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)”.