A Poetic Description of Surgery and Disease Snatching Dogs? A Collective of Sumerian Hymns to Healing Deities From Old Babylonian Nippur (Author Draft, published Oriens Antiquus 2 2020))

Kaskal 19, 2022

The Electronic Babylonian Literature (eBL) team has achieved several milestones in 2022. First, the Fragmentarium has now reached the size of 21,200 cuneiform tablets, totalling over 300,000 lines of text. Secondly, the Corpus has been greatly enlarged with editions of several texts, such as the Hymn to Ninurta as Savior, the Great Prayer to Nabû, and particularly the Epic of Gilgameš. Thirdly, a sophisticated string-alignment algorithm, based on the python-alignment library, has been fine-tuned for cuneiform script and implemented. The algorithm has been run several times, and has found several matchings that had escaped the attention of humans, such as a new fragment of the latest datable manuscript of Gilgameš edited in no. 27, text no. 2. The growth of the manuscript base of texts is important in its own right, but it also has a larger significance for the understanding of Mesopotamian literature, since it contributes decisively to its contextualization. The importance of recovering the context in a tradition in which the authors of most texts are still unknown, and indeed in which the date of composition of almost all works of literature is impossible to establish, can hardly be overstated. In this respect, the pièce de résistance of this collection is constituted by T. Mitto's new edition of the Catalogue of Texts and Authors (no. 26). The edition is informed by several new fragments and includes two pieces of a hitherto unsuspected

The close examination of a large previously unedited literary fragment from Old Babylonian Ur reveals that it is a letter-prayer or Gottesbrief to Ninšubur.

The Electronic Babylonian Literature (eBL) team has achieved several milestones in 2022. First, the Fragmentarium has now reached the size of 21,200 cuneiform tablets, totalling over 300,000 lines of text. Secondly, the Corpus has been greatly enlarged with editions of several texts, such as the Hymn to Ninurta as Savior, the Great Prayer to Nabû, and particularly the Epic of Gilgameš. Thirdly, a sophisticated string-alignment algorithm, based on the python-alignment library, has been fine-tuned for cuneiform script and implemented. The algorithm has been run several times, and has found several matchings that had escaped the attention of humans, such as a new fragment of the latest datable manuscript of Gilgameš edited in no. 27, text no. 2. The growth of the manuscript base of texts is important in its own right, but it also has a larger significance for the understanding of Mesopotamian literature, since it contributes decisively to its contextualization. The importance of recovering the context in a tradition in which the authors of most texts are still unknown, and indeed in which the date of composition of almost all works of literature is impossible to establish, can hardly be overstated. In this respect, the pièce de résistance of this collection is constituted by T. Mitto's new edition of the Catalogue of Texts and Authors (no. 26). The edition is informed by several new fragments and includes two pieces of a hitherto unsuspected 190 Enrique Jiménez et al. 35. BM 38873: A Parallel Fragment to Kiutu M, Beatrice Baragli 76 and Daisuke Shibata BM 38873 is a small fragment written in Neo-Babylonian script that belongs to the Babylon Collection of the British Museum. Its text was described by Leichty-Finkel-Walker (2019, 405) as a "bilingual incantation". Its obverse preserves eight lines of a bilingual text, while its reverse contains the remains of a colophon. T. Mitto identified the fragment as a close parallel to a manuscript of Kiutu M from Nineveh (Baragli 2022, 367-372). The preserved sections are almost identical with Kiutu M 3-6, although obv. 2'-5' of its text slightly differs from it. However, obv. 2'-5' of the fragment also partially parallel TCL 6 53 obv. 5-6, a prayer to Anu from Hellenistic Uruk, which was composed using materials from various older prayers and shares at least its opening section with Kiutu M. 77 The phrases in obv. 6'-9' of this fragment are, however, missing from this prayer to Anu. As indicated by these parallels, the prayer in BM 38873 is either a variant of the Nineveh version of Kiutu M or another Sumerian prayer belonging to the corpus of the "healer" (āšipūtu) that has certain lines in common with Kiutu M. Due to the fragmentary state of the tablet, a final decision must be postponed until further pieces are discovered. Until now, only one manuscript of Kiutu M has been found in the Kuyunjik collection. Kiutu M has been suggested to be the Kiutu of the first "house" of the Bīt rimki ritual; however, the available information is insufficient for such an assumption (Baragli 2022, 368-369). If BM 38873 is another manuscript of Kiutu M, this would attest the presence of this Kiutu also in southern Mesopotamia. Transliteration 76. B. Baragli's contribution was written with the support of the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The authors are grateful to K. Simkó for collating individual signs of the tablet. 77. D. Shibata is preparing a new edition and study of TCL 6 53, to be published in a volume edited by B. Baragli and U. Gabbay.

The Electronic Babylonian Literature (eBL) team has achieved several milestones in 2022. First, the Fragmentarium has now reached the size of 21,200 cuneiform tablets, totalling over 300,000 lines of text. Secondly, the Corpus has been greatly enlarged with editions of several texts, such as the Hymn to Ninurta as Savior, the Great Prayer to Nabû, and particularly the Epic of Gilgameš. Thirdly, a sophisticated string-alignment algorithm, based on the python-alignment library, has been fine-tuned for cuneiform script and implemented. The algorithm has been run several times, and has found several matchings that had escaped the attention of humans, such as a new fragment of the latest datable manuscript of Gilgameš edited in no. 27, text no. 2. The growth of the manuscript base of texts is important in its own right, but it also has a larger significance for the understanding of Mesopotamian literature, since it contributes decisively to its contextualization. The importance of recovering the context in a tradition in which the authors of most texts are still unknown, and indeed in which the date of composition of almost all works of literature is impossible to establish, can hardly be overstated. In this respect, the pièce de résistance of this collection is constituted by T. Mitto's new edition of the Catalogue of Texts and Authors (no. 26). The edition is informed by several new fragments and includes two pieces of a hitherto unsuspected 106 Enrique Jiménez et al. Babylonian version of it, which shows that the Catalogue, or a composition akin to it, circulated in Babylonia in the last few centuries before the turn of the eras. Even more important for the recovery of the context of Babylonian literature are the newly established identifications of several of the incipits given in the Catalogue: the progress made since the last critical edition of the text (Lambert 1962) is considerable. New authors can now be recovered from oblivion, and their oeuvre studied in some detail. Three compositions, all of them identifiable, can now be credited to the scholar Rīmūt-Gula (Mitto, no. 25), a fact that allows us, perhaps for the first time, to study the style of a Babylonian author across several of his works. The new sections of the Catalogue, together with several new textual discoveries, afford us a context also for the Great Hymn to Ištar: it was probably authored, according to the Babylonian tradition, by the elusive scholar Aba-Ninnu-dari (Jiménez-Rozzi, no. 32), homonymous or perhaps identical with the scholar called AΒiqar in the Uruk List of Kings and Sages. New readings of old manuscripts also provide evidence for a possible serialization of Bullussa-rabi's Hymn to Gula in first-millennium Babylonia (Földi, no. 31). *** More fragments are identified almost daily, so inevitably some of the notes edited in previous instalments of this series need be supplemented. A. Hätinen adds several new fragments of Ludlul (no. 28) to the already published ones in Hätinen 2020 and in the introduction to the third instalment. G. Rozzi edits additional fragments of the Great Šamaš Hymn (no. 29), to be added to those that appeared in the preceding collection (Rozzi 2021b). Zs. J. Földi furthers the textual basis of Bullussarabi's Gula Hymn (no. 30), thus continuing the labor started in Földi 2019b. *** From the Electronic Babylonian Literature Lab 25-35 185 34. Further Kiutu Fragments and Joins, Beatrice Baragli 75 The Kiutu incantation-prayers addressed to Utu are a group of Sumerian texts that describe the movement of the sun in the sky or of a cultic divine statue on earth. The eBL team, in particular Zs. J. Földi, has identified some new fragments during the final revision phase of the main edition of this corpus (Baragli 2022); however due to time constraints they could not be included in it (see the Addenda, ibid. 642). They are therefore edited here. 1) The new join K.17907+ (Kiutu br 6) The small fragment K.17907 joins K.5680+, a manuscript of the Kiutu of the sixth "house" of the Bīt rimki ritual (Nin5 in Baragli 2022, 511). The present fragment contains the remains of 4 lines, whose endings none of the known manuscripts fully preserve. Transliteration Kiutu br 6 49a (Nin5 r. 11). [ka-sili]m {šà} ~úl-la [...] Kiutu br 6 50a (Nin5 r. 12). [enim-ĝar sa6-g]a [...] Kiutu br 6 51a (Nin5 r. 13). [ d utu lugal dum]u diĝir-ra-na ! šu-a ~é-en-d[a-ab-...] Kiutu br 6 52a (Nin5 r. 14). [en ki-gal kul-aba4]{ ki?-ke4 ? } {saĝ ?-ni ?-x} {kù ?-ga ? } [...] Translation Kiutu br 6 49a. [in the peac]e of the joy of the heart [...] Kiutu br 6 50a. in [the good utterance] [...] Kiutu br 6 51a. [Utu], may [the king, so]n of his god, be sa[ved ...] Kiutu br 6 52a. [Lord, pedestal] of [Kulaba], steadfastly, the holy [...] Notes 51. This verb is probably to be restored as a form of šu(-ĝar) ge4, cf. Unb3: šu-a; Nin1: šu-ĝar (previously read as níĝ), probably meant as a possible restoration due to the occurrence of magāri in the Akkadian line (suggestion courtesy T. Mitto). 75. The contribution was written with the support of the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Revue d'Assyriologie 7 , 2013