Weather Omens of Enuma Anu Enlil: Thunderstorms, Wind and Rain (Tablets 44-49).

• Author: Steele, John M.
• Position: Book review

Weather Omens of Enuma Anu Enlil: Thunderstorms, Wind and Rain (Tablets 44-49). By Erlend Gehlken. Cuneiform Monographs, vol. 43. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Pp. x + 286, 47 pits. $144.

The weather omens of the celestial divination series Enuma Anu Enlil have, until recently, been the focus of comparatively little study by scholars. Over the past decade, Erlend Gehlken had drawn attention to this part of Enuma Anu Enlil in a series of publications including a general survey in which he attempted to establish the order of the weather omen tablets ("Die Adad-Tafeln der Omenserie Enuma Anu Enlil. Teil 1: Einfuhrung," Baghdader Mitteilungen 36 [2005]: 235-73), an edition and German translation of the first two tablets containing omens from thunder ("Die Adad-Tafeln der Omenserie Enuma Anu Enlil. Teil 2: Die ersten beiden Donnertafeln (EAE 42 und EAE 43)," Zeitschrift fur Orient-Archaologie 1 [2008]: 256-314), and culminating in the book under review, which contains editions and English translations of the remainder of the thunder omens, the wind omens, and the rain omens (assigned by Gehlken to Enuma Anu Enlil tablets 44-49). The first five tablets containing weather omens (Enuma Anu Enlil tablets 36-41 in Gehlken's numbering), which deal with mist, clouds, dawn, and twilight, still await publication.

Gehlken begins the book with a very brief introduction to the weather omens and their place within Enuma Anu Enlil. He briefly explains that there existed different versions of Enuma Anu Enlil in antiquity with different systems of numbering for the tablets in the series. For convenience Gehlken assigns tablet numbers based upon the lowest numbering system, which appears to be consistent with that used at Uruk. Gehlken's comments here are extremely terse and a longer introduction to the content and style of the weather omens, their role in celestial divination, and the principles he has adopted in assigning tablets to the series would have been helpful for the reader.

The bulk of the book contains editions of Enuma Anu Enlil tablets 44-49 and related texts, including commentary texts and Neo-Assyrian letters and reports which cite the omens. For each reconstructed Enuma Anu Enlil tablet, Gehlken gives a short introduction, including a catalogue of the sources he has used to produce a composite edition, an overview of the content of the tablet, and a summary of related texts. It is unfortunate that rather than giving a full discussion of the placement of...