Mesopotamian scholarship in Hattusa and the Sammeltafel KUB 4.53.

• Author: Rutz, Matthew T.
• Position: Report

The tablet published as KUB 4.53 is something of an enigma in the cuneiform text corpus from Hattusa. E. Weidner (1922) first included it among the Akkadian-language "Med-izinische Texte" (KUB 4.48-62) from the early excavations at the Hittite capital, placing it in a heterogeneous group of fragmentary sources that consist mainly of medical therapeutic texts with incantations and recipes. (1) Several decades later E. Laroche (1971: 148) listed KUB 4.53 among the unidentified fragments of Sumero-Akkadian literary compositions (CTH 819), and G. Wilhelm (1994b) made hesitant mention of the tablet in his edition of the medical diagnostic texts from Hattusa, a classification that has gained traction in subsequent discussions (e.g., Sassmannshausen 2008: 286). The purpose of this article is to reexamine KUB 4.53 in order to situate it more precisely within the traditions of cuneiform scholarship in circulation in Hattusa during the Late Bronze Age. In what follows I argue that KUB 4.53 is a collective or Sammeltafel with an incantation-prayer or hymn (perhaps to the sun-god Samas) on its obverse and a collection of terrestrial omens on its reverse.

In the course of the complex editorial history of ancient Mesopotamian divinatory compositions, individual omens or groups of omens were sometimes incorporated into a variety of different omen series known principally from first-millennium manuscripts. The case of KUB 4.53 rev, is curious in that it may correspond with sections of two different first-millennium omen compositions. I suggest that KUB 4.53 rev, contained terrestrial omens of the kind later incorporated into the series gumma Nu. At the same time, this section of text may also provide a second-millennium forerunner of the otherwise unknown Tablet 25 of the medical diagnostic-prognostic series Sakikka. However, before investigating the specific contents and significance of KUB 4.53 it is necessary to provide a few general remarks about the diagnostic-prognostic series and the relationship between that genre and the wider text corpus of Mesopotamian omen literature. I will then discuss the placement of KUB 4.53 in the Mesopotamian scholarly traditions of Hattusa, focusing on both the specific textual genres that contain therapeutic recitations against illness and the transmission of terrestrial omen texts. An edition of KUB 4.53 can be found in the appendix.

The forty-tablet Mesopotamian treatise on disease, medical diagnosis, and prognosis, the standard diagnostic handbook or diagnostic-prognostic series, is referred to in first-millennium Babylonia and Assyria by the incipit of its first tablet, Enuma ana bit marsi asipu (2) illaku, "When an exorcist goes to a sick man's house," as well as with the designation SA.GIG = sakikku, probably to be glossed as 'symptom(s)' (Labat 1951; Hee[beta]el 2000; Maul 2003: 64-66). First-millennium scribal traditions attributed the redaction of this text to an eleventh-century Babylonian scholar (Finkel 1988; Hee[beta]el 2000: 104-10), and a number of fragmentary sources point to the existence of the genre in the second millennium B.C.E., so it is no surprise that Akkadian-language medical diagnostic texts have been found in the tablet collections of the Hittite capital (CTH 537). (3) To date some eighteen fragmentary sources have been identified, and among them are at least three sets of duplicates. (4) These sources are witnesses from an important and poorly documented period in the transmission of both medical and divinatory texts from Mesopotamia proper.

The series Sakikku is a treatise devoted specifically to reading and interpreting medical signs, but in fact a variety of Mesopotamian omen collections have select entries or entire sections that read aspects of the phenomenal world vis-a-vis health, illness, and death (van der loom 1985: 77-78; Bock 2000: 33-37; Hee[beta]el 2000: 76-77; Geller 2010: 39-42). Omens read from signs around (as opposed to on) the patient's body were even incorporated into Sakikku itself: it is well known that the first two tablets of the standard version of Sakikku are devoted not to a patient's medical signs but rather to various terrestrial omens that find their clearest parallels in the first-millennium omen series gumma alu (Freedman 1998, 2006; Hee[beta]el 2001-2b, 2007; Maul 2003: 58-62). In the case of Sakikka 1 the omens pertain to the exorcist's observations on the way to making his house call, while most of the entries in Sakikka 2 have direct parallels in various tablets of the series Summa alu (George 1991; Hee[beta]el 2001-2a). Although compendia of terrestrial omens are known from the second millennium (Hee[beta]el 2007: 2), very few of the entries in Sakikku 1-2 have clear antecedents among the early omen collections. (5) Therefore, if correctly identified, the omen text on KUB 4.53 rev, would contribute to the current understanding of the circulation of terrestrial omen texts in Hattusa (CTH 536; Riemschneider 2004: 6-7; Cohen 2007). Before discussing this omen text, I will first summarize what is known about KUB 4.53 and then address the text on its obverse.

KUB 4.53 (Bo 1284) is an upper-right-hand fragment with some fifteen lines on the obverse and ten lines on the reverse, and its ductus has been identified as that of the so-called Mittanian school (Wilhelm 1994b: 6; cf. Schwemer 1998: 8-39). Both the obverse and the reverse have a vertical ruling that gives a guide for properly spacing the text across the tablet's surface. The obverse consistently follows this vertical line, while the text on the reverse does not. (6) Only the reverse has regular horizontal rulings. Virtually nothing is known about where the tablet was found (Kosak 2005: 43). KUB 4.53 can be referred to as a collective/combination tablet or Sammeltafel because the fragmentary contents of the obverse and reverse are difficult to reconcile with one another as a single continuous text. As noted above, Wilhelm (1994b: 73-74, Fragment N) was duly cautious about including KUB 4.53 rev. in his text corpus, but the appearance of the lexeme silittu

Enough is intelligible on KUB 4.53 obverse to suggest that it contained an incantation-prayer or hymn, and the isolated words, phrases, and epithets are consistent with an address to Samas (cf. Tallqvist 1938: 453-60). Although it must be stressed that the divine name Samas is not found in the extant text, the epithets and descriptive phrases that can be identified do not fit well with either Ea or Asalluhi. The preserved section is only an introductory address, presumably to curry divine favor, and the overall structure and function of the text remain elusive. However, Sumerian-Akkadian bilingual and Akkadian-language incantation-prayers and hymns to the sun-god are known to have existed in Hattusa, (7) and parallel phrases can be found in a variety of later texts. (8)

The reverse of KUB 4.53 poses altogether different problems, since no parallels have been recognized thus far in the medical diagnostic-prognostic series (Wilhelm 1994b: 74; Biggs 1997: 231). My contention here is that KUB 4.53 rev, is a second-millennium version of an omen text introduced summa naru sa res marsi, "If the lamp at the head of a sick man," some version of which was later incorporated into the terrestrial omen series Summa alu. Although its incipit is not preserved, the topic of one version of Summa alu Tablet 94 is given in a section rubric on the reverse of a Neo-Assyrian manuscript from Nineveh (CT 39.36 r.17', Freedman 1998: 341-42, cf. 22):

25.AM IZI, GAR sa SAG [.sup.lu]GIG DUB.94.KAM DIS URU ina SUKUD-e GAR Twenty-five (entries): "(If) the lamp at the head of a sick man." 94th Tablet, "If a city is set on a height." The only source published at present (K.4097+) has excerpts from at least four different tablets of the canonical series. (9) The topic of igniting fire does occur in a small section of one of the two terrestrial omen tablets incorporated into the beginning of the diagnostic-prognostic series Sakikku (Sakikku 2:78-81), but any possible correspondence between this section of canonical Sakikku 2 and Summa alu is still not clear due to the incomplete preservation of the latter (Hee[beta]el 2001-2a: 25, 36-37). Nevertheless, the presumed topic of Summa alu 94 and its precursors--the behavior of the light source placed at the head of someone who is sick--would suggest that it would have been ideal for inclusion in Sakikku. The text of Sakikku has not been fully reconstructed, but according to the Sakikku-Alamdimmu catalog, the incipit of Tablet 25 of Sakikku is summa nuru sa ina res marsi kunnu, "If a lamp that was set up at the head of a sick man" (CTN 4.71:30, Finkel 1988: 147). At present no sources for this tablet are known (Hee[beta]el 2000: 32). (10) The parallel apodoses (see appendix) give hints that the reverse of KUB 4.53 may preserve at least one textual tradition behind Summa alu 94 (and perhaps Sakikku 25). That is to say, if correct this identification would make KUB 4.53 rev, only the second Akkadian-language compendium of terrestrial omens known in the text corpus from the Hittite capital (cf. KBo. 36.47 rev., Cohen 2007: 235-37, 243-47), and it would also provide a second-millennium forerunner of an otherwise unknown tablet in the medical diagnostic-prognostic series. Confirmation or refutation of these claims must await additional data such as joins, duplicates, or more complete parallels.

The following concluding remarks speak to three issues that are germane to the present discussion: the identification and reconstruction of the texts found on KUB 4.53; the question of the relationship between the texts on the obverse and reverse of the tablet; and the significance of the circulation of a source like KUB 4.53 in Late Bronze Age Hattuga.

The first question is: can a specific scholarly text be identified by its apodoses when they are compared diachronically? Because the text on the obverse of...