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The Nimrud Catalogue of Medical and Physiognomical Omina

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

J. V. Kinnier Wilson
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Extract

In the issue of this journal for Autumn, 1956, I published under the title ‘Two medical texts from Nimrud’ a fragment from the Nābû temple library which had been excavated the previous year. The piece is numbered ND. 4358, and in the issue referred to it was described as follows: ‘This text is a catalogue, perhaps sufficiently important to be called the “Nimrud Catalogue”, of a series “sa-gig”. The series in question we have not yet learnt to call by this name, but it is otherwise well known as enūma ana bīt mar marṣi āšīpu illaku.’ As to its physical description, it was stated that the fragment was ‘the lower half of a single-column tablet, obverse and reverse thus providing a continuous text which must represent about half the original.’

It is the purpose of the present communication to announce that the missing portion of the tablet has been identified.

The new piece is ND. 4366. It came to my notice through a copy made by D. J. Wiseman at Baghdad towards the end of 1959, and I am grateful for Wiseman's generous consent that I should edit the text in this publication. The text was collated by me in the course of a personal visit to Baghdad in the Spring of 1961, and I was then able to confirm my suspicion that it in fact physically joined ND. 4358. There is some loss of material at the join and down the left edge, and the quality of the surface rapidly deteriorates as the end of the reverse is reached, but every line of the tablet is now represented in some part at least. The copy will be included in Wiseman's forthcoming volume of texts from the Nābû temple library, and thus in the present edition the text is conveyed in transliteration only.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , Spring 1962 , pp. 52 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1962

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References

1 Iraq XVIII, Pt. 2, pp. 130Google Scholar.

2 Cf. Iraq XVIII, Pt. 2, p. 136Google Scholar, where lines and Tablet numbers provided by the Catalogue were compared with those given on texts edited by Labat in his Traité akkadien de Diagnostics et Pronostics médicaux.

3 See M.V.A.G. 40/2 (1955)Google Scholar; A.f.O., Beiheft 3 (1939), cited hereafter as ‘Texte’; A.f.O. XI (1936–1937), pp. 219 if.Google Scholar; Or. NS 16 (1947), 172 ff.Google Scholar

4 Also referred to occasionally as alamdimmû, without šumma.

5 In M.V.A.G. 40/2 20Google Scholar, Kraus drew attention to the existence of six Tablets with preserved colophons, Nos. 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, and 10, ‘welche eine Serie von mindestens elf Tafeln bezeugen.’

6 Cf. Kraus, M.V.A.G. 40/247Google Scholar and Texte, No. 54.

6a On the texts relating to šumma kataduggû see Kraus, , Or. NS 16, pp. 202–3Google Scholar.

7 See, in the last instance, Kraus, Texte, No. 50.

8 See Iraq XVIII, Pt. 2, p. 137Google Scholar, which, however, is not a model of accurate statement.

9 The writing sa-gig-ga is difficult. Hitherto I have argued for Sum. sa-gig, Bab. (plur.) sakikkū (or sakīkū; my previous sakikkû represents a misuse of the circumflex), and Ass. (plur.) sakikkē. At the moment it seems likely that sa-gig-ga should be considered a late and incorrect Sumerian formation.

10 Cf. Lambert, , Babylonian Wisdom Literature, p. 211Google Scholar.

11 [b]i, [g]a [i]g. etc.

12 Text evidently corrupt. The signs are clear.

13 Restored after the first line of K.3802 +, and the catchline of K. 12484 (see Kraus, Texte, Nos. 2a and 1, and cf. M.V.A.G. 40/2, 20 and 68Google Scholar.

14 Restored after Kraus, Texte, No. 6, Rev. 69, and No. 5, Rev. 15′.

15 On the idiom involved, cf. Wilson, Kinnier, Iraq XVIII, Pt. 2, 142Google Scholar.

16 Cf. Kraus, , Or. NS 16 pp. 184–5Google Scholar concerning 3 TI.RA.AN (‘drei Wirbel’) of the head.

17 I cannot certainly identify the sign from the traces. It appears to have something in common with the sign šin, and tentatively a reading ˹šin˺- ˂na˃ šú, ‘one of his teeth,’ may be considered.

18 The uncertainty is due to internal damage within the sign; the ‘frame’ of KA is clear.

19 For the possible relevance of K.A.R. 395, Rev. vi 25′ at this point, see Kraus, , Texte, p. 15Google Scholar (description of text No. 72).

20 Restored from Kraus, Texte, No. 8, Rev. 75.

21 Curiously, panū may sometimes be followed, where it is the subject, by a verb in the singular. The nearest proof of this is to be found in the verb ú-kal as in the first line of sa-gig, IX (see above), the singular being confirmed also by T.D.P. 70, 1.

22 It is to be noted that this line is not at all expected for Tablet XI, see Kraus, , M.V.A.G. 40/2 pp. 26–27Google Scholar.

23 Very faint, but probably correct. The following GAL.MEŠ makes clear that the relevant line in Kraus, , M.V.A.G. 40/2 p. 45Google Scholar, must be restored in terms of the uncontracted ra-b]i-ú-tum.

24 One of the few distinctive characteristics of ‘Nimrud orthography’ concerns the sign kin, which is often written with exactly the same strokes as for the sign en, when it is only to be distinguished from it by the fact that the two verticals are placed slightly further apart, and the two oblique strokes are placed centrally between them rather than at the bottom of the verticals. The present example is a case in point.

25 Lines 36–7 have been restored with the help of Obv. 1–2 of K.4173 (Kraus, Texte, No. 54, and cf. M.V.A.G. 40/2, p. 47Google Scholar).

26 Probably written [TKG-tum].

27 Traces resemble “ana 2,” or conceivably ‘ib’.

28 Unless two signs, — ud aš.

29 I.e. Anu, Enlil and Ea? Or restore [dIgigi]?

30 Meaning obscure. A katadugga would appear to be something like a repeated expression or utterance, occasionally, to judge from the extant material, indicative of what a modern psychiatrist would call the obsessive-ruminative state, but in any case sufficiently characteristic of a person as to reveal something of his personality.

31 The possibility of restoring ina da-ba-bi-šú, “while he is speaking,’ and thus of seeing this entry as the first line (hitherto missing) of the tablet edited by Kraus in A.f.O. XI, 222 ff.Google Scholar may be considered, particularly as the second line, [šumma amēlu i]-na da-ba-bi-šu SAG[.DU? ], appears to be concerned with the head.

32 Traces do not appear to favour a restoration in line with the catchline of Kraus, Texte, No. 50, whence possibly the entry represents the first line of Tablet III.

33 Traces resemble lu, or ib.

34 Supposing that šumma is not to be restored in this position.

35 Reference from C.A.D. II p. 166.

36 After Landsberger's unpublished edition.

37 Gould's Medical Dictionary 5, p. 767.

38 Cf. Wilson, Kinnier, Iraq XVIII, Pt. 2, p. 140Google Scholar. The translation ‘muscle’ appears first to have been suggested by Jensen, , Z.K. I p. 302Google Scholar and Z.A. I p. 54Google Scholar (under *buānu).

39 Or ‘symptoms and physical Characteristics, female and male.’

40 Cf. Landsberger, , J.N.E.S., XVII, p. 58Google Scholar.

41 Note that in T.D.P. 40, 11 to 42, 29, the word šer'ān is to be restored throughout after šumma.

42 For references, see Iraq XVIII, Pt. 2, p. 141 n. 2Google Scholar.