BABYLONIAN DIVINATORY TEXTS CHIEFLY IN THE SCHO YEN …eprints.soas.ac.uk/15984/1/CUSAS-18-Frontal.pdf · 2013-06-05 · viii Babylonian Divinatory Texts archives of numerous temples,

BABYLONIAN

DIVINATORY

TEXTS

CHIEFLY

IN

THE

SCHO

/

YEN

COLLECTION

The publication of C

ORNELL

U

NIVERSITY

S

TUDIES

IN

A

SSYRIOLOGY

AND

S

UMEROLOGY

Volume 18

was made possible thanks to a generous subvention from an anonymous donor

Cornell University Studies in

Assyriology and Sumerology

(CUSAS)

Volume 18

MANUSCRIPTS

IN

THE

SCH

O

/

YEN

COLLECTION

CUNEIFORM

TEXTS

VII

Babylonian Divinatory Texts

Chiefly in the Schøyen Collection

by

A. R. George

with an appendix of material from the papers of W. G. Lambert

†

CDL PressBethesda, Maryland

2013

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

George, A. R.Babylonian divinatory texts chiefly in the Schøyen Collection : with an appendix of material from the papers

of W.G. Lambert / by A.R. George. pages cm. – (Cornell University studies in Assyriology and Sumerology (CUSAS) ; Volume 18)ISBN 978-1-934309-47-6 (alk. paper) 1. Schøyen Collection. 2. Divination—History—To 1500. 3.Omens—History—To 1500. 4.Assyro-Baby-lonian religion. 5. Assyro-Babylonian literature. I. Lambert, W. G. (Wilfred G.) II. Title. BF1762.G46 2013 133.30935—dc23

Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology

E

DITOR

-

IN

-C

HIEF

* * *David I. Owen

(Cornell University)___

E

DITORIAL

C

OMMITTEE

* * *Robert K. Englund

(University of California, Los Angeles)

Wolfgang Heimpel(University of California, Berkeley)

Rudolf H. Mayr(Lawrenceville, New Jersey)

Manuel Molina (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid)

Francesco Pomponio (University of Messina)

Walther Sallaberger (University of Munich)

Marten Stol (Leiden)

Karel Van Lerberghe (University of Leuven)

Aage Westenholz (University of Copenhagen)

ISBN 9781934309476

Copyright 2013. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form(beyond that copying permitted in Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except byreviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher, CDL Press, P.O. Box34454, Bethesda, Md. 20827.

Table of Contents

v

Statement of Provenance (Ownership History), by Martin Schøyen .........................................

vii

Series Editor’s Preface, by David I. Owen .................................................................................

ix

Acknowledgments

...................................................................................................... xi

Abbreviations

............................................................................................................ xii

Introduction ............................................................................................................................

xv

Catalogue ............................................................................................................................

xxiii

Concordances ......................................................................................................................

xxvii

I. Nos. 1–3. Old Babylonian Divination Prayers ............................................................. 1

II. Nos. 4–6. Old Babylonian Extispicy Reports .......................................................... 13

III. Nos. 7–11. Old Babylonian Extispicy Compendia...................................................... 27

IV. Nos. 12–16. Other Old Babylonian Omen Lists from Southern Mesopotamia ............ 49

V. Nos. 17–21. Late Old Babylonian Omen Lists from Tigun⁄num ................................ 101

VI. Nos. 22–32. Divinatory Texts from the Sealand ......................................................... 129

VII. Nos. 33–34. Middle Babylonian Omen Lists .............................................................. 229

VIII. Nos. 35–36. Standard Babylonian Omen Lists ........................................................... 259

IX. Nos. 37–42. Divinatory Models and Related Objects ................................................ 273

X. No. 43. An Unusual List of Sheep and Goats ...................................................... 281

Appendix. Nos. I–XVII Further Divinatory Texts from Tigun⁄num, from the Papers of the Late W. G. Lambert .......................................................... 285

References ..............................................................................................................................321

Indexes .................................................................................................................................. 337

Cuneiform Texts ...................................................................................................Plates I–CVIII

Statement of Provenance

(

OWNERSHIP

HISTORY

)

vii

The holdings of pictographic and cuneiformtablets, seals, and incantation bowls in theSchøyen Collection were collected in the late1980s and 1990s and derive from a great varietyof collections and sources. It would not havebeen possible to collect so many items, of suchmajor textual importance, if it had not beenbased on the endeavor of some of the greatestcollectors in earlier times. Collections that onceheld tablets, seals, or incantation bowls now inthe Schøyen Collection are:

1. Institute of Antiquity and Christianity, Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, California (1970–94)

2. Erlenmeyer Collection and Foundation, Basel (

ca

1935–88)3. Cumberland Clark Collection,

Bournemouth, UK (1920s–1941)4. Lord Amherst of Hackney, UK (1894–

1909)5. Crouse Collection, Hong Kong and New

England (1920s–80s)6. Dring Collection, Surrey, UK (1911–90)7. Rihani collection, Irbid (

ca.

1935) and Amman, Jordan (before 1965–88) and London (1988–)

8. Lindgren Collection, San Francisco, California (1965–85)

9. Rosenthal Collection, San Francisco, California (1953–88)

10. Kevorkian Collection, New York (

ca

1930–59) and Fund (1960–77)

11. Kohanim Collection, Tehran, Paris and London (1959–85)

12. Simmonds Collection, UK (1944–87)13. Schaeffer Collection, Collège de France,

Zürich (1950s)

14. Henderson Collection, Boston, Massachusetts (1930s–50s)

15. Pottesman Collection, London (1904–78)16. Geuthner Collection, France (1960s–80s)17. Harding Smith Collection, UK (1893–

1922)18.Rev. Dr. W. F. Williams, Mosul (

ca.

1850–60)These collections are the source of almost

all the tablets, seals, and incantation bowls. Oth-er items were acquired through the auctionhouses Christie’s and Sotheby’s, where in somecases the names of their former owners were notrevealed.

The sources of the oldest collections, suchas Amherst, Harding Smith, and CumberlandClark, were antiquities dealers who acquiredtablets in the Near East in the 1890s to 1930s.During this period many tens of thousands oftablets came on the market, in the summers of1893 and 1894 alone some 30,000 tablets. Whilemany of these were bought by museums, otherswere acquired by private collectors. Some ofthe older private collections were the source ofsome of the later collections. For instance, alarge number of the tablets in the Crouse col-lection came from the Cumberland Clark,Kohanim, Amherst, and Simmonds collections,among others. The Claremont tablets camefrom the Schaeffer collection, and the Dringtablets came from the Harding Smith collec-tion.

In most cases the original findspots of tabletsthat came on the market in the 1890s to 1930sare unknown, like great parts of the holdings ofmost major museums in Europe and the UnitedStates. The general original archaeological con-text of the tablets and seals is the libraries and

viii Baby l on i an D iv i na t o r y Tex t s

archives of numerous temples, palaces, schools,houses and administrative centers in Sumer,Elam, Babylonia, Assyria, and various city statesin present-day Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran.Many details of this context will not be known

until all texts in both private and public collec-tions have been published and compared witheach other.

Martin Schøyen

MANUSCRIPTS

IN

THE

SCH

Ø

YEN

COLLECTION

CUNEIFORM

TEXTS

Vol. I. Jöran Friberg,

A Remarkable Collection of Babylonian Mathematical Texts

Sources and Studies in the History of Mathematics and Physical Sciences

New York: Springer, 2007

Vol. II. Bendt Alster,

Sumerian Proverbs in the Sch

ø

yen Collection

Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology 2Bethesda, Md.: CDL Press, 2007

Vol. III. Stephanie Dalley,

Babylonian Tablets from the First Sealand Dynasty in the Sch

ø

yen Collection

Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology 9 Bethesda, Md.: CDL Press, 2009

Vol. IV. A. R. George,

Babylonian Literary Texts in the Sch

ø

yen Collection


Vol. V. Miguel Civil,

The Lexical Texts in the Sch

ø

yen Collection


Vol. VI. A. R. George,

Cuneiform Royal Inscriptions and Related Texts in the Sch

ø

yen Collection

with contributions by M. Civil, G. Frame, P. Steinkeller, F. Vallat, K. Volk, M. Weeden, and C. Wilcke


Vol. VII. A. R. George,

Babylonian Divinatory Texts Chiefly in the Sch

ø

yen Collection


Other volumes in preparation

Series Editor’s Preface

ix

The cultural legacy of Mesopotamia continuesto be more broadly illuminated with the sev-enth volume from the Schøyen Collection(MSCT 7 = CUSAS 18), once again from thepen of Andrew George. With its publicationthe CUSAS and Schøyen series continue tofunction as the major vehicles for the preserva-tion and dissemination of an astonishing varietyof new sources written in Sumerian and Akka-dian/Babylonian. These new sources enhancegreatly our understanding of Mesopotamianhistory, economics, religion, law, culture, andlanguage from the Archaic and eventuallythrough the Neo-Babylonian periods, therebycovering most of Mesopotamia’s historical peri-ods. No series in recent history can comparewith the speed and scope of publication that theCUSAS series is providing.

The recent publication of the first SealandDynasty economic records by Stephanie Dalley(CUSAS 9 = MSCT 3) placed the Sealanddynasty and two of its rulers on firm historicalfootings for the first time. The current volume,containing fifty-five previously unpublisheddivination texts, some entirely new to thegenre, opens a window on what must havebeen a rich and varied literary tradition thatflourished during that dynasty. Divination textsrepresent one of the more difficult and intrigu-ing literary genres from Mesopotamia andGeorge’s masterful editions and analyses of theastonishing variety of new divination sourcesfrom the Sealand dynasty and from the other-wise unidentified locations of the northernBabylonian city of

Tigun⁄num

and the southernBabylonian city of

D›r-AbieÍuÓ

add much tothis genre. They reveal the existence of differ-ent, non-canonical, traditions outside main-

stream, southern Babylonia, from where mostof our sources have emerged until now.George’s publication includes selections fromthe lamented Wilfred Lambert’s

Nachlass

.These particularly welcome additions preservefor posterity Lambert’s meticulous work, alongwith those texts he carefully recorded and onwhich he had begun an extended commentary.In keeping with the general format of this series,all texts are provided with accompanying fullapparati, which include transliterations, transla-tions, commentaries, copies, and photos so thatscholars and students may continue to reliablystudy and elaborate these new sources forMesopotamian civilization. In addition, photosof most tablets also may be accessed andenlarged for more detailed study at http://cuneiform.library.cornell.edu/collections andthe

CDLI.

Much continues to be written publicly andspoken privately against the publication of textswithout excavated context. In spite of theincontrovertible importance of the thousandsof texts that have been published so far in thisseries and the many studies that have beenappearing, and will continue to appear, basedon their availability, there still are those indi-viduals and organizations that simply refuse toadmit that their views and imposed regulationshave done more harm than good. Rather thanencouraging the recording, preservation, dis-semination, and publication of unprovenancedtexts, they choose rather to ignore or suppressthem. Those who retain the baseless positionthat texts without excavated context have littlevalue hardly warrant even a brief response. Theinput and international cooperation of scholarsfor this and other volumes are sufficient indica-

x Baby l on i an D iv i na t o r y Tex t s

tions of the widespread support of the CUSASand MSCT publications and a rejection of thepolicies of those journal and book editors whoprefer to impose censorship and otherwisechoose to suppress knowledge.

Special thanks are due to Martin Schøyen,who continues to open his remarkable collec-tion to scholars for study and publication, to

Andrew George for the astonishing effort thathas gone into the preparation of this and previ-ous CUSAS and MSCT volumes, to ReneeGallery Kovacs for her continuous help andadvice, and to the anonymous donor, who pro-vided the generous subsidy that made this largeand handsome volume available at a moderateprice.

David I. OwenCurator of Tablet CollectionsJonathan and Jeannette Rosen

Ancient Near Eastern Studies SeminarDepartment of Near Eastern Studies

Cornell University, Ithaca, New YorkMarch 17, 2013

Acknowledgments

xi

This book presents the results of a study of for-ty-three cuneiform tablets undertaken in Nor-way, England and America during the years2005–2012. The research was underpinned by agrant from the British Academy and a researchallowance provided by the Faculty of Languag-es and Cultures at the School of Oriental andAfrican Studies, University of London. In Nor-way I enjoyed as ever the generous hospitalityand friendship of Elizabeth Sørenssen, MartinSchøyen and Jens Braarvig. In America I wastwice a visitor to the Jonathan and JeannetteRosen Ancient Near Eastern Studies Seminar ofCornell University, and the pampered guest ofDavid and Susan Owen in Ithaca and of Frankand Renee Kovacs in California. Renee Kovacsinitiated my interest in the Schøyen Collection’somen texts and was also of enormous help infacilitating my study of the other tablets pub-lished here. To all these institutions and individ-uals, and to the anonymous collector whoallowed me access to those other tablets and sup-ported my work on them, I am deeply grateful.

Photographs of tablets in the Schøyen Col-lection were prepared by agents of the SchøyenCollection and the Norwegian Institute forPalaeography and Historical Philology, byKlaus Wagensonner of the University ofOxford and by the author, and are reproducedby kind permission of Martin Schøyen and JensBraarvig. Images of most of the tablets in theanonymous collection were made at the RosenSeminar, Cornell University, and are publishedhere by generous leave of David I. Owen,Curator of the Tablet Collections. I am indebt-ed to Robert Englund of the University of Cal-ifornia, Los Angeles, for giving these images ahome online at the website of the CuneiformDigital Library Initiative.

Many of the texts presented here were readin seminar with colleagues and students, espe-cially at the London Cuneiforum in SOAS butalso at the Department of Culture Studies andOriental Languages, University of Oslo. Thecontribution of these seminars to my under-standing of the texts has been substantial and Iexpress my gratitude to those who accompa-nied me in these readings. My work on theTigun⁄num tablets treated in Chapter V hasbenefited substantially from reading fifteen tab-lets in Japan from transliterations prepared byProfessor Akio Tsukimoto of Rikkyo Univer-sity, Tokyo, with whom Dr. Daisuke Shibata ofTsukuba University kindly put me in touch. Irecord here my appreciation of Tsukimoto’sgenerosity in sharing his work with me, and mythanks for his own comments on my editions oftexts Nos. 18–21. Dr. Abraham Winitzer ofNotre Dame University very kindly readthrough the editions of the Old Babylonianomen lists in Chapter III and made some veryhelpful observations. Faults that remain restwith the author alone.

I am also grateful to Professor Stefan Maulof the University of Heidelberg for sending mea draft of his unpublished chapter, Die Inspek-tion der Opfervögeln, and to Dr. Erle Leichtyof the University of Pennsylvania for sharingwith me his work on two Cornell tablets. LastlyI record my indebtedness to David Owen, andnot only because he has accepted into his beau-tifully produced CUSAS series this latest install-ment of cuneiform texts from the SchøyenCollection. His persistence and leadership ineffecting the publication of the dispersed intel-lectual and historical legacy of ancient Meso-potamia earn the admiration of all those whovalue knowledge.

A.R.G.Buckhurst Hill

March 2013

Abbreviations

xii

AbB Altbabylonische BriefeIII = R. Frankena, Briefe aus der

Leidener Sammlung. Leiden, 1968VII = F. R. Kraus, Briefe aus dem

British Museum. Leiden, 1977IX = M. Stol, Letters from Yale.

Leiden, 1981X = F. R. Kraus, Briefe aus kleineren

westeuropäischen Sammlungen. Leiden, 1985

XI = Stol 1986XIV = K. R. Veenhof, Letters in the

Louvre. Leiden, 2005ABRT J. A. Craig, Assyrian and Babylonian

Religious Texts. Assyriologische Bibliothek 13. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1895–97

ACh C. Virolleaud, L’astrologie chaldéenne, le livre intitulé “enuma (Anu) iliBêl,” publié, transcrit et traduitIÍtar = ACh fasc. 3 and 7, Paris, 1908

and 1909Sîn = ACh fasc. 1 and 5. Paris, 1908

and 1909Supp. = ACh fasc. 9 and 10. Paris,

1910AHw W. von Soden, Akkadisches

Handwörterbuch. 3 vols. Wiesbaden, 1965–81

AO Antiquités orientales, tablet signature, Musée du Louvre

ARM Archives royales de MariV = G. Dossin, Lettres. TCL 26.

Paris, 1951VI = J.-R. Kupper, Lettres. TCL 27.

Paris, 195326/I = Durand 1988

Bab Field number, excavations at Babylon on behalf of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, 1899–1917

BAM F. Köcher, Die babylonisch-assyrische Medizin in Texten und Untersuchun-gen. 6 vols. Berlin, 1963–80

BBR = Zimmern 1901BE The Babylonian Expedition of the

University of Pennsylvania, Series A: Cuneiform TextsVI/1 = H. Ranke, Babylonian Legal

and Business Documents from the Time of the First Dynasty of Babylon. Philadelphia, 1906

BM Tablet signature, British Museum, London

BRM Babylonian Records in the Library of J. Pierpont MorganIV = Clay, 1923

CAD The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Chicago, 1956–2010

CBS Catalogue of the Babylonian Section, tablet signature, University Museum, Philadelphia

CCT Cuneiform Texts from Cappadocian Tablets in the British Museum4 = S. Smith, CCT 4. London, 1927

CDLI Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative, http://cdli.ucla.edu/

CT Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets, &c, in the British Museum3 = L. W. King, CT 3. London, 18984 = T. G. Pinches, CT 4. London,

18988 = T. G. Pinches, CT 8. London,

189918 = R. C. Thompson, CT 18.

London, 190420 = R. C. Thompson, CT 20.

London, 190428 = P. S. P. Handcock, CT 28.

Abb r e v i a t i on s xiii



London, 191138 = C. J. Gadd, CT 38. London,

192539 = C. J. Gadd, CT 39. London,



193144 = T. G. Pinches, Miscellaneous

Texts. London, 196351 = C. B. F. Walker, Miscellaneous

Texts. London, 1972CTN Cuneiform Texts from Nimrud

IV = D. J. Wiseman and J. A. Black, Literary Texts from the Temple of Nabû. London, 1996

DN Divine NameEA J. A. Knudtzon, O. Weber and E.

Ebeling, Die El-Amarna-Tafeln. Vorderasiatische Bibliothek 2. Leipzig, 1915

EAE En›ma Anu Ellil, astrological-omen series

Emar VI D. Arnaud, Recherches au pays d’AÍtata 4 = Arnaud 1987

Erm. Tablet signature, State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

GAG W. von Soden, Grundriss der akkadischen Grammatik. 2nd edn. Analecta Orientalia 33/47. Rome, 1969, 3rd edn 1995

GEN GilgameÍ, Enkidu and the Netherworld, Sumerian literary composition

Gilg. Epic of GilgameÍ, Babylonian narrative poem

HISM Object signature, Hirayama Ikuo Silkroad Museum, Yamanashi, Japan

HSM Tablet signature, Harvard Semitic Museum, Cambridge, Mass.

HY Field number, excavations at Tell Yelkhi (Hamrin), Iraq

IM Tablet signature, Iraq Museum, Baghdad

K Kuyunjik, tablet signature, British Museum, London

KAR E. Ebeling, Keilschrifttexte aus Assur religiösen Inhalts. 2 vols. Wissenschaft-liche Veröffentlichungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 28, 34. Leipzig, 1915–23

KBo Keilschrifttexte aus BoghazköiI = H. Figulla and E. Weidner, KBo

I. Wissenschaftliche Veröffent-lichungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 30, 1. Leipzig, 1916

KUB Keilschrifturkunden aus BoghazköiIV = E. Weidner, KUB 4. Berlin,

192237 = F. Köcher, Literarische Texte in

akkadischer Sprache. Berlin, 1953LB Tablet signature, de Liagre Böhl

Collection, LeidenLKA E. Ebeling, Literarische Keilschrifttexte

aus Assur. Berlin, 1953MAH Tablet signature, Musée d’Art et

d’Histoire, GenevaMB Middle BabylonianMDP Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse,

etc.57 = Labat 1974

MLC Tablet signature, J. Pierpont Morgan Library collection, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

MS Manuscript Schøyen, object signature, Schøyen Collection, Oslo and London

MSCT Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection6 = A. R. George et al., Cuneiform Royal

Inscriptions and Related Texts in the Sch¶yen Collection. Cornell Univer-sity Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology 17. Bethesda, Md.

Msk Field number, excavations at Mes-keneh, Syria

MSL Materials for the Sumerian LexiconIX = B. Landsberger, The Series

°AR-ra = Óubullu Tablet XV and Related Texts. Rome, 1967

X = B. Landsberger and E. Reiner, The Series °AR-ra = Óubullu

xiv Baby l on i an D iv i na t o r y Tex t s

Tablets XVI, XVII, XIX and Related Texts. Rome, 1970

XI = E. Reiner (ed.), The Series °AR-ra = Óubullu, Tablets XX–XXIV. Rome, 1974

XIV = Civil et al. 1979Ni Nippur, tablet signature,

Archaeological Museum, IstanbulPBS Publications of the Babylonian

Section, the Museum of the University of PennsylvaniaII/2 = A. T. Clay, Documents from the

Temple Archives of Nippur Dated in the Reigns of the Cassite Rulers. Philadelphia, 1912

VII = A. Ungnad, Babylonian Letters of the °ammurapi Period. Philadelphia, 1915

VIII/1 = E. Chiera, Legal and Administrative Documents from Nippur, Chiefly from the Dynasties of Isin and Larsa. Philadelphia, 1914

OB Old BabylonianR H. C. Rawlinson et al., The Cuneif-

orm Inscriptions of Western AsiaV = T. G. Pinches, A Selection from

the Miscellaneous Inscriptions of Assyria and Babylonia. 2nd impression. London, 1909

RA Revue d’AssyriologieRm Rassam, tablet signature, British

Museum, LondonRN Royal nameSAA State Archives of Assyria

II = S. Parpola and K. Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths. Helsinki, 1988

IV = Starr 1990VIII = Hunger 1992X = S. Parpola, Letters from Assyrian

and Babylonian Scholars. Helsinki, 1993

SB Standard BabylonianSm Smith, tablet signature, British

Museum, LondonSTT O. R. Gurney, J. J. Finkelstein and

P. Hulin, The Sultantepe Tablets. 2 vols. London, 1957, 1964

TCL Textes cunéiformes du Louvre

VI = F. Thureau-Dangin, Tablettes d’Uruk à l’usage des prêtres d’Anu au temps des Séleucides. Paris, 1922

XVII = G. Dossin, Lettres de la première dynastie babylonienne 1. Paris, 1933

TIM Texts in the Iraq MuseumIX = J. J. A. van Dijk, Cuneiform

Texts: Texts of Varying Content. Leiden, 1976

TLB Tabulae cuneiformes a F. M. Th. de Liagre Böhl collectae, Leidae conservataeII = J. J. A. van Dijk, Textes divers.

Leiden, 1957IV = R. Frankena, Altbabylonische

Briefe. Leiden, 1965TMB F. Thureau-Dangin, Textes mathé-

matiques babyloniens. Leiden, 1938UCLM Tablet signature, R. H. Lowie

Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, Calif.

UMM Tablet signature, University Museum of Manchester

Uruk Spätbabylonische Texte aus UrukI = Hunger 1976II = von Weiher 1983III = von Weiher 1988IV = von Weiher 1993

VAS Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmäler der Königlichen [Staatlichen] Museen zu BerlinXXII = H. Klengel, Altbabylonische

Texte aus Babylon. Berlin, 1983XXIV = J. J. A. van Dijk, Literarische

Texte aus Babylon. Berlin, 1987VAT Vorderasiatische Abteilung

Tontafeln, tablet signature, Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin

Voc. VocabularyYBC Tablet signature, Yale Babylonian

Collection, New Haven, Conn.YOS Yale Oriental Series, Babylonian

TextsX = Goetze 1947aXI = J. van Dijk et al. 1985

ZA Zeitschrift für Assyriologie

Introduction

xv

Ancient Mesopotamian divinatory texts fallinto several genres. The most important andnumerous are the scholarly and pedagogicaltexts: omen lists, which are overwhelmingly themost common kind of divinatory text, modeltablets, commentaries and other scholia. Theseintellectual forms are academic, and served toelaborate, illustrate and comment on the theo-retical principles of Babylonian divination. Theacademic texts bear witness to many differentdisciplines. Without attempting a comprehen-sive list of divinatory media, it is enough to listthe principal disciplines: portents were observedin the inspection of the body of sacrificial sheepand, less commonly, birds, particularly theirinternal organs (extispicy, Babylonian b⁄rûtu,from b⁄rû “haruspex”); in the appearance of oilpoured on water (lecanomancy), of smoke ris-ing from burning incense (libanomancy), and offlour dropped on to a surface (aleuromancy); ineclipses and planetary movements (astrology)and in natural phenomena such as thunder andearthquakes (collected in the late series En›maAnu Ellil); in multiple births, human and ani-mal, and malformations of stillborn foetuses(teratomancy, series fiumma izbu); in the localenvironment, where portents were observed ina wide variety of contexts, including topogra-phy and the built and natural environments,agriculture and animal husbandry, the move-ment of animals and birds (augury), the behav-ior of humans, the flames of lamps and torches,and in isolated events such as chariot accidents,

the perceived movement of cult statues andvehicles, etc. (collected in the first-millenniumseries fiumma ⁄lu); in sleep and dreams (oneiro-mancy); in the human face and body (physiog-nomy, series Alamdimmû etc.); and in symptomsof sickness (diagnosis and prognosis, seriesSagig).1

These various disciplines all fall into one oftwo distinct categories of divination that arecharacterized by different approaches to theobservation of portents and the response thatfollows. The first category involves the inter-pretation of unprovoked portents (omina oblati-va). The disciplines here are astrology, terato-mancy, augury and other techniques that com-prise the passive observation of the natural andbuilt environment and its populations, animaland human. These divinatory techniques seekto decode signs that occur without any humanintervention.

Divination is often described as a means ofpredicting the future. In ancient Mesopotamiait was not so simple as that, except in its medicalapplication. Outside the diagnostic and prog-nostic omens, divination was a type of sooth-saying only in that observed signs were con-sidered to correlate with events that usually hadnot happened yet. The characteristic formal listsof omens paired off portents and predictions,the former as a conditional clause (“If such andsuch is seen,” called the protasis), the latter as itsoutcome (“then such and such will happen,”the apodosis). A lunar eclipse on the fifteenth

1 A careful description and comprehensive bibliogra-phy of the various categories of omen text is given byMaul 2003. For fiumma ⁄lu see in addition Freedman2006; for En›ma Anu Ellil also Reiner and Pingree2005, Gehlken 2012.

xvi Baby l on i an D iv i na t o r y Tex t s

day of the third month, for example, was pairedwith a statement predicting the death of a kingin a palace revolt (text No. 13: 21). It can alreadybe seen that an analogy is operating in this omen:the eclipse of one of the major celestial bodiesleads to a prediction of the demise of an earthlyruler. From that obvious beginning arose thediscipline of astrology. The theoretical under-pinnings of Babylonian divination will be con-sidered later. For the moment one may remarkthat the equation of sun and moon with heads ofstate meant that astrology was a divinatory dis-cipline of especial importance in governmentand diplomacy.

In studying Babylonian omen texts it isimportant to reject the pairing of portent andprediction as evidence of fatalism, in the sense ofan inevitable, pre-determined future. The kingwhom we met in the previous paragraph did nothave to die. The Babylonians and Assyrians un-derstood naturally occurring, unprovoked por-tents not as statements of a fixed future but ascommunications from the gods that invited aresponse from those who could decode them. Ifthe signs were unfavorable, they were taken aswarnings, and it was then imperative to elimi-nate their threat by magic means. The ancienttext known today as the Diviner’s Manual in-structs that an evil prognostication would onlyoccur if it was not eliminated by the correctmagical response (Oppenheim 1974: 200 l. 46).This elimination was achieved through apotro-paic rituals accompanied by incantations, by lit-anies chanted to appease the gods, or by both.These two activities were known respectively inBabylonian as ⁄Íip›tu (from ⁄Íipu “exorcist,medicine-man”) and kalûtu (from kalû “lamen-tation-singer”). The response to ill-boding signswas articulated in ancient Mesopotamia as thedispelling of evil (Babylonian namburbû, Maul1994). Averting the consequences of bad por-tents was not a matter of small-time superstition;it was a central concern of ancient Mesopota-mian religion.

The second category of divination compris-es techniques that were perceived to induce a

portent. They typically involve the ritual use ofa divinatory medium especially chosen and pre-pared for the purpose. The ritual’s purpose wasto invite the divine authorities, explicitly or tac-itly, to encode ominous signs in the medium forthe diviner to decipher. In ancient Mesopota-mia the most prominent discipline here wasextispicy, in which the divinatory medium wasthe body and insides of a sacrificial victim, usu-ally a male lamb. Other media were oil, smokeand flour, which are mostly attested in a veryfew texts of the early second millennium butsuspected of being commonly practised none-theless. The expensive technique of extispicy,patronized by the royal court and the wealthy,naturally attracted more scholastic attentionthan divination by cheaper media.

Divination by induced portent is oftenreferred to as provoked or impetrated (ominaimpetrativa). This kind of divination worked as awarning system in the same way as the first but,in addition, lent itself early to the developmentof a question-and-answer dialogue, in which,after due ritual, the diviner first posed a questionto the gods (the oracular query) and then soughttheir answer in the divinatory medium. The ques-tion was phrased so as to elicit a simple response,positive or negative. Questions could be askedon all manner of topics, private and public: thesafety and health of an individual, the prospectsof success in trade, marriage and war, the righttime to embark on a journey or military manoeu-vre, the correct moment to conduct a religiousritual or dedicate an image, appointments ofofficials and priests, etc.

In extispicy the answer to the client’s ques-tion was acquired by cross-referencing ominoussigns with their predictions, as set out in lists ofomens. Their form is the same combination ofprotasis and apodosis as in unprovoked omens.In provoked omens the apodosis carried herme-neutic value, identifying the portent as favorableor unfavorable. A majority of favorable portentsobserved in the extispicy indicated a positiveanswer to the oracular query, a majority of unfa-vorable portents communicated the reverse.2

2 On the theory and practice of Babylonian extispicysee, e.g., Jeyes 1980, Maul 2003: 77–83, Veldhuis 2006.

I n t r o du c t i on xvii

This procedure of question and answerprobably first emerged as a method of corrobo-rating the value of unprovoked portents.Uncertainty in their interpretation could beresolved through extispicy, by asking the appro-priate question. Historical instances of the cor-roborative function of extispicy in respondingto unprovoked omens are documented in thecorrespondence of diviners. At the court of Marion the middle Euphrates in the eighteenth cen-tury, extispicies were reported to have beendone to determine whether an ill-boding lunareclipse compromised the king’s safety (it didnot), to clarify the significance of dreams, and toidentify the causes of illness (ARM 26/I nos. 81–83, 136, 142). At the Assyrian court in the sev-enth century, documents report extispicies per-formed to assess the import of a bird of ill omenand the implications of symptoms of sickness(SAA X nos. 183 and 315).

By virtue of its perceived capacity for check-ing the intentions of the gods, extispicy was animportant tool in good government. It becamethe preferred divinatory technique in determin-ing that decisions in matters of strategic impor-tance to the state –– royal, military, political,economic and religious –– were made in accor-dance with divine approval. The correspon-dence from Mari shows that extispicy wasalready much employed by the state and its ser-vants in the eighteenth century BCE (Durand1988: 3–373, Heimpel 2003: 173–248). Theresponse to portents called for the co-operation ofmen trained in different academic disciplines.The collaboration of astrologer (En›ma Anu Ellilexpert), lamentation-singer (kalû), exorcist-cum-medicine man (⁄Íipu) and haruspex (b⁄rû),is well attested at the Assyrian court (Parpola1993), and was assuredly necessary in earlierperiods too.

It has been noted that the prediction in theapodosis of a typical Babylonian omen is not a

prophecy of a fixed outcome but a warning.Alongside this must be considered anotheressential point, that the combination of portentand prediction is an intellectual construct. Thisbecomes clear if the two elements of the omenare studied separately.

Portents were usually naturally occurringsigns that were ostensibly rooted in observation.This led to the view, once widely current inAssyriology, that ancient Mesopotamian divina-tion was based on real experience. However,recent studies of the omen corpora have discred-ited that view (e.g. Koch-Westenholz 1995: 13–19, Brown 2000: 108–13, Rochberg 2009, Win-itzer 2011). There are several reasons for reject-ing the old position. A telling one is provided bya small number of portents that describe impos-sible events that could never have beenobserved. Already in the Old Babylonian peri-od, lists of omens incorporated such events asportents. Such portents have not yet been col-lected systematically. Good examples in OldBabylonian tablets occur in lunar-eclipse lists, asdemonstrated in the introduction to texts Nos.13 and 14 in Chapter V, but the most conspic-uously absurd example known to me is the sunsighted at midnight.3 The existence of impossi-ble portents does not mean that the compilers ofomens were stupid. These men lived in a worldwhere, as now, a lifetime of experience taughteach and every one of them that the sun sets atdusk and rises at dawn. Just as today, their ances-tors had conceived a model of the universe toaccount for this. Though their model was one inwhich the sun passed around the earth, there wasno more room in it for a sighting of the sun atmidnight than there is in today’s scientificallyproved model, in which the earth orbits the sun.And on the basis of experience and model,Babylonians generally were surely inclined, justas we are today, to infer this about the future,that the sun would never be seen at midnight.

3 BM 97210: 3–4: DIfi dÍamaÍ(utu) ina qabl‹tim(murub4)

tim innamir(igi.duÓ) ba-ar-tum a-na Íarrim(lugal) “¶ (If) the sun is sighted in the middle watch(of the night): revolt against the king.” The existenceof this tablet has been reported by Francesca Roch-berg (Rochberg-Halton 1984: 132 n. 21, 1988: 9 n.

5, Rochberg 2006: 340) and Matthew Rutz (2006: 72n. 42). Its text, in late Old Babylonian script, isknown to me from photographs posted online at ht-tp://www.britishmuseum.org/research.aspx and atransliteration by C. B. F. Walker. I am grateful to allthree scholars for permission to quote it here.

xviii Baby l on i an D iv i na t o r y Tex t s

What happened in divination, it seems, was thatthe compilers of omens consciously rejectedthat inference. They thought not only in termsof their own experience and the received wis-dom of their models, but they deliberatelyimagined phenomena which they had not expe-rienced, even though such phenomena contra-dicted the model and were against all expec-tations. They can only have done this by rea-soning that they were without empirical evidencethat such phenomena could not occur. If so, itcan be said that they adopted a strictly empiricistresponse to the natural world, resisting thetemptation of jumping to conclusions on thebasis of their own limited experience and inher-ited expectations. In this suspicion of inductiveinference they anticipated the position taken bythe eighteenth-century Scottish empiricist phi-losopher David Hume. Events that conflict withnatural laws can be reasoned not to be possible,but they cannot be experienced not to be possible.

So much for portents. The predictions wereany one (sometimes two) of a large repertoire ofmany hundreds of standard sentences. The veryfact that they are so standardized speaks for theirorigin in reason rather than experience. It hasbecome ever more apparent that Babylonianscholars employed several methods in attachinga prediction to a portent: the common toolswere symbolism, analogy, paranomasia, etymo-logical speculation and folkloric allusion (e.g.Starr 1983a: 8–12, Glassner 1984, Rochberg2004: 55–58, 2009: 20–22, George 2010). Inastrology it has already been noted that themajor celestial bodies, sun and moon, wereinterpreted as symbolic counterparts of earthlyrulers, and the eclipse of such a body signifiedthe analogous demise of a king. In extispicy toothe same devices were at work. For example, thegall-bladder, the major feature of the visceralsurface of the sheep’s liver, was often under-stood to stand for the king, a symbolic equation.Thus the presence underneath the liver of twogall-bladders –– one more than usual –– usuallysignified rivalry between two rulers (or would-be rulers). Right was the side identified with theclient’s interests (equivalent in Cicero’s termi-nology to pars familiaris), left with those of hisopponent (pars hostilis or inimica). If the left-hand

of the two gall-bladders was wrapped aroundthe right, it signified usurpation of the throne(text No. 9 §5), a prediction that maps by anal-ogy the portent’s dominance of good (right) bybad (left) on to the field of the two rulers. Fromthe point of view of the diviner’s client, oftenthe king, the prediction of a usurper is naturallyunfavorable, and would be reckoned with thenegative omens.

The hermeneutic tools operating in the caseof the two gall-bladders are clear. The con-structed nature of the typical omen finds furtherexpression in the elaboration of systematic pat-terns in both portent and prediction. So in textNo. 10 §§8'–10' portentous smears of blood ondifferent parts of the gall-bladder attract predic-tions of wounds to different members of theroyal entourage –– minister, diviner and cup-bearer. Other patterns associate different parts ofan observed feature with such variables as sec-tions of the army (e.g. No. 25 §§1–3 and paral-lels) and times of day and night (e.g. No. 25 §§4–9 and parallels).

While it remains the case that in manyomens the connection between portent andprediction is obscure to us, the combination ofportent and prediction was probably alwayswithout empirical basis, that is, without foun-dation in historical precedent. It is true that inlater lists of astrological omens some lunar-eclipse portents were matched not with predic-tions but with a limited number of past historicalevents –– notably the downfall of Akkade andthe sack of Ur in the reign of king Ibbi-Suen –– but there are good grounds for rejecting theseas arising from an actual coincidence of the por-tents and these events in history (Al-Rawi andGeorge 2006: 24). Similarly the omens oftencalled “historical,” in which a portent is associ-ated with a legendary or historical ruler, such asGilgameÍ or Sargon of Akkade, are also of dubi-ous historical worth, even if some of them werecomposed as late as the reign of Ashurbanipal(Starr 1985). In making the connection betweena portent and a supposed historical context, sev-eral of them employ such hermeneutic tech-niques as analogy and paranomasia, and they areof value for neither the history of events nor thehistory of divination (Cooper 1980, Starr 1986).

I n t r o du c t i on xix

It is clear from the two tell-tale features ofimpossible portents and artificially generatedpredictions that in the periods from which wehave evidence, ancient Mesopotamian divina-tion was no longer dependent on empiricalobservation, if it ever had been. Diviners wereusing sets of theoretical rules to generate andencode new omens, and were able to elaboratethe existing corpus almost limitlessly (Winitzer2006). In the first millennium BCE a considerablescholarship grew up that was concerned withthe theoretical basis of extispicy, reflecting espe-cially on the hermeneutic links between portentand prediction, and the positive or negative val-ue of that prediction. A problem for modernscholars is that while we can identify some of therules in play, we do not fully understand thisBabylonian language of signs (George 2010,Frahm 2010).

One corollary of the breaking of the con-nection between the matter of the predictionand the prospective repetition of historicalevents is that the predictions can be studied fromnon-historical perspectives. They have alreadybeen presented as evidence for daily life, publicand private (Oppenheim 1936, Nougayrol1971b, Koch-Westenholz 2002b). They aremore interesting still as sources for Babylonianpsychology. In characterizing omen apodoses as“didactic rather than functional,” Ivan Starr hasrightly observed that they “serve as a reflectionof the fears and aspirations of the people ofMesopotamia, rather than as statements of real-ity” (Starr 1986: 630). The topics do indeedillustrate many universal human anxieties.Prominent subjects in the private realm are thefaithfulness of wives, the profligacy of heirs, thesuccess of the harvest and business, the loss ofproperty and livestock, the threats of droughtand famine, lions and rabid dogs, sickness andplague, etc. In the public domain the anxietiesexpressed relate chiefly to the king: usurpationof the throne, loyalty of ministers and sons, suc-cess of the army, social unrest and rebellion, lossof territory and wealth, etc.

A further corollary lies in the history ofideas. The newly clarified intellectual context ofomen lists has led them recently to be charac-terized as texts “where one may speculate about

the meaning of things” (Veldhuis 2006: 493).Babylonian scholars speculated relentlessly onmeaningful interconnections in the observeduniverse, for example between constellations,cities, plants and minerals (Weidner 1967) and,more pertinently, between ominous parts of theliver, deities, months and constellations (vonWeiher 1993 no. 159). Divination took part inthis “cosmic network of interrelations” (Koch-Westenholz 2000: 12). Speculation about hid-den meaning was the hallmark of Babylonianscholars’ theoretical exploration of the worldand its contents. The list was their equally char-acteristic format for conveying knowledge. Theomen lists, which represent a large proportion ofthe achievement of Babylonian scholarship,constitute as a whole an important statementabout the Babylonians’ understanding of theworld. In elaborating thousands of examples ofhidden interrelations between realities andideas, the manifold lists of omens are the out-come of cumulative attempts to embrace theentire universe in a system of reciprocal infer-ences. As an intellectual concept this can per-haps be seen as a Babylonian counterpart to themore modern idea of a universal “theory ofeverything.”

Not all ancient Mesopotamian divinatorytexts are academic and theoretically based.Alongside the omen lists and other scholarly andpedagogical texts are compositions of morepractical application, deriving from the profes-sional practice of divination. Some of these textsare prescriptive, serving to maintain correct pro-cedures, especially the ritual acts that precededan act of extispicy and the various prayers thataccompanied those acts (Starr 1983a, Zimmern1901: nos. 1–20, 71–101). Others are more ephe-meral, arising from particular instances of prac-tice: reports on the outcome of individual acts ofextispicy (Kraus 1985, Koch-Westenholz 2002a),and documents that report or record other omi-nous portents, on earth and in the sky; particu-larly numerous are astrological reports sent tothe Assyrian court in the seventh century BCE

(Hunger 1992). The oracular queries that wereput to the deity in the course of the ritual of actsof extispicy were originally ephemeral, but pro-fessional pride ensured that many queries of reli-

xx Baby l on i an D iv i na t o r y Tex t s

gious and historical importance were retained inacademic libraries and became part of the tradi-tional scholia in Babylonia and Assyria (Lambert2007, Starr 1990).

The purpose of this volume is to make pub-lic those cuneiform texts in the Schøyen Col-lection that fall into the category of ancientMesopotamian divinatory texts. The SchøyenCollection does not hold examples of all thegenres noted above, for products of the laterperiods in the history of cuneiform writing arevery rare in the collection. Not surprisingly, ithas very few exemplars of the canonical omenseries and lacks completely omen commentariesand astrological reports. No Assyrian documentsare present: as the volume’s title suggests, thetexts are all composed in varieties of Babylonian.

The volume is divided into chapters, partlyby genre, partly by period and partly by prove-nance. Chapter I contains two divinationprayers, one highly literary and unusual, and anoracular query, all written in the Old Babylo-nian period, i.e. the third and fourth centuries ofthe second millennium BCE (texts Nos. 1–3).Three Old Babylonian extispicy reports popu-late Chapter II, one deriving from the archive ofD›r-AbieÍuÓ and reflecting a precise momentin history, the others probably academic modeltexts (Nos. 4–6). Chapter III gives editions offive Old Babylonian lists of extispicy omens, alltreating ominous features of the sheep’s liverand gall-bladder (Nos. 7–11). Five Old Babylo-nian omen lists pertaining to other divinatorydisciplines (teratomancy, lunar eclipses, medicaldiagnosis and prognosis, and household por-tents) are collected in Chapter IV (Nos. 12–16).Two chapters are devoted to the presentation ofdivinatory texts, mostly omen lists, from thedecades either side of the end of the Old Baby-lonian period: five late Old Babylonian omenlists from Tigun⁄num in northern Mesopotamiain Chapter V (extispicy and teratomancy, Nos.17–21), and eleven texts from a scholarly archivedating back to the first Sealand dynasty in Chap-ter VI (extispicy, teratomancy, Nos. 22–32).Two Middle Babylonian omen lists from thelate second millennium occupy Chapter VII;one treats extispicy, the other lunar eclipses inthe third month (Nos. 33–34). Chapter VIII

presents Neo-Babylonian manuscripts of sec-tions of two of the great canonical omen seriesof the first millennium, Tablet I of fiumma izbu(human pregnancy and birth, No. 35) and Tab-let LXXIX of fiumma ⁄lu (augury, No. 36).Chapter IX is given over to model tablets andrelated objects: two depict different arrange-ments of the sheep’s colon, one perhaps is anatypical example of a model sheep’s liver (Nos.37–42). In Chapter X is edited an unusual textthat has some of the formal characteristics of anomen list but is not a succession of decoded por-tents (No. 43).

Not all the tablets in this volume are held bythe Schøyen Collection. Ten members of theSealand archive treated in Chapter VI are cur-rently in a private collection whose owner wish-es to remain anonymous. The same collectionprovided one example each of the genres divi-nation prayer and extispicy report. The appen-dix makes available seventeen tablets whosewhereabouts are unknown at the time of writ-ing: a selection of the divinatory texts fromTigun⁄num recorded in the scholarly papers ofthe late W. G. Lambert (Nos. I–XVII).

This book adds to current knowledge fifty-five previously unpublished divinatory tablets.Some of them are important for the rareness ofthe texts they contain –– especially an excep-tionally well-preserved Old Babylonian tabletof teratomancy (No. 12), two early lunar-eclipseomen tablets (Nos. 13–14), a huge tablet ofhousehold omens, written in eighteen columnsbut sadly not fully legible (No. 16), and a tabletof prognostic omens (No. 15). Other tabletsreport the presence of Babylonian divination inplaces from which little evidence for it has so farbeen available: eastern Babylonia in the periodof the first Sealand dynasty, which emerges as alink between Old Babylonian divinatory schol-arship and the omen texts written at Susa later inthe second millennium (Nos. 22–32); and thepalace of king Tunip-TeÍÍub at Tigun⁄num innorth Mesopotamia, where a tradition of divi-nation associated with the temple of Adad inAleppo was studied alongside texts originallyimported from Babylonia (Nos. 17–21, appen-dix Nos. I–XVII).

I n t r o du c t i on xxi

In addition to the gain in primary sourcesand in understanding of the transmission ofBabylonian divination to the periphery and itsevolution there, this book also adds to the pic-ture, already painted above, of the huge varietyof divinatory techniques developed in ancientMesopotamia. Three texts report two divinato-ry media that are new to us, both belonging tothe category of provoked omens and both attest-

ed on the northern fringes of Mesopotamia: abird’s heart dropped in water (texts Nos. 18 andappendix No. XV), which is a technique thatcombines extispicy with lecanomancy; and aewe confined in a building overnight (appendixNo. II), which is a practice that seeks to induceby artificial means a portent similar to those thatoccur without human provocation in the ani-mal-behavior omens of fiumma ⁄lu.

Catalogue

xxiii

1 Clay tablet, portrait format, near complete 47™65™22 MS 3363Divination prayer, Old Babylonian, 13+13 ll.

2 Clay tablet, portrait format, top half 44™68™19 –Divination prayer, Old Babylonian, 13+14+2+3 ll.

3 Clay tablet, square, complete 51™53™20 MS 3057Oracular petition, Old Babylonian, 10+1+10 ll.

4 Clay tablet, portrait format, near complete 53™114™29 MS 3218/6Extispicy report, Late Old Babylonian, AbieÍuÓ, 19+[x]+21+4 ll.

5 Clay tablet, landscape format, near complete 88™53™25 MS 3058Extispicy report, Old Babylonian, undated, 12+4 ll.

6 Clay tablet, portrait format, complete 44™54™15 –Extispicy report, Old Babylonian, undated, 11+11+2 ll.

7 Clay tablet, near square format, complete 77™90™22 MS 2225Liver omens (naplaÍtum), Old Babylonian, 12+13 ll.

8 Clay tablet, landscape format, complete 77™57™25 MS 3066Liver omens (na‰raptum), Old Babylonian, 9+9 ll.

9 Clay tablet, landscape format, complete 73™58™24 MS 3078Liver omens (gall-bladder), Old Babylonian, 12+9 ll.

10 Clay tablet, portrait format, near complete 64™109™33 MS 3295Liver omens (gall-bladder, naplaÍtum), Old Babylonian, 2+2 cols., 26+19+26+25 ll.

11 Clay tablet, portrait format, major portion 100™117™30 MS 2813Liver omens (ub⁄num), Old Babylonian, 2+2 cols., 23+24+11+8 ll.

Measurements CollectionText Description in mm (W™H™D) number

xxiv Baby l on i an D iv i na t o r y Tex t s

12 Clay tablet, portrait format, complete 118™171™30 MS 3000Malformed-birth omens, Old Babylonian, 60+45 ll.

13 Clay tablet, portrait format, near complete 110™180™40 MS 3118Lunar-eclipse omens, Late Old Babylonian, 26+3+31 ll.

14 Clay tablet, portrait format, near complete 130™220™40 MS 3117Lunar-eclipse omens, Late Old Babylonian, 46+40 ll.

15 Clay tablet, portrait format, lower three-quarters 78™104™32 MS 2670Diagnostic and prognostic omens, Old Babylonian, 22+2+26 ll.

16 Clay tablet, portrait format, near complete 240™210™50 MS 3104Domestic omens, Old Babylonian, 8+1+9 cols., obv.: 23+34+29+35+37+35+34+28 ll.; right edge: 20 ll.; rev.: 19+27+30+31+29+31+35+35+27 ll.; top edge: 8 ll.; left edge: 4 ll.

17 Clay tablet, fragment 37™70™28 MS 2796Liver omens (gall-bladder), Late Old Babylonian, Tigun⁄num, 12 ll.

18 Clay tablet, portrait format, top two-thirds 97™103™23 MS 1807Bird’s-heart omens, Late Old Babylonian, Tigun⁄num, 17+18+2+1 ll.

19 Clay tablet, portrait format, lower two-fifths 110™109™28 MS 1805Malformed-birth omens, Late Old Babylonian, Tigun⁄num, 25+25+2 ll.

20 Clay tablet, portrait format, top portion 79™89™37 MS 1806Malformed-birth omens, Late Old Babylonian, Tigun⁄num, 17+9 ll.

21 Clay tablet, portrait format, lower two-fifths 70™72™34 MS 2797Malformed-birth omens, Late Old Babylonian, Tigun⁄num, 7+4+16 ll.

22 Clay tablet, landscape format, major portion 127™114™26 –Omens, carcass of sacrificial animal, 1st Sealand dynasty, 36+30 ll.

23 Clay tablet, portrait format, major portion 130™163™34 –Liver omens (pû ˇ⁄bu), 1st Sealand dynasty, 40+3+13 ll.

Measurements CollectionText Description in mm (W™H™D) number

Cata l o gu e xxv

24 Clay tablet, upper right portion 105™88™32 –Liver omens (b⁄b ekalli, Íulmu), 1st Sealand dynasty, 26+28+4 ll.

25 Clay tablet, top portion 115™78™20 –Liver omens (kak imitti), 1st Sealand dynasty, 21+15 ll.

26 Clay tablet, portrait format, major portion 94™130™23 –Liver omens (kak Íum¤li), 1st Sealand dynasty, 41+24 ll.

27 Clay tablet, lower right fragment 85™136™32 –Liver omens (gall-bladder), 1st Sealand dynasty, 39+42 ll.

28 Clay tablet, portrait format, top half 101™96™22 –Lung omens, 1st Sealand dynasty, 28+15 ll.

29 Clay tablet, portrait format, lower half 112™100™23 –Malformed-birth omens, 1st Sealand dynasty, 28+3+32 ll.

30 Clay tablet, landscape format, right-hand portion 73™64™23 MS 2420Omen apodoses, 1st Sealand dynasty, 19+7 ll.

31 Clay tablet, portrait format, lower half 115™126™32 –Gut omens, Middle Babylonian, Sealand, 40+4+39 ll.

32 Clay tablet, upper left fragment 47™95™28 –Diagrams of gut, 1st Sealand dynasty, 3+6 ll.

33 Clay tablet, square, near complete 75™70™24 MS 3176/2Liver (manz⁄zu etc.) and lung omens, Middle Babylonian, 30+19 ll.

34 Clay tablet, landscape format, left portion + patch 82™55™23 MS 3119Lunar-eclipse omens, Middle Babylonian, 10+8 ll.

35 Clay tablet, portrait format, top portion 94™70™28 MS 1808Human-birth omens, fiumma izbu I, Neo-/Late Babylonian, 21+12 ll.

36 Clay tablet, portrait format, lower portion 105™126™33 MS 1687Augury, fiumma ⁄lu LXXIX, Neo-Babylonian, 2+2 cols., 30+34+33+28 ll.

37 Clay tablet, square, near complete + patch 57™55™18 MS 3080Diagrams of gut, Old Babylonian, uninscribed

Measurements CollectionText Description in mm (W™H™D) number————––————————————————————————————————————————————

xxvi Baby l on i an D iv i na t o r y Tex t s

38 Clay cone, complete 35™35 MS 3195Diagram and model of gut, Old Babylonian, uninscribed

39 Clay tablet, square, complete 93™93™20 MS 4515Drawing of spiral labyrinth, Old Babylonian(?), uninscribed

40 Clay tablet, portrait format, complete 103™117™20 MS 3194Drawing of spiral labyrinth, Old Babylonian(?), uninscribed

41 Clay tablet, portrait format, near complete 83™116™20 MS 45168 drawings of labyrinths, Old Babylonian(?), uninscribed

42 Clay model, cut down 42™66™9 MS 3034Model of liver(?), Middle Babylonian, 6+5+1 ll.

43 Clay tablet, landscape format, near complete 90™62™23 MS 3331List of deformed(?) sheep, Old Babylonian, 16+1+17+1 ll.

Measurements CollectionText Description in mm (W™H™D) number—————————————————————————————————————————–———————

Concordances

xxvii

1687 351805 191806 201807 181808 362225 72420 302670 152796 172797 212813 11

3000 123034 423057 33058 53066 83078 93080 373104 163117 143118 133119 34

3176/2 333194 403195 383218/6 43295 103331 433363 14515 394516 41

MS No. Text No. MS No. Text No. MS No. Text No.

1. Concordance of tablet numbers in the Schøyen Collection (MS) and text numbers in this volume.

2. Concordance of text numbers in this volume and entry numbers in the database of the CuneiformDigital Library Initiative (CDLI), which offers high-resolution images of all the objects publishedin this book, sometimes in a fuller photographic record. The URL of an individual tablet at CDLIis the domain address http://cdli.ucla.edu/ followed by the CDLI entry number, e.g. text No. 1has the URL http://cdli.ucla.edu/P252304.

Text No. CDLI No. Text No. CDLI No. Text No. CDLI No.

1 P2523042 P4312983 P2520664 P3426895 P2520676 P4312997 P2514218 P2520759 P252087

10 P25223611 P25186012 P25202713 P25212714 P25212615 P251708

16 P25211317 P25184218 P25050119 P25049920 P25050021 P25184322 P43130023 P43130124 P43130225 P43130326 P43130427 P43130528 P43130629 P43130730 P251603

31 P43130832 P43130933 P34264134 P25212835 P25050236 P25045737 P25208938 P27458839 P25361640 P27458741 P25361742 P25204043 P252272

xxviii Baby l on i an D iv i na t o r y Tex t s

Friberg 2007: 219, 489 39Friberg 2007: 223 38Friberg 2007: 224, 490 40Friberg 2007: 228, 489 41Leichty and Kienast 2003 36

4. Published duplicates and parallel texts

Publication Text No.

AO 7539 (Nougayrol 1971a) 31BM 13915 (Aro and Nougayrol 1973 no. 3) 9EAE XVII/2 34fiumma ⁄lu LXXIX 36fiumma izbu I 35YOS X 31 10YOS X 56 12

3. Concordance of previous publication with text numbers in this volume

Publication Text No.