The verb râku, as also stressed by Meier (1939: 210), is rather rare, and in the eighty years since the editio princeps of this text the references have substantially not changed: following CAD R râku p. 110 the verb is attested only in this text (in CTH 811.A Vs. I 5 and later in Vs. II 25 and CTH 811.B Vs. II 7) and, with the same meaning (“to smear, to knead (?)”), also in AMT 66,3 ii 4, in fragmentary context. CAD differentiates a second meaning ‘to mix’ of the verb due to attestations in which the verb seems to have the meaning of mixing only liquids or fluids together. The differentiation between ‘smearing’ and ‘mixing’ in the dictionary thus remains mainly due to this text, in which liquids are added to a solid base, clay in this case. It seems, however, to be a technical term indicating the act of mixing together different substances, at least one of which is liquid, to get a uniform mixture.

For my translation of ana cf. AHw ana E p. 47b.

Alternatively «The substitute figurine (is made) . . .».

These ma-al-ki do not seem to be the ‘rulers’, as in CAD M/1 malqu p. 168, but rather the Malkū, chthonic deities of the Netherworld.

Uninscribed space for about two lines.

Meier (1939: 203) considers u4-mu as plural, and similarly Bácskay (2018: 172) translates “As many days as”.

Kolons 53-57 need some sort of clarification. In K. 53 the patient’s speech reproaching his own illness has ended. K. 54 marks the beginning of the speech of the āšipu, addressed to Šamaš, which seems to end in K. 58. The 1st person singular statives in K. 55 and 56 (na-ad-na-ku ṣú-ud-dá-ku) support a passive, more than active, meaning, and thus it would not be the āšipu talking for himself, but rather the substitute figurine through the āšipu’s mouth, who possibly recited this sentence touching its head as to channel its energy. lu ta-at-tal-lak of K. 57 would be the (actual) response of the āšipu to what is said by the figurine: after it has qualified itself, it is encouraged to be off.

In the text, and in rituals in general, kīam is used with the meaning of ‘thus’, ‘as follows’, more than ‘in the way just described’, but here there seems to be a sort of chiasmus so that we have:

⑄ ana Šamši taqabbi + formula // formula + ana muḫḫi marṣi kīam taqabbi

As a matter of fact, this text seems to use anastrophe without particular modification of the meaning of the sentence: see also in this regard the use of én in Kolon 170. Differently Bácskay (2018: 172), who instead considers kīam as if introducing a direct speech composed of the single Kolon 59. His translation does not seem convincing for the reasons explained in the following footnote.

For the translation of this sentence cf. CAD K kapāru 3 p. 179 «You wipe him seven times with seven dry loaves» and Meier (1939: 203). šá is problematic, because the correct temporal expression for “seven times” would be 7-šu, and not -ša. In this regard cf. AHw kapāru I D 2, which reports the sentence without actually reading this sign (“abwischen, kultisch reinigen (auch mit 2 Akk.) a) Personen: mB mit 7 Broten 7 x tu-kap-pár-šu ZA 45, 202, 20. jB amēlu . . . ku-up-pir etc.”). Consequently, I take the šá as a mistake for šu. The scribe seems to have problems in understanding the difference between -šu and -ša, if not between masculine and feminine, and uses sometimes the 3rd person suffix pronoun feminine instead of the 3rd person masculine; see also CTH 811.A R. V 36 and VI 7. Bácskay (2018: 172) translates: “‘Oh seven dried (offering) bread! Wipe him by (these) seven breads! (sic.)”; he does not close the brackets, but I suppose that he considers only this line as direct speech, and that he makes it be depended from the kīam in the previous line. This reading does not seem convincing to me, on the first hand because I find the presence of a chiasmus more plausible, and on the other hand, on a grammatical basis, because tu-kap-par-šu is a durative, and not an imperative.

Nisaba is present in relation to the term kuzbu also in BBR No. 88 Obv 9-10, a neo-Assyrian fragment from Nineveh, in which one can read: … nisaba // [. . .] dumu dA-nim ku-zu-ub dingirmeš (“Nisaba [. . .] son of Anu, luxury of the gods”). The context, which is fragmentary, is that of an invocation to Šamaš “Lord of Judgement” and Adad “Lord of divination”.

The phrase is also present in CTH 811.A Vs. III 13 and in Rs. V 3, and it denotes the act of submission in which the āšipu forces the illness.

The verb nadû is in Gtn, with an iterative hint, which seems to suggest the condition of solitude of the āšipu while he performs the following acts, away from other people, probably because the actions that follow channel the evil that seized the patient, and thus the presence of strangers could, in the perspective of the ritual, complicate the situation, or because the ritual needs to take place in secret. An alternative reading of the verb could see it regarding the human figurines with the meaning of “discarding”, but it is not convincing because its object is amīlūti: inside the ritual we have only two human anthropomorphic figurines, that of the substitute riding the donkey and that holding the stick, too few to justify a collective; moreover, the use of an iterative verb would be strange with this meaning. The literal translation of the phrase would be “you abandon the people”, and similarly translates Meier (1939: 205 ii 35): “die Menschen wirfst du hin”. Bácskay (2018: 172 r. 72), on the other hand, interprets the phrase as “You lay down the (ill) man”; this translation is not convincing because it does not consider the collective amīlūti and, above everything, it seems extremely unrealistic the iterative Gtn-Stamm if the meaning of the sentence were that of having the patience lay down.

The drawing mentioned in this line, more than a magic circle, as Meier (1939: 205) interprets it, could be some kind of mark, even just stylised, that was made on the figurine – maybe on its hand, if one interprets literally the phrase ina šu-ka of CTH 811.A Vs. III 12 – to mark it out in some way, or to ‘tie to it’ the illness of the patience, as if to ritually imprison it.

For e-bi-iṭ-ma cf. CAD E ebēṭu p. 14 “get cramps (?)” and AHw ebēṭu II p. 183a “etwa ‘binden’.” A translation ‘to bind, to tie’ is more plausible in this context. Meier (1939: 205) translates “nimm als Pfand”, and in the related footnote (ivi: 213) comments to interpret to verb as an imperative from the root ’bṭ to which the term ebūṭum from Cappadocia texts is related as well. Bácskay (2018: 172) similarly translates with the meaning of ‘tying’, but I don’t think his interpretation of the sentence after this passage (“it (i.e. the illness) may be tied up (and told) ‘do not return (and) do not come back!’”) is convincing because I think there is no need to add a direct speech inside the recitation which is a direct speech per se; perhaps Bácskay interprets this way because of the -ma, but I think it’s more simple to simply take it as a correlation, which I translated as a run-on sentence.

CAD Š/1 šalāmu 1d translates these two sentences as “Šamaš, before you I got well, behind you I did not get well”. The phrase can have two meaning: the first, which is the one I adopted in the translation, is that, metaphorical, of the presence/absence of the deity; the second can be literal, i.e. with the meaning that the patient was feeling well during the day but fell ill during the night. If intended metaphorically, anyway, the verb could also be translated as a present if we want to read it a gnomic phrase.

The term ennungallu (or enungallu) is a loanword from Sumerian en.nun.gal, and can be found only in this text. Its literal meaning of ‘great guardian’ is clear, but less clear is what deity or demon hides behind the epithet of ‘Great Warden of the Forests’. The image surely seems to call to memory Ḫumbaba, and even if the reason for which it is called into question is not entirely clear, it may perhaps be linked to the use that was made of the representations of this creature in Mesopotamian context: following the myth of Gilgameš, images of the severed head of the monster were affixed to doors with an apotropaic function as a bogeyman against evil entities, similar to what happened with the gorgoéneion in classical times. The reference to Ḫumbaba could therefore be linked to this usual prophylactic function, which here however appears perverted if not completely reversed, so much so that instead of defending the patient from external attacks it causes him all those reactions that it should cause to the demons against which he is put for protection. It wouldn’t be different from the ‘Bailiff-demon’ (maškim/rābiṣu) and from the ‘Sheriff-demon’ (gal5.lá/gallû), “which represent corrupt aspects of ancient bureaucracies” (Geller 2015: 11): figures per se protective and benevolent which, however, take on a negative connotation and even a demonic aspect. For the term ennungallu itself cf. also CAD E enungallu p. 180 and AHw 221b “(sum. Lw.) ‘Großwächter’, Bo. Dämonen (der Wälder)”.

The sentence is translated in CAD Ṣ ṣītu 3b p. 218. AHw ešēgu p. 253 refers to ašāgu and considers it a demon in this text. However, I am not so convinced that the ašāgu is a demon, more likely a means used to exorcise the demon that has seized the patient. The clay figurine was probably stuck in the thorns of the thorn-bush so that the latter would retain and “channel” the evil it represented.

The rendering of the term garza follows CAD P parṣu 1c p. 198.

The translation of this sentence follows Meier’s edition in ZA 45 209 column IV line 35: “zeichnest du sieben Umkreise vor sieben”. However, it is not clear what these ‘seven’ are, perhaps the seven dried bread loaves mentioned in CTH 811.A Vs. II 20 (and CTH 811.B Vs. II 3). The hypothesis of Bácskay (2018: 173) according to which they would be “seven (gods?)”, perhaps the Sebettū, does not seem plausible because it is not consistent with the rest of the ritual, in which this “hepteade” is never mentioned, as well as because the divinity determinative would be missing in front of the number 7.

This is the only time in the text where the ašāgu is defined with the determinative (úe-še-ki). Another solution would be to consider ú a logogram in its own right for šamnu, as if ašāgu were an attribute; even in this case, however, it would be a unicum within the text. Meier (1939: 208) reads it as šà-ú (cf. also AHw libbu p. 550 “l.ú ešēgu ZA 45, 208, 9 unkl.”), and he interprets the word as an unclear meaning of libbu, thus his translation: “daß . . . des ešeku durch das geöffnete Tor nicht (wieder) zu mir hereinkommt!”, but this reading is not convincing either, because we would need libbi in bound form, not libbu in nominative case. Bácskay (2018: 169) transliterates in the same way as Meier, but then translates: “I praise you by the great gods who belong to the ašāgu thorn, (the disease) will not enter through the open gate”. This translation does not seem convincing to me both on a grammatical level, because for the reasons mentioned above we would need libbi, not libbu, and because it actually forces us to ask ourselves who are these phantom – and never before mentioned in the text – “great gods who belong to the ašāgu-thorn(bush)”.

The sentence is translated in CAD P petû p. 338: “let him not come in to me through the open city gate”. It is not completely clear whether -am is the 1st person suffix pronoun or simply the ventive particle, but since it was possible to maintain both nuances in English, I have translated accordingly; Meier (1939: 209) also translates “. . . durch das geöffnete Tor nicht (wieder) zu mir hereinkommt!”. Bácskay (2018: 174), on the other hand, translates “(the disease) will not enter through the open gate”, thus giving preference to the ventive, as, I must admit, would have been preferable in Italian as well in order to make the reading more fluid.

ig-gám-ma-ru can be interpreted as either referring to the incantation, as also in Meier 1939: 209 and AHw gamāru II p. 278b “bis (die Beschwörung) g.” or as referring to the febrile attack: “until (his attack) is over”.

According to Bácskay (2018: 41), “The ‘human semen’ as a drug probably refers symbolically to the seed of amēlānu plant. Based on a Late Babylonian medical commentary, the term is the Deckname of the maštakal plant”; for this reason, in the translation I have put the term into brackets. Indeed, it is common to find attestations of ‘coded’ writing for ordinary ingredients, to make sure that “a lay person [. . .] would not be able to understand and use medical recipes” (Geller 2010: 53): it is, therefore, an attempt to ‘encrypt’ the ritual text so as not to make it accessible to laymen, replacing the real name of the plant with a code name (Deckname) or ‘dirty name’ (Dreckname), and the practice is therefore called Dreckapotheke (Rumor 2016: 587). In some cases we are able to trace their correspondent thanks to a botanical catalogue from a tomb in Uruk that shows both the ‘dirty name’ (defined as ‘secret’, pirištu) and the common name (Fales 2018: 42), and other similar texts, such as the late-Babylonian commentary quoted by Bácskay, that is MLC 1863: in this specific case, in l. 5 (Geller 2010: 155) one can read: u gú : ì ḫul : nap-ṭu u ì ku6 : šam-ni nu-ú-nu : a.ri.a nam.lú.lu18.lu : úmaš-ta-kal : áš-šú úa.ri.a : úmaš-ta-kal šá-niš a.ri.a : ri-ḫu-ut : “Human sperm (Sum.) is the same as (the plant) maštakal, which is derived from ‘steppe-plant.’ A second explanation for maštakal is ‘semen’ (Sum.), which is the same as ‘semen’ (Akk.)” (Geller 2010: 168 e 171).