signs, an interpretation of the results and their significance for the client, as well as a check of the results by performing another round of extispicy.14 All of these elements of the procedure have some textual correlate in the reports taken together, though 12 Meyer 1987, 1993, 1994, 2003; Salvini 2004; Heeßel 2012a: 84–85, 250–54 (KAL 5: 9; KAR 444 = KAL 5: 78; KAL 5: 79); Rutz 2013: 227–29; George 2013: nos. 32, 37, 38, 42; De Vos 2013. I argue elsewhere that the models present the most promising data set for contextualizing extispicy archaeologically, at least for the Old Babylonian period (Rutz 2014). 13 Although there are still points of contention, major advancements have been made in recent years, see, e.g., Meyer 1987; Jeyes 1989: 51–96; Leiderer 1990; Starr 1990; xxxvi–lv; KochWestenholz 2000: 38–70; Koch 2005: 73–83. 14 This check was termed piqittu(m) in OB and NA reports, which may correspond to the expression ša târi in the MB corpus (see below).

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there are significant diachronic differences in what was deemed important to commit to writing, so gaps remain in our knowledge of the practice specific to each major period. In all periods a more-or-less conventional order was followed when presenting the state of the exta in textual format (Nougayrol 1967: 232–33), and it has long been appreciated that this order was subtly different from the order of the topics treated in the first-millennium omen series devoted to extispicy (bārûtu), though individual compendia sometimes followed a structure similar to what is found in the reports (e.g., George 2013: 231–32). In the sources from the second millennium there is no clear reference in the texts themselves to what they were called, but têrtum is used to denote “extispicy,” and lipit qāti(m), “ritual act (for extispicy)” (lit. “touch of the hand, handiwork”) occurs as a heading of a number of reports (CAD L 202b). The term ṭēmu, “report,” is used explicitly in reference to the documents themselves in the Neo-Assyrian period (e.g., SAA 4: 289 rev. 6). While the Neo-Assyrian practitioners’ names were frequently recorded with their report (e.g., the diviner, bārû, and reporter, bēl ṭēmi), the authors of the second-millennium texts are largely hidden from view, though there are exceptions.15 If the reports embedded in letters to the king of Mari are included in the total, then about 77 Old Babylonian extispicy reports are presently known.16 The letters from the royal palace in Mari are 18 in number, whereas reports found during the excavation of private houses in Babylon (7) and Sippar-Amnānum (11) are largely unpublished.17 An additional 40 unprovenienced reports are scattered in various modern collections, and a plausible guess is that at least some of those reports were found in Sippar.18 Finally, an unprovenienced extispicy report for the king Tunip-Teššub comes from the so-called archive of Tigunānum that dates to the Late Old Babylonian period.19 Some 26 extispicy reports are known from the later second millennium, with 24 reports from Nippur, 1 possible report from Babylon, and 1 report that lacks provenience.20 These sources are the primary topic of my discussion, and I will re15 In addition to the Mari letters that routinely give the sender’s name following formal epistolary conventions, note the unusual case of the phrase qāt(šu) ib-ni-marduk(damar.utu), “Hand of Ibni-Marduk,” which occurs in one unprovenienced OB extispicy report near the very end of the tablet just before the date (George 2013: 17, No. 4 rev. 38′). 16 Provisionally included in this total are unprovenienced extispicy reports that may well be school exercises, i.e., academic models for how such texts should be properly structured (CT 4: 3b; George 2013: 20–25, Nos. 5–6). 17 Nougayrol 1967; Koch-Westenholz 2002: 131–33; Pedersén 2005: A1:386, A2:7, 8, 24, 25, 55, 194; Tanret 2011: 283. 18 Koch-Westenholz 2002; Richardson 2002, 2007; George 2013: 13–19, No. 4. 19 George 2013: 287, No. 1, Lambert Folio 7677. 20 Extispicy reports are also known from the Hittite sphere in the Late Bronze Age, but unlike the omen compendia from Syria and Anatolia these texts bear only a passing formal resem-

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turn to them below. From Neo-Assyrian Nineveh some 350 extispicy queries and reports are known, and a handful of letters make reference an animal’s internal organs, such as the kidneys of sacrificial sheep (SAA 13: 131; 133).21 As far as can be ascertained, all Assyrian sources date to the reigns of the last enduring Sargonid kings: Esarhaddon (680–669 BCE) and his son Assurbanipal (ca. 669–630 BCE). Unlike the vast majority of second-millennium sources, the Sargonid texts are known to quote from the omen series bārûtu. The compendia, models, rituals, reports, letters, and assorted miscellanea each provide a distinct, if generically and contextually circumscribed, view on the mental and social practice of extispicy, but the extent of overlap among these varied sources of evidence is often unclear. In addition the art of observing and interpreting signs in general requires neither writing nor text, so it is worth considering the roles writing and textuality played in the contexts of Mesopotamian extispicy (e.g., Winitzer 2011). Why commit each of these text types to writing at all? And what were the contexts in which each text was produced, used, circulated, and deposited or disposed of? Limiting the focus to a more manageable sub-corpus, the extispicy reports, did these tablets function like letters, receipts, or memory aids? Who was meant to read them and on what time scale? Why do some tablets lack identifying features like the names of the practitioner and the client or when and where the extispicy was performed? Political and economic decision-making is a clear concern of a large number of the extispicy reports, but what is the best approach for interpreting examples that fall outside of that specific sphere of experience? Finally, in the earlier periods what was the relationship between the theoretical literature (i.e., the omen compendia) and the production of practical documents (i.e., the extispicy reports), and what constitute sound methodological principles for drawing connections between these starkly different but intimately interrelated genres? In what follows I will confront these questions and problems by focusing on the Kassite extispicy reports found mainly in Nippur.

2 Kassite Extispicy Reports in Context The study of the Middle Babylonian extispicy reports began with the selective publication of individual tablets as early as 1906 (Table 1), but research on this

blance to the contemporary extispicy reports found in Babylonia (Beal 2002; van den Hout 2003b; Rutz 2013: 260–62). 21 SAA 4 = Starr 1990; SAA 10: 184; Fincke 2003–2004: 146; Robson 2011; Heeßel 2012b.

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Tab. 1: Reports on Acts of Divination by Extispicy from the Kassite Period. No.

Museum/Excavation Numbers

Publication History

 1.  2.  3.

Ni. 105 Ni. 1156 + Ni. 13056 Ni. 2389

 4.  5.  6.  7.  8.  9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Ni. Ni. Ni. Ni. Ni. Ni. Ni. Ni. Ni. Ni. Ni.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

CBS 10493 CBS 10495 CBS 12696 CBS 13517 CBS 10176 + CBS 10808 CBS 10906 YBC 4363

22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

CBS 14003 N 3188 N 4017 Ni. 2854 Bab 37264, B?, PhBab 1767(11), 1768(11)

Scheil 1917: 145–48; Kraus 1985: 130–31, 204 Kraus 1985: 131–32, 205 Scheil 1917: 146, 149–50; Kraus 1985: 132–34, 206–207 Kraus 1985: 134–37, 208–10 Kraus 1985: 137–38, 211–12 Kraus 1985: 138–39, 213 Kraus 1985: 139–40, 213 Kraus 1985: 140, 214 Kraus 1985: 140–1, 214 Kraus 1985: 141, 214 Kraus 1985: 142, 214 Kraus 1985: 142–43, 215 Kraus 1985: 143–44, 216 Kraus 1985: 144, 216 (Ni. 13061); unpub. (CBS 10847) Goetze 1957: 92, 104; Kraus 1985: 145 Clay 1906: Pl. 3, no. 4; Kraus 1985: 145–46 Goetze 1957: 90, 102–103; Kraus 1985: 146–47 Lutz 1918; Kraus 1985: 147–50 Kraus 1985: 151–52, 217 Kraus 1985: 152–53, 218 Goetze 1947: no. 2; Goetze 1957: 103; Kraus 1985: 153–54 unpub. unpub. unpub. unpub., see Brinkman 1976: 115, E.2.28 unpub., see Pedersén 2005: 103–104, M10:53

2575 + Ni. 13054 + Ni. 13062 2894 13051 13052 13053 13055 13057 13058 13059 13060 13061 +? CBS 10847

material as a proper corpus was first put on firm footing by the then-comprehensive treatment by F. R. Kraus (1985). However, this group of texts has garnered relatively little attention since then, perhaps in part because Kraus provided rather unconventional text editions that are not particularly easy to use.22 Despite any infelicities in presentation found in this pioneering work, in

22 Transliterations of the texts are found in one section (Kraus 1985: 130–54), certain copies in another (Kraus 1985: 204–18), selective translations of elements that are not part of the technical vocabulary of extispicy appear in another (Kraus 1985: 157–62), and a list of the diviner’s technical vocabulary is found in yet another section (Kraus 1985: 168–99). To make

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what follows I will retain the convention of differentiating distinct queries on a single tablet with Arabic numerals in parentheses.23 In any case, most studies of Mesopotamian extispicy in general or the reports in particular have noted the conservatism of the genre, and indeed the formal continuities between the OB and MB traditions for writing extispicy reports are well known (e.g., Starr 1983: 108). Remarks on any distinctive or innovative elements of the Kassite period are typically limited to noting the use of the precative (sometimes referred to as the optative) in formulating some of the questions.24 One exception is the discussion by U. Koch in which she suggests that the MB reports may have been prompted by unusual or anomalous features not found in the compendia and attempts to show points of correspondence between the elements of the Kassite extispicy reports and the first-millennium omen series bārûtu (Koch-Westenholz 2000). Of the twenty-six extispicy reports included in the corpus under discussion, twenty are published, one is partially published (No. 14), and two have been catalogued by others (Nos. 25–26). I have identified three fragments that belong in the corpus (Nos. 22–24) as well as a fragment that I suspect joins No. 14.25 Twenty-four of the reports were found during the University of Pennsylvania’s expedition to Nippur (1888–1900). A general provenience for these tablets is reasonably certain, i.e., Nippur, but nothing will ever be known about their original find-spots. There are two exceptions to the Nippur focus in the corpus. No. 21 clearly belongs to the genre, but it has neither a provenience nor a date, so it can only be included or excluded using typological criteria such as format, paleography, orthography, grammar, and lexicon. In contrast, No. 26 is the only report for which there is anything approximating an the archaeological find-spot. This tablet was found in the so-called Merkes district during the early twentieth-century German excavations in Babylon, specifically in the excavation unit designated Merkes 26l2, but it lacks any clear architectural or archival associations (Reuther 1926: Pls. 3, 15; cf. Pedersén 2005: 70–

matters worse, alphanumeric designations are used both to differentiate elements in an individual report and to isolate the different technical terms being used. For example, the feature of the exta known as ubān(šu.si) ḫašî(mur) qablītu(murub4), “the middle Finger of the lungs” (identified as the intermediate lobe, see Koch 2005: 80), occurs as the thirteenth observation, hence m, in the second report, hence (2), from tablet No. 1, thus referred to as No. 1 (2) m (Kraus 1985: 130), while this same feature is listed in the catalogue of technical terms under the siglum AA c 2 (Kraus 1985: 188). 23 E.g., the second report on the tablet published as No. 3 (Ni. 2389) will be designated No. 3 (2). 24 Reiner 1965: 248; cf. GAG § 153g. 25 I will give proper editions of these new fragments elsewhere.

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Tab. 2: Kassite Extispicy Reports: Dates, Toponyms, Number of Reports and Summary Statements. No.

Date (M/D/Y)

Toponyms

Number of Reports

Summaries

 1.  2.  3.  4.  5.  6.  7.  8.  9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

V/2/27 (no RN) [–] III/1/- (no year, no RN) X/13/21 (no RN) [– (no date?)] [–] [–] [–] [-]/16(?)/[- Burn]a-Bur[iaš II] [–] [-]/[-]/[- Burn]a-Bur[iaš II] [–] [–] IV/[-]/21 [(no RN?)] – (no date) II/1/11(or 21?) Burra-Buriaš II XI!/28/24 (no RN) IV/22/21 Burna-Buriaš II IV/5/26 (no RN) [–] – (no date) [–] [–] [–] V/[-]/21 Burna-Bur[iaš II] II/3/[-] Meli-Šipak(?)

Dūr-Kurigalzu [–] Nippur Nippur [(–)] [(–)] [–] [–] [N]i[ppur(?)] [–] [Ni]ppu[r] [–] [–] Nippur – (Dūr-Kurigalzu,) Nippur Ur Nippur Babylon(?) [–] – [–] [–] [–] Nippur ?

2 at least 4 4 10 1 at least 2 at least 5 at least 2 at least 1 at least 3 at least 2 at least 5 at least 2 at least 4 2 at least 2 2 9 at least 5 at least 4 2 at least 2 at least 3 at least 2 2 ?

at least 1 – 4 – [–?] [–?] [–?] [–?] [–?] [–?] [–?] – [–?] [–?] [–?], – –, [–?] at least 1 – [–?] at least 1 – at least 1 at least 2 [–?] [–?] ?

106). An evaluation of its contents will only be possible after the tablets from Babylon are properly published. A reckoning of the dated tablets in the corpus helps to anchor the corpus securely in the period in question and may shed some light on moments in the tablets’ object histories, from production, to use, to deposition (Table 2). While two sources intentionally lack a date and twelve tablets are too broken to determine whether or not they ever bore a date, a total of eleven tablets from Nippur are dated. Of these eleven, five sources are dated to a specific year (i.e. mu.n.kam), but no king is specified (Nos. 1, 4, 14, 17, 19), and one tablet has simply the day of the month but no year (No. 3). The five remaining tablets (Nos. 9, 11, 16, 18, 25) are all dated to the reign of Burna-Buriaš II (1359–

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1333 BCE), the Kassite king perhaps most famous for his diplomatic correspondence with his counterparts in New Kingdom Egypt.26 So far the oldest dated Kassite tablet of any genre from Nippur is from the time of Kadašman-Ḫarbe I (ca. 1400 BCE), while the latest dated tablet stems from the accession year of Kadašman-Ḫarbe II (ca. 1224), leaving the remainder of the dated archival documents to the period between Burna-Buriaš II and Kaštiliašu IV (ca. 1359– 1225).27 The date of the unpublished tablet from Babylon (No. 26) is evidently uncertain, but it appears to come from much later: the preliminary catalogue tentatively attributes it to the reign of Meli-Šipak (1186–1172 BCE). Before examining the various types of evidence that shed light on the contexts in which the Kassite extispicy reports were produced and used, it will prove useful to look at a specific example from the corpus under discussion. The following is an excerpt and overview of one of the more well-known examples from the period in question: No. 18 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2

(1) obv. 1–12 [ki(-i)] ˹i˺-na šutti(máš.gi6)-šu gizillû(gi.izi.lá) i-na qá-ti-šu na-šu-ma ù a-na ḫu-ub-bi gizillû(gi.izi.lá) ia-nu ù ištar(U.DAR) ˹i?(erasure)˺-mu-ru ù iš-te-en gizillâ(gi.izi.lá) a-na qá-ti-šu iš-ša-am-ma iš-ku-nu ù šu-ú a-ka-an-na iq-bu-ú um-ma-a ištar(U.DAR) i-na qá-ab-la-at a-li-i ú-ḫáb-bu ištar(U.DAR) i-na e-re-bi-ša lu-ḫi-ib it-ti Ilàl-é-kur ša da-ba-bi id-bu-bu ša-nu-ti-šu it-ti-lu-ma ti-ra-nu 20 i-mu-ru 2 bābī(ká) ekalli(é.gal) ù ti-bi i-mu-ru a-na lemutti(Ḫul-tì) la šak-na-taaš-šu [When(?),]28 in his dream, a torch was raised in his hand and there was no torch for the consecration,29 and he saw(?) Ištar,

26 In keeping with common practice, I will refer to the Amarna-period king as Burna-Buriaš II, though there is some uncertainty as to whether one or two kings with the same name preceded him (Brinkman 1976: 100–121). The Amarna dossier consists of EA 6–14 (Moran 1992: 12–37), which includes letters from Burna-Buriaš II (EA 6–11), a letter from an unnamed Babylonian princess (EA 12), and two inventories, one from Babylonia (EA 13), the other from Egypt (EA 14). 27 See Brinkman 1975; Brinkman 2003–2004: 398; Paulus 2013. 28 A plausible restoration of first signs in the upper left-hand corner is kî, ‘when’ (so CAD Š/1 410b). 29 There are a number of examples in first-millennium ritual texts of using a torch (gizillû) for consecration (ḫâbu) (CAD Ḫ 20–21).

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he then lifted a torch in his hand and positioned (it). Then he said: “Are they to consecrate Ištar in the middle of the city? 30 Let me consecrate Ištar when she enters!”31 He conversed with Lal-Ekur 32 (and) he lay down to sleep a second time:33 (in his dream) he saw twenty coils of the colon;34 he saw two Palace Gates and Rises(?).35 Is it (= the dream, šuttu) not an evil portent for him? 36

After a single ruling the descriptive report proper follows: 9

manzāza(ki.gub) išu(tuku) padānu(gír) šakin(gar) šubat(ki.tuš) šumēl(gùb) padāni(gír) šaknat(gar-at) pû(ka) ṭābu(dùg) šakin(gar)

30 The line is difficult, but I interpret it as asking whether consecration would be possible without a torch. I take a-li-i as ālu, “city” (as opposed to “alû-demon,” “[mythological] bull,” or “alû-drum,” CAD A/1 375–78), in the genitive (nomen rectum) with word-final stress marked in the writing to indicate an interrogative, as in the query No. 4 (3) obv. 16 a-na damiqtî (sig5ti-i), “into good?” (= into a good dream). Because qablat/qabalti āli is an established expression (CAD Q 1b), Kraus (1985: 161) rightly found the following interpretation suspect: “I shall consecrate Ishtar in the battle with the (heavenly) bull” (CAD Ḫ 21a). 31 Or “Shall I consecrate ... ?” I have interpreted the previous statement as a question, so perhaps a normal precative is meant here as contrast. 32 This line seems to indicate the previous line was the end of the description of the dream. There are several attestations of this PN in the text corpus from Kassite Nippur (Hölscher 1996: 130; Sassmannshausen 2001: 352 No. 269 obv. 9, cf. patronymic 244 No. 50 obv. 10). 33 This language also suggests that the first dream ends with line 5. Note that Kraus (1985: 160) omitted the beginning on this line from his translation, with which I am otherwise largely in agreement. 34 An alternative translation that is grammatically defensible is: “as he lay down for the second time beside Lal-Ekur who had made the (first dream) report” (CAD D 2b, CAD Š/1 410b); but cf. “(the fact that) he fell asleep a second time and saw twenty intestinal loops” (CAD T 424a; CAD U/W 345b). Or could this construction mean “with (respect to) Lal-Ekur, who spoke, … lay, … saw,” which would make him the client? Regardless, in the extispicy reports the observed number of coils is typically 10, 12, or 14 (e.g., Kraus 1985: 192, GG). In contrast, in the section of the series bārûtu that deals with the tīrānū all even numbers from 10 to 20 are included (see CAD T 423–24); however, that chapter, called šumma tīrānū (the second major division, consisting of Tablets 5–12 of the series as a whole), has not been properly studied or published (see KAL 5: 8–12; Heeßel 2012a: 81–89). 35 2 Palace Gates are not attested as such in the preserved section of bārûtu as it is currently known (cf. Koch-Westenholz 2000: 328–29, No. 62). 36 Lit. “is it not present for him for evil?” Based on collation, the first sign in the verb is SAG, thus šak- not ša-ak- (so Kraus 1985: 148).

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10 11 12

9

10

11 12

ME SU šakin(gar) danānu(kalag) šakin(gar) šulum(silim) taš-me-e šakin(gar) martu(zé) nanmurat(igi.igi) i-na šumēl(gùb) marti(zé) 2 ti-bu šaknū(gar-nu) i-na šumēl(gùb) marti(zé) šēpu(gìr) suḫ4-ḫu-rat i-na muḫḫi(ugu) ṣibti(máš) uṣurtu(giš.Ḫur) ra-aḫ-ṣa-at e-li-tu4 il-lik niiš re-ši ul-lu-uṣ rēssa(sag-sà) e-ed ubān(šu.si) ḫašî(mur) qablītu(murub4) išissa(suḪuš-sà) ra-ki-is ku-nu-uk-ku na-aḫ-su 12 ti-ra-nu It has a Presence/Station. The Path is present. The Seat to the left of the Path is present. The Pleasing Word/Mouth is present. The ... (?) is present. The Strength is present. The Well-being-of-being-heard 37 is present. The gallbladder is visible. To the left of the gallbladder two Rises are present. To the left of the gallbladder a Foot (mark) is turned around(?).38 Atop the Increase/Increment a design is squashed(?).39 The Top Part went(?). The Honor 40 is swollen. (With respect to) the middle Finger of the lung:41 its top part is pointed, its base is attached. The Seal(ing)s are shrunken(?).42 The coils (of the colon) are twelve (in number).

After another single ruling there is a second report, this time with the query not visually differentiated from the report (not reproduced here) by space or rulings:

37 Or perhaps “Well-being of acceptance” (cf. CAD Š/3 256a). Jeyes (1978: 221 n. 83) views šulmum and šulum tešmîm as different terms for the same feature of the liver; Kraus (1985: 173–74, I) translates the expression silim (taš-me-e) as “die Blase(?) (der Erhörung).” 38 Stative forms of the verb saḫāru occur often in texts related to extispicy, but the D stem is rare (CAD S 45b, cf. 47–51). 39 The sense of raḫāṣu here is not entirely clear, but it occurs with some frequency in texts related to extispicy (CAD R 72). 40 The expression nīš rēši, “promotion, honor” (lit. “raising of the head”), is deployed as a technical term in extispicy (Jeyes 1989: 136; CAD N/2 297a). 41 Depicted on the models YOS 10: 4–5, Pl. 134; see also n. 22 above. 42 The kunukkū, “Seal(ing)s,” are probably the vertebrae and the musculature around them (Heeßel 2012a: 76), but the interpretation of the verb is unclear (CAD N/2 131a “to be turned backward(?), held down(?)”). In any case, the Seal(ing)s being sunken/atrophied(?) (naḫsū) is a bad sign, e.g., šumma(be) kunukkū(kišib.meš) naḫsū(lal.meš) ummān(érin)-ka rēš(sag) eqli(a.šà)-šá ul(nu) ikaššad(kur-ád), “If the Seal(ing)s are shrunken(?), your army will not reach its destination” (KAR 423 = KAL 5: 1 rev. ii 51).

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No. 18 (2) obv. 13 13 ša târi(gur) Pertaining to the repetition (of the extispicy?).43 Directly after that second query are seven more queries, each embedded with its unique report (not given here) but separated from the queries/reports before and after it with a single ruling: No. 18 (3) obv. 18 18 ˹ša˺ šutti(máš.gi6) ša-a-ši i-na pî(ka) šarri(lugal) i-šal-lim Will the one who had (lit. ‘of’) this dream be well at the command of the king? No. 18 (4) obv. 25 25 ki.min ša târi(gur) Ditto. Pertaining to the repetition (of the extispicy?). No. 18 (5) obv. 32 32 šuttu(máš.gi6) ši-i-ma qāt(šu) ili(dingir) ù iš-ta-ri Is this dream (a portent of) the hand of god or goddess (= illness)? No. 18 (6) rev. 4 rev. 4 liš-pur-ma d˹nin˺-líl li-se-ep-pu-ú Shall he send word for them to pray to Ninlil? No. 18 (7) rev. 12 rev. 12 liš-pur-ma dnuska ˹ki.min˺ Shall he send word ditto (= for them to pray to) Nuska? No. 18 (8) rev. 18 rev. 18 liš-pur-ma šukūda(mulgag.si.sá) ki.min Shall he send word ditto (= for them to pray to) Sirius? 44 No. 18 (9) rev. 23 rev. 23 a-na kaskal li-il-lik Shall he go on a trip?

43 CAD T 256a; perhaps the equivalent of the OB/NA practice of doing a piqittu(m), a second round of extispicy to check the results of the first. 44 The star Sirius, Akk. šukūdu, is sometimes associated with Ninurta in prayers and oaths (CAD Š/3 229–30).

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Following this last query/report is a double ruling and the date, which fills the remaining space on the tablet and wraps around onto the upper edge: duʾūzu(itišu.numun.a) ud.22.kam mu.21.kam bur-na-bu-ri-ia-aš šarru(lugal.e) nippuru(nibruki) Duʾūzu (4 th month = June-July), 22 nd day, 21 st year, Burna-Buriaš (II), the king. Nippur This collection from already late in the reign of Burna-Buriaš II illustrates many of the salient features common to the corpus of Kassite extispicy reports. For whom were these reports produced? The identity of the client is unclear, which is curious given that one Lal-Ekur is mentioned in the first query. Was there just one client for all nine reports? No. 18 (3), its check No. 18 (4), and No. 18 (5) all seem to be queries related to different possible aspects of the particular dream recorded in No. 18 (1). The queries that follow, No. 18 (6), (7), and (8), are all cultic in focus: do these queries about making supplication to specific gods relate to the well-being or health of the client, i.e., are the queries on this tablet a collection that coheres around a specific individual and his dreams? If so, then what is the significance of the laconic final query having to do with travel, No. 18 (9)? Also remarkable is the fact that the lengthy first query includes in the second dream report a description of ominous configurations of the exta, with the technical jargon of extispicy embedded in the dream itself, the significance of which was then checked via extispicy. What was the relationship between the query, the report, and the technical literature of divination, especially the omen compendia? All of the extispicy reports collected on this tablet are purely descriptive and provide no interpretive guidance, so anyone consulting this tablet would have needed to be able to make informed judgments about the signification of each observed element and then synthesize the results. Given that the results of performing extispicy are generally thought to have been valid for only a period of no more than one year, the socalled stipulated term (adannu),45 in what type of archival context would this tablet have been stored and used? In light of that question, what is the significance of indicating the toponym Nippur at the end of the text? Why indicate a specific place, when the Kassite archives of Nippur are populated with many

45 See Koch 2005: 56–66, 447–79; Heeßel 2010.

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tablets that bear no such designation? These topics and questions recur throughout the corpus in various guises, but before looking more closely at the corpus as a whole it is necessary to survey the other evidence for the contexts in which the extispicy reports may have been produced. The contexts in which extispicy was practiced are scarcely visible outside of the evidence of the reports themselves, but there are a few other hints of Babylonian diviners in practice during the Kassite period. A handful of administrative records from Kassite Nippur list animals for bārûtu, “divination,” and lipit qāti, “(extispicy) ritual,” sometimes with personal names of the transacting parties (Sassmannshausen 2001: 168–69).46 There are instances where the line between bārûtu and lipit qāti is blurry, though it is clear that the former included both extispicy and lecanomancy.47 A number of diviners (bārû, typically written máš.šu.gíd.gíd or lúḪal) appear in a variety of documents from Nippur, Tell Zubeidi, and Ur (Sassmannshausen 2001: 68–69) 48 as well as in kudurrus.49 Unfortunately, very few diviners are known by name as scribes in the corpus of MB omen compendia from Babylonia.50 In addition, some person-

46 E.g., small tablets such as the following: 3 puḫādū(sila4) ba-ru-tu4 “Three lambs (for?) divination” of Enlil-nīšu; “hand of” Šamaš-aḫa-iddina, son of Napširī-bēltu; kunuk(˹na4˺kišib) “[s]eal of” Enlil-nīšu (BE 14: 53, date: VIII/2/11 Nazi-Maruttaš; geometric sealings [hem/imitating hem?] on upper, lower, and left edges); 1 gu4.nínda, 1 puḫādu(sila4) li-pí-it qāti(šu), “one lamb for the (extispicy) ritual,” and one lamb for the naptanu-meal(?) (BE 15: 145, date: XII/ 10/24 [no RN]). 47 E.g., in a tabular record with a column that designates each item’s purpose (with the heading mu.bi.im, lit. “its name being”) the following entries occur: ˹20˺ puḫādū (sila4), “lambs,” and four vessels of oil are listed as being for ba-ru-˹tu4˺, “divination,” while 14 lambs are designated for li-pi-it qāti(šu), “(extispicy) ritual” (PBS 2/2: 83 obv., date: VII/[-]/25 [no RN]). 48 E.g., a diviner (máš.šu.gíd.gíd) Uṣânnû’a is reported to have been in Taḫlaš (BE 14: 114, Kadašman-Turgu 15); a diviner (lúḪal) named Bunna-Gula, son of Izkur-Adad, is known to have purchased a large amount of grain from one Amurru-ēriš (UDBD 117, VII/2/11 ŠagaraktiŠuriaš; with Bunna-Gula’s seal); Ibni-Marduk (lúḪal), son of Arad-Nabû, is reported to have been in Karê-Aštaba-ḫetuk (BE 15: 39, II/17/15 [no RN]); Ninurta-kabit-aḫḫēšu (lúḪal) was in receipt of a quantity of oil (Sassmannshausen 2001: 362, MUN 285, VII/24/accession year Kaštiliašu IV); Ninurta-andul (lúḪal) appeared as a witness in a document resolving a legal dispute (MBTU 8, IV/22/12 Adad-šuma-uṣur); a fragmentary ration list contains the name of Bābilāyu the diviner (lúḪal) (UDBD 97 obv. 9′, no date preserved). 49 A kudurru from the time of Meli-Šipak (BBSt. 3) is concerned with the property of two brothers, diviners both (lúḪal), Takil-ana-ilīšu and Ur-Nintinugga, who were active during the reigns of Adad-šuma-iddina (1222–1217) and Adad-šuma-uṣur (1216–1187); the property is to be transferred to Marduk-kudurrī-uṣur, son of Ur-Nintinugga, son of Sāmu, the diviner (lúḪal). On the kudurrus in general, see Brinkman 2006a. 50 The copyists of BRM 4: 15 and BRM 4: 16 from Babylon were the diviners (lúḪal) Ilīmaaḫu and Ṭāb-ṣilli-[Marduk], the latter of whom is apparently attested elsewhere in the largely unpublished text corpus from Babylon (Heeßel 2011b: 176–92; Pedersén 2011: 56–59).

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al names in Kassite-period administrative tablets from Nippur, Dūr-Kurigalzu, Baradān, and Zubeidi may document the use of mār bārî as a patryonym, not a professional title, i.e., so-and-so, “son of Bārû/Diviner,” not so-and-so, “son of the diviner” meaning “diviner” (Brinkman 2006b: 27). Unlike the rich archives of Mari and Nineveh, the Middle Babylonian period offers little epistolary evidence for the socio-political contexts in which extispicy functioned. A copy of a diplomatic letter (found in Hattusa) from the Hittite king Hattusili III to his Babylonian counterpart Kadašman-Enlil II mentions, among many other things, repeated acts of divination51 performed for a sickly and ultimately moribund Babylonian healer (asû), who had been sent to Hatti as part of the elaborate exchanges that took place among the brotherhood of great kings in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean (Bryce 2003: 126– 28; Heeßel 2009). However, no means of divination is indicated. A clearer example comes from a letter found in Nippur in which a certain Erība-Marduk writes to someone called simply “my lord” and indicates that he performed extispicy on account of his superior’s express desire to travel to Nippur (PBS 1/2: 58 obv. 5-rev. 3; cf. Oppenheim 1967: 117–18, no. 61): As to my lord sending word of coming to Nippur: when I performed the (extispicy) ritual (li-pi-it ˹qa-ti ki˺-i aš-šu-ú),52 the extispicy (te-e-er-tu) indicated that he may go [elsewhere(?), but] it is not good to g[o] to Nippur. [(Some features of the exta?)] were interconnected(?) (iṣ-ṣa-na-ba-ta AN [...]). [I say] to my lord: [it means(?)] the king [will have(?)] bad health (lugal la ˹ṭú-ub ši-ri˺ [...]). But if the k[in]g(?) [still wishes to go to Nippur(?),] let him say this: “I shall not leave Kar-En[lil] because of ill health (ki-i la ṭú-ub ši-ri).”

It is unclear whether this Erība-Marduk was himself a diviner or trained in extispicy, but no one by that name is given the title diviner in the Kassite archives of Nippur, at least as they are presently known (Hölscher 1996: 71–72).53

51 The text reads bi-ra-šú ab-te-te-er-ri, “I repeatedly performed divination for him” (KBo. 1: 10 rev. 35, see Beckman 1999: 142). 52 Unfortunately the idiom lipit qāti našû, lit. “to raise the touch of the hand (i.e., ritual),” is evidently known only from this letter (CAD N/2 105b). 53 An additional unpublished letter fragment found in Nippur refers to [...]˹x˺ ba-ru-tu4, “[...] ... (the) divination,” but the context is too broken to be of any use (CBS 4772 rev. 1). It is worth noting that bārûtu frequently refers to lecanomancy in the administrative records from Nippur.

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3 Around the Sacrifice, before the Text: The Mechanics of Text Production and the Kassite Reports Although administrative records, monuments, and letters provide incidental glimpses of diviners and extispicy in specific social contexts, most of the people named in the documents make only a fleeting appearance in the source material. Thus, internal evidence from the extispicy reports themselves provides the only recourse to reconstructing the tablets’ contexts of circulation and use as well as the social mechanics behind their production. In what follows I suggest that a consideration of textual rubrics, physical features, textual labels, the contents of the queries, and the presence or absence of a summary interpretation in the Kassite reports provides a sound basis for ascribing possible contexts of use to these texts. Furthermore, comparisons between the contents of the reports and the evidence from MB omen compendia confirm a continuation of the generic disjunction, or at least mutual disinterest, observed already in the OB period (Veldhuis 2006), which stands in contrast to the liberal use of quotations found in NA reports from the contemporary omen compendia recovered from Assurbanipal’s library and elsewhere. Only three tablets bear an identifying textual rubric, though it is possible that the phrase lipit qāti was generally applicable to the genre in this period: ˹li˺-pi-it [q]á-tì (No. 1 up. ed.) ˹li˺-pi-it qá-tì marduk(damar.utu) (No. 16 up. ed.) lipit qāti(níg.šu.tag.ga) (No. 17 up. ed.) 54 No. 16 notes further that the extispicy was “of (= for) Marduk.” In two of the three instances (No. 1, No. 17) the tablet in question also bears a geographic label, Dūr-Kurigalzu and Ur, respectively. I take up the problem of toponyms in the texts below, but if these two toponyms indicate a place of production, then the rubrics would make the tablets’ contents somewhat easier to identify. All of the Kassite extispicy reports are single-column tablets, and single as well as double rulings were used to visually differentiate and organize information on the writing space. For example, in instances where a tablet contained multiple queries, different reports were separated by a single ruling. However, it comes as no surprise that other practices were more heterogeneous and indi-

54 Neither Goetze 1957: 90 nor Kraus 1985: 146 noticed this notation on the tablet’s upper edge.

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cate that scribes took some latitude when organizing their texts. In some instances the first query was separated from the following report with a single ruling,55 while in other instances no distinction was made between the first query and its associated report.56 Many tablets have a ruling following the last report before the date, if the tablet is dated, and in several cases these are double rulings.57 While the norm seems to have been that non-first queries were not separated for their associated reports,58 there are a few instances in which non-first queries were kept distinct from their reports.59 In at least one case rulings were probably used only to structure lines of text and not to otherwise organize the textual information on the tablet.60 While the corpus is too small and varied to draw any definitive conclusions, it may be noted that this variety is itself significant. The conventions for presenting queries and their reports were above all practically oriented, especially in cases where it would have been necessary to differentiate discrete reports on the tablet. These structuring techniques may give some indication of how the tablets may have been used, since someone consulting a collection of reports from a given day may have needed to locate a particular record. All but one of the Kassite reports were found in Nippur, so the fact that eight tablets contain seemingly innocuous labels that read nibruki, Nippur, came as little surprise and has invited virtually no comment.61 In light of the well-known Hilprecht controversy involving the allegedly forgery of the Nippur tablets’ provenience, perhaps these laconic notices were simply taken as welcome confirmation that the tablets did indeed come from Nippur. However, the issue is complicated by a handful of examples in which toponyms other than Nippur are found appended to the texts: No. 1 dūr(bàd)-˹ku-ri-gal-zu˺ No. 17 uri(úriki) No. 19 pan-ba-liki

Dūr-Kurigalzu Ur Babylon(?)

55 No. 1; No. 2 (?); No. 3; No. 4; No. 6; No. 17; No. 18. 56 No 14; No. 15; No. 19; No. 21. 57 No. 1; No. 2 (double; also before last query); No. 3; No. 4; No. 5; No. 6; No. 8 (double); No. 9 (double); No. 12; No. 14; No. 15; No. 17; No. 18 (double); No. 21. One tablet does not: No. 19. 58 No. 1 (2); No. 2 (2′); No. 4; No. 5; No. 7; No. 8; No. 10; No. 11; No. 12; No. 13; No. 14; No. 15; No. 16; No. 17; No. 18; No. 19 obv.; No. 20; No. 21; No. 22; No. 23; No. 24. 59 No. 2; No. 3; No. 19. Despite the copy and edition indicating the contrary, No. 17 does not have a ruling separating a non-first query from its report. 60 No. 16. 61 No. 3, No. 4, No. 9 (only traces; not noted by Kraus 1985: 141), No. 11, No. 14, No. 16, No. 18, No. 25.

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The interpretation of the first two toponyms is clear, but the third requires some comment. Originally read BAN DIŠ AN li KI (Kraus 1985: 152), the signs are consistent with similar writings collected by Nashef (1982: 47): uru

pan-ba-li (PBS 1/2: 16 obv. 36–37) pa-an-ba-liki (BE 17: 23 rev. 10) pa-an-ba-lu4 (BM 17715 obv. 2) ip-pa-am-ba-li (RA 29: 96 obv. 4) uru

The conventional interpretation of this toponym is that it was a peculiar Kassite orthography for writing Babylon, which existed alongside more conventional spellings, in particular ká.dingir.raki or less commonly in this period tin.tirki (Nashef 1982: 47–49; cf. George 1992: 254). It should be noted that so far no MB omen compendia or extispicy reports are known among the tablets from Ur or Dūr-Kurigalzu, though a complete copy of the Babylonian almanac and a fragmentary bilingual hemerology for the seventh month were found at the latter.62 Although numerous the MB sources from Babylon remain largely unpublished. The report tablet from Dūr-Kurigalzu contains two queries, only the first of which is legible: No. 1 (1) obv. 1–2, 12 1 ˹šiprū?(kin?.meš) ma?-la? libba?(šà?)-šu?˺ ṣa-ab-˹tu4˺ 2 ˹bēl(en) mātāti(kur.kur) li˺-se-ep-pí … (report) 12 ul(nu) ˹šalmat˺ (˹silim-at˺) 1–2

12

Shall he pray to the Lord of the Lands63 (regarding) whatever deeds(?) are on his mind? … (report) It is not favorable.

The second query is unintelligible, and the summary statement is unusual and difficult to understand.64 Would this tablet have been sent from Dūr-Kurigalzu to Nippur as a request for the recipient to pray to the Lord of the Lands? Or

62 See Baqir 1946: 89; Labat 1952; cf. Gurney 1949: Livingstone 2013: 5–71, 193–94. 63 Anu, Aššur, Enlil, Marduk, Nabû, Sîn, and Šamaš are all given this epithet (Tallqvist 1938: 48); perhaps Enlil is meant here based on the provenience of the tablet. 64 No. 1 (2) rev. 12: na-di-a-at, “it is cast down(?),” from nadû.

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was it sent to prevent an ill-advised prayer to the deity? In any case, one of the reports that bears the label “Nippur” contains the following query: No. 16 (2) obv. 11–12 11 immerī(udu.níta.meš) li-mur-ma a-na dūr(bàd)-ku-ri-g[al-zu] 12 li-še-bi-˹il˺ Should he look for rams and have (them) sent to Dūr-Kurig[alzu]?65 Because the tablet is broken, it is unclear whether or not the extispicy was favorable, but at the very least these queries represent moments in a larger complex of regional exchange. The tablet from Ur contains two queries and reports, the first of which pertains to cultic behavior by the healer’s (asû) daughter: No. 17 (1) obv. 1–5, 10 up. ed. lipit qāti(níg.šu.tag.ga) 1 mārat(˹dumu˺.munus) a-si aš-šum š[u-u]l-ma-na 2 a-na ištar(dinana) la ˹ú˺-še-bi-lu 3 ˹a-šar pa-nu-ša ša-ak˺-nu li-il-lik-ma 4 ù i-na e-˹le-e šu˺-ul-ma-na 5 a-na ištar(dinana) li-še-bi-il ... (report) 10 ul(nu) šalmat(silim-at) (Extispicy) Ritual: Should the healer’s daughter,66 because she did not send a gift to Ištar, go wherever she wishes, and upon (her) return (lit. “ascent”) send a gift to Ištar? … (report) It is not favorable. Here the wish to defer sending an offering to Ištar, presumably in Nippur, is scuttled, and a bad omen report would presumably have constrained her movement and increased the pressure of the obligation already incumbent on her or her family. Why a notice like this would be written in Ur and presumably then sent to Nippur is unclear, but the second query may have some bearing on the matter:

65 For the chronological significance of this tablet, see Bartelmus 2010: 148–49. 66 Or perhaps a patronym (cf. Brinkman 2006b)?

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No. 17 (2) obv. 11–12, rev. 4 11 [aš-š]um šutti(máš.gi6) ša i-mu-ru 12 [x r]âmi(k]i.ág) li-se-ep-pí ... (report) rev. 4 IG KI ID(?)

rev. 4

[Conc]erning the dream she saw: Should she pray [to/for(?) … l]ove(?)? ... (report) …(?)

Unfortunately the query is broken and the summary statement remains unintelligible, but enough of the former is preserved to show that the query pertains to the cultic implications of a dream had by the healer’s daughter. Finally, the first three queries found on the tablet from Babylon follow a pattern not found in any other source, namely the sign DI followed by a DN, here Enlil, Ninlil, and Ninurta, major deities in the Nippur pantheon. While Kraus (1985: 151) read DI as silim for šulum DN, the common reading di for dīnu, “(oracular) verdict,” is also plausible, hence: No. 19 (1) obv. 1 1 ˹dīn(di)˺ den-líl Verdict(?) of Enlil? No. 19 (2) obv. 9 9 dīn(di) dnin-líl Verdict(?) of Ninlil? No. 19 (3) obv. 13 13 ˹dīn(di)˺ dnin-urta Verdict(?) of Ninurta? No summary statements are preserved. Following a lacuna in the text, the final query pertains to recurring dreams: No. 19 (5′) rev. 7′ rev. 7′ ˹i-na˺ pî(ka) šunāti(máš.gi6.meš) ša i-ta-nam-m[a-ru(?) ...] According to(?) the dreams that he keeps seei[ng(?) …] Again, no summary interpretation is preserved. Sending the written results of an extispicy across even small distances is not an obvious feature of the OB reports found in Babylonia proper. The exca-

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vated reports point to deposition in domestic structures in Babylon and SipparAmnānum. In contrast the OB reports from the royal archives of Mari demonstrate an interest in conveying the information from afar. Similarly certain Sargonid queries found deposited in Nineveh were produced in various locales in Assyria (Kalḫu, Tarbiṣu, Adian, Arbela) as well as in various specific locations in Nineveh itself (Robson 2011: 612). In the Kassite reports there is no hint of the royal focus that is so central to the earlier and later examples, but perhaps the cultic focus of the queries on the three tablets provide some hint as to the contexts in which they circulated. The major topics of the Kassite-period extispicy queries are dreams, prayer and supplication, and ritual behaviors, many of which are associated with health and illness. Sassmannshausen (2001: 68) suggests that Kassite-period diviners were expected to have competency in dream interpretation as well as extispicy, lecanomancy, and the like. However, the relationship between extispicy and dream interpretation is not one in which the diviner is interpreting the elements of a dream as such but rather using a different method to check the veracity of the dream or the accuracy of a suggested interpretation. This intersection between dream interpretation and extispicy has resonance with sources from OB Mari and NA Nineveh,67 though these similarities have not been fully integrated into the diachronic narrative due in part to an early misunderstanding of the terminology found in the Kassite reports. The writing máš.gi6 for šuttu, “dream,” and the poetic variant tabrīt mūši, “nocturnal vision,” are well known in Akkadian texts in general.68 Building on and refining the idea that, in the present corpus, the writing máš.gi6 is not “dream” but rather bīru or têrtu “prodige” (Scheil 1917: 150), Reiner (1965: 248) took the view that the writing máš gi6 was for bīr/tabrīt mūši, “nocturnal extispicy.”69 Reiner cites as evidence the query: No. 3 (3) obv. 18 šuttu(máš.gi6) ši-i a-na da-mi-iq-t[i(-i) (...)]

67 E.g., in Mari extispicy was performed (têrtam šūpušum) to verify the meaning of a troubling dream (ARM 26/1: 82); diviners were asked to advise on (malākum) or were made to decide on (warkatam šuprusum) the veracity of a dream (ARM 26/1: 225; 239); dreams could also be shown to be invalid, ul naṭlat, literally “it (= the dream) was not seen” (e.g., ARM 26/1: 142) (cf. Pongratz-Leisten 1999: 103–105). In Nineveh the only clear example is SAA 4: 316 + 340 (K 4728 + K 8909), which is an unfavorable extispicy report on a dream that was seen during the reign of Assurbanipal. 68 Oppenheim 1956: 225–26; CAD Š/3 405–407; CAD T 31b. 69 This interpretation is reproduced by Pongratz-Leisten (1999: 103 n. 65) and Steinkeller (2005: 13 n.1), who appear to endorse Reiner’s view.

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mistaking it for a summary statement (i.e., “this nocturnal extispicy portends favorable omens”), when formal considerations require that a question precede the report in the lines that follow (i.e., “Will this dream be goo[d? (blank?)]”).70 Furthermore, the previous queries on the same tablet seem to indicate a progression: No. 3 (1) obv. 1, 8 1 [ma-la(?)] libba(šà)-šu ṣa-ab-tu4 dnuska li-se-ep-pí [According to whatever(?)] is on his mind, shall he pray to Nuska? ... (report) 8 šalmat(silim-at) It is favorable. No. 3 (2) obv. 9, 17 9 ki dnuska ú-sa-ap-pu-ú šutta(máš.gi6)-šu li-dam-mi-iq When he prays to Nuska, will he (= Nuska) make his dream good? ... (report) 17 ˹x˺ [...] ... (broken summary). No. 3 (3) obv. 18, rev. 7 18 šuttu(máš.gi6) ši-i a-na da-mi-iq-t[i(-i) ...] Is this dream goo[d? (blank?)] ... (report) rev. 7 š[alm]at(s[ilim]- ˹at˺) It is f[avorable]. No. 3 (4) rev. 8–9, 16 rev. 8 K[I? ...] ˹x ŠU?˺ rev. 9 ˹d?˺ [... li-s]e?-[e]p-[p]i? ... Shall s/he pray to [DN ...]? ... (report) rev. 16 šalmat(silim-at) It is favorable. Unfortunately the broken final query makes the last step in the progression difficult to understand, but throughout the text prayers to Nuska are coupled

70 Hence my proposal to possibly restore an interrogative long vowel in the lacuna.

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with good dreams. Regardless, the final piece of evidence against Reiner’s interpretation of máš.gi6 as bīr/tabrīt mūši, “nocturnal extispicy,” instead of šuttu, “dream,” comes from an unpublished source in the corpus: No. 23 (3′) obv. 11′ 11′ [ki(-i)(?) i-n]a šutti(máš.gi6)-[š]u narkabāti(giš.gigir.meš) i-mu-ru [ [When(?)] he saw chariots [i]n [h]is dream [...] The most plausible interpretation of this admittedly fragmentary query is literal: a client dreams about seeing chariots. Several other reports have dreams as their topic as well.71 As we have already seen, prayer or supplication, expressed consistently with the Akkadian verb suppû, figures prominently in several queries.72 For example, No. 2 (2′) obv. 10′ 10′ dnin-líl i-na ˹é?˺ [(x x) l]i-se-ep-pí eli(ugu) dnin-líl ṭāb(dùg-ab) Shall he pray to Ninlil in [her(?)] temple/shrine(?)/É[-ki-ùr(?)]? Is it pleasing to Ninlil? No. 2 (4′) rev. 2′–3′ rev. 2′ [(x)] ˹x x˺ [(x x)] ˹šu li x˺ [(x) u]n?-ma rev. 3′ dnuska l[i-se]p-pí eli(ugu) dnuska ṭāb(dùg-ab) ... Shall h[e p]ray to Nuska? Is it pleasing to Nuska? Another tablet illustrates the nexus of dreams and supplication with ten different queries preserved, none of which has an interpretive summary for the results of its report: No. 4 1 2 3 4

(1) obv. 1–4 ša i-na šutti(máš.gi6)-š[u? ...] um-ma-a dingir.meš [...] i-tu-šu áš-b[a ...] LA ŠU AN [...]

71 In addition to the texts cited in this discussion note: No. 4 (1) (frag.); No. 4 (3); No. 4 (4) (check); No. 17 (2); No. 18 (1); No. 18 (2) (check); No. 19 (5′); No. 25 (2). 72 No. 1 (1): Bēl-mātāti (= Enlil?); No. 2 (2′), No. 18 (6), No. 22 (2′): Ninlil; No. 2 (4′), No. 3 (1), No. 3 (2), No. 18 (7), No. 20 (3′), No. 22 (1′): Nuska; No. 4 (5), No. 4 (6): Ninkarrak; No. 18 (8): Sirius; No. 20 (4′): Ištar; No. 3 (4), No. 8 (3′), No. 10 (3′), No. 17 (2): frag. DN.

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He, who, in h[is(?)] dream [...] thus: “The gods [...”] living with him [...] not the hand(?) of the god(?) [or goddess(?) …] No. 4 (2) obv. 10 10 la-aš-šu é ša KAR NIN KI Is there not a temple/shrine of ...? 73 No. 4 (3) obv. 10 16 šuttu(máš.gi6) ši-i a-na damiqtî(sig5-ti-i) Will this dream be good? No. 4 (4) obv. 23 23 ki.min ša târi(gur) Ditto; pertaining to the repetition (of the extispicy). No. 4 (5) obv. 29 29 liš-pur-ma dnin-kar-ra-ak li-sà-ap-pu-ú Shall he give orders that they pray to Ninkarrak? 74 No. 4 (6) obv. 36 36 [ki].min ša târi(gur) [Di]tto; pertaining to the repetition (of the extispicy). The seventh query is not preserved. No. 4 (8) rev. 9′ rev. 9′ dnuska a-na ṣa-bat a-bu-ti a-na dgu-la liš-pur Shall he send Nuska to intercede (on his behalf) to Gula? No. 4 (9) rev. 15′ r. 15′ ki.min ša târi(gur) Ditto; pertaining to the repetition (of the extispicy).

73 This query is difficult, but perhaps Kar-Nin was intended (cf. Nashef 1982: 158); however, that toponym is written kar-dnin-lílki and the like in other examples. 74 Kraus (1985: 158) suggests that this query implies that the cultic behavior was taking place outside of Nippur and not under the direct control of the client.

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No. 4 (10) rev. 20′ r. 20′ mār(dumu) šip-ri ša a-na muḫḫi(ugu) šarri(lugal) ˹iš˺-pu-ru ṭe4-ma ˹dam˺-qá i-leq-qá-a Will the messenger, whom he sent to75 the king, receive good news? The client of No. 4 must be high in rank if he is able to send a messenger to the king (Kraus 1985: 159), but the interrelationships here among all the queries are more difficult to discern. The prayers to Ninkarrak (Gula) 76 and for intercession by Nuska to Gula suggest a possible concern with ill health. The lamp (Nuska) at the head of the sick person is a motif attested in both texts and iconography (e.g., Rutz 2012: 173–74, 177, 181, 184), and the divine symbols found on certain kudurrus provide iconographic associations between Gula and Nuska (e.g., Seidl 1989: no. 48 pl. 19b, no. 49 pl. 19a, no. 50 pl. 22a, no. 74 fig. 11, no. 75 fig. 12). Perhaps the cryptic signs inscribed at the end of the text (but not copied) were more significant than originally thought (Kraus 1985: 137). Other cultic behaviors include making offerings (naqû), perhaps for expiation, having rituals performed to soothe an angry god, and ritual actions undertaken to prevent illness.77 No. 15 1 2 3

(1) obv. 1–3 [(x x)] li-iq-qú-ú [den(?) ku]r.kur a-na ḫi-ṭi [(x x)] ˹iṣ˺-ṣa-ab-ba-ta-aš-šu [...] should he offer? 78 [Lord(?) of the L]ands, for the misdeed […] he is being seized for him/it.

No. 16 (1) obv. 1–2 1 ˹li˺-pi-it qá-tì marduk(damar.utu) 2 ˹né-pé˺-ša-am a-na kimilti(dingir.šà.dib.ba) 79 li-še-pí-šu-šu 75 In his edition Kraus (1985: 137) neglected to transliterate a sign (UGU) that is clear in his copy (Kraus 1985: 210). 76 Ninkarrak (Westenholz 2010) also appears in broken contexts in No. 14 (1) and No. 14 (3). 77 Cf. No. 17 (1); No. 18 (5) cited above. 78 Offerings, niqû(sískur), for Nanaya and Ištar are the subject of the queries on the unprovenienced tablet No. 21. 79 Or kimilti ili; a reading ili(dingir) kamli/zenî(šà.dib.ba) is also possible but seems less likely. See CAD K 372–373 sub kimiltu; CAD K 124b sub kamlu, citing dingir.šà.dib.ba búr.ra = lìb-bi il(ān)ī(dingir.meš) kam-ri(sic) li-ip-pa-š[i?-ir(?)], “may the angry heart of the gods be undone” (BRM 4 20: 76); CAD Z 84b sub zenû, citing d ì m - m e - e r š à - d i b - b a - m u //

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(Extispicy) Ritual of (= for) Marduk. Should they have him perform the ritual for an angry god? The second query relates to sending rams to Dūr-Kurigalzu, so perhaps the ritual was meant to be performed there.80 Illness, already an evident concern of No. 18 (5), appears to be a focus of the long, difficult, and fragmentary query edited as No. 5: No. 5 obv. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 rev. 1 rev. 2 rev. 3 rev. 4 rev. 5 1 2 3 4–5 6 7–8

1–rev. 5 ˹ba˺-ru-ut šu-u[l-mi(?) ...] ki-i e-te-ep-pu-š[u ...] qá-tu-tu4 ša i-ba-aš-˹šu˺ [...] us-sa-ap-pu-ú ù ik-ri-˹bi˺ [(blank?)] na-da-na iq-ta-bu-ú qá-at ištari(U.DAR) ša ša-me-e aš-šum unīqi(munuséš.gàr) ù qá-at si-la-ak-ku a-na ri-im-˹ki˺ ru-˹um-mu˺-ki-im i-na-an-na puḫāda(sila4) ša ud.12.kam e-˹pu˺-u[š? (blank?)] a-ka-an-na at-ta-ši ki-i PI ˹x˺ [(x)] qí-bi ù te-me-qé-˹tì ša? ili(dingir?)˺ [...] iš-te-te-ú ˹unīqa˺(munus˹éš.gàr˺) qá-li [...] ù ri-im-ka ru-um-m[u-ka(?) ...] ˹iq-ta˺-bu-ú šà G[A? ...] ša i-˹x˺ [...] ˹puḫāda(sila4) an˺-ni-i ˹a-di ud˺.2[0?(+n?).kam(?) ...] a-di ˹ud.2.kam˺ ne-pe-eš-ti ˹x˺ [...] i-ṭi-ib-ba-aš-ši-i UD TA [...] na-ap-ša-tu-ša ˹i?-šal?-li?˺-[im(?) (...)] Divination for the well-be[ing of(?) ...].81 When I repeatedly performe[d (it?) ...] the end result(s)(?) that occurred [...] did they pray and did they order the giving of offerings? The “Hand of Ištar of the Heavens,” because of the female kid, and the “Hand of Silakku,”82 for taking baths(?).83

il(ān)ū(dingir.meš) ze-nu-tu, “the (Sum. ‘my’) angry gods” (TCL 6 43: 17–18); however, note that both BRM 4 20 and TCL 6 43 are from Seleucid Uruk. 80 No. 16 (2) obv. 11–12 is discussed above. 81 A feminine PN or title seems possible in the lacuna (Kraus 1985: 159). 82 On the demon Silakku, see Wasserman 2006: 204–205. 83 The syntax is difficult to comprehend (Kraus 1985: 159).

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9 10 11 12 13 14 rev. rev. rev. rev. rev.

1 2 3 4 5

Now I have sacrificed the lamb of the twelfth day. Thus I lifted/performed(?) (it) according to/when ... [...] (with?) words and prayers of the god(s?) ... they sought; the roasting of the female kid [...] and taking a (ritual) bath [...] they ordered; ... [...] which/who(?) ... [...] This lamb, until the twenti[eth(?)] day/twent[y-nth(?)] day [...] until the second day the ritual of(?) ... [...] will it go well/be better for her? ... [...] Will her life remain wel[l? (blank?)]

Curiously no report is given, and nothing more than a cursory summary statement could fit in the lacuna at the end of the last line of preserved text. Perhaps this tablet is an example of a lengthy query written at some intermediate stage before the performance of the ritual slaughter of the animal(s) and inspection of the entrails. If this tentative interpretation holds, then perhaps other queries had longer original formulations that were distilled down to a pithy statement for the final written report. Of course, other interpretations of text No. 5 are possible, but any interpretation must contend with the absence of a report proper. In sum, the contents of the queries show that the overwhelming concern of the Kassite extispicy reports is for cultic matters. This is not to say that the collections of queries are all easily understood in light of checking dreams, performing prayers of supplication to the gods, and the like. It also seems unlikely that the preponderance of cultic concerns points to some distinct concern of the Kassite period. I suggest that the apparent differences between the Kassite extispicy reports and those of earlier and later periods stem not from some inherent difference in mentality or practice but rather a difference in context of production and use. Archives from palaces and domestic contexts have yielded extispicy reports that reflect the concerns of political (i.e., royal) and socio-economic elites, so perhaps the Kassite extispicy reports reflect the concerns of temple archives or at least cultic or ritual functionaries.84 The last point of entry into analyzing the Kassite extispicy reports is their relationship with the omen compendia related to extispicy. There are a number of comparisons to be made between the omen compendia and reports, but because so few MB sources are known, the comparisons inevitably involve specu-

84 E.g., some association with the temple of Gula (Gibson et al. 2001; cf. Böck 2013) and/or the temple of Nuska (Streck 1998–2001) seems at least plausible.

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lation about diachronic issues of textual stability, transmission, and access. I will adduce just two examples from sources found in Nippur that were probably contemporary with the Kassite extispicy reports.85 The so-called orientation tablets present the topography of the liver and lungs in terms of positive and negative zones, which are denoted using the scribal shorthand imittu, “right” = positive, and šumēlu, “left” = negative, respectively. Texts of this kind occur in two known formats: visual representations (KAR 444 = KAL 5: 78; KAL 5: 79; BM 50494) and lists (Nougayrol 1968; Koch 2005: 480–534; Heeßel 2012a: 250–54, nos. 78–79). I have identified an unpublished orientation tablet from Nippur that is in list format and probably dates to the MB period (CBS 8540, unpub.). Take, for example, the following entry from that source: CBS 8540 rev. 15′ [i]šid([s]uḪuš) ṣe-er ubāni(šu.si) qablî(murub4) imittu(zag) [The b]ase of middle Plain of the Finger is “right” (i.e., +).86 The check (ša târi) from the first example cited above contains the following in its description of the state of the exta: No. 18 (2) obv. 16 i-na išid(suḪuš) ṣēr(edin) ubāni(šu.si) qablî(murub4) šīru(uzu) kīma(gin7) passi(za.na) zikari(níta) šakin(gar) At the base of the middle Plain of the Finger flesh akin to a male game piece is present. Here the report simply places a known positive feature (e.g., Koch-Westenholz 2000: 322, No. 59: 80, No. 76: 15) in the zone covered by the orientation tablet. While there is uncertainty as to whether the scribe of the extispicy report would have had in mind the contents of the orientation tablet, the two genres run parallel; that is, one does not preclude the other. In contrast, the other example is not quite so tidy. I have identified another MB compendium from Nippur, UM 29-16-250 (unpub.), that illustrates a more complex relationship. Although fragmentary UM

85 Divinatory scholarship in late-second millennium Nippur is a subject I am currently working on, so these results are necessarily preliminary. 86 On this feature of the liver, see Jeyes 1989: 66–67; note the NA duplicates of this passage found on tablets from Assurbanipal’s library: CT 31: 6 obv. ii 19′ (Koch 2005: 498) and CT 31: 1 obv. ii 3′ // K 6731 obv.(?) 2 (Koch 2005: 522, Pl. lii).

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29-16-250 has a Neo-Assyrian duplicate from Assurbanipal’s library87 that contains only minor orthographic variants and thus provides the plausible elements missing in the lacuna at the end of the line: UM 29-16-250 rev. 14′–15′ [šu]mma([b]e) i[-n]a ekal(é.gal) imitti(zag) ubāni(šu.si) u[ṣurt]u(gi[š.Ḫu]r) eṣret(Ḫur-et) gaba-ra-aḫ ummānī[ya](érin[-ia(?)]) [šu]mma([b]e) i-na ekal(é.gal) ˹šumēl˺(˹gùb˺) ubāni(šu.si) uṣurtu(giš.Ḫur) eṣret(Ḫur-et) [gab]a-[r]a-aḫ ummān(érin) [nakri(?)] [I]f a dr[aw]ing is drawn o[n] the right part of the Palace of the Finger, (it is a sign of) despair of [my] troops.88 [I]f a drawing is drawn on the left part of the Palace of the Finger, (it is a sign of) [de]spair of [the enemy’s] troops.89 Compare those entries with the laconic notice found in second report on No. 3: No. 3 (2) obv. 13 i-na ekal(é.gal) ubāni(šu.si) uṣurtu(giš.Ḫur) On the Palace of the Finger is a drawing. To complicate matters further, the MB orientation tablet provides additional information about the right/left regions of the Palace of the Finger, partitioning them into the expected top, middle, and base (CBS 8540 rev. 7′–12′). The report just quoted notes simply a design. But where precisely was it placed? It was either obvious or the subtleties just described were deemed irrelevant to the report in question. But how could this be, when the position of the design on either the right or the left could have diametrically opposite signification? All this shows that a significant body of knowledge lay behind seemingly simple descriptions of features of the exta, but it also may point to background knowledge as a basis for interpretive license in describing and interpreting the organs. The diviner’s experience and judgment would have probably governed any narrow interpretation (e.g., using the orientation tablet scheme) of features described in broad terms in the text of the report. In conclusion, I have argued that internal evidence from the Kassite extispicy reports coupled with basic information about their provenience (mostly from Nippur) can offer insight into the contexts in which these texts circulated.

87 K 4030 (DA 220) + K 7999 + K 8030 + K 8121 (CDLI P395366). 88 NA dupl.: érin-ia5 (K 4030+ obv. 11′). 89 NA dupl.: [ér]in kúr (K 4030+ obv. 12′).

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The collections of multiple queries and reports are not merely examples of checking known from OB and NA parallels, though that probably has a correlate in the Kassite text corpus as well. Rather, in some instances the collections of queries seem to be topically related, successive questions probably performed in a single context or, at the very least, on a single day (as the dated records indicate). The fact that some reports contain summary statements and others do not is puzzling, but it shows that the textual genre did not require a written interpretation to be presented. Perhaps the interpretation would have been discussed or conveyed orally; if so, that setting may have been the one in which the omen compendia were most relevant, since they are not obviously cited in the reports but overlap in complex ways with the written contents of the reports. In those cases where an (intelligible) interpretive summary is given in the Kassite reports, it is a simple statement, i.e., no advice or interpretive elaboration beyond “it is (not) favorable” is typically given. The fact that reports evidently written in Dūr-Kurigalzu, Ur, and Babylon made their way to Nippur provides a glimpse of the regional circulation of extispicy reports, which like letters would have had to be properly delivered and understood for the system or network to function. What would have been the expected behavior in response to receiving an extispicy report in Nippur from Dūr-Kurigalzu, Ur, or Babylon? Was a response expected, or was the report a one-way communication, notionally sent from the god, read in the exta, observed by the diviner(s), recorded by the diviner and/or his scribe, and then passed along to the appropriate recipient in another locale? While the ability of extispicy reports to travel between cities is reminiscent of epistolary practice, other tablets may have functioned more like administrative records, such as receipts or inventories. Perhaps their rubrics, formal features (such as rulings), dates, and geographic labels provide us with some cues as to their fate in the cuneiform archives of Nippur.

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Heeßel, Nils P. 2009. The Babylonian Physician Rabâ-ša-Marduk: Another Look at Physicians and Exorcists in the Ancient Near East. Pp. 13–28 in Advances in Mesopotamian Medicine from Hammurabi to Hippocrates, ed. Annie Attia and Gilles Buisson. CM 37. Leiden: Brill. Heeßel, Nils P. 2010. The Calculation of the Stipulated Term in Extispicy. Pp. 163–75 in Divination and Interpretation of Signs in the Ancient World, ed. Amar Annus. OIS 6. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Heeßel, Nils P. 2011a. Die divinatorischen Texte aus Assur: Assyrische Gelehrte und babylonische Traditionen. Pp. 371–84 in Assur – Gott, Stadt und Land, ed. Johannes Renger. CDOG 5. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Heeßel, Nils P. 2011b. “Sieben Tafeln aus sieben Städten”: Überlegungen zum Prozess der Serialisierung von Texten in Babylonien in der zweiten Hälfte des zweiten Jahrtausends v. Chr. Pp. 171–95 in Babylon: Wissenskultur in Orient und Okzident, ed. Eva CancikKirschbaum et al. Topoi: Berlin Studies of the Ancient World 1. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Heeßel, Nils P. 2012a. Divinatorische Texte II: Opferschau-Omina. KAL 5, WVDOG 139. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Heeßel, Nils P. 2012b. The Hermeneutics of Mesopotamian Extispicy: Theory vs. Practice. Pp. 16–35 in Mediating between Heaven and Earth: Communication with the Divine in the Ancient Near East, ed. C. L. Crouch, Jonathan Stöckel, and Anna Elise Zernecke. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 566. London: T & T Clark. Hölscher, Monika. 1996. Die Personennamen der kassitenzeitlichen Texte aus Nippur. IMGULA 1. Münster: Rhema Verlag. Horowitz, Wayne. 2000. Astral Tablets in The Hermitage, Saint Petersburg. ZA 90: 194–206. Horowitz, Wayne, and Nathan Wasserman. 1996. Another Old Babylonian Prayer to the Gods of the Night. JCS 48: 57–60. van den Hout, Theo. 2003a. Omina (Omens). B. Bei den Hethitern. RlA 10: 88–90. van den Hout, Theo. 2003b. Orakel (Oracle). B. Bei den Hethitern. RlA 10: 118–24. Jeyes, Ulla. 1978. The “Palace Gate” of the Liver: A Study of Terminology and Methods in Babylonian Extispicy. JCS 30: 209–33. Jeyes, Ulla. 1989. Old Babylonian Extispicy: Omen Texts in the British Museum. PIHANS 64. Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul. Jeyes, Ulla. 2000. A Compendium of Gall-Bladder Omens Extant in Middle Babylonian, Nineveh, and Seleucid Versions. Pp. 345–73 in Wisdom, Gods and Literature: Studies in Assyriology in Honour of W. G. Lambert, ed. Andrew R. George and Irving L. Finkel. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns. Koch(-Westenholz), Ulla S. 2000. Babylonian Liver Omens: The Chapters Manzāzu, Padānu and Pān tākalti of the Babylonian Extispicy Series Mainly from Aššurbanipal’s Library. CNIP 25. Copenhagen: The Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Near Eastern Studies, University of Copenhagen; Museum Tusculanum Press. Koch(-Westenholz), Ulla S. 2002. Old Babylonian Extispicy Reports. Pp. 131–145 in Mining the Archives: Festschrift for Christopher Walker on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday, 4 October 2002, ed. Cornelia Wunsch. Babylonische Archive 1. Dresden: ISLET. Koch(-Westenholz), Ulla S. 2005. Secrets of Extispicy: The Chapter Multābiltu of the Babylonian Extispicy Series and Niṣirti bārûti Texts mainly from Aššurbanipal’s Library. AOAT 326. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag. Koch(-Westenholz), Ulla S. 2011. Sheep and Sky: Systems of Divinatory Interpretation. Pp. 447–69 in The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture, ed. Karen Radner and Eleanor Robson. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Christian W. Hess, Freie Universität Berlin*

10 Songs of Clay Materiality and Poetics in Early Akkadian Epic

1 Introduction A basic distinction can be drawn in Mesopotamian literature between poetic songs, including hymns and epics, and formally prosaic texts such as wisdom literature, incantations, and monumental inscriptions.1 Though this distinction is fundamental to generic and literary analysis, few Assyriological studies have addressed it directly. Despite several more recent attempts (notably von Soden 1981, 1984; Tropper 2012), the search for formal meter in Akkadian based on stress or accent has largely been abandoned.2 West’s (1997: 175) objections remain: “In general, it seems to be impossible to formulate any rules to which there are not numerous exceptions.” More generally accepted units begin above the level of individual syllables, morae, or feet, and include cola, (line) caesurae, line divisions, couplets, and stanzas.3 These remain the stock-in-

* I take the opportunity here to thank both of the organizers, Paul Delnero and Jacob Lauinger, for the invitation to participate in the symposium on “Texts and Contexts,” as well as the discussants throughout, particularly the respondent to my paper, Sara Milstein. 1 Hecker 1974; Wilcke 1977: 214; Foster 2005: 13; Shehata 2009: 307; and Shehata 2009: 237– 38 on explicit references in Atramḫasīs III vii 14–16; Anzû I 1. In contrast to narû (Haul 2011: 125), the term is usually taken at face value. 2 Edzard 1993; West 1997; Metzler 2002: 30; Wasserman 2003: 159–62; and now Lambert 2013: 17–34. The recent attempt by Tropper, summarized in Tropper 2012, relies heavily on a KetivQere-approach based on often tacit reinterpretations of the written grammatical forms to fit the poetic patterns proposed. For example in the analysis of Enūma eliš IV 3, Tropper (2012: 435) assumes a reading: attāma kabtāta ina ilī rabûtum, assuming regular apocope of short, unstressed vowels and the short form of the plural ilī for the more common ilānū/ī. The text of the epic (Lambert 2013: 86) here reads: at-ta-ma kab-ta-ta i-na ilānī rabûti (CT 13: 14 obv. 3: dingir.dingir ra-bu-tum; STT 3: 3 and STT 4: 3: dingir.dingir gal.gal). Cf. West’s (1997: 181) criticism of the similar attempt by De Liagre Böhl 1960. Note that Zimmern (1897), heavily influenced by Sievers’ work on Hebrew, had already expanded the analysis to such texts as Šurpu II 73–86 and begun to describe poetic form in terms of rhythm and musical notation rather than meter. Helle 2014, arguing for selective rather than regular syllabic rhythm, appeared after this paper had already been submitted for publication, and could not be considered here. 3 See the terminological discussion in Buccellati 1990; the use of the colon to represent subdivisions within a verse or period essentially follows West 1982: 5, particularly in their essential

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trade of poetic analysis, common to both hymns and epics (e.g., Hecker 1974; George 2003: 162; Lambert 2013: 17–34; and Guichard 2014: 88–93), as do the ensuing analyses of couplets and parallelism (e.g., Streck 2007). The formal characteristics of these songs, however, remain largely elusive. Beginning already with Zimmern (1893, 1895, 1896, and 1897), the discussion of poetic structures has been connected with material features, above all their visual arrangement on the tablets. Zimmern (1893: 121) pleaded for the “necessary, meticulous care in the reproduction of the form of the original with regard to hemistichs, verses, verse feet, strophes, etc.”4 This included attention to duplicates, which, as Zimmern (1893: 123) already recognized, could show varying degrees of consistency in the ways poetic units are arranged or marked. This relevance of material features of Old Babylonian epic texts to understanding poetic form has since been reflected in various publications. Lambert and Millard (1969: 31–39), for example, discuss the various formats of tablets of Atramḫasīs, and both Hecker (1974: 109) and West (1997: 176–77) note the use of spacing and line division to reflect verse structure. Worthington (2012: 21) notes the relevance of layout, typology, and period to the assessment of variants while resigning a more detailed discussion to specific corpora. A more comprehensive discussion is still outstanding. Groneberg’s (1971: 131–67) earlier discussion of verse features made almost no mention of the tablets themselves. In a later work, Groneberg (1996: 61) assumes a “visual presentation” of some tablets “according to some universal rules of poetics, which usually establish the text’s formal structure.” What those universal rules might be remains unclear, and rests on a tacit assumption that material features are consistent across duplicates and among most poetic texts. Zimmern’s plaidoyer thus seems to have had little influence.5 The present paper represents an attempt at resuming the discussion begun by Zimmern. The goal is neither to attempt another analysis based on syllable or accent units nor to radically reject the basic elements of Akkadian poetry which have been suggested so far. Instead, we will look at the ways in which individual tablets mark or reflect presumed poetic structures through the physical arrangement of the text. After a brief overview of epic as genre and of the places and actors associated with the production and reception of epic during

identity in their “reappearance in other contexts, either in the same or in other compositions,” and has the advantage of being neutral with respect to length, accent, stress, or metrical units. 4 “… nötige peinlichste Sorgfalt auf die genaue Wiedergabe der Form des Originals hinsichtlich der Halbverse, Versfüsse, Strophen u. s.w.” See also Zimmern 1896: 87. 5 Cf. Kilmer 2006, concentrating, however, on the visual arrangement of larger narrative structures.

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the Old Babylonian Period, we will attempt to describe the various forms and physical features represented by the tablets. This will focus on a few categories, including tablet form, layout, line divisions, and spacing. We will conclude with a comparison of several passages, usually discussed as duplicates, in which these features vary, and offer a possible interpretation of what this variation might mean for the stability or fluidity of the transmitted text. The corpus will be based on the genre-family of epics from the Old Babylonian period, as defined by Wasserman (2013: 176–78). This assumes a minimalist definition of epic as essentially narrative verse (Pongratz-Leisten 1999: 74; Guichard 2014: 73). A tabular overview of epics from the Old Babylonian period, including a summary of formats, is listed in the appendix according to major editions or common sigla.6 The period is often viewed as formative for Akkadian literature, characterized by a great degree of decentralization and variation.7 Epics on heroic figures such as Atramḫasīs and Gilgamesh are attested in numerous versions and recensions, while even generic groups such as the Akkadian incantations seem to draw on a common tradition of phrases and formulas, but otherwise show few tendencies toward standardized form.8 Old Babylonian epic thus provides a corpus with considerable textual variation, in which many generic features can be observed for the first time in Akkadian. A review of the physical features of the tablets thus promises a unique view of the dual nature of texts as both individual and social, particularizing

6 References to secondary literature are kept to a minimum; for additional bibliography, cf. http://www.seal.uni-leipzig.de. Unless otherwise indicated, sources are cited throughout this study according to the sigla and tablet numbers listed in the appendix. The recently published “Ark Tablet” has not been included. It was explicitly assigned an Old Babylonian date “from the shape and appearance of the tablet itself, the character and composition of the cuneiform signs and the grammatical forms and usages” (Finkel 2014: 105–106). Despite the continuing lack of clearly formulated paleographic criteria (Sassmannshausen 2008: 265 n. 19), a number of features would seem to point to a later date. These include the values ár(UB) in giš ˹ár˺-ti (l. 11); rù(RUM) in ˹ú-pa-az-zi-rù˺ (l. 33) and ú-pá-az-zi-rù (l. 58); pít(BAD) in pít ba-bi-˹ša˺ (l. 60); and the ending -u for the accusative in ka-an-nu aš-la-a… (l. 10). The occurrence of ṣe-ri for ṣēlī (l. 13), if interpreted correctly, would point in this direction as well (see Dalley 2009: 15 and fn. 21 below). Though characteristically Middle Babylonian grammatical forms are lacking, neither the use of mimation (as, for example, in l. 4 m[a-a]k-ku-ra-am; l. 12 ta-qab-bi-am; l. 17 e-le-nu-um ˹ù˺ ša-ap-lu!-um; l. 24 na-˹ḫa˺-[a]m; l. 57 na-ḫa-am; but cf. ˹a-na ú-ri˺ “to the roof” in l. 45) nor the writing -wa- (l. 39 a-wa-t[um …) are necessarily diagnostic for the date. Mimation, for example, is still attested as an archaizing feature in some (early) Middle Babylonian letters and economics texts (Aro 1955: 32) as well as in Middle Babylonian literary texts, as in the hymn KAR 19 (i 15′; iv 8′; iv 12′; iv 16′), a Babylonian import at Assur; cf. Sommerfeld 1984: 300 on kudurrus. 7 Foster 2005: 79; the evaluation goes back at least to von Soden 1953: 21. 8 See recently Mittermayer 2010: 139 on Gilgamesh and Finkel 2014 on Atramḫasīs.

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and anthropological, “bespeaking the social, commercial, and intellectual organization of a specific moment in time, on the one hand, and a recognizable set of practices over time, on the other” (Nichols 1997: 12). The approach shares the attention to the relationship between the individual and social evinced by some views of genre, which focus less on its application as a taxonomic system and more on the ways in which works reflect, produce, and subvert patterns of cultural practice within particular communicative contexts (Hyatt 2002; Artemeva 2009). The principles underlying this focus are succinctly summarized by Driscoll (2010: 85–102): Works do not exist independently of their material embodiments. These physical objects are both the products of and transmitted, disseminated, and consumed by particular persons at a particular place and time, in ways thus socially, economically, and intellectually determined. We should thus expect the material features of epic tablets to bear traces of how they were understood as literary texts and of how or if these features changed from place to place or over time.

2 Epic and Genre The question of contexts for much of Mesopotamian literature has generally received a pessimistic answer. As George (2007b: 41) stated most recently: “For the most part …, the realm of pedagogy is the only proven context of the written literature …”9 Thus, even if we accept the “relentlessly social character of the objects of our study” (Smith 2004: 362) or their fundamentally practical or functional background (Reiner 1978: 157), the social, functional, or practical remain elusive more often than not.10 The general unease with which the question has usually been addressed is all the more sensible in the case of epic, for which neither a curricular nor ritual context can, for the most part, be traced. Attention to generic groupings provides one possible avenue to situating texts within broader currents of Mesopotamian cultures and cultural formations. The recent focus on genre-families, including incantations, hymns, and

9 On the distinction of original, and secondary, or institutional and social, contexts, see Veldhuis 2004: 44. On “curricular compositions” and the identification of scribal schools as original contexts, see, for example, Tinney 1999; Brisch 2007: 29–31; and Lauinger 2014 on UET 6/ 2: 402. 10 For the various methodological approaches to Mesopotamian literature, see, for example, Veldhuis 2004: 39–45, particularly on the “social-functional approach,” and the summary in Chen 2013: 17. The approach dove-tails with the understanding of epic as an inherently functional category, argued for example in Martin 2005.

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epics, has the practical advantage of identifying broad clusters exhibiting common traits and thus neatly side-stepping many of the thorny issues associated with defining the more specifically generic contexts against which texts can be read. Nevertheless, each family also clearly represents a heterogeneous group which can be subdivided in various ways. Epic, for example, has instead been classified according to the nature of the protagonists, whether human or divine (Edzard 2005: 495; Holm 2005: 258; Noegel: 234), themes of human or divine experience (Foster 2007), or more narrowly according to historical context (Westenholz 1997; Haul 2009). Based on these criteria, the same texts have been variously described as epics, myths, legends, sagas, or even folklore. Myths and legends, for example, can further be distinguished as narratives on divine or human protagonists in the distant past or in cultural memory, respectively (Westenholz 1997: 16–24; Haul 2000: 35–74; Haul 2009: 9–13). The objection to their interpretation as generic groupings, however, remains: both categories can occur indifferently in other genres, media, and arts, and are on the whole too broad to specify the place of a text within the literary tradition.11 J. G. Westenholz’s (1997) definition of “legends,” for example, includes such texts as the Nippur and Ur Letters (MC 7: 10; MC 7: 11) and the panegyric “Elegy on the Death of Narām-Sîn” (MC 7: 14). Some recent works on Mesopotamian, and particularly Akkadian, epic as genre have approached the problem from different perspectives. Each starts from a particular Akkadian term for the text itself, essentially following the “ethnic genre” suggested by Tinney (1996: 11–25) and the emic approach discussed by Longman (1991). As epic developed, however, individual texts are thought to have incorporated elements of various other poetic and prosaic genres.12 George (2007b) argued for the inclusion of elements from numerous genres, including hymns, prayers, invective, curses, laments, and elegy, in various sections. By the first millennium, the epic had become a sort of generic anthology within which any textual type could be selectively embedded. Similar processes can also be traced for most other Old Babylonian epics. Michalowski

11 Hecker 1974: 2; Streck 1999: 55. See already Fowler 1982: 127 on “mythic types” as sort of “quasi-generic grouping” which can “occur indifferently in other media and even arts.” Examples from Mesopotamia include the possible depiction of scenes from Etana on early cylinder seals (Haul 2000: 35–44) and the re-working of the deluge myths into the Greek prose of Berossos. 12 See the discussion in Hecker 1974: 69–100. For the difficulties inherent in identifying individual texts as hymns or epics, cf. the variable classification of CT 15: 5–6 (“Sîn and Išum”) as a hymn in Wasserman 2003: 194 No. 60 and epic in Shehata 2009: 307 n. 1759 (“rein narrative Dichtung”); or the classification of UET 6/2: 397 as myth in Ludwig 2009: 246 and lament in Wasserman 2003: 212 no. 192 and Wasserman and Gabbay 2005: 78.

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(1999) traced the influences of narû-literature on Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh, and Chen (2013: 200–252) established the influence of laments on the development of Atramḫasīs in the early second millennium. Guichard (2014: 71–83), in his edition of the Zimrī-Lîm Epic, renewed the discussion of the relationship between the categorizations of texts as epic, historical epic, royal hymns, and heroic poetry, tracing the interconnections between the epic and hymns, Sargonic legends, and monumental inscriptions. The Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh might thus claim a privileged place in the discussion. But the accretion of diverse material within narrative verse can be situated within a wide-spread practice of intertextuality inherent to the development of Mesopotamian literature as a whole. Generic boundaries here seem fluid, at best. The second approach to the development of epic in the second millennium focuses on the term narû, most prominently in Pongratz-Leisten’s (1999; 2001) analysis of the development in meaning from a physical stele, to a monumental inscription, and finally to a general term for commemorative texts written for posterity, including the Cuthean Legend and the Epic of Gilgamesh. The approach was later developed by Haul (2009), who argued for the direct use of monumental inscriptions and later copies in the composition of Old Babylonian legends. Historiographic material was reworked, “fictionalized,” under the influence of both hymns and epics. Haul (2009: 307) explicitly mentions the Cuthean Legend as the clearest example of the reworking of prose sources into poetic form.13 The notion of epic as a genre-family thus encompasses several parallel developments in Akkadian literature during the second millennium. Originally prosaic narû-literature approaches epic in form, while poetic epic continues to incorporate elements of other genres, including narû. Both discussions reflect an inherent tension in the development of Akkadian epic between distinct modes of performance and transmission. The first, poetic, interpretation is essentially focused on tablets as reflections of the a-material process of recitation. The second presumes a cultural construction rooted in a gradual process of disentanglement from its material roots. Both are said to be bound by common function: the preservation, creation, and communication of the culturally normative past. Both presume that poetic form is connected with the mode and context of reception of a text and can shift over time.14 As noted by George (2009: 118): “The classical view that discourse is either poetry or prose is not

13 The development had already been sketched in Westenholz 1992. 14 See in particular Pongratz-Leisten 2001: 13; and Haul 2009: 309 on the comparison of Middle Babylonian Šar tamḫāri with AO 6702 and TIM 9: 48.

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helpful to us, for it disallows the possibility of a composition in which prose and poetry merge.”

3 Old Babylonian Epic: An Overview A review of the contexts suggested so far for Akkadian epic, both original and secondary, gives good grounds for the general pessimism mentioned above. For most texts, there is the general assumption that the work itself is to varying degrees older than the tablets by which it is represented. Examples can be seen in the discussion on Sumerian forerunners of Etana or its possible depiction on cylinder seals from the third millennium (Haul 2000: 35–44), or the involved discussion on the relationship between the Sumerian and Akkadian narratives of Gilgamesh and Atramḫasīs.15 Accordingly, there is nothing, for example, preventing us from reading Enlil’s authoritarian rule in Atramḫasīs against the reign of Samsu-iluna, as suggested by Wilcke (1999), but the existence of earlier manuscripts (i.e., CUSAS 10: 2) certainly precludes Samsu-iluna’s reign as the context of the work as a whole.16 An Assyriological shift in focus to the context of individual tablets has renewed interest in the various loci of transmission, including the provenance, archeological context, and scribes involved. Each individual site has, however, yielded no more than a few epics, and even fewer of these have a well-defined archeological context. Beginning outside of Babylonia proper, the Zimrī-Lîm Epic (Guichard 2014) and a tablet containing part of the Great Revolt again Narām-Sîn come from Mari; three tablets, including both Old Babylonian texts of Anzû (Anzû N, Anzû O) and Etana OV-II, come from Susa; and another lone epic fragment comes from the Ishtar-temple at Nineveh (Dalley 2001: 155 n. 12; 163).17 Moving from south to north in Babylonia: excavations at Ur produced two small fragments, UET 6/2: 395 and UET 6/2: 396,18 while the “Scherbenloch” at Uruk contained only a small tablet with Akkadian glosses to an excerpt from the Sumerian Enmerkar and Ensuḫkešdaʾana (AUWE 23: 96). Gilg

15 See, for example, Fleming and Milstein 2010 and Mittermayer 2010 on Gilgamesh and Chen 2013 on Atramḫasīs. 16 For a more nuanced study of the epic’s formation, see now Chen 2013. 17 The latter included here among the Old Babylonian epics, though the text displays some Assyrianisms (e.g., iṣ-ṣí-bi-it in obv. 12′) thought typical of the later, Middle Assyrian reception of Babylonian literature (Machinist 1978: 431–32) 18 See the collation and new copy of UET 6/2: 396 (“Übungstafel”) in Ludwig 2009: 243–245.

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OB Nippur was found in Locus 205, Floor 2 of House F (George 2003: 241), while the Nippur provenance for Gilg OB UM is suggested by the collection number (George 2003: 216). Only one epic tablet, MC 7: 5, was found at Babylon, though without context, and the (late) Old Babylonian date remains uncertain (Westenholz 1997: 53). One, perhaps two tablets come from Kiš: PRAK II C 114 + PRAK II C 136 and BM 134537a-i+ (= Dalley 2001: 165), the latter again assigned its provenance based on the accession number (Dalley 2001: 155). By far the largest number of tablets seem to come from Sippar, including several copies of Atramḫasīs (Atramḫasīs A, B, C1+, E, F, G, and possibly D), Girra and Elamatum (Walker 1983), the Cuthean Legend (MC 7: 20A and 20B), Gilg OB VA+BM (George 2003: 272), and possibly “Gula-AN and the 17 Kings against Narām-Sîn” (MC 7: 17). The Diyāla region offers the next largest group. A single tablet, Gilg OB Ishchali, was found at Nērebtum, while Gilg OB Harmal1, Gilg OB Harmal2, the text “Sargon in Foreign Lands” (MC 7: 7), and the small fragments TIM 9: 49 and TIM 9: 50 were found at Šaduppûm.19 Based on orthography, several texts of unknown provenance have been identified as “southern”: MC 7: 12 (Westenholz 1997: 175); MC 7: 13 (Westenholz 1997: 190); CUSAS 10: 2; CUSAS 10: 3; CUSAS 10: 6; Gilg OB II and Gilg OB III (George 2003: 161); MC 7: 6 (Westenholz 1997: 60); and MC 7: 19 (Westenholz 1997: 259). Of the remainder, some seem to display a mixed orthography with both “southern” and “northern” traits (MC 7: 16B; Westenholz 1997: 239; Gilg OB Schøyen2; George 2003: 225), while of others too little is preserved to allow for a decision either way (“I, Sargon,” MC 7: 1; Westenholz 1997: 35; Gilg OB Schøyen1; George 2003: 219). One last text which I would include among the Old Babylonian epics is the tablet Gilg MB Priv1, belonging to the time of the First Sealand Dynasty.20

19 Kinnier Wilson (1985: 11) first assigned TIM 9: 49 to Etana, later adding TIM 9: 50 (Kinnier Wilson 2007: 17). The objections of Saporetti (1990: 127) still stand: neither of the texts clearly duplicates an extant portion of the epic, and not enough is preserved to allow for a more certain identification. The same applies to the Middle Assyrian fragment KAR 327 (Kinnier Wilson 2007: 48–53): the obverse alludes to offerings and sacrifice in the 1 st person (aṭ-bu-uḫ im-me-ra obv. 4′). The reverse clearly refers to some animals, including the ti8 ˹mušen˺ in rev. 7′, but also ib-ru-su “his friendship” (rev. 8′) and it-ba-ru-su “his collegiality” (rev. 9′). The text may be more readily understood as a fable or dialogue, or at least belonging to the vague category of wisdom texts. 20 George (2013: 130) groups the tablet based on its resemblance in orthography, grammar, appearance, and ductus to a tablet of lung omens dated to Pešgaldarameš within an independent category of Sealand I texts. These include the unprovenanced Sealand archive published by Dalley (2009) and dated to the reigns of Pešgaldarameš and Ayadaragalama, which share a number of grammatical features such as general lack of mimation, the assimilation of /lš/ > /šš/, and a shift from /lt/ > /št/ in ištabaš for iltabaš in l. 75 (George 2007a: 62: “the shift

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The preceding gives some sense of the geographic distribution of epic during the Old Babylonian period. Several works or at least versions thereof are represented by two or more tablets, most notably the Cuthean Legend, Anzû, Etana, Gilgamesh, and Atramḫasīs. Only few of these represent direct duplicates, in whole or in part.21 The overview also suggests the limits of the information provided by the archeological context for the reconstruction of object biographies of Old Babylonian epic tablets.22 Even where a general provenance is known, there is seldom enough information available to place an individual tablet unambiguously within a manuscript collection, as, for example, at Kiš and Susa. The most promising sites are Nippur and Šaduppûm. Gilg OB Nippur can be added to some 210 other literary and lexical tablets in the private House F, part of which served as a scribal school (George 2003: 241). A more exact localization is possible for each of the texts from Šaduppûm as well.23 As already noted by George (2003: 246), Gilg OB Harmal1 and Harmal2 both come from room 211, given as HL 3-286 R 211 L. II; HL 3-295 R 211 L. II. The several fragments of TIM 9: 48 stem from HL 3-88 R. 180 L. II conf. period (IM 52305) and HL 3-90 R 180 L. II (IM 52684A+). TIM 9: 49 is listed as HL 2-485 R. 161 L. II (Sq. 7G); TIM 9: 50 as HL 3-274 R 212 L. II near entrance. All of these texts were found in Level II, associated with the destruction of the city by Ḫammurapi. It is noteworthy that R 161 also contained the syllabic Emesal hymn to Inana TIM 9: 31 and the duplicate incantations TIM 9: 65 and TIM 9: 66. Considering these limitations, some investigations have turned to the actors involved, both the singers and performers (Shehata 2009) and scribes. The approach is brilliantly represented by van Koppen’s (2011) investigation of the social circle of Ipiq-Aja, scribe of many of the manuscripts of Atramḫasīs and member of an elite scribal family of Sippar with particular devotion to Enki/Ea

of liquid to fricative before a dental is hitherto attested only for /rt/ > /št/.”; cf. Dalley 2009: 15 on the “variation l/r”). However the chronology of the First Sealand Dynasty is resolved (Dalley 2009: 4; Pruzsinszky 2009: 99–100), its end is generally connected with the defeat of Ea-gāmil by Ulam-Buriaš (Chronicle of Early Kings; Brinkman 1993) and the title of “king of the Sealand” for Ú-la-Bu-ra-ri-ia-aš, son of Bur-na-Bu-ra-ri-ia-aš (i.e., Burna-Buriaš I) given in the mace-head inscription from Babylon (Stein 2000: 129; André-Salvini 2008: 123 no. 75). The texts may thus predate the first contemporary Kassite texts, including the kudurru BaM 25: 455 from the reign of Burna-Buriaš I (Brinkman 2006: 25), by only a few years, though the vast majority of Kassite texts are later. 21 See for example the overview of duplicates in Wasserman 2003: 180 n. 11. 22 On the term, see for example Steel 2013: 190–224. 23 Based on information given in the register of the Iraq Museum, kindly made available to me by Dr. Laith Hussein (Marburg). Pending the final publication of the excavation results, a general overview of the private houses in Šaduppûm, including some of the relevant rooms, can be found in Miglus 1999: 51–53.

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over several generations.24 Based on paleography, as first suggested by Finkelstein (1957: 83–84), the Old Babylonian Cuthean Legend MC 7: 20A could be assigned to Ipiq-Aja as well. The approach so far represents the best application of Charpin’s (2010: 25–42) diplomatics to Akkadian literature, but can certainly be extended to other Old Babylonian literary texts as well. Both the scribes Iddatum, the dub.sar.tur of BM 17215 vi 4′ (= MC 7: 20B; Walker 1981: 195), and [Il]šu-iqīša, the scribe named in l. 53 of BM 78962 (= Walker 1983: 151–52), were active in Sippar. At least the former may be identified as the dumu é.d[ub.ba.a] of a receipt around the 21 st year of Ammī-ṣaduqa (BM 81135; noted in van Koppen 2011: 148). At Ur, Ludwig (2009: 8–12) first noted the similarity in writing and shared landscape-format of the Akkadian UET 6/2: 396 to the Sumerian UET 6/1: 28 (“u4-ri-a-text”); UET 6/2: 146 (prayer); and UET 6/2: 166 (Edubba E). Neither archeological nor scribal contexts are thus available for most Old Babylonian epics. Information on the texts from Ur, Nippur, and Šaduppûm suggests that Akkadian epic was certainly produced or reproduced together with Sumerian material. The scribal circles of Šaduppûm and Sippar also suggest that both narû-literature and epics were transmitted within the same context.

4 Material Features of Old Babylonian Epic Both J. J. Finkelstein’s and M.-C. Ludwig’s arguments on MLC 1364 (Finkelstein 1957: 84–85) and UET 6/2: 396, respectively, focused on the internal characteristics of the tablets themselves, and neatly lead to the next section, a review of the physical features of the tablets. We will concentrate on three aspects: the form and format of the tablets; the use of section and line divisions to mark poetic units; and the use of spacing within lines.

4.1 Form and Format With few exceptions, far less attention has been paid to formats of Akkadian texts than their Sumerian counterparts.25 All of the texts are written on clay tablets. There is no sign of the diversity of materials and forms displayed by

24 See also Löhnert 2011 on Ipiq-Aja as scribe of the Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur. 25 Most recently for Sumerian see Ludwig 2009: 8–12; Delnero 2010; and Delnero 2012: 17–20. Cf. also the general considerations in Taylor 2011.

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monumental inscriptions or even hymnic texts, for example, which include statue inscriptions (CT 21: 40–42; Wasserman 1992) and stone stelae (UET 1: 146) or even clay prisms (“Elegy on the Death of Naram-Sin” = MC 7: 14; Westenholz 1997: 205). By far the most common format for epics is the one-column long tablet, represented by roughly half of the texts.26 The numerous fragments of Gilg OB Schøyen3 also most likely belong to a one-column tablet, though the tablet is too broken for a complete reconstruction. Multi-column tablets are the next best attested, with three-column tablets the most common in the group: Atramḫasīs E; CT 15: 5–6. Etana OV-I(?); Gilg OB II; Gilg OB III; Gilg OB UM; MC 7: 12; MC 7: 17. Two-column (Atramḫasīs G; CUSAS 10: 2; Gilg OB VA+BM; MC 7: 6; HE 529; Zimrī-Lîm Epic) and four-column tablets are relatively rare. The latter are almost solely represented by the Sippar tablets of Atramḫasīs (Atramḫasīs A; Atramḫasīs B; Atramḫasīs C1+; Atramḫasīs D), though Westenholz (1997: 95) also suggests an original four columns for MC 7: 8A, of which only one is preserved. Other tablets are too fragmentary to allow an accurate reconstruction of their formats. MC 7: 20B seems originally to have contained at least three columns, while Atramḫasīs F, BM 134537a-i+, and TIM 9: 50 contained at least two. Neither the Sumerian Type II nor the lentil-shaped Type IV tablets are attested, but at least four texts were written on small, one-column landscape tablets: UET 6/2: 396; Gilg OB Harmal1; TIM 9: 49; and MC 7: 5. Absent either archeological context or a broader sample, conclusions on the function of individual tablet types rely on parallels or external considerations and thus remain tenuous. A number of tablets, including the long tablet Gilg OB Ishchali, (George 2003: 162) have been identified as school texts, mostly based on either errors or ineptness in writing, but it is the landscape format for which the identification seems most certain. F. van Koppen (2011) was able to conclude that the four-column tablets of Atramḫasīs were not only written as storage copies, but were incorporated into the collection of Ipqu-Annunītum after they were written. Whether the same holds true of other multi-column tablets, as assumed, for example, by George (2007a: 59) for Gilg OB II, Gilg OB III, and Gilg MB Priv1, remains unproven. Lastly, the Atramḫasīs tablets of IpiqAja (Atramḫasīs A, B, C1 + C2) all share the same four-column format, and it has been suggested that this represents the standard format for this version. The Sippar-tablet Atramḫasīs D (Lambert and Millard 1969: 33) has the same

26 BM 78962; Anzû N; Anzû O; Atramḫasīs H; AUWE 23: 96; CUSAS 10: 3; Etana OV-II; Gilg Harmal2; Gilg OB IM; Gilg OB Ishchali; Gilg OB Nippur; Gilg OB Schøyen1; Gilg OB Schøyen2; Ash.1932.382 (= Dalley 2001: 165); MC 7: 1; MC 7: 13; MC 7: 16A; MC 7: 16B; MC 7: 19; TIM 9: 49; and UET 6/2: 395.

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format, though it is not included among the Ipiq-Aja tablets (van Koppen 2011: 147). Ipiq-Aja was also the scribe of the three-column MC 7: 20A, and at least Atramḫasīs E and G, both apparently from Sippar but not written by Ipiq-Aja, seem to have only three and two columns, respectively. Texts which have been assigned to divergent recensions of Atramḫasīs, including Atramḫasīs G (von Soden 1978: 51) and CUSAS 10: 2, display different formats, but there is no reason to presume a standard format for the epic beyond the hand of Ipiq-Aja.

4.2 Section Divisions Only one Old Babylonian epic tablet, MC 7: 13 (Erra and Narām-Sîn), regularly uses ruling lines to mark section divisions. The lines following MC 7: 13:8, 19, and 25 each begin a section of direct speech, of Annunītum to Narām-Sîn, of Erra to Narām-Sîn, and Narām-Sîn to Erra, the last without introductory formula. The sense of the ruling lines following lines 37 and 43 is less clear, though the six-line pericope in 38–43 contains a brief poetic description of the ensuing battle. Further texts use dividers solely to mark the end of the text. The divider separates the text from the colophon in BM 78962 rev. 49; Atramḫasīs A viii 1; Atramḫasīs B viii 5′; Atramḫasīs C1+ viii 19′; Atramḫasīs D viii 8′; Gilg OB II vi 240; MC 7: 20B vi 2′. It can also simply mark the end of the text on a tablet when additional room is available: Etana OV-I vi 9′; Gilg OB Harmal1 17; MC 7: 5 after line 3; MC 7: 6: 123 (iv 13); MC 7: 16A ; MC 7: 16B rev. 4′, and possibly Ash. 1932.382 fragment C 5′. Section dividers in other genres are not obligatory, as shown for example by the hymn Ištar Baghdad, CM 8 pl. 27–37. But they are certainly more common in hymns (Groneberg 1971: 136), which include unruled tablets with section dividers such as RA 22: 172–73. (AndréSalvini 2008: 316) and CUSAS 10: 10 and tablets with rulings and consistent strophic divisions such as Agušaya A and B. In contrast, almost all epic tablets construct texts as continuous narrative. The exception is MC 7: 13, where divisions seem to have the primary function of marking direct speech.

4.3 Lines and Couplets The consistency of the arrangement of poetic lines has served as an important criterion for determining poetic form. One line of poetry or verse per tablet line is usually considered to be standard, with occasional doubling, until the end of the first millennium. (George 2003: 162) This practice contrasts with prose texts, in which syntactic units regularly extend over line boundaries, which more easily vary from tablet to tablet. Importantly, George also observes that

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in most cases lines are consistently preserved across duplicates. The use of decimal marks (Anzû N; Atramḫasīs A; C1+; D) to mark the tenth line of a column certainly suggests that lines were at least in some cases considered relevant to the writing of a tablet.27 Nevertheless, numerous editions have noted variations in line division, usually discussed as errors on the basis of presumed poetic structure (e.g., Walker 1983: 147; George 2009: 58 ad 16–18).28 The majority of epic tablets from the Old Babylonian period seems to include rulings to separate and guide lines of text, though these are not always represented in the copies and often faint on the tablets themselves.29 Several exceptions are known, including AnSt 33, 151–52; Atramḫasīs E (based on the photograph in OrNS 26: pls. 11–14); Atramḫasīs F; Etana OV-II; Gilg OB Harmal2; Gilg OB Schøyen2; Gilg OB VA+BM; MC 7: 1; MC 7: 8A; MC 7: 16B; MC 7: 20A; MC 7: 20B; HE 529; TIM 9: 49; and TIM 9: 50. Comparison of the ruled tablet Gilg OB Harmal1 and unruled Gilg OB Harmal2, both found in the same room at Šaduppûm, shows that practice could vary even within particular scriptoria. Almost all of the remaining tablets seem to show a ruling after each individual verse, with two exceptions. The bilingual exercise text MC 7: 5 includes a ruling after each line of Sumerian and following Akkadian translation, and Atramḫasīs G shows a ruling after each couplet, e.g., after i′ 2; i′ 4; i′ 6, etc. MC 7: 8A consistently indents the second line of a couplet, MC 7: 5 the Akkadian translation of the preceding Sumerian. Usually, lines are justified along the left edge of the tablet or column, with indentation marking run-overs from the previous line. The left edge is too broken in Anzû O; HE 529; TIM 9: 49; and TIM 9: 50 to describe the line-beginnings, but indented run-over can be noted in: Atramḫasīs A, with indented run-over in iv 48; Atramḫasīs C1+, with indented run-over in i 36, iii 47, iv 9, iv 12, iv 42, iv 47, vi 4, vi 11, vii 1; Atramḫasīs D, with run-over in iv 10, probably vii 51, and viii 35; AUWE 96, with indent of Sumerian in 6′; CT 15: 5–6, with indent in ii 4, ii 5, ii 6, iii 2, most likely iii 3–4, vii 3′, vii 4′, vii 7′; CUSAS 10: 2, with indented run-over in i 2, i 4, i 6, ii 4, ii 12, ii 13, iii 7′, iii 13′; CUSAS 10: 3, with indented run-over in

27 See George 2007a: 57 on their interpretation in Gilg MB Priv1 as the “serious intentions of the writer to produce a permanent copy fit for consultation …” 28 See also Worthington 2012: 91 n. 308, who notes “errors in the division into poetic lines” as “corpus-specific error types.” 29 Most of the tablets of Atramḫasīs, including Atramḫasīs A (CT 46: 1) seem to have been ruled, though the ruling lines were omitted on the copies (Lambert and Millard 1965: 3; some lines clearly visible on the photograph in Chen 2013: pl. 7); compare also W. G. Lambert’s copies of Gilg OB Harmal1, reproduced in George 2003, with J. van Dijk’s copy in TIM 9: 43.

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l. 6 and 8; Etana OV-I, with indented run-over in v 3′ and vi 5′ and vi 8′; Gilg OB Harmal1, with indented run-over in ll. 5, 9, and 17; Gilg OB IM, with indented run-over in l. 22 and possibly 35; Gilg OB Nippur, with indented run-over in l. 5; MC 7: 6, with indented run-over in lines 11–12 (indented lines numbered consecutively in the J. Nougayrol’s copy in RA 45: 182–83), 13–14, 18–19, 30– 31, 32–33, 34–35 (all column i), 53–54 (col. ii); MC 7: 12, with indented run-over in i 2′, i 3′, i 4′, ii 1′, ii 6′, ii 7′, iv 8, iv 9, v 7, v 8, v 9, v 10, v 11, v 16, vi 3, vi 6, vi 9, vi 10; MC 7: 16B, with indented run-over in l. 2, l. 7, l. 25, l. 27, l. 29. The remainder of the texts, as far as can be seen on some of the more fragmentary tablets, consistently begins lines flush with the left edge of the tablet or column.30 There is considerable variation in the arrangement of poetic lines, both short and long, with numerous examples for either the division of poetic lines into two lines of tablet or the doubling of poetic lines on one line of tablet. Where a verse is spread over more than one tablet line, as regularly, for example, in the manuscripts Gilg OB II and III, these divisions are thought to preserve smaller verse units. (George 2003: 163). Zimmern (1896: 87) had already noted the use of the “Trennkeile,” the two short, diagonal wedges (:), to separate poetic doublets arranged on a single line of text. Middle Babylonian and Middle Assyrian texts use the sign both as internal dividers, as in UM 29-16663 (= de J. Ellis 1979: 224) ii 10′ or KAR 375 iii 16, and to separate parallel Sumerian and Akkadian translations, as in AoF 17: 180–181 (passim; bilingual An-gin7 dim2-ma, Ms. bB).31 There seem, however, to be no Old Babylonian examples for the practice in epics. The tablet Atramḫasīs F groups couplets of other manuscripts into a single line, though not enough is preserved to determine how or if these were divided. We can concentrate on a few examples. George (2003: 162–5) gave a sample analysis of the poetic patterns in Old Babylonian Gilgamesh, including sections of Gilg OB II, Gilg OB III, Gilg OB Schøyen2, and Gilg OB VA+BM.32 We can take as an example his analysis of Gilg OB II, adding the line numbers on

30 These are: BM 78962; Anzû N; Atramḫasīs E; Atramḫasīs F; Atramḫasīs G; Etana OV-II; Gilg OB II; Gilg OB III; Gilg OB Harmal2; Gilg OB Ishchali; Gilg OB Schøyen1; Gilg OB Schøyen2; Gilg OB Schøyen3; Gilg OB UM; Gilg VA+BM; MC 7: 1; MC 7: 7; MC 7: 13; MC 7: 16A; MC 7: 17; MC 7: 19; MC 7: 20A; MC 7: 20B; HE 529; UET 6/2: 396; and UET 6/2: 396. 31 The practice seems to have been well-established by the second half of the second millennium, occurring in bilingual texts as diverse as epics (see also KAR 18, bilingual An-gin7 dim2ma, Ms. cC), incantation texts (LKA 75, Bīt rimki; Iraq 42: 43–44, Udug-ḫul; YOS 11: 74 rev. 6′, samānu-incantation), and apparently also in administrative texts (KAJ 254: 3, following copy; eponymate of Sîn-šēja). 32 Cf. the slightly divergent analysis of von Soden (1981: 180–83).

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the tablet: 1itbē-ma | Gilgameš || šunatam | ipaššar 2issaqqaram | ana ummīšu 3 ummī | ina šāt | mušītīja 4šamḫāku-ma | attanallak || 5ina birīt | eṭlūtim.33 George explains the bicolon in line 2 as an exception, frequently found in the introduction to direct speech. The four cola of the last poetic line are divided into two physical lines of the tablet. Walker (1983: 147) already noted the difficulties in determining a poetic structure in BM 78962. Lines 12–15, 30–35, and 46–47 form regular couplets, but in lines 16–27 and 48–50, couplets are spread over three lines of tablet, e.g., 16[u] dGirra | dapīnu | qurādu || 17īrub-ma | ittī-šunu || 19šēp abī-šu | iššiq “[So] Girra, the ferocious warrior, entered, with them kissed the feet of his father.”34 The couplet in lines 28–29 is spread out over two lines in a pattern which Walker suggests is an incorrect line division: 28adi takkalunim aja īkulū 29ilū aḫḫū-ka “Until you eat, your brothers shall not eat.”35 But though the line-break is unusual, parallelism is maintained with the following lines, 30–31, and the short line in line 30 fits the division of couplets in lines 16–27 etc. In CT 15: 5–6 line divisions usually separate single poetic lines, including indented run-over. At least five times (ii 5–6; vii 3′–4′; vii 7′), the line contains an entire couplet. In ii 5–6: 5api ú-da-at irâm dSîn ina-ma nāri / šēp-šu kīnat 6 pāši kassūsī u sulâ i-/ -na muttiš-šu eli bāʾerūtim / uštabni-ma, with a ruling line between lines 5 and 6. Without the breaks, line ii 5 could easily be ana-

33 Here and in the following: | marks cola within a line or phrase, || marks a (line) caesura, and / a line-break. 34 See also the attempt at analysis in von Soden 1984: 213–5, where individual lines are broken apart to fit the suggested pattern of accent units, as, for example, von Soden’s 10 … zíkra 11 ˹u˺šárbi || izzá(r)ru tartáma. The lines remain somewhat unclear. Numerous attestations for the phrase zikra šurbû (CAD R 49b s. v. rabû A 9c) support both von Soden’s phrasing and interpretation. As already noted by von Soden (1984: 213 n. 4), tar-ta-ma can be added to the attestations for tartāmu “mutual love,” correctly interpreted in Kouwenberg 2010: 397 as Gt infinitive of râmu “to love” (see now Streck 2012, where the passage should be added). The signs iz-za-ru seem certain, though neither von Soden’s interpretation as Gtn preterite “streute (immer wieder) aus” to zarû nor any of the other possible verbs seem to make much sense in (poorly understood) context. We might hesitantly connect the phrase with the poorly attested azāru. (AHw I 92b “Hilfe”; CAD A/2, 527a “to help, forgive”) Both the lack of shift /a/ > /e/ and the attestation of the Amorite loan ḫazīrum (Streck 2000: 96) from the same root contradict comparison with Hebr. ʿāzar (Koehler and Baumgartner 1983: 766; Donner 2007: 947), on which the dictionaries’ translations are based. Both Lambert 1959–60: 54 ad 226 and the context of the lexical entries in Hrůša 2010: 115, preceding ḫâpu = râmu II in Malku V 88, would at least point to a semantic field suitable to the passage in BM 78962 obv. 11. 35 Walker (1983: 150) adds an after a-˹di˺ to parallel the construction in l. 30 (a-di atta ˹ta˺-ša-at-tu-nim) “and on metrical grounds,” but note the spacing between i-lu and aḫ-ḫuka in l. 29.

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lyzed as a standard verse of four cola: api ú-da-at | irâm dSîn || ina-ma nāri | šēp-šu kīnat. It would be difficult to press the second (l. 6) into an acceptable rhythmic scheme. Note also the unusual break in i-/-na for the preposition. The breaks are thus unusual, but the ruling between lines 5 and 6 groups the lines into recognizable poetic units. In the preceding examples, despite the various line-divisions or breaks, either colon, line, or couplet remain coherent on the tablet line.36 There are examples where this is not the case. The tablet of “I, Sargon” (MC 7: 1) is the most obvious, in which each tablet line consists of only one or two words, beginning: 1anāku Šarru-kīn 2narām Ištar 3mūtallik 4kibrāt 5erbettīn “I am Sargon, beloved of Ištar, who roams the four quarters.” The text is certainly closest in format to a narû in the etymological sense, with short lines consisting of one or two words, divided into ruled spaces. But we can compare promiscuous line breaks in longer texts as well. George (2003: 252) notes the uneven line-breaks in OB Harmal2 and MC 7: 7, both from Šaduppûm. Much of the former remains unclear, and even where lines are relatively legible, they seem to be composed of numerous, individual cola, as in obv. 15: [š]akin kibsu šutēšir padānum-ma ˹ša na x kib˺-s[u] “the track is laid, the way is cleared, … the track.”37 The sentence begun in line 37 of OB Harmal2 continues into the following line: 37˹x˺-mi ikrubuš pānam ana melammi ištakan ˹x˺ [(x)]-šu 38ana ḫatāʾim … “… he greeted him, he turned his attention towards the radiant aura, in order to strike his …,” in which the object of ana ḫatāʾim in line 38 is placed at the end of the preceding line 37. The Sargon epic MC 7: 7, re-edited by Haul (2009: 391–415), displays similar line patterns. Line i 13′, for example, reads similarly to OB Harmal2 15: iškun kakkī-šu ittaqi nīqī-šu ilbin appa-šu “he set down his weapons, poured his libations, made obeisance.” The same phrase is repeated in line 14′, running onto line 15′: 14′ … ittaqi nīqī-šu 15′ilbin appa-šu-ma … Another break is found in the following two lines: 16′ … mimma 17′ša taqabbi-nim … “everything you say to me.” The texts OB Harmal2; MC 7: 1; MC 7: 7; and possibly AnSt 33: 151–52 thus provide examples for a prosaic scriptio continua.

36 This ignores for the moment the general question of enjambement as a stylistic feature of literary texts, explicitly rejected in von Soden 1969: 420–21. For possible counter-examples, see Groneberg 1971: 137; Walker 1983: 147 on the “obvious enjambement” in BM 78962 rev. 36– 38; and von Soden himself (1982: 183) on Gilg OB III 149–150. 37 Cf. also the recent translation of Fleming and Milstein 2010: 168. Alternate line division is suggested by Gilg V i 4–5 (following George 2003: 603): 7ašar Ḫumbaba ittallaku || šakin kibsu 8 ḫarrānātu šutēšurā-ma || ṭubbat girru “where Ḫumbaba used to walk, a track was laid; the paths were cleared, the way well-trodden.”

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We can now return to the indented run-over lines listed above. In Etana OV-I vi 5′, the indent groups an introductory speech formula: erûm pā-šu īpušam-ma ana Etana-ma / issaqqar-šu “The eagle opened his mouth to speak to him, to Etana.” The next indent (vi 8′) repeats the formula, with speaker and addressee reversed: Etana pā-šu īpušam-ma ana erîm-ma / issaqqar-šu. Gilg OB Harmal1 l. 5 divides a parallel couplet: iš–šasê-šu qaqqaram ilette / tarbuʾta-šu ittakip šamê “As with its cry it was cleaving the ground, its dust butted against the heavens.” In MC 7: 6, the indented lines have a similar function: 11tēr pagrū-k šukutta-ka / 12tillī-ka “Restore to your body your jewelry, your festive garb!”38 The one, clear exception is provided by MC 7: 16B, as, for example, in line 2: [N]arām-Sîn šarrum dannum / šar Akkade “Narām-Sîn, the mighty king, king of Akkade”; line 7: rābiṣ būrāt Irnina // Idiglat u Purattim “guardian of the sources of the Irnina, the Tigris, and the Euphrates”; and line 25: ina Ugār-Sîn bīrīt / Esabad Egula “in Ugār-Sîn, between the Esabad and Gula temples.” As in the examples for scriptio continua above, there is no clear pattern in the line breaks, nor in the structure or length of the lines of the text. It is noteworthy that MC 7: 16B in particular has been described as the “closest to the description [of the great revolt] given in the royal inscriptions” (Westenholz 1997: 238).

4.4 Spacing and Phrasing The use of indents suggests that some Old Babylonian tablets preserve verse lines or phrases visually. In several tablets, including Gilg OB II and III, tablet lines have been grouped together in various ways (von Soden 1981: 180–83; George 2003: 163–64) to reconstruct regular and rhythmic verse. The internal organization of poetic lines into individual cola, often separated by caesurae, remains the most controversial aspect of the discussion. Caesurae in particular are thought to be reflected in spacing within the line on the tablet. (Zimmern 1896: 87; Hecker 1974: 109; West 1997: 184). Later tablets such as several manuscripts of the Standard Babylonian Enūma eliš, which are thought to indicate poetic patterns with great consistency (West 1997: 176–77; Lambert 2013: 17– 34), suggest both a presumably classical pattern and variation. For example, the manuscript CT 14: 13 (Enūma eliš IV) seems to mark the caesura between the two halves of each line with a space; the Neo-Babylonian tablet IM 121284 (= Al-Rawi and Black 1994: 136–38; Enūma eliš VI) divides each line into three

38 See Guichard 2014: 81 with n. 74.

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parts, as noted by West (1997: 176); while KAR 162+ (Enūma eliš I) seems to show no consistency in spacing lines at all. There are numerous Old Babylonian tablets which follow the latter pattern, with no clear indication of poetic groupings within individual lines. This is the case with a few fragmentary texts, such as the bilingual AUWE 23: 96 or MC 7: 8A (“Sargon, the Lion”), but also with texts such as the Sargon text MC 7: 7; the Atramḫasīs texts CUSAS 10: 2 and 3; and Etana OV-I, analyzed as a poetic text by von Soden (1981: 191). He interprets the first line: rabûtum | Anunna || šāʾimū šīmtim “the great Anunna, who establish destiny …” The signs here are written close together, the analysis based on the syntax divided by the presumed caesura. In line i 5, spacing both divides the first word from the following line and the last sign within the last word: i-sí-nam (space) a-na niši i-ši-(space)mu for isinnam | ana nišī | išīmū “they established a feast for the people.” Spacing is certainly not confined to the function of word or phrase divider, but can also be inserted within words. The pattern of Etana OV-I i 5 is found again in line 5 of Anzû N, written ki-iṣ-ṣú (space) iš-ta-ḫa-aṭ na-mu-ur-(space)ra-as-sú, with considerable space after ki-iṣ-ṣú and within the word namurrassu, for kiṣṣu ištaḫaṭ namurrassu “the sanctuary cast off its frightfulness.”39 In Anzû O rev. 7′ and rev. 11′, na-ap-ša-(space)as-sú and a-(space)bi-(space)šu, respectively, are stretched to extend the words to the right edge of the column. Further examples include: with ša-ar nu-(space)n[i] and ra-(space)bi-(space)a-(space)[am] CUSAS 10: 2 ii 8 and ii 11, respectively; šikaram(kaš) iš-ti-(space)-a-am Gilg OB II 101; a-na ib-ri(space)šu Gilg OB Schøyen2 obv. 3, and … ˹il-ta˺-wi lu-(space)tum obv. 7; and emqá-am bi-ir-ki-(space)-im MC 7: 6, 53; [i-na] ĝešĝidru den.(space)líl MC 7: 19, 12. In the Zimrī-Lîm Epic, line i 19 (Guichard 2014: 13 and 34) reads: i-na aš-ri diškur i-di-nu (space) di-na-(space)aš-šu, presumably ina ašrī Addu iddinu dinaššu “in the places where Addu rendered his judgment.” In Gilg OB II 237, the tablet line contains only the name of the goddess Ninsun, written dNin-sún-(space)na, while in Atramḫasīs A ii 11 it-(space)ta-(space)-ak-(space)-šu is spaced so that the word fills the entire line. The preceding examples give the impression that spacing within lines is dependent more on aesthetic concerns than poetic. Signs of the required line fill or stretch across the available space. There are, of course, also examples in which the spacing matches a suggested poetic division. The physical arrangement of only one line in Etana OV-I might support von Soden’s analysis, as line i 4 reads: ṣi-ru a-na ni-ši (space) i-lu I-gi4-gu, analyzed as ṣīrū | ana nišī ||

39 Following Aster 2012: 107 on the semantics of namurratu in the epic and the connection with puluḫtu.

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ilū | Igigū “the Igigū were exalted for the people.” In Anzû N obv. 1–2, spacing seems to mark a caesura in the lines: 1den.líl-lu-tam i-te-ki-im (space) na-du-ú pa-ar-ṣú 2a-bu-um ma-li-ik-šu-nu šu-ḫa-ru-˹ur˺ den.líl for 1Enlilūtam ītekim || nadû parṣū 2abum mālik-šunu || šuḫarrur Enlil “he had robbed the Enlil-ship, the rites were cast aside / the father, their counselor Enlil, was struck dumb.” No tablet, however, seems to mark proposed poetic patterns in the same way consistently or consecutively over more than a few lines. There is, however, one case in which phrasing seems to be marked more regularly: in the formula introducing speech. Several tablets, including Etana OV-I vi 49 and Gilg OB Schøyen2 68, include the entire formula in a single line: erûm pā-šu īpušam-ma ana Etana-ma / issaqqar-šu Etana OV-I vi 49, without spacing, but with indented run-over.40 More usual is a space after issaqqaram, though some tablets may also add space before īpušam(-ma): 7dAnum (space) pā-šu (space) īpušam 8issaqqaram (space) ana (space) ilī mārī-šu Anzû N obv. 7–8; 29dEnlil pā-šu (space) īpušam-ma 8ana šukkallim Nuska (space) issaqqar Atramḫasīs A ii 29–30;41 issaqqar (space) ana ummī-šu; l. 16: issaqqar (space) ana Gilgameš Gilg OB II 2.42 The regularity of the spacing pattern across numerous texts and manuscripts suggests that the phrasing of the formula was similarly understood. A wider comparison of spacing patterns in Old Babylonian literature may reveal subtler patterns elsewhere. For now, however, it seems that spacing is more often related to aesthetic concerns in justifying verse across tablet lines or to the phrasing or syntax rather than a reflection of poetic form. The discussion of poetic structures has been most controversial with respect to subdivisions of individual lines or verses. While many tablets seem to show consistency in arranging lines or couplets, it is in these subdivisions that the tablets too show the greatest amount of variation and instability.

40 Other examples include Gilg OB Schøyen2 68: Enkidu [p]ā-šu īpušam-m[a i]ssaqqaram-ma [an]a Gilgameš, running over the edge of the column; MC 7: 12 v 12–13: 12Narām-Sîn pā-šu īpušam-ma 13issaqqaram-ma šukkališ-šu; and MC 7: 13, 19, Err[a pā-šu īpuša]m-ma ana NarāmSîn šarra-šu issaqqar, without spacing. 41 See also 35Nuska pā-šu īpušam-ma 36issaqqar (space) ana qurādi (space) Enlil Atramḫasīs A ii 35–36, with similar spacing in ii 50; vii 35–36 and vii 39–40, both fragmentary; and 40 Atramḫasīs pā-šu īpušam-ma 41[i]ssaqqar (space) ana šībū[ti] Atramḫasīs C1+ i 40–41. 42 See also similar spacing in l. 52; l. 233; and issaqqar (space) ana ummī-šu Gilg OB II 2; issaqqar (space) ana Gilgameš Gilg OB II 16, with similar spacing in l. 52; l. 233; and Gilg OB III 84; 105; 139; Gilg OB VA+BM i 6′.

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5 Variation In the preceding sections, we have argued that Old Babylonian epics, broadly understood, were written in a range of poetic forms and styles, some approaching continuous prose. These variations are directly reflected in the format, layout, and line-divisions of the tablets. The consistency in spacing in the introductory speech formula across texts at least suggests a similar understanding of phrasing, though it is unclear whether or how this phrasing should be connected with a more abstract poetic form. While direct duplicates or parallels for passages of Old Babylonian epics are rare, the few attested examples provide additional test-cases for the types of variation or persistence in poetic forms and formats. In the final section, we will focus on two examples: a comparison of MC 7: 6 and MC 7: 7, both on the Great Revolt against Narām-Sîn, and a comparison of several passages from Atramḫasīs. While the Šaduppûm text MC 7: 7 was shown to have a greater variation in line-breaks, no regular spacing between signs or phrases, and an inconsistent poetic structure, MC 7: 6 seems to have a relatively fixed poetic form. Nevertheless, both texts seem to share a common narrative structure and draw on many of the same motifs, up to the point of common wording in individual passages (Haul 2009: 237–251)43: MC 7: 7 iii

MC 7: 6

13′

65

14′

15′ 16′

17′

ana r tamḫārim šaknam? āl nakrim ana tišî-šu awīlam alpam būlam u immeram ikmi inūmī-šu-ma Šimurram i[k]mi maddat Akkade ša ištī-šu it[ru?] Akkade [x (x)] ˹x˺-lu-mi ālam

[…] ekallim?

šaknū dūru ša nakrī ana 9tišî-šunu ālam b[ūl]am alpam u immeram 67 mi[tḫar]iš ik[mi] 68 in[a ūmī-šu]-ma Šimurr[am ikmi] 69 [man]dat Akkade ša ištī-šu 70 u mandat Akkade lītat ˹itru?˺ 71 ālam uttēr ana tīli u karmi 72 ˹50˺ bērê kīdi ekallim issu[ḫ] 66

Despite the line-breaks, both passages share a common language in individual phrases. Both, for example, use the phrase inūmī-šu/ina ūmī-šu-ma “in those days,” borrowed from royal inscriptions (Haul 2009: 249), and the series awīlam/ālam, būlam, alpam u immeram “man/the city, beasts, cattle, and sheep.” The immediate difference is, of course, the structure of individual

43 Readings generally follow the re-edition of the texts in Haul 2009: 355–89 (MC 7: 6) and 391–415 (MC 7: 7).

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lines. Even were we to assume that the poetic line is intended but unmarked in MC 7: 7 iii, taking, for example, ana tišî-šu “nine times” as a unit with the preceding line, we would still be faced with the addition of a whole other sense unit in the adverbial phrase ana šār tamḫārim. The case is similar at the end of MC 7: 7 iii 16′, though no plausible restoration suggests itself. As Haul (2009: 250) suggests, it is likely that both texts draw on common sources. Both tablets reflect a different incorporation of these sources in the composition, resulting in widely divergent poetic structures in the text. The epic of Atramḫasīs is remarkable in Akkadian literature for its considerable stability in form and content from the Old Babylonian to at least the Achaemenid period, represented in the tablets of the Sippar library. It is also one of the few works continuously attested during this span, spreading as far as Ugarit and Ḫattuša during the Late Bronze Age, and leaving a lasting mark on the literatures of the Ancient Near East.44 Most relevant for our discussion, von Soden (1984: 230), was able to note a basic identity of poetic form between the Old Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian tablets of Atramḫasīs, despite the identification among the latter of a separate version. This general continuity, however, should be read against the existence of several different versions and recensions. Variations among the Sippar tablets themselves have long been recognized (Lambert and Millard 1969: 29–39), though the publication of the two tablets CUSAS 10: 2 and 3 from the early Old Babylonian period gave solid evidence for earlier predecessors to the version of Ipiq-Aja. Though most tablets consistently arrange the text into couplets, the text of Atramḫasīs F includes both poetic lines of a couplet in one, long tablet line. As noted above, Atramḫasīs G, written on a poorly preserved twocolumn tablet, divides the lines according to couplet, followed by a dividingline. Though the text on the obverse runs more or less parallel to the text of Ipiq-Aja, the fragmentary reverse can so far not be reconciled with any known version. While many of the differences among the Sippar tablets are orthographic, differences between the Sippar tablets and other Old Babylonian tablets are more significant. The right-hand column of HE 529 provides a duplicate to Atramḫasīs E iii 9′. After four lines, however, HE 529 diverges, omitting lines iii 14′–19′ (i 200–205 of the composite text), completely eliminating a speech of Enki in response to the mother goddess (Lambert 1991: 412). The tablet CUSAS 10: 2, with partial parallels with Atramḫasīs B and D (George 2009: 18–19), omits the couplets of Atramḫasīs D vii 42–43, but also

44 See the most recent overviews in Shehata 2001; Chen 2013; and Finkel 2014.

272

Christian W. Hess

includes more major variants. The beginning of the passage recounts mankind’s prosperity before the deluge, parallel to Atramḫasīs D vi 9′–16′: CUSAS 10, 2 obv.

Atramḫasīs D vi

1

9′

2

10′

[ip]pariš Anum ina šamāʾī [m]īlum ina nagbim ukattim ṣ[erra r]apša 3 šammī imlû ugārū 4 bub[ū]tiš nišī tiwītiš mātim 5 ana kanî aklam tenēšētum 6 īteppirni nuḫuš nišī Asananna 7 ilum ītašuš wašābam 8 ana puḫri ša ilī 9 ṣīḫtum īkul-šu

[(fragmentary)] [ušazni]n Adad zunnī-šu 11′ [šammū] imlû ugāra 12′ [u erp]ētum ukallalā ˹x x x˺ 13′ [ik]kalānim tenēšē[t]u! 14′ [īt]eppirānim nuḫuš nišī Nisaba 15′ [ilu]-ma ītašuš ašābam 16′ [an]a puḫri ša ilī ṣīḫtum īkul-šu

The text of CUSAS 10: 2 seems to be at least partly corrupt. George (2009: 23) interprets a-na ka-ni-i in obv. 5 and i-te-pi-ir-ni in obv. 6 as errors for ikkalānim and īteppirāni(m), respectively, both of which make better sense in the line. The first two lines of CUSAS 10: 2 diverge from Atramḫasīs vi 9′-10′, though “the flood from the deep covered the broad steppe” (l. 2) corresponds in sense to “Adad sent down his rain” (Atramḫasīs D vi 10′). Subject and object are reversed for imlû in CUSAS 10: 2 obv. 3, and the second half of the couplet again diverges. The next four lines (CUSAS 10: 2 obv. 5–9) correspond again, with the exception of the change of Nisaba to Asananna and the split of the second half of the couplet (Atramḫasīs D vi 16′) onto two lines. Both the fragment HE 529 and CUSAS 10: 2 exhibit significant variants from the Sippar tablets. On the whole, however, the poetic structure of the parallel passages is preserved. The omission of whole sections in couplets in HE 529, and not individual lines, leaves the structure of the preceding and following couplets intact as well. In the CUSAS 10: 2, the variations affect lines or individual words within couplets. But, again, the poetic structure of the passage remains intact. Both tablets also seem to preserve or reflect line or couplet divisions in their form and layout. The material reflection of poetics on the tablets thus suggests that poetic form played a significant role in the reception of the text.

6 Conclusions The paper began with an overview of several ongoing discussions on the history of Akkadian literature: the problem of defining and classifying genres and

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genre-families, the development of the genres narû and epic, and the convergence of the two in the course of the second millennium. Each of these developments takes place within a broader social and cultural context. Considering the limited information on the archeological or scribal context of Akkadian epic, it becomes a natural step to consider the material features of the tablets themselves. The genre-family of epic in the Old Babylonian period is generally recognized as a heterogeneous group, and form, format, and layout of individual tablets serve as a direct reflection of this diversity, particularly in the way poetic forms are recorded or blurred. Though Gilgamesh and the Cuthean Legend have so far dominated the discussion, the comparison of other texts can situate developments of both within broader literary practices of intertextuality. The overview of the material features of the tablets shows that neither poetic form nor meaning are inherent to a work or theme or invariable. As the Assyriological discussion has shifted focus ever further from the reconstruction of Urtexts to the social contexts of transmission, these material features of tablets serve as the best indicator of changes within the reception history of Mesopotamian literature. As with the case of Gilg OB Harmal1 and Gilg OB Harmal2, the reflection of poetic form may even vary within a single tablet collection. But the case of Atramḫasīs shows that, when common poetic forms are retained, even across versions, they may serve as important guides for variations among texts. The general assertion that the Late Babylonian Sippar tablets of Atramḫasīs, despite several gaps in the readings of the lines, are direct descendants of Ipiq-Aja may offer a late reflection for the persistence of poetic practice. Conversely, the greater variation of poetic lines and divisions often noted for copies of Akkadian literature in the west during the Late Bronze Age (e.g., George 2003: 162), might be interpreted as a reflection of textual transmission divorced from poetic form. Both topics, however, require further investigation.

Sb 9470

Sb 14683 Ashmolean 1932.382 BM 78941 + 78943

MLC 1889

BM 78942 + 78971 + 80385 + MAH 16064 Ni 2552 + 2560 + 2564 BM 92608

BM 17596a

BM 78257

HE 529

VAT 21579

Anzû N

Anzû O Ash. 1932.382

Atramḫasīs B

Atramḫasīs C1 + C2

Atramḫasīs F

Atramḫasīs G

Atramḫasīs H

AUWE 23: 96

Atramḫasīs E

Atramḫasīs D

Atramḫasīs A

Mus.-Nr.

Siglum

Uruk (Pe XVI-4/5)

–

Sippar

Sippar

Sippar

Sippar?

Sippar

Sippar?

Sippar

Susa Kish?

Susa

Provenience

two+-column flake, unruled(?) two-column, rulings according to couplet 10.5 × 5.0, one-column, ruled? one-column, ruled

four-column, decimal marks; ruled(?) three-column, unruled

four-column, ruled; decimal marks

four-column

four-column, ruled; decimal marks

one-column, ruled one-column, unruled

13.9 × 7.8, one-column, ruled; decimal marks

Format

Cavigneaux 1996: Pl. 7 no. 96.

Groneberg 1991: 409

CT 44: 20

Lambert and Millard 1969: Pls. 1–6 CT 6: 5; CT 46: 4; OrNS 26: Pl. 11–14 CT 46: 2

BRM 4: 1; YOSR 5/3 pl. VII CT 46: 3 + RA 28: 92–93

CT 46: 1

Dalley 2001: 165

RA 35: 21–22; Vogelzang 1988: 92–93.; AndréSalvini 2008: 318; Marzahn and Schauerte 2008: 342.

Copy/Photo

Appendix: Overview of Old Babylonian Epic Tablets and Formats

Traces of line-rulings faint Bilingual, Enmerkar and Ensuḫkešdaʾana

Faint lines visible on photograph of MAH 16064

According to Lambert and Millard 1965: 3, lines omitted from copy

Notes

274 Christian W. Hess

BM 22714b BM 78962 BM 134537a–i + BM 134538 BM 87521 MS 5108

MS 2950

MLC 1363

Sb 9469

CBS 7771

YBC 2178 IM 52615

IM 52750

IM 21180x

A 22007 IM 58451

MS 2652/2

BM 22714b BM 78962 BM 134537a-i+

CUSAS 10: 3

Etana OV-I

Etana OV-II

Gilg OB II

Gilg OB III Gilg OB Harmal1

Gilg OB Harmal2

Gilg OB IM

Gilg OB Ishchali Gilg OB Nippur

Gilg OB Schøyen1

CT 15: 5–6 CUSAS 10: 2

Mus.-Nr.

Siglum

Nērebtum Nippur (TA 205 XI2, House F) Unknown

Larsa? Šaduppûm (HL 3– 286 R 211 L. II) Šaduppûm (HL 3– 295 R 211 L. II)

Larsa?

Susa

Larsa?

Larsa?

– Larsa?

– Sippar? Nineveh

Provenience

3.4 × 7.0 × 2.5, onecolumn, ruled

one-column, ruled one-column, ruled

18.5 × 16.5 × 2.4, threecolumn, ruled three-column, ruled 5.5 × 7.7 × 2.5, onecolumn, ruled, landscape 20 × 14.3, one-column, unruled one-column, ruled

three-column, ruled 12.5 × 11.5 × 4.0, twocolumn, ruled 6.2 × 5.2 × 2.5, onecolumn, ruled 7.3 × 10.5, threecolumn?, ruled 11.7 × 7.3, one-column, unruled

two-column, unruled? one-column, unruled multi-column?, ruled

Format

Etana

Atramḫasīs

Sîn and Išum Atramḫasīs

Atramḫasīs Girra and Elamatum

Notes

CUSAS 10: 4

Line-rulings on obv., faint on rev.

Line-rulings given on TIM 9: 43

RA 24: 106; André-Salvini Etana 2008: 320; Marzahn and Schauerte 2008: 274 no. 192.

BRM 4: 2

CT 15: 5–6

Lambert 1991: 414 Walker 1983: 151–52 Dalley 2001: 163

Copy/Photo

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MS 3025

MS 3263/1–7, 11

UM 29-13-570

VAT 4105 + BM 96974 MLC 641

VAT 17166

AO 6702

IM 52684A+52684B +52305

Gilg OB Schøyen2

Gilg OB Schøyen3

Gilg OB UM

Gilg OB VA+BM

MC 7: 5

MC 7: 6

MC 7: 7

MC 7: 1

Mus.-Nr.

Siglum

Šaduppûm (HL 3–88 R. 180 L. II conf. period (IM 52305); HL 3– 90 R 180 L. II (IM 52684A+)

“southern”

Babylon

Unknown

Sippar?

Nippur?

Larsa?

Unknown

Provenience

13,0 × 19,0, two-column, ruled

5.0 × 9.0 × 3.0, onecolumn landscape, ruling after every line Sumerian/Akkadian 16.5 × 12.5, two-column, ruled

20.3 × 7.5 × 3.2, one column, unruled (unclear, numerous fragments), unruled 5,5 × 4,8, three-column?, ruled 7.9/12 × 15 × 3.9/9, twocolumn, unruled one-column, unruled

Format

RA 45: 182–83; Westenholz 1997: 382– 83 TIM 9: 48

André-Salvini 2008: 353 no. 322B BRM 4: 4; Westenholz 1997: 379 VS 24: 75; Westenholz 1997: 382

CUSAS 10: 6

CUSAS 10: 5

Copy/Photo

Haul 2009: 391–415

Sargon the Conqueror; Haul 2009: 355–389

Bilingual; Sargon-Legend

“I, Sargon”

Notes

276 Christian W. Hess

Mus.-Nr.

UM 29-13-688

BM 139965

BM 120003

A 1252 + M 8696

MAH 10829

BM 79987

VAT 7832a

MLC 1364

BM 17215

AO 10730 + AO 10752 IM 51345

Siglum

MC 7: 8A

MC 7: 12

MC 7: 13

MC 7: 16A

MC 7: 16B

MC 7: 17

MC 7: 19

MC 7: 20A

MC 7: 20B

PRAK II C 114 + PRAK II C 136 TIM 9: 49 Šaduppûm HL 2-485 R 161 L II (Sq. 7G)

Kish

Sippar?

Sippar?

“southern”

Sippar?

Unknown

Mari

(“southern”)

(“southern”)

Nippur

Provenience

4.0 × 5.9 × 2.4, originally three-column+?, unruled 6,1 × 3,6 + 5,23 × 3,6, ruled, one-column(?) 4.4 × 7 × 2.5, one-column, unruled, landscape

6.5 × 6.5 × 3.0 (ca. 2/5 preserved) one-column, ruled three-column, unruled

three-column+, ruled

one-column, unruled

one-column, ruled

one-column, ruled

8.3 × 4.3 × 3.2, fourcolumn? (one preserved), ruled three-column, ruled

Format

JCS 11: 84–85; Westenholz 1997: 404 JCS 33: 195

VS 17: 42; Westenholz 1997: 403

RA 70: 116–17

RA 70: 109–10

AfO 13: pls. 1–2 after p. 48; Westenholz 1997: 389 BiOr 30: 359–60; Westenholz 1997: 390– 91 Westenholz 1997: 402

JCS 31: 229 No. 9; Westenholz 1997: 385

Copy/Photo

Cf. Wasserman 2003: 204 No. 128.

Cuthean Legend

Cuthean Legend

Great Revolt against Narām-Sîn; MC 7: 16A; Haul 2009: 319-37. Great Revolt against Narām-Sîn; Gula-AN and the 17 Kings against Narām-Sîn; “The Tenth Battle”

Erra and Narām-Sîn; MC 7: 13

Narām-Sîn and the Lord of Apišal; MC 7: 12

Sargon, the Lion

Notes

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277

Mus.-Nr.

IM 52578c

[U. 16889]

[U. 16890]

A. 3152 + M. 5665

Siglum

TIM 9: 50

UET 6/2: 395

UET 6/2: 396

Zimrī-Lîm Epic

Format

Šaduppûm 6 × 10 × 2.7, two(HL 3-274 R 212 L. column+, unruled II near entrance) Ur 14.6 × 8.5 × 3.5, onecolumn, ruled Ur 8.6 × 11.7 × 3.2, onecolumn landscape, ruled Mari 24.0 × 12.5, two-column, ruled

Provenience

Guichard 2014: 142–160

Ludwig 2009: 245

Ludwig 2009: 243

Copy/Photo

Guichard 2014

Ludwig 2009: 244–45

Ludwig 2009: 243–44

Notes

278 Christian W. Hess

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Noegel, Scott B. 2005. Mesopotamian Epic. Pp. 234–45 in A Companion to Ancient Epic, ed. John Miles Foley. Oxford: Blackwell. Pongratz-Leisten, B. 1999. “Öffne den Tafelbehälter und lies …”: Neue Ansätze zum Verständnis des Literaturkonzeptes in Mesopotamien. WO 30: 67–90. Pongratz-Leisten, B. 2001. Überlegungen zum Epos in Mesopotamien am Beispiel der KuthaLegende. Pp. 12–41 in Von Göttern und Menschen Erzählen: Formkonstanzen und Funktionswandel moderner Epik, ed. Jörg Rücke. PaWB 4. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Pruzsinszky, Regine. 2009. Mesopotamian Chronology of the 2 nd Millennium B.C.: An Introduction to the Textual Evidence and Related Chronological Issues. Denkschriften der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 56. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Reiner, Erica. 1978. Die akkadische Literatur. Pp. 151–210 in Altorientalische Literaturen, ed. W. Röllig. Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft 1. Wiesbaden: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion. Sallaberger, Walther. 2008. Das Gilgamesch-Epos: Mythos, Werk und Tradition. München: C. H. Beck. Saporetti, Claudio. 1990. Etana. “Prisma” 124. Palermo: Sellerio. Sassmannshausen, Leonhard. 2008. Babylonische Schriftkultur des 2. Jahrtausends v. Chr. in den Nachbarländern und im östlichen Mittelmeerraum. AuOr 26: 263–93. Shehata, Dahlia. 2001. Annotierte Bibliographie zum altbabylonischen Atramḫasīs-Mythos Inūma ilū awīlum. GAAL 3. Göttingen: Seminar für Keilschriftforschung. Shehata, Dahlia. 2009. Musiker und ihr vokales Repertoire: Untersuchungen zu Inhalt und Organisation von Musikerberufen und Liedgattungen in altbabylonischer Zeit. GBAO 3. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen. Shehata, Dahlia. 2010. Selbstbewusste Dichter der Hammurabi-Dynastie. Pp. 197–224 in Von Göttern und Menschen: Beiträge zu Literatur und Geschichte des Alten Orients. Festschrift für Brigitte Groneberg, ed. D. Shehata et al. CM 41. Leiden: Brill. Smith, J. Z. 2004. A Twice-Told Tale: The History of the History of Religions’ History. Pp. 362– 74 in Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. von Soden, Wolfram. 1953. Das Problem der zeitlichen Einordnung akkadischer Literaturwerke. MDOG 85: 14–26. von Soden, Wolfram. 1969. Als die Götter (auch noch) Mensch waren. Einige Grundgedanken des altbabylonischen Atramḫasīs-Mythus. OrNS 38: 415–32. von Soden, Wolfram. 1978. Die erste Tafel des altbabylonischen Atramḫasīs-Mythus: “Haupttext” und Parallelversionen. ZA 68 (1978): 50–94. von Soden, Wolfram. 1981. Untersuchungen zur babylonischen Metrik, Teil 1. ZA 71: 161–204. von Soden, Wolfram. 1984. Untersuchungen zur babylonischen Metrik, Teil 2. ZA 72: 213–34. Sommerfeld, Walter. 1984. Die mittelbabylonische Grenzsteinurkunde IM 5527. UF 16: 299– 306. Steel, Louise. 2013. Materiality and Consumption in the Bronze Age Mediterranean. New York: Routledge. Stein, Peter. 2000. Die mittel- und neubabylonischen Königsinschriften bis zum Ende der Assyrerherrschaft: Grammatische Untersuchungen. JBVO 3. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Streck, Michael P. 1999. Die Bildersprache der akkadischen Epik. AOAT 264. Münster: UgaritVerlag. Streck, Michael P. 2000. Das amurritische Onomastikon der altbabylonischen Zeit, Band 1: Die Amurriter, Die onomastische Forschung, Orthographie und Phonologie, Nominalmorphologie. AOAT 271/1. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag.

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Streck, Michael P. 2007. Der Parallelismus Membrorum in den altbabylonischen Hymnen. Pp. 167–81 in Parallelismus Membrorum, ed. Andreas Wagner. OBO 224. Fribourg: Academic Press. Streck, Michael P. 2012. tartāmū “mutual love,” the Noun Pattern taPtaRS in Akkadian and the Classification of Eblaite. Pp. 353–58 in Altorientalische Studien zu Ehren von Pascal Attinger: mu-ni u4 ul-li2-a-aš ĝa2-de3, ed. Catherine Mittermayer and Sabine Ecklin. OBO 256. Fribourg: Academic Press. Taylor, Jonathan. 2011. Tablets as Artefacts, Scribes as Artisans. Pp. 5–31 in The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture, ed. Karen Radner and Eleanor Robson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tinney, Steve. 1996. The Nippur Lament: Royal Rhetoric and Divine Legitimation in the Reign of Išme-Dagan of Isin (1953–1935 B.C.). Occasional Publications of the Samuel Noah Kramer Fund 16. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum. Tinney, Steve. 1999. On the Curricular Setting of Sumerian Literature. Iraq 61: 159–72. Tinney, Steve. 2011. Tablets of Schools and Scholars: A Portrait of the Old Babylonian Corpus. Pp. 577–96 in The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture, ed. Karen Radner and Eleanor Robson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tropper, Josef. 2012. Alternierende Metrik in der akkadischen Poesie. Pp. 433–42 in Language and Nature: Papers Presented to John Huehnergard on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday, ed. Rebecca Hasselbach and Naʿama Pat-El. SAOC 67. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. van Koppen, Frans. 2011. The Scribe of the Flood Story and His Circle. Pp. 140–66 in The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture, ed. Karen Radner and Eleanor Robson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Veldhuis, N. 2004. Religion, Literature, and Scholarship: The Sumerian Composition Nanše and the Birds. With a Catalogue of Sumerian Bird Names. CM 22. Leiden: Brill. Walker, Christopher. 1983. The Myth of Girra and Elamatum. AnSt 33: 145–152. Wasserman, Nathan. 1992. CT 21, 40–42: A Bilingual Report of an Oracle with a Royal Hymn of Hammurabi. RA 86: 1–18. Wasserman, Nathan. 2003. Style and Form in Old-Babylonian Literary Texts. CM 27. Leiden: Brill. Wasserman, Nathan and Uri Gabbay. 2005. Literatures in Contact: The Balaĝ úru àm-ma-ir-rabi and its Akkadian Translation UET 6/2, 403. JCS 57: 69–84. West, M. L. 1982. Greek Metre. Oxford: Clarendon Press. West, M. L. 1997. Akkadian Poetry: Metre and Performance. Iraq 59: 175–87. Westenholz, Joan Goodnick. 1992. Oral Traditions and Written Texts in the Cycle of Akkade. Pp. 123–54 in Mesopotamian Epic Literature: Oral or Aural?, ed. Marianna E. Vogelzang and Herman L. J. Vanstiphout. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press. Westenholz, Joan Goodnick. 1997. Legends of the Kings of Akkade. MC 7. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Wilcke, Claus. 1977. Die Anfänge der akkadischen Epen. ZA 67: 153–216. Wilcke, Claus. 1999. Weltuntergang als Anfang: Theologische, anthropologische, politischhistorische und ästhetische Ebenen der Interpretation der Sintflutgeschichte im babylonischen Atramhasis-Epos. Pp. 63–112 in Weltende: Beiträge zur Kultur- und Religionswissenschaft, ed. A. Jones. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Worthington, Martin. 2012. The Principles of Akkadian Textual Criticism. Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records 1. Berlin: de Gruyter. Zimmern, Heinrich. 1893. Ein vorläufiges Wort über babylonische Metrik. ZA 8: 121–24.

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Zimmern, Heinrich. 1895. Weiteres zur babylonischen Metrik. ZA 10: 1–16. Zimmern, Heinrich. 1896. Zu den neuesten Arbeiten über babylonische Metrik. ZA 11: 86–88. Zimmern, Heinrich. 1897. Ueber Rhythmus im Babylonischen. ZA 12: 382–92.

Jacob Lauinger, The Johns Hopkins University*

11 Neo-Assyrian Scribes, “Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty,” and the Dynamics of Textual Mass Production 1 Introduction The aim of this paper is to study the method by which the various exemplars of the text commonly called “Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty” (SAA 2: 6; hereafter abbreviated as EST) were produced. Specifically, I consider how different aspects of variation between exemplars can help us understand the role that copying and/or dictation played in the process of textual transmission.1 EST provides a fascinating case study in the transmission of cuneiform texts for two reasons: First, the various tablets were considered to be Tablets of Destinies by their ancient producers and users (see below), and so the tablets are at one and the same time texts and religious objects, perhaps closer akin to icons (Steymans 2003: 93, Radner 2006: 373); and second, an enormous number of tablets inscribed with the text of EST was produced within a relatively brief period of time (for the estimate of a minimum of 110 tablets, or over 73,000 lines of text, in perhaps a month’s time, see below), and so EST offers an example of textual mass production that has no parallel in the cuneiform world to my knowledge.

* I am extremely grateful to all the participants of the symposium – and especially Christian Hess – for their comments on the original version of this article. Since that version was written, an important and germane article, Fales 2012 [2013], has appeared, in which is discussed the ramifications of the new Tayinat exemplar of “Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty” for our understanding of not just “Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty” but also adê’s in the Neo-Assyrian period more generally. I have tried to incorporate the valuable conclusions and insights reached by Fales into the present article wherever possible. Still more recently, another article with a similar focus, Watanabe 2014, has appeared. Unfortunately, I have been able to incorporate Watanabe’s equally important conclusions in only a cursory way. 1 For the specific nuances of terms used in this sentence such as “variation,” “exemplar,” “production,” etc., see the section Terminology, below.

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2 Background EST and similar Neo-Assyrian texts record something designated in the NeoAssyrian period with the Akkadian word adê.2 Although adê-texts are frequently described as “treaties” or “loyalty oaths” in the secondary literature, these designations do not adequately capture the texts’ character. The designation “treaty” improperly restricts the texts to the realm of international relations, when in practice an adê was imposed not just on client kings but also on members of the royal family, the palace administration, and the populace of Assyrian cities, among others. The designation “loyalty oath” focuses too narrowly one important component of the adê, the oath that was sworn during the establishment of the adê, and overlooks the larger context of the oath. More accurately, the adê seems to have been an obligatory behavior that was imposed on an individual or group of individuals and transformed into a destiny by projecting it into the divine realm (Lauinger 2013, and cf. Fales 2012: 153 on the text of the adê as “a truly ‘theophorous’ substance,” the result of “a transformation from a legal tool [the loyalty oath] to a legal subject [the supernatural Loyalty Oath]”. We know of adê’s from a variety of sources, such as royal inscriptions, letters, and oracle queries. We are also fortunate to have the texts of actual adê’s, such as Esarhaddon’s adê with Baal, king of Tyre (SAA 2: 5), which regulates commercial matters, Assurbanipal’s adê with the Qedar tribe of Arabs (SAA 2: 10), which requires hostility towards a former leader of the tribe who had rebelled, or EST, which demands support for the succession of Esarhaddon’s heir Assurbanipal to the throne.3 The longest of the extant adê texts (approximately 670 lines), EST is also the best preserved, and there is reason to think that its structure is fairly representative: − a preamble naming the parties with whom the adê is made; − a list of the gods before whom it is made; − a series of stipulations that delineate the obligatory behavior; − a series of curses should the tablet inscribed with the adê be destroyed, damaged, or rendered inaccessible; − the wording of an oath taken by the person or persons on whom the adê was imposed;

2 For a brief discussion of proposed Aramaic and Akkadian etymologies for adê, see Lauinger 2013: 100, citing previous literature. 3 The texts are collected in SAA 2 and now WVDOG 121 No. 66–71.

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another series of curses should the stipulations be broken that were probably accompanied by ritual actions; a final colophon with date.4

The extant tablets inscribed with the adê-texts fall into two categories: A tablet may be a ṭuppi adê (“adê-tablet”), the ancient term used for the actual inscribed object that was produced for the occasion of the adê’s establishment and was ritually transformed into a Tablet of Destinies; or it may be a chancellery copy of ṭuppi adê (Radner 2006: 373). We have but a single exemplar of each adê-text known from a chancellery copy. For the most part, these tablets were found at Nineveh, although one tablet from Assur (SAA 2: 3) has also been identified by Frahm (2009: 133) as an abridged version or extract of a longer adê-text. Like this Assur text, the chancellery copies from Nineveh also comprise small single column tablets that are extracts (e.g., SAA 2: 12, an adê of Sin-šarru-iškun) and drafts (e.g., SAA 2: 8, the so-called Zakutu treaty, see Lauinger 2013: 108 n. 35) of longer adê-texts as well larger multi-columned tablets that probably included the complete adê-texts when whole (e.g., SAA 2: 2, Aššur-nerari V’s adê with Matiʾilu of Arpad or SAA 2: 5, Esarhaddon’s adê with Baal of Tyre). The tablets with complete adê-texts may have been written and stored for consultation.5 The extracts and drafts may have been made during the process of composing new adê-texts.6 However, the focus of this paper is on the other type of tablet inscribed with an adê-text, the adê-tablets (ṭuppi adê). In contrast to the situation with the chancellery copies, where we have but a single exemplar for multiple adêtexts, we have probably 11 adê-tablets, and all are exemplars of a single adêtext, EST. These tablets are distinguished by their large size (approximately 45 × 30 cm), their unusual rotation on the vertical axis, and the fact that they

4 Fales (2012: 139) considers the structure of EST to be generally the same as outlined here, although he seems to understand the two groups of curses to be occasioned by the same behavior (“Next comes a series of curses befalling any violation of the adê itself, in two vast groupings [§ 37–56; 58–106], separated by the final vow of loyalty [§ 57]”). He goes on (p. 139– 42) to provide a useful précis and analysis of the stipulations found in § 4–36. 5 The adê with Baal of Tyre ends with a descriptive label that specifies the adê has been concluded, the name of the contracting party, and perhaps the time or place of its conclusion: “Tablet of an adê-oath that was established. Made by (lit. that of) Baal, the Ty[rian]. In/when […]” (ṭup-pi a-d[e]-e kun-nu šá mba-a-lu kurṣu[r-ra-a-a] ina […], SAA 2: 5 iv 20′–21′). On the translation, see Lauinger 2013: 108 n. 34. 6 For the suggestion that the adê fragments KAL 3 67 and 68 may have served as Vorlagen for EST, see Frahm 2009: 132–33.

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were sealed by the divine seals of the god Aššur (Watanabe 1985; Watanabe 1988; Radner 2006: 367). They were displayed in temples and probably utilized as part of annual akītu-ceremonies to renew the destinies inscribed upon them (Lauinger 2013, and cf. Assmann 2006: 10 who sees SAA 9: 3 iii 2–15 as evidence that “a memory ritual was introduced that had to be repeated periodically in order to refresh their memories”). Nine exemplars of EST were found in the Nabu temple at Nimrud by Max Mallowan in 1955 (see Wiseman 1958 for the editio princeps; Watanabe 1987 for a score and extensive commentary; and SAA 2: 6 for the most recent edition). These tablets were found broken into over 300 fragments; subsequent joins have reduced this number to 92. But significantly, while one can conclude that these 92 fragments originally comprised 9 different tablets – because there are generally not more than 9 instances of a given line of text preserved among these fragments – one cannot yet isolate which fragments belonged to which manuscripts (I will return to this important point later in the paper). In these tablets, independent “city lords” from Assyria’s eastern periphery conventionally described as “Media” have the adê imposed on them and their cities. Three fragments of the adê were also found during Walter Andrae’s excavations at Aššur in the early 20th century (Weidner 1939–1941; Frahm 2009 Nos. 70–71), but owing to the absence of archaeological records and the fragments’ small size it is unclear where they were found, whether these fragments derive from one or more adê-tablets, and on whom the adê was imposed. Finally, in 2009, the Tayinat Archaeological Project discovered a tablet in an unidentified temple at the Neo-Assyrian provincial capital of Kullania, modern Tell Tayinat (Lauinger 2012). In this tablet, the adê is imposed on the provincial governor of Kullania, his administration, and the province’s populace. As mentioned above, the succession of Esarhaddon’s younger son Assurbanipal to the throne is EST’s primary concern. Esarhaddon probably made the decision to appoint Assurbanipal to be the crown prince of Assyria and Assurbanipal’s older brother, Šamaš-šumu-ukin, to be the crown prince of Babylonia sometime late in his eighth regnal year. The decision may have been made under pressure from the dowager queen Zakutu following the death of Esarhaddon’s wife that same year (Wiseman 1958: 6); or in response to the disastrous Egyptian campaign of the previous regnal year (Tadmor 1983: 42– 44); or for fear that the king’s health was going to worsen, as, in fact, it subsequently did (Parpola 1983: 428). The actual ceremony installing Assurbanipal in the House of Succession as the crown prince of Assyria took place in the second month of the Esarhaddon’s ninth regnal year (672 BC). Evidence external to the exemplars of EST helps us appreciate the enormous scale of the ceremony, which included the imposition of the adê. Consid-

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er Assurbanipal’s statement in his royal inscriptions concerning this adê, that his father “gathered the people of Assyria, great and small, from the Upper to the Lower Sea. In order to protect my status as crown prince and afterwards the exercising of the kingship of Assyria, he caused them to swear an adê sworn by the (great) gods.”7 Assurbanipal’s statement is lent credence by the fact that the surviving exemplars of EST involve both Median city lords and a provincial administration, contra some scholarship prior to the discovery of the Tayinat exemplar that doubted its veracity.8 Since so many persons had to swear the oath to support Assurbanipal’s succession, the ceremony probably lasted many days. A long duration would explain why some exemplars of recension F of Assurbanipal’s inscriptions date the ceremony to the 12th of Ayyaru while others give the day as the 18th – Cogan (1977: 99) has suggested that the latter date commemorated “the ceremony’s completion rather than its inception” (the exemplars of EST are variously dated to the 16th and the 18th of Ayyaru, see below). Because the exemplars of EST were Tablets of Destinies and because each exemplar established the destinies not just of the political unit’s elite but of that political unit’s entire populace,9 we may conclude that one and only one tablet was produced for each and every province or client kingdom. This conclusion allows us, in turn, to put forward the following formula for determining a minimum number of the exemplars of EST that were produced: # of provinces + # of client kingdoms = minimum # of exemplars of EST.

Thanks to the work of Karen Radner (2006–2008), the first part of this formula is easy to fill in. If we exclude uncertain cases, 71 different provinces or provin7 u-pah-hir UN.MEŠ KUR AN.ŠÁRki TUR u GAL ša tam-tim e-li-ti ù šap-lit a-na na-ṣir DUMU LUGAL-ti-ia ù EGIR-nu LUGAL-tu KUR AN.ŠÁRki e-pe-še(var. -eš) a-de-e MU DINGIR.MEŠ (var. adds GAL.MEŠ) ú-šá-áš-kír-šú-nu-ti ú-dan-ni-na rik-sa-a-te, BIWA 15–16: 18–22. 8 E.g., Liverani 1995: 62, “Thus, the fact that we have recovered only the Mede oaths can now be explained in the simplest terms: there were no similar oaths with other ‘vassals.’” We can infer from the surviving exemplars that Assurbanipal considered “the people of Assyria” in this instance to consist of, at a minimum, both the provinces and tribute-paying client kingdoms. Cf. Wiseman’s (1958: 4) remark: “In 672 B. C. Esarhaddon was at the peak of his political power and the countries whose delegates were present would have included others forced to acknowledge his suzerainty, Egypt, Elam, the Arabs of the western deserts, the city-states of Syria and Palestine (including Manasseh of Judah), Tyre, Sidon and even distant Cilicia, Cyprus, N. Arabia and all those peoples recorded as bringing him tribute following his campaigns.” 9 E.g., “(The adê of Esarhaddon) … with the Nahšimartians, the men in his hands, young and old, as many as there are,” TA* uruna-ah-ši-mar-ta-a-a lúERÍN.MEŠ ŠUII-šú gab-bu TUR GAL ma-la ba-šu-u (SAA 2: 6 l. 4–5, cf. JCS 64: 92 i 11–12).

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cial governors are attested in the reign of Esarhaddon.10 To get a rough estimate of the number of client kings, we can use Esarhaddon’s inscription Nineveh A: The dated exemplars of that inscription were produced in 673 and 672 BC, with one dated to only a month before the exemplars of EST were produced; and one of the exemplars of EST records an adê made with a Median city lord who is named as a tributary in Nineveh A.11 If we count only those instances in which a client king explicitly “pulls the yoke” of Assyria, pays tribute, or visits Nineveh (i.e., we exclude instances in which the Assyrian army simply conquers and plunders a city), Nineveh A attests 31 client kings. To this number we can add the eight Median city lords known from the Nimrud exemplars of EST (not including Ramataya of Urakazabanu, who appears in Nineveh A and so is counted among the 31 recorded in that text) for a total of 39 client kings.12 Accordingly, we complete the formula presented above: 71 provinces + 39 of client kingdoms = minimum 110 exemplars of EST

This number is undoubtedly too low if we remember that only one of the nine client kings known from the Nimrud exemplars of EST is mentioned in Nineveh A. Indeed, Fales (2012: 148) has recently and independently suggested there were 200 exemplars, an estimate absolutely personal and very rough … based on an initial number of no more (and possibly less) than 70 provincial seats as still extant/operational at the time of Esarhaddon (drawing from the numbers of the Assyrian provinces given in Radner 2006–2008), plus a certainly smaller but not irrelevant number of vassal/client polities, and finally a more consistent total of ‘inner’ professional groups, which could have even comprised subdivisions between palace and temple, and among residents of a number of major cities of the empire (n. 96).13

In addition to Fales’s apt observation that scholars and other officials at the Assyrian court would have entered into the adê (see below), we should also

10 The 66 provinces listed by Radner up to and including the reign of Esarhaddon (2006– 2008: 45–64) and the provinces in Babylonia (Babylon, Der, Dur-Šarrukku, Nippur, and Ur, but not Gambulu or Sippar; the former is not attested in the 7th century and the latter is only attested as a province in the reign of Šamaš-šumu-ukin, see Radner 2006–2008: 64–56). 11 Ramataya of Urakazabanu, see Ms 27 of EST and RINAP 4 001 iv 34. 12 The client kingdoms listed in Nineveh A are the Sealand (RINAP 4 001 ii 58–64); the land in Cilicia next to Tabal (iii 47–55); Bit-Dakkuri (iii 62–70); the kingdom associated with the city Ša-pi-Bel (iii 71–83); the Arabs (iv 1–16); three Median cities, including Urakazabanu (iv 32– 45); the district of the city Bazu (iv 72–77); and twenty-two kingdoms in Syria-Palestine and Cyprus (v 54–vi 1). 13 Cf. now Watanabe 2014: 161, where the tablets are described as “mass produced.”

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consider that it might have been established with members of the royal family (cf. the Zakutu Treaty [SAA 2: 8]), and perhaps non-state actors such as the leaders of important Aramean and Chaldean tribes. Nonetheless, the figure of 110 exemplars of EST put forward above can serve as a conservative minimum estimate that still allows us to comprehend the scale of textual production that the establishment of this adê required – at approximately 670 lines per exemplar (the exact line count varies among the exemplars), the scribes of the Assyrian chancellery produced a minimum of 73,700 lines of text solely in conjunction with this event. To my knowledge, the only possible mention of how this work was accomplished occurs in three letters written by Issar-šumu-ereš, the chief scribe and astrologer at the court of Nineveh during the reigns of Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal. These letters concern an upcoming adê-ceremony (see Parpola 1983: 3–4 and 6 on the identification of this adê-ceremony with that for which EST was produced). Two of these letters, SAA 10: 6 and 7, are about the days that scribes from various cities and various scholars will enter into (erēbu) and establish (šakānu) the adê. Interestingly, the day that eventually seems to be settled on is the 16th of Nisannu, that is, about a full month prior to the date found in the colophons of the extant exemplars of EST, the 18th of Ayyaru in two and the 16th of the same month in another (the day is damaged in Tayinat exemplar; as preserved, the day could be from the 16th–19th). Parpola has discussed the lack of agreement between the dates found in the letters and in the examplars of EST. While he acknowledges that the king may simply have preferred later dates than those proposed by his chief scribe, Parpola raises the possibility that “scribes who would draw up treaty documents in their home towns should be adjured before the rest of the population” (Parpola 1983: 4). Indeed, it seems only logical that the scribes who were entrusted with the task of drawing up what would become the destinies of the entire empire would need first to be bound to protect the crown prince themselves. Fales (2012: 149) has noted that if the subject of these letters is, as assumed, the adê-ceremony for which EST was produced, then “it would seem that operations of oath-taking had begun already one month before the dates on the tablets at our disposal – at least as far as the ‘innermost’ sectors and circles of Assyrians were concerned.” In fact, we may find some further support for Fales’s “temporal parameters” (p. 148) in Issar-šumu-ereš’s third letter on this adê, SAA 10 5. This letter concerns another set of days for the adê ceremony: ud.20.kám ud.22.kám ud.25.kám a-na šá-ka-ni ša a-de-e ṭa-a-ba im-ma-at lugal be-li iqab-bu-u-ni nu-šá-aṣ-bi-it liš-ku-nu (obv. 8–rev. 6)

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The opening statement is clear: “Day 20, day 22, and day 25 are auspicious for the establishment of the adê.” In SAA 10: 5, the remaining lines are translated, “We shall undertake (that) they may conclude it whenever the king, my lord, says.” While nušaṣbit can certainly be analyzed as the Neo-Assyrian form of the cohortative (and the following precative may lend support to this analysis), the form can also be translated instead as a simple preterite. A translation that reflects this analysis might be as follows: “We have undertaken (the work), and so let them conclude it (the adê) whenever the king, my lord, gives the command.” Since Issar-šumu-ereš, the chief scribe, speaks in the 1st person plural, presumably he is reporting on the scribes under his supervision. The implication that follows is that the scribes had already finished writing some exemplars of EST, perhaps their own adê-tablets, about a month before the exemplars that have come down to us.14 In brief, then, we can describe the circumstances in which the exemplars of EST were written as an event of mass textual production in which at least 110 tablets of about 670 lines each (probably more than 73,700 lines in total) were reproduced over the course of a period of time that may have been only a month. The remainder of this paper will focus on trying to reconstruct some of the mechanics of this process of textual production en masse, beginning with a brief comment on previous scholarship and some necessary terminological and methodological preliminaries.

3 Previous Studies To my knowledge, no attempt has yet been made to explore aspects of textual transmission vis-à-vis EST in a sustained and systematic manner. In the pages of previous editions of the text (Wiseman 1958; Watanabe 1987; SAA 2: 6), one can find insightful observations on individual variants, and I reference these observations when relevant; but the analytic value of the observations is somewhat diminished by the fact that the variants are generally discussed in isolation. The same observation holds for Borger’s (1961) early collection of textual variants in EST. An important exception to this approach to variation is Parpola and Watanabe’s (1988: xl) discussion of the variant form of the verbs in the

14 Assuming that the date in the colophons of EST refers to the day on which the writing of the tablet was completed and not the day on which the ceremony was performed for the persons named in the tablet (as does Cogan [1977: 99]), though these two need not be different.

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stipulations of EST. Their focus, however, is on language, not on the processes of transmission that enable such variation to appear in the extant exemplars. With respect to broader discussions of textual criticism in the first-millennium, there is little scholarship that is directly concerned with the transmission of EST. Luukko (2004) frequently cites variants found in EST in his discussion of grammatical variation in Neo-Assyrian, but again, the focus is on language not textual transmission. On the other hand, in a study concerned precisely with processes of transmission in first millennium Akkadian texts, Worthington (2012) makes reference to EST just once (p. 106, pointing to an instance of dittography in one exemplar). The royal inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian kings have received a good deal of attention from a text-critical perspective, but these studies tend to be interested more in issues of composition and redaction (e.g., inter alii, Levine 1973; Cogan and Tadmor 1977; Levine 1981; Liverani 1981; Levine 1984; Frahm 1997: 248–61) than methods of transmission (e.g., Cogan 2005). In any event, it is unclear the degree to which any conclusions as to the method by which individual Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions were transmitted are applicable to the particular historical situation presented by the transmission of EST. Phrases, lines, and even entire episodes were routinely omitted from later recensions of royal inscriptions in order to allow for the narration of new events to be included in a finite amount of space. This approach to textual production should stand in sharp contrast to the production of EST when we remember that the exemplars of that text that were produced were intended to be transformed into Tablets of Destinies and so, at least in theory, no text could be omitted. Indeed, a comparison of the methods of textual production used for EST with those used for royal inscriptions could prove a useful avenue of future research.

4 Terminology In this section, I clarify some terms that I have already used and will subsequently use with an increased degree of precision in the discussion that follows, although the terminology largely follows Assyriological convention. First, by text, I mean simply the whole of the signs inscribed on a particular tablet. By composite text, I mean an ancient or modern abstraction, “probably not having an exact counterpart in any of the manuscripts” (Parpola and Watanabe 1988: xlviii). I refer to the ancient abstraction as EST and acknowledge that postulating the existence of such an abstraction is probably anachronistic

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(on which, see below); nonetheless, it is necessary to do so for heuristic reasons. Unfortunately, even as an anachronistic abstraction, EST is not homogeneous, and I will on occasion have to discuss a revision that was made by an ancient editor, designating the different versions that resulted as recensions. The composite text that is the modern abstraction is the product of scholarly editorial interpretation and for the purpose of this paper is SAA 2: 6. As we will see, the reconstruction of a modern composite text is extremely important not only for allowing one to comprehend the text as a whole but also for providing a point of reference to which individual texts may be compared. I distinguish between textual composition and textual production. The former refers to the act or acts by which the first recension of EST was created; the latter refers to the process by which a tablet is inscribed with a text. The agent of textual production is a scribe. In the case of EST, in which a scribe produced a text by reference to one or more other texts, I speak of textual transmission or textual reproduction. I refer to these various tablets as exemplars or manuscripts, identifying individual tablets or fragments by the sigla found in Watanabe 1987: 47–52 with the addition of T for the Tayinat exemplar. I preface sigla with the abbreviation Ms. I consider two methods by which the text of EST was transmitted: Dictation, in which the scribe had aural access to the text; and copying, in which the scribe had visual access to the text.15 Finally, while many physical and textual aspects of the extant exemplars of EST are identical, no two exemplars have exactly the same text. I designate this phenomenon as variation and specific manifestations of the phenomenon as variants, further distinguishing comprehensible variants, which would have been meaningful to an ancient consumer of the text, from incomprehensible ones.

5 Methodological Considerations Having established the terminology that will be used in this paper, I move on now to three methodological considerations: The fixedness of the text of EST; the number of scribes who produced a particular exemplar; and the extent to which variants can be diagnostic of dictation or copying when taken in isolation.

15 In light of the non-canonical status of EST, I do not consider here a third method of transmission, memory or “learning by heart,” the existence of which has been ably demonstrated in the production of Old Babylonian literary texts by Delnero (2012a). On the possible role of learning literary texts by heart in the first millennium, see Worthington 2012: 13–15.

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5.1 The Fixedness of the Text Worthington (2012: 20) begins his discussion of ancient attitudes towards textual transmission with a series of important questions: “Did Akkadian transmitters feel obliged to reproduce their exemplars as seen, or did they feel free to change the signs and wording? If so, to what extent and under what circumstances? How did they cope with damage and obscurities?” As Worthington goes on to discuss (p. 21), scholars working in different fields have shown that we cannot assume the “notion of exactitude” prized in our culture is shared in other times and places. Obviously, where we should locate a particular scribal subculture or even a particular scribe on a spectrum of “standards of textual fidelity” can only be understood by detailed work within a group of texts that has been carefully defined for this particular purpose. The exemplars of EST present a natural group and such an investigation could prove to be very valuable. However, such an investigation would take us away from the paper’s aim of exploring the processes for the textual reproduction of EST, and specifically the role of dictation and copying, and so is not pursued here. Rather, I consider the fixedness of EST from another perspective, namely whether multiple recensions of EST might have been in circulation either contemporaneously or successively over the period of time in which the text was being reproduced. Because the method I will employ later in this paper involves comparing different exemplars of EST, I want to establish at the outset whether the possibility exists that I might be comparing exemplars of different recensions of the text, and, if so, the degree to which that outcome might affect the results of my comparison. Indeed, the existence of different recensions of EST is clear from the very outset of the text, the Preamble (see Appendix 1). Apart from minor textual variants (which are only selectively indicated in Appendix 1 in order to not detract from the focus of discussion), the two versions of the preamble differ in two substantive ways: The addition of two and a half lines at the end of the Preamble 2; and the sequence of lines 6–10/12. How are we to understand these differences? One observes that the shorter preamble, Preamble 1, makes no reference at all to the subject matter of EST. Although the preambles of other extant adê are unfortunately poorly preserved, we find a structure and phraseology in Preamble 1 that is similar to Esarhaddon’s adê with Baal of Tyre (SAA 2: 5), Zakutu’s adê on behalf of Assurbanipal (SAA 2: 8), and Sin-šarru-iškun’s adê with the Babylonians (SAA 2: 11). One can deduce a standard opening for adê’s: adê ša RN TA* PN1 (TA* PN2, etc.) “The adê of RN with PN1 (and with PN2, etc.).”

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In its structure, then, Preamble 1 of EST seems to employ a basic template in which the names of the relevant parties are simply inserted where appropriate. However, because Preamble 1 employs this template, it necessarily lacks any details about the adê and, in particular, any mention of the crown prince Assurbanipal. Evidently, at some point someone involved in the composition of EST desired more specificity, for Preamble 2, ends with the additional qualification that the adê concerns Assurbanipal. Prior to the discovery of the Tayinat exemplar of EST, Preamble 2 was extant in only one exemplar from Nimrud, so that it might have been considered simply a deviation from the text of the preamble as preserved in five other Nimrud exemplars. However, the presence of Preamble 2 in the Tayinat exemplar confirms that it is a valid recension in its own right so that at least two recensions of the text were in circulation during the period of textual production.16

5.2 The Number of Scribes who Produced a Given Exemplar Dittography is of course a common means by which variants occur. However, most occurrences of dittography typically introduce an extra sign or word into the reproduced text. In this regard, Ms T is noteworthy because of an example of dittography comprising eight lines in which § 30 of EST is written twice (I designate the second as § 30a; see Appendix 2).17 Interestingly, § 30a contains three errors in its first two lines (two erasures and the omission of the Personenkeil), not to mention the error of the dittography itself. There are also a number of variants in § 30a, such as in the orthography, the most striking example of which is the very rare use of lugal instead of man in § 30a in writing the common phrase mār šarri rabî. Also in § 30a, UŠ is followed by the phonetic complement -ti for the Babylonian genitive whereas it is followed by -te for an Assyrian form in § 30. This is likely the deployment of a standardized orthography in § 30a, however, for three lines later the logogram nig2.ba.meš is fol-

16 We should not automatically assume that Preamble 2 necessarily postdated Preamble 1. As Frankena (1965: 126) has observed, the additional lines do not fit smoothly with the syntax of the template. Preamble 1 may present an abbreviation of Preamble 2 designed to smooth the syntax. It seems likely that the additional qualification in Preamble 2 is related in some way to the order of the preceding lines, but the precise nature of that relation eludes me. On the existence of “several templates” of the text, cf. now also Watanabe 2014: 147. 17 The transition from § 30 to § 31 is preserved without dittography in three of the Nimrud exemplars (Mss 35 +, 45 C, and x 15 +).

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lowed by -te (and note the verbal form inaṣṣuru written with Assyrian vowel harmony in both versions). Individually, these errors and variants carry little significance but their cumulative weight in a section of the text that is itself an example of dittography suggests that § 30 and § 30a in Ms T may have been written by two different scribes. In other words, without evidence to the contrary, we should not assume that any extant exemplar of EST is the product of a single scribe’s hand. In fact, when one considers that the work of producing a text as long as EST might take many hours, it seems reasonable to suppose that the textual reproduction of a given exemplar was performed by more than one scribe.

5.3 The Extent to which Isolated Variants are Diagnostic of Dictation or Copying The previous two methodological considerations are important for helping guide the questions we ask when we compare the exemplars of EST. The third and final methodological consideration, namely that isolated variants are not diagnostic of dictation or copying, threatens to compromise the entire project. The difficulty lies in the fact that variants of an obviously visual derivation are not diagnostic of copying, because the error could have been made by either someone reading the text aloud or copying it; and variants of an obviously aural derivation are not diagnostic of dictation because of the demonstrated existence of interior dictation during the copying process (Worthington 2012: 98–99, citing previous literature). I illustrate the difficulty with two concrete examples taken from the exemplars of EST (see Appendix 3). Example 1: SAA 2: 6 l. 374: § 32 of EST contains a stipulation against stratagems to nullify the oath to uphold Assurbanipal’s succession. The end of line 374, in which appears the last of three in a sequence of nouns, is preserved in three exemplars. Two exemplars have lubultakunu, “your garment,” while only one has napultakunu, “your throat.” Yet the parallelism lū … lū … lū implies that this exemplar, Ms 45 J, presents the original rendering of the line. At some point, an ocular elision of the first sign of napultakunu, NA, occurred, and the resulting sequence of signs LU--BUL-TA-KU-NU was reinterpreted intelligibly as lubultakunu, as in Ms x 14. But who committed the ocular elision – a copyist or someone giving dictation? The variant present in Ms 35+ adds still another wrinkle, for the determinative TUG2 is added to lubultakunu. Evidently, the scribe who wrote this line also had access to a version in which the ocular elision of NA had

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occurred and so heard or copied lubultakunu; he chose to precede the word with the determinative with which it frequently appears.18 Example 2: SAA 2: 6 l. 418: § 38 of EST is a short curse invoking the goddess Mullissu. Three different forms of the preterite ay iṣbat in the vetitive construction of the second sentence are among the interesting variants found in the exemplars that preserve this curse.19 Ms 29 has the expected form of the preterite in which stress is on the first syllable of the word, i.e., íṣbat. However, both Ms 27 and Ms T display phonological variants of this verb form. While the final -a of iṣbata in Ms 27 conceivably could be interpreted as the ventive, it seems more likely that we meet in this word an example of prosodically marked stress in which intonation has shifted the stress to the final CVC syllable of the word and that closed syllable has opened as a consequence, i.e., iṣbáta.20 A similar shift of stress is apparent in Ms T, which shows still further phonological change with the addition of an anaptyctic vowel before the stressed syllable, i.e., iṣibáta.21 Conceivably, these three different forms of the preterite could derive from dictation: Perhaps the three exemplars reflect three different pronunciations of the vetitive made during three distinct readings; or perhaps a less colloquial pronunciation of the preterite iṣbat was rendered colloquially by two of the scribes. However, the phenomenon of interior dictation allows one to posit an equally valid scenario in which, for instance, the scribe of Ms T transformed the less colloquial preterite into a more colloquial form iṣibata when he pronounced the word to himself, whether audibly or not, as he copied it. These two examples are meant to illustrate succinctly that isolated instances of textual variation are not diagnostic as to the method of textual reproduction, as copying may introduce not just visual but also phonetic variants while dictation may introduce not just phonetic but also visual variants. In light of these ambiguities, can we still examine textual variation with the aim of reconstructing the process of textual production? At least three approaches seem plausible. First, one could focus on identifying visual variants that are incomprehen-

18 Cf. Watanabe 1987: 188, “Die beiden Varianten … deuten an, daß die verschiedenen Textvertreter der VTE nicht auf einmal diktiert wurden, sondern teilweise anhand einer Vorlage abgeschrieben oder weiter diktiert worden sind. Dadurch erklärt sich, daß einige Texte manchmal die gleichen Fehler aufweisen.” 19 E.g., Ms T has a-ma-ti-ku-nu, “your words,” in place of the genitival construction a-mat ka-šú, “the word of his [i.e., Aššur’s] mouth,” preserved in one other exemplar (Ms 27). 20 Hämeen-Anttila 2000: 28, cf. Luukko 2004: 107-08. 21 Luukko 2004: 103-04.

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sible. Presumably, these variants should not occur during dictation (a speaker would correct an incomprehensible form before uttering it), and so the presence of such should be diagnostic of copying. However, the identification of such variants presupposes that we can determine with certainty what would or would not have been comprehensible to an ancient reader, and so this approach needs to be employed with due caution, ideally in tandem with another avenue of investigation. Second, one could adopt the approach taken by Delnero (2012a, 2012b) in his work on the Sumerian literature produced in the Old Babylonian Edubba where the variants found in a closely defined corpus of texts are discussed not in isolation but as the object of “systematic and comprehensive study” (2012b: 199). Operating systematically and within such a corpus allows Delnero to discern a meaningful pattern of distribution for the various types of variants that are encountered and thereby also the method used to reproduce the texts. In a third possible approach, one could focus less on the individual words themselves and more on uniformity and variation in their placement on the tablet, e.g., variations in line breaks, spacing, script density, and the like, in the hope that these features may reflect the method of textual reproduction with less ambiguity. For the remainder of this paper, I pursue this third approach.

6 Case Study: Line Breaks and Horizontal Script Density The surviving exemplars of EST show great uniformity in their physical appearance. Where the total height and width are preserved, the exemplars are quite similar in size.22 The layout is also quite consistent across the exemplars: Vertical rulings, perhaps made with string, create about 1 cm of blank space between the columns; where visible in the published photographs, two more vertical rulings, very close together, border the left and right sides of the text; two horizontal rulings, made 1 cm apart at the very top of the obverse, frame the caption to the seal impressions; and two more horizontal rulings, made about 7 cm and 17 cm down the obverse, make a roughly 10 × 28 cm box in which the divine seals of Aššur were impressed.23 22 Ms 27 = 45 × 30 cm; Ms 31 + 51 = 42.5 × 28.4 cm; Ms 36: 42 × 28; and Ms T = 40 × 28 cm. 23 See also Fales’s (2012: 136–37) discussion of the tablets’ physical layout, with his observation that although the layout is unlike any other contemporary Neo-Assyrian text, “it bears some resemblance to contemporary contracts, with their typical seal-identification text at the beginning of the Obverse, and the space for the sealing placed below it.” See also SAA 12: 1

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This uniformity of physical appearance is most likely connected to uniformity in the process of tablet production. For instance, from the way the text occasionally runs over the column lines, clearly, the layout was put into place before anything was written on the tablet. Significantly, the horizontal rulings that divide the different sections of the text were not made at this time, as their placement on the tablet varies from exemplar to exemplar (discussed in more detail below). Only after the layout of the tablet was put in place was the tablet inscribed with text of the adê. Finally, once the composition of the text was complete, the tablet was impressed with the three divine seals of Aššur.24 This order of production also makes the most sense: Surely something needed to be written on a tablet before the Seal of Destinies transformed it into a Tablet of Destinies. In general, the arrangement of the text itself on the exemplars is also uniform. The text is always arranged into four columns on obverse and reverse for a total of eight columns. In all exemplars for which both faces are preserved, unusually, a reader must rotate the tablet along the vertical axis to move from the obverse to the reverse, as with a book, instead of along the horizontal axis, as is typical. Correspondingly, the order of the columns proceeds from left to right on the reverse in all exemplars preserving more than one column on the reverse. In all exemplars, the text is regularly divided into sections by horizontal rulings and these divisions are typically quite consistent across the surviving exemplars, although omissions and additions exist.25 Vertical script density of the exemplars is also highly consistent at about 2.5 lines/centimeter (so also Parpola and Watanabe 1988: xlviii). In the face of such uniformity, then, it is somewhat surprising that the line breaks within the sections are, as a rule, not consistent. This is illustrated well

and 86 for royal grants which “have superscriptions invoking the seal of Aššur (and Ninurta in no. 1); although the seal is not on the tablet, it was doubtless on the originals from which these tablets, according to the colophons, were copied” (Kataja and Whiting 1995: xx). 24 The obvious reason for the box around the seal impressions was to ensure that the scribe left enough room for the seal impressions when he was reproducing the text (in fact, the demarcated space is more than is necessary). In this regard, one can see in the published photos of Ms 27 (especially Wiseman 1958: pl. I, reproduced as Watanabe 1987: tf. I) that the rolling of the seal has flattened and faded some vertical column rulings that encroach into the space demarcated for the seal impressions. Cf. the unsealed contracts where space nevertheless has been put aside by horizontal rulings for fingernail or seal impressions, e.g., SAA 6: 10, 12, and 13. 25 E.g., a ruling to distinguish § 6 and § 7 is present in six exemplars and absent from one (Ms 36); conversely, lines 526–29 and 530–33 are conventionally divided into two sections (§ 63 and § 64), but as Watanabe (1987: 198–99) notes, a ruling between lines 529 and 530 is present in only one exemplar (Ms 27) and absent from six.

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by comparing the opening lines of § 10 (see Appendix 4). Variation in line breaks begins with the negated statives lā tarṣatuni lā ṭābatuni. In Ms 46 E and 45 A, these statives are divided over lines 110 and 111; in 45 E, they are both written with wide spacing and occupy all of line 111. But the two exemplars that agree in dividing the statives over two lines also vary in their line breaks: The scribe of Ms 46 E attempted to fit two prepositional phrases, lū ina pī nakrišu lū pī salme!? into line 111, while the scribe of Ms 45 A ended the line after only the first prepositional phrase.26 The scribe of Ms 46 E continued in the following line to squeeze more words together so that he was able to write [lū ina p]ī ahhīšu ahhī abišu mārī ahhī abišu in line 112, while the scribe of 45 A managed only the prepositional phrase lū ina pī salmešu lū ina pī – ending the line in the middle of a construct chain! Such variation in line breaks occurs throughout the exemplars of EST to such a degree that I do not know of one section for which a significant number of exemplars are preserved where the line breaks are uniform in every exemplar (and see Appendix 2 for the different line breaks in the two versions of a single section, § 30 and 30a, that appear in Ms T). Of course, orthographic factors, such as logographic versus syllabic spellings, the presence or absence of determinatives, or plene writings can affect the length of a word and thus the number of words that can be written in a given line. But one of the greatest determining factors for line breaks is the size and especially the proximity of signs in a line, a feature that I designate horizontal script density and that is illustrated by the opening lines of Ms 28A (see Fig. 1, and, in particular, the contrast between the horizontal script density in lines 1–2 and 3–4). However, before we can explore whether variation in horizontal script density might reflect the method of textual production, we need a way to measure it. While we could simply count the signs per line, it is unclear what we would learn from this exercise because, as was mentioned above, the majority of the extant documentation, the nine original tablets from Nimrud, exists in the form of 92 fragments, and there is currently no way to determine which fragments belong together. Therefore we cannot compare horizontal script density in the tablets simply by comparing the signs per line in the extant fragments because we do not know which tablets we would be comparing. Here is where is the power of the modern composite text, SAA 2: 6, comes in. Crucially, though the exemplars of EST exist mostly in the form of small isolated fragments, some of these fragments preserve the beginnings of col-

26 The scribe of Ms 46’s attempt to fit the second prepositional phrase into the limited available space at the end of the line may account for the errors in the line: the omissions and - as well the indecipherable sign ˹x?˺- for sal-.

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Fig. 1: Wiseman 1958: Plate 12.

umns. SAA 2: 6 allows us to compare horizontal script density by letting us see what line of the composite text has been reached in all fragments with the beginning of the same column (I will refer to this line number as the fragment’s line count for that column). For instance, as I discuss in more detail below, one fragment preserving the beginning of column ii has a line count of 93 while another has a line count of 73 for that same column. Therefore, we know that the tablet from which the first fragment came contained the equivalent of twenty more lines of the composite text in its first column than that tablet from which the second fragment came. Appendix 5 provides the line counts for all of the exemplars that preserve the beginning of a column. Of course, the exemplars preserving the beginning of column i all have a line count of 1, but the exemplars preserving the beginning of the other columns show a great amount of variation in their line count. I list here the range in line counts as drawn from the data assembled in Appendix 5: – Col. ii range = 20 lines – Col. iii range = 43 lines – Col. iv range = 59 lines – Col. v range = 53 lines – Col. vi range = 65 lines

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Col. vii range = 60 lines Col. viii range = 39 lines

The exemplars vary enormously in how many lines of the composite edition of the text they fit into a column. As mentioned above, the variation is apparent already in column i, for Ms 31 has a line count of 93 for column ii while three other exemplars have a line count of 73 for the same column. The greatest range is found in column vii, where Ms x 12 has a line count of 455 while Ms 36 has a line count of 390. This range signifies that the equivalent of 65 additional lines of the composite text, or almost 10 % of the entire composition, were written through column vi on the tablet from which the first fragment comes! A number of factors might conceivably affect the line count found at the beginning of a column and jeopardize our ability to use line counts as a means of measuring horizontal script density. For instance, the number of words written in § 1 demonstrably increased if the adê concerned a province, and sections might have been longer or, indeed, present only in certain exemplars owing to recensional differences.27 The dittography of an entire section, as seen by the example above of § 30 and § 30a in Ms T, could also increase the number of words in a text.28 We might expect any exemplar with text added in these ways to have a lower line count at the beginning of columns subsequent to the additions because some space of their preceding columns is occupied with text not found in the composite edition. These exemplars would thus misleadingly appear to have fewer lines of the composite text written in the preceding columns relative to exemplars without the additional text. However, Ms T acts as a control for these factors and shows that none of them should affect our use of the composite text as a metric in a decisive manner. As expected, Ms T begins column ii with the lowest line count of all surviving exemplars because it has both the longer Preamble of § 1 and additional words required to enumerate the members of the provincial government – but two other exemplars from Nimrud which did not require the additional 98 words in the Preamble have the same line count! Nor has the dittography of

27 In the Nimrud exemplar Ms 36, naming the Median city lord and mentioning his sons, and the populace of his city requires 32 signs written over two lines. In Ms T, listing the officials of the provincial government and mentioning the populace of the province takes 80 signs written over nine lines. The longer preamble requires 41 additional signs written in two extra lines in § 1 of Ms 27 and T. And § 38 A, present in four of the five surviving exemplars (absent from Ms 27), adds 34 signs written in two lines. 28 The dittography of § 30a adds 98 words in eight lines to the text of Ms T.

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an entire section in column v of Ms T caused it to have a lower line count for column vi than the other exemplars; instead it is in the middle of the range. Therefore, it seems that horizontal script density is a primary factor for determining how many words were written in a column. But how does variation in horizontal script density help us determine whether textual reproduction of EST occurred via copying or dictation? If we assume horizontal script density, whether high or low, remained consistent within a exemplar, we expect the range in line counts in all exemplars to increase with each subsequent column as a scribe with a cramped hand wrote more and more of the text and a scribe with a wide hand wrote less and less. Now, since we know that more than one scribe may have contributed to the writing of a single tablet, this assumption of consistency may not be warranted; but when one charts the range of line counts for columns, an interesting pattern emerges:

Chart 1: Range of Line Counts for Columns of the Extant Exemplars of EST.

As we expected, we see a 300 % increase in range, from 20 lines to 60 lines, between columns ii and vii. But we also see a brief dip at the beginning of column v and then a sharp drop at column viii. I come back to column v at the end of this article, but for now I consider why the range drops so sharply in column viii instead of continuing to increase. Since as many exemplars are preserved for the beginning of column viii as for any other column, the incongruity should not derive from insufficient data, and a similar pattern can be seen in the few instances in which we can track horizontal script density across the columns of a single exemplar. For instance, Ms 36 consistently has the lowest line count of all extant exemplars until the beginning of column viii, where it moves up to third lowest. The reason for this change is that the scribe fit the equivalent of 125 lines of the composite text into column vii – by comparison, column vi of the same exemplar con-

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tained the equivalent of only 88 lines, or 30 % less text. Of course, the dramatic increase in the amount of text contained in column vii of this exemplar increases its line count at column vii and contributes the sharp drop in the range of line count among all exemplars at column viii. The reason for the decrease in line count at the beginning of column viii most likely occurred because the scribes realized that they were approaching the end of the text while they were writing columns vi or vii. Accordingly, some wrote signs more closely while others spaced out lines in order to fit or fill the remaining text into the available space as necessary. How did scribes recognize when they were approaching the end of the text? Obviously, the most straightforward way would be by having visual access to an exemplar, which, in turn, would imply that that textual reproduction took place via copying. But aural recognition is also conceivable. A scribe who was familiar with the general outline of EST or even with the texts of adê’s in general and who was reproducing the text via dictation might recognize that he was approaching its end when he heard the beginning of the so-called Ceremonial Curse Section (§ 58– 106) that comprises the final quarter of the text. However, if we dive deeper into the data collected in Appendix 5, I believe we can find some confirmation that the scribes did indeed have visual access to the text. Our interest now is in column v, which remarkably begins at line 336 of the composite text in three of the 11 extant exemplars. Significantly, the beginning of column v has the added weight of being also the beginning of a tablet’s reverse, so that three times a scribe ended the obverse and turned to the reverse of his tablet at the exact same point in the text. This concurrence suggests that a scribe had visual access to a particular manuscript and was adjusting his script density in order to finish the obverse at the same point in the text as in the manuscript that he was copying – adjustments that would explain the slight dip in our chart precisely at column v. Finally, I note that the conclusion that at least some exemplars of EST were reproduced via copying finds some confirmation in the existence of those textual variants that are diagnostic in isolation, incomprehensible visual variants. For instance, five exemplars preserve the verb in line 530 (see Appendix 6). In two exemplars, the verbal form is izannununi, with the second /u/ representing the subjunctive marker. In two exemplars, the verbal form is izannunanni, with the second /a/ representing the ventive, which necessarily replaces the subjunctive /u/. In the fifth exemplar, Ms 28 A, we meet a verbal form that is written as ˹i˺-za-nun-A-AN. Clearly, the closely preceding šeg3 (=A.AN) has influenced the copying of an intended writing i-za-nun-a-ni in an example of the visual error of dittography.29 Yet the resulting verb form is not meaningful and there29 So already Watanabe 1987: 199.

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fore should not have been made by someone reading the text aloud, for presumably a reader would have corrected the visual error before he spoke it.30 Therefore, we have some confirmation for concluding that at some point in the process of textual production, certain exemplars of EST were copied. I address the caveats in this statement at the end of this paper.

7 Conclusion In this paper, I have explored the dynamics of textual production involved in the transmission of EST, the results of which I briefly recapitulate here. I have argued that EST was transmitted during a period of mass textual production in which at least 110 exemplars of the text were produced in perhaps a month’s time (although time span of production is less secure than the estimated minimum number of exemplars). At least two recensions of EST circulated during this period of mass textual production, and more than one scribe may have contributed to the reproduction of any given exemplar. While our extant exemplars of EST preserve numerous textual variants, I illustrated that these variants are not diagnostic of the method of an exemplar’s transmission (copying or dictation) when studied in isolation. Studying the varying horizontal script density in the exemplars was more conclusive. By focusing on fragments that preserve the beginning of columns, I was able to observe a pattern in the range of script density across the eight columns of EST in both across extant exemplars and also within a single exemplar. I suggested that this pattern was the result of scribes’ having visual access to, i.e., having copied, the text, and I then briefly raised some supporting evidence for this conclusion by identifying an incomprehensible visual variant. Nonetheless, we cannot conclude from this study that every exemplar of EST was reproduced via copying. We can only conclude copying was used to reproduce certain exemplars at some point in the process of textual transmission. This restriction is necessary because the method of investigation employed in this paper is designed to capture only the “signal” of transmission via copying. It is possible, for instance, that a handful of exemplars of EST were reproduced via copying; then those exemplars were read aloud to scribes

30 Conceivably, the writing could reflect the apocope of the final vowel, but Luukko (2004: 110) does not list any instances of this phenomenon with the subjunctive marker -ni and I do not know of any instances among the exemplars of EST (although apocope is quite common with other morphemes).

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who reproduced still more via dictation. In fact, there is good reason to think that this might have occurred, as, with copying, each reading produces only a single exemplar; with dictation, however, ten, twenty, or even more exemplars can conceivably be reproduced from a single reading. Faced with the need to reproduce over 73,000 lines of text within a relatively short period of time, the officials in charge may have prioritized efficiency, in which case we would expect for manuscripts to have been reproduced via dictation. Yet the method I have employed in this paper cannot capture the “signal” of this dictation. The next step, of course, is to design additional studies that can capture it or, harder still, rule dictation out completely.

Appendix 1: The Preamble Preamble 131 1 The adê of Esarhaddon, king of the world, king of Assyria, 2 son of Sennacherib, king of the world, king of Assyria, 3 with PN, the city lord of GN, 4 (with) his sons and grandsons, with the people of GN, 5 all the men of his hands, great and small, as many as there are, 6 from the east to the west, 7 all those over whom Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, 8 exercises kingship and lordship, with you, 9 (with) your sons and grandsons 10 who are born after the adê in the future. Preamble 232 1 The adê of Esarhaddon, king of the world, king of Assyria, 2 son of Sennacherib, also king of the world, king of Assyria, 31 1 a-de-e ša₂ maš-šur-pap-aš man šu₂ man kur aš-šurki 2 dumu md30-pap.meš-su man šu₂ man kur aš-šurki 3 ta* pn en uru gn 4 (ta*) dumu.meš-šu₂ dumu.dumu.meš-šu₂ ta* gn-a-a 5 lu₂ erin₂.meš šuII-šu₂ gab-bu tur gal mal ba-šu₂-u₂ 6 ta* na-pa-ah dutu-ši a-di ra-ba(var. e-reb) d utu-ši 7 am-mar mdaš-šur-pap-aš man kur aš-šur lugal-tu en-tu 8 ina ugu-hi-šu₂-nu up-paaš₂-u-ni is-se-ku-nu 9 (ta*) dumu.meš-ku-nu dumu.dumu.meš-ku-nu ša egir a-de-e 10 a-na u₄me ṣa-a-ti ib-ba-aš₂-šu₂-u-ni (Mss. 28 A, 31, 32, 36, 43 +; Ms 45 I is preserved through line 7). 32 1 a-de-e ša maš-šur-pap-aš man šu₂ man kur aš-šur 2 dumu md30-pap.meš-su man šu₂ man kur aš-šur-ma 3 ta* pn en uru gn 4 ta* dumu.meš-šu₂ dumu.dumu.meš-šu₂ ta* gn-a-a 5 (not omitted in Ms T) gab-bu tur gal mal ba-šu₂-u 6 is-se-ku-nu 0 dumu.meš-ku-nu dumu.dumu.meš-ku-nu 7 ša egir a-de-e ina u₄-me ṣa-a-ti ib-ba-šu₂-u-ni 8 ta* na-pah dutu-ši a-di e-reb dutu-ši 9 am-mar mdaš-šur-pap-aš man kur aš-šur lugal-tu be-lu-tu 10 ina ugu-šu₂-nu u₂-pa₂-šu₂-u-ni(Ms T: up-pa-aš₂-u-ni) ša₂ ina ugumaš-šur-du₃-a 11 dumu man

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3 4 5 8 9 6 7 10 11 12

with PN, the city lord of GN, with his sons and grandsons, with the people of GN, all , great and small, as many as there are, with you, your sons and grandsons, who are born after the adê in the future, from the east to the west, all those over whom Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, exercises kingship and lordship, concerning Assurbanipal, the great crown prince designate, the son of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, on whose behalf he established the adê with you.

Appendix 2: The Dittography of § 30 in ms T § 30 v9 v 10 v 11 v 12 v 13 v 14 v 15 § 30a v 16 v 17 v 18 v 19 v 20 v 21

šum-ma ta-da-ga-la a-na maš-šur-du3-a dumu man gal-u ša2 e2 uš-te šeš.meš-šu2 la pal-hu-uš la kan-šu-uš en.nun-šu2 la i-na-ṣu-ru at-tu-˹nu˺ ki ra-ma-ni-ku-nu ṣa-a-li la ta-ga-ra-šu2-nu-ni pu-luh-tu2 nig2.ba.meš-te ina ša3-˹bi˺-šu2-nu la tu-še-rab-a-ni ma-a ad-˹ku-nu˺ ina ša3-bi a-de-e is-sa-ṭar is-sa-kan u2-[t]am-ma-na-a-ši

šum-ma ta-da-ga-la a-na aš-šur-(erasure)-du3-a dumu lugal gal-u ša2 e2 uš-ti šeš.meš-(erasure)-šu2 ˹la pal-hu-uš la˺ kan-šu2-˹uš˺ en.nun-šu2 la i-na-ṣu-[r]u at-tu-nu ki ra-[ma-ni-ku-nu] ṣa-a-li la ta-ga-ra-šu2-nu-ni pu-˹luh-tu2 nig2.ba.meš-te˺ ina ša3-bi-šu2-nu la tu-še-rab-a-n[i]

gal ša e₂ uš-ti dumu maš-šur-pap-aš 12 man kur aš-šur ša ina ugu-hi-šu₂ a-de-e is-se-ku-nu išku-nu-ni (Mss. 27 and T; for “with PN, the city lord of GN, with his sons and grandsons, with the people of GN,” ms T substitutes, “with the governor of Kunalia, with the deputy, the majordomo, the scribes, the chariot drivers, the third men, the village managers, the information officers, the prefects, the cohort commanders, the charioteers, the cavalrymen, the heavy infantry, the regular infantry, the specialists, the shi[eld bearers (?)], the quartermaster troops”; the translation of some professions follows Fales 2012: 147).

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v 22 v 23

309

ma-a ad-ku-nu ina ša3 a-de-e is-sa-ṭar is-sa-kan u2-tam-ma-na-a-ši

Translation: “If you look, (and) his (i.e., Assurbanipal’s) brothers are not protecting Assurbanipal, the great crown prince designate, without reverence or submission, you shall fight them as if fighting for yourselves. You shall bring frightful terror into their hearts, saying: ‘Your (pl.) father wrote (this) in the adê, he established it, and he makes us swear (it)” (SAA 2: 6 l. 353–59, see now JCS 64: 96, 112, 116 for the text, translation, and commentary; the translation of the first three lines of the section follows the analysis of Watanabe 2014: 157).

Appendix 3: The Non-Diagnostic Character of Isolated Variants Example 1: SAA 2: 6 l. 374 35 + lu [pa-ni]-ku-nu lu [šuII]-ku-nu tug2lu-bul-ta-ku-n[u] 45 J [lu pa-ni-ku-nu lu š]u˹II˺-ku-nu lu na-pul-ta-ku-nu x 14 lu pa-ni-ku-nu lu šuII-ku-nu lu-bu[l-ta-ku-nu] T lu pa-ni-ku-nu lu šuII-ku-˹nu˺ [(x) x x x k]u-nu (Translation of the larger context: “You shall anoint neither your faces nor your hands nor your throat with the SAR-BU, which is against the gods of the assembly.33 You shall not bind (it) in your lap. You shall not do anything that undoes an oath.”) Example 2: SAA 2: 6 l. 418 27 [a]-a iṣ-ba-ta ab-bu-tu-ku-un 29 a-a iṣ-bat ab-bu-tu2-k[u-un]

33 The sentence is difficult, in part because the ambiguity of the prepositional phrase ina muhhi ilāni obscures the nature of SAR-BU, as Parpola and Watanabe (1988: 43 note to line 373 ff) observe. They note also that previous interpretations of the direct object as sarbu, “tallow,” (Watanabe 1987: 187–88) or, dividing the wedges differently, as šaršerru, “red paste,” (Reiner 1969: 537 n. 13 and passim in the CAD) are unlikely because whatever SAR-BU signifies must also be able to be bound (rakāsu, “to bind,” in the subsequent clause).

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35 + T

a- iṣ-b[at/a-ta …]34 a-a i-ṣi-ba-ta a-bu-tu2-ku-nu

(Translation of the larger context: “May Mullissu, his wife, his beloved, make his (i.e., Aššur’s) speech evil! May she not intercede for you!” )

Appendix 4: Line Breaks in Exemplars Preserving the Opening Lines of § 10 (The line numbers follow the composite edition SAA 2 6) 46 E 108 109 110 111 112 45 A 108 109 110 111 112 45 E 108 109 110 111 112

[šum-ma a-bu-t]u2 la dug3.ga-tu2 la de-iq-tu2 la ba-ni-tu2 [ša2 ina ugu] ˹m˺aš-šur-du3-a dumu man gal ša e2 uš-ti [dumu maš-šur-pap-aš ] man kur aš-šurki en-ku-nu la tar-ṣa-at-uni [la ṭa-bat]-u-ni lu ina pi-i lu2kur2-šu2 lu pi-i lu2˹x?-me˺- [lu ina pi]-˹i˺ šeš.meš-šu2 šeš.ad.meš-šu2 dumu.šeš.˹ad˺.meš-šu2

[…] [… e2 uš-ti] dumu maš-š[ur-pap-aš man kur aš]-˹šur˺[(ki) en-ku-nu la tar-ṣa-atu-ni] la ṭa-˹bat-u-ni lu˺-u ina ˹pi-i˺ [lu2kur2-šu2 ] lu-u ina pi-i sal-me-šu lu-u ˹ina pi˺-[i]

[šu]m-ma a-bu-tu2 l[a dug3.ga-tu2 la s]ig5-tu2 la ba-ni-tu2 [ša2] ugu maš-š[ur-du3-a dumu man gal ša2] e2 uš-te [dumu maš]-˹šur˺-[pap-aš man kur aš-šur(ki) en]-ku-nu [la tar-ṣa-at-u-ni la ṭa-bat]-u-ni [lu(-u) ina pi-i lu2kur2-šu2 lu(-u) pi-i lu2sa-l]i-me-šu2

(Translation of the entire section: “If you hear something malicious, harmful (or) ugly – (something) [which] is inappropriate and malicious concerning 34 Only the beginning of a single horizontal wedge is preserved before the break, and so the traces fit either B[A] or B[AD].

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Assurbanipal, the great crown prince designate, son of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, your lord – whether from the mouth of his enemy or the mouth of his friend or from the mouth of his brothers, his uncles, his cousins (or) his family, the seed of his father’s house, or from the mouth of your brothers, your sons, (or) your daughters, or from the mouth of a prophet, an ecstatic, (or) an interpreter of oracles, or from the mouth of anyone at all, you shall not conceal (it). You shall come and tell (it) to Assurbanipal, the great crown prince designate.”)

93 (Ms 31)

190 (Ms x 7)

277 (Ms x 7)

345 (Ms T)

455 (Ms x 12)

537 (Ms 38 A)

627 (Ms 31)

Col ii begins

Col. iii begins

Col. iv begins

Col. v begins

Col. vi begins

Col. vii begins

Col. viii begins

613 (Ms x 9)

537 (Ms x 12)

437 (Ms 31)

340 (Ms 46 N)

266 (Ms 51 T)

185 (Ms 31)

84 (Ms 45 I)

402 (Ms 27)

336 (Ms 49 F)

260 (Ms 46 N)

178 (Ms 46 P)

79 (Ms 28 A)

608 (Ms 28 A)

606 (Ms T)

530 527 (MS 51 N) (Ms 31)

431 (Ms T)

336 (Ms 31)

264 (Ms 31)

180 (Ms 38 A)

79 (Ms 27)

603 (Ms 36)

521 (Ms 28 A)

390 (Ms 36)

336 (Ms x 16)

257 (Ms T)

170 (Ms 46 E)

78 (Ms 39) 155 (Ms 27)

73 (Ms 30 A)

601 (Ms x 21)

514 (Ms 37)

327 (Ms 38 B)

218 (Ms 36)

147 (Ms 36)

73 (Ms 36)

599 (Ms 27)

513 (Ms T)

594 (Ms 32)

502 (Ms 27)

321 320 (Ms 45 G) (Ms 56)

244 230 (Ms 45 G) (Ms 27)

163 (Ms 39)

77 (Ms 43 +)

594 (Ms 36 C)

477 (Ms 36)

316 (Ms 35)

73 (Ms T)

590 (Ms 30 C)

302 (Ms 27)

588 (Ms 48 I)

292 (Ms 36)

Appendix 5: Line Counts of Exemplars Preserving the Beginning of Columns

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Appendix 6: SAA 2 6 530, Showing an Unintelligible Visual Variant 27 28 A 31 51 N T

ki-i ša2 ˹ta* ša3 an˺[-e ša2] zabar še[g3] ˹la˺ i-za-nun-˹a-ni˺ ki-i ša2 ta ša3 an-e [ša2 zabar] šeg3(=A.AN) la ˹i˺-za-nun-A-AN ˹ki-i˺ ša2 ta* ša3 [an]-e ša2 zabar šeg3 la i-za-nun-u-ni ] [… še]g3 la i-za-nun-u-[ni … ki-i ša2 ˹ta ša3˺ a[n-e] ša2 zabar [š]eg3 la i-za-nun-a-ni

(Translation: “Just as rain does not fall from a sky of bronze”)

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