JCS 69 (2017) TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Pp. 3-31: “Nonadministrative Documents from Archaic Ur and from Early Dynastic I–II Mesopotamia: A New Textual and Archaeological Analysis,” by Camille Lecompte and Giacomo Benati

The present paper addresses a subgroup of cuneiform documents from the so-called Archaic Texts from Ur in Mesopotamia. The documents in this subgroup can be isolated within the bulk of the Archaic Texts due to their nonadministrative content. A fresh textual analysis of this dataset is combined with a discussion of the archaeological context of their provenance to highlight patterns in early Ur scribal training methods. The results of this integrated analysis are used to frame more precisely the significance of “Archaic Ur” scribal traditions, dating to the first part of the Early Dynastic period, within the cultural transition from the Late Uruk to the Early Dynastic III (“Fāra”) period in Mesopotamia.

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Pp. 33-47: “Three Administrative Texts from the Time of Me’annedu,” by Armando Bramanti

This article presents two land texts (allotments of field) and one grain text (barley loan) originating from Early Dynastic Zabala. The high year numbers allow for the attribution of these texts to the ensiship of Me’annedu. The edition is followed by a prosopographical study which, supported by paleographical considerations, provides some guidelines for the identification of more documents belonging to the same archive.

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Pp. 49-66: “The Sumerian Discourse Markers u4-ba and u4-bi-a,” by C. Jay Crisostomo

In Old Babylonian Sumerian literature, the temporal phrases u4-ba and u4-bi-a typically occur in complementary distribution. Previous analyses have focused on morphological disparity to differentiate the two. The present paper considers pragmatic functions within a larger discourse structure, analyzing them as discourse markers, specifically temporal connectives. In this study based on a corpus analysis of Old Babylonian literary compositions, I argue that in Sumerian discourse, u4-ba primarily marks perspectival shifts and refocusing, and u4-bi-a indexes sequential and consequential action.

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Pp. 67-108: “Goodbye, Princess: Iltani and the DUMU.MUNUS LUGAL,” by Seth Richardson

The Babylonian princess Iltani has been known to us since the 1899 copies of T. G. Pinches. Within fifty years, following a proliferation of published texts featuring the princess, it became probable there were at least two such persons by this name and title; by now, it can be shown there were at least three. But the problem hardly ends there: a close inspection of the disparate epistolary, administrative, and commercial evidence for these Iltani’s does little to clarify their activities or status, nor even their relation to the king. An analysis of that evidence leads me to propose a redefinition of the title DUMU.MUNUS LUGAL and a reinterpretation of the position and purpose of women bearing the name Iltani.

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Pp. 109-116: “Cultural Transformations from Mesopotamia to Hatti? The Case of the GALA,” by Ilan Peled

This article surveys the textual attestations of the cultic performer designated by the logogram GALA in Hittite texts. This logogram, which originated in Mesopotamia, was apparently used for the Hittite word šaḥtarili, but the nature of the activities performed by the Mesopotamian and Hittite cultic practitioners designated in this manner was not identical. This should be assessed against the background of the nature of Mesopotamian-Hittite connections and cultural transmissions and the multifaceted cultural influences that shaped Hittite cult.

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Pp. 117-124: “The Sumerogram KUR: Logogram or Determinative?,” by Maksim Kudrinski

The article deals with the problem of finding spoken correlates for combinations of the Sumerogram KUR and toponyms in Hittite texts. The discussion adds to our understanding of the relation between written and spoken language in the case of using foreign written templates by the Hittites.

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Pp. 125-150: “Teratomancy at Tigunānum: Structure, Hermeneutics, and Weltanschauung of a Northern Mesopotamian Omen Corpus,” by Nicla De Zorzi

This article examines the inner structure, building principles, and hermeneutic code of a group of late Middle Bronze age teratomantic tablets from Tigunānum in northern Mesopotamia. While in the final evaluation, the Tigunānum teratomantic corpus is of southern Babylonian inspiration, it represents a very specific local reworking of this tradition. This article posits as its distinctive feature the use of a strongly gendered imagery and language that reflect the worldview of an extremely androcentric and militarized society. It also demonstrates a connection between the cultural conceptions underlying the Tigunānum omen corpus and the Old Hittite sphere, the mid-second-millennium world of northern Mesopotamia, and later Assyria.

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Pp. 151-191: “The Nonintercalated Lunar Calendar of the Middle Assyrian Period,” by Joshua Jeffers

Scholars generally assume that Assyria employed a luni-solar calendrical system during the Middle Assyrian period—akin to the one used in Babylonia—that kept the months of its year synchronized with the seasons of the solar year through periodic intercalation. With this understanding, the regnal dates assigned to the Middle Assyrian kings have traditionally been expressed in terms of solar years. The present article, however, argues that the Assyrians did not use this type of system. The author draws upon a variety of administrative tablets—primarily from the reigns of Shalmaneser I, Tukultī-Ninurta I, and Tiglath-pileser I—to demonstrate that the months of the Assyrian year were in fact not permanently affixed to particular seasons of the solar year, revealing that its year was not intercalated and was thus perpetually rotating slowly through the solar year. This article also explores how such a calendrical system impacts the Middle Assyrian kings’ regnal dates, which would need to be lowered given that the unadjusted Assyrian lunar year was slightly shorter than its solar counterpart.

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Pp. 193-202: “The Case Marking of Sumerograms in Hittite,” Mojca Cajnko

The paper begins with a brief introduction to case and case marking and a description of the Hittite corpus and the corpus of the research. The main part is devoted to the case marking of Sumerograms, an as yet unresearched and undescribed topic in Hittitology. The paper examines different possibilities for the case marking of Sumerograms on the level of the sentence and the functional value of phonetic complements. It also attempts to discern whether competition between formally case-marked and case-unmarked Sumerograms in the grammatical roles of subject and direct object was driven by grammatical factors, economy of writing or by other reasons.

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Pp. 203-212: “Esarhaddon’s Prayer in the Inscription AsBbA as Related to the mīs pî Ritual,” by Amitai Baruchi-Unna

The prayer of Esarhaddon, incorporated in the inscription AsBbA, is the first prayer in an Assyrian royal inscription that is presented as a verbatim citation. The aim of this paper is to delineate the historiographical background for this innovation in a genre usually described as routine and formalistic. By examining descriptions of prayers said to have been recited by the king in Assyrian royal inscriptions, I analyze Esarhaddon’s prayer from the aspects of its content, context, and possible linkage to prayers external to the royal inscriptions. Specifically, I examine the possible relation between the prayer in this inscription and the mīs pî ritual performed during the last phases of the process of making a divine image. This comprehensive analysis suggests that the king’s prayer had been part of an early stage of such a ritual and was available to the authors of the Esarhaddon inscription.

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Pp. 213-220: “Comment Presentifier l’Invisible? Reflexions autour des termes ṣalmu, tamšīlu et uṣurtu,” by Jean-Jacques Glassner

Les Mésopotamiens créèrent des objets, des images et des signes qui avaient une fonction précise. À la suite d’une cristallisation de concepts produite par l’archéologie, on a pris l’habitude de parler à leur propos de « représentations ». Il est préférable d’y voir davantage des « présentification ». Tel fut le sens de šlm dans la Genèse, à propos du premier homme qui fut « à l’image de Dieu », entendons qu’il fut la manifestation de la puissance divine.

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Pp. 221-246: “From Text to Reading in Enūma Eliš,” by Johannes Haubold

This article makes two main points. First, the transmitted text of Enūma eliš can be more reliably construed than has hitherto been assumed, provided we take seriously the spelling of the manuscripts and the rules of Akkadian grammar. If we do this, and that is my second point, we can also make progress at the level of interpretation. To illustrate these claims, I look at two passages that have caused difficulties to modern readers. In Enūma eliš I.1–10 we encounter some forms that seem prima facie to defy the normal rules of Akkadian grammar. Through careful analysis of spelling, syntax, and poetic context I show that the text as it stands can in fact be securely construed. I then turn to a passage that the poet himself introduces as a masterpiece of verbal craft. In Enūma eliš II.61–70 the god Ea soothes the excited Anšar by reassuring him that he has the situation under control. I argue that existing translations misconstrue the personal pronoun šâši and consequently misinterpret the climactic final couplet of the speech. Clarifying the grammar of the passage enables us to establish not only what the text says, but also to appreciate it better.

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Pp. 247-260: “Additional MUL.APIN Fragments in the British Museum,” by Jeanette C. Fincke

The edition of the series MUL.APIN by Hermann Hunger and David Pingree (1989) granted modern scholars access to the rather objective descriptions of the stars, the intercalation scheme and the lengths of days and nights compiled by Mesopotamian astronomers in the first millennium BCE. This article provides the publication of three more Neo-Assyrian exemplars from Nineveh, and joins made by Enrique Jiménez, Irving Finkel, and me to two Late Babylonian fragments that have already been used in the edition.

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