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Tablets from the Sippar library IV. Lugale

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

F. N. H. Al-Rawi
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Extract

      To the memory of the library's excavator,
      my good friend Walid al-Jadir

As reported in Iraq 49, four tablets of the bilingual version of Lugale, the myth of Ninurta, were excavated in the library of Šamaš's temple at Sippar: complete manuscripts of Tablets I, III and IX, and a fragment of Tablet XIII. All the tablets have brief colophons, three of which identify the owner of the tablet as Nabû-ēṭir-napšāti, a member of the Potter family (Paḫāru), who is known from other colophons as the son of one Marduk-šuma-uṣur. They all come from niche 3 A.

The tablets are given here in copy, photograph and transliteration. The transliterations are based on a first draft made directly from the original tablets in 1986, the year that they were discovered. The copies are provisional, having been traced from the photographs, which, with the transliterations, must be regarded as the primary witnesses to the cuneiform. Collations were made from a different set of photographs, not published here, which became available after the copies were made. Such collations are marked in the text with an asterisk.

Since the text of the Tablets given here was already fundamentally complete in the Old Babylonian version when the myth as a whole was last edited, there is no call for a fresh translation. Where the new sources add significantly to our knowledge is in filling out the often extensive lacunae of the bilingual version, especially in Tablets III and IX. The changes in the Sumerian text that seem to have been engendered by the exercise of furnishing it with an Akkadian translation are a matter which needs to be tackled with reference to the whole text, and a topic which cannot be addressed at length here. Nevertheless, some commentary on these and other points has been provided by A. R. George and follows the transliterated text as an appendix.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 57 , 1995 , pp. 199 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1995 

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References

1 Cf. Iraq 49 (1987), p. 249 Google Scholar, which reports “tablets 1, 3, 9 and 10 at least”.

2 The tablets are published by permission of the excavators, the University of Baghdad and the Directorate of Antiquities and Heritage. I also record my grateful thanks to the British School of Archaeology in Iraq for help in meeting the costs of work on the library. I acknowledge, too, a debt to A. Cavigneaux, for his notes on the first draft of the transliterations, and thank A. R. George for further help and suggestions.

3 van Dijk, J., LUGAL UD ME-LÁM-bi NIR- ÁL (Leiden, 1983).Google Scholar A recent English translation is that of the late Jacobsen, Thorkild, The Harps that Once … (New Haven and London, 1987), pp. 233–72.Google Scholar See also idem, “The Asakku in Lugal-e”, in E. Leichty et al. (eds.), A Scientific Humanist. Studies in Memory of Abraham Sachs (Philadelphia, 1988), pp. 225–32; Geller, M. J., “Notes on Lugale”, BSOAS 48 (1985), pp. 215–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Finkel, I. L., “On the Lugale Commentaries”, RA 80 (1986), pp. 190 f.Google Scholar; Borger, R., “Neue Lugale-Fragmente”, Or NS 55 (1986), pp. 446–9Google Scholar; von Weiher, E., Spätbabylonische Texte aus Uruk III 60 rev.Google Scholar