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If the reading of the traces is correct, cf. the lunar eclipse omens in KBo 13.15+, obv. II 19′, rev. IV? 6′, and KUB 29.9 rev. IV 8′. The fragment may belong to one of these texts.
From the Old Babylonian witnesses we expect both protases mentioning the king to be about the king of Akkad. The sign traces in C are unclear, but rather point to -uš than URU.
The Old Babylonian witnesses have nīšu iṣeḫḫerā, hence antuwaḫḫaš may mean ‘populace, people’, here.
The Old Babylonian witnesses all have ubbuṭu, the first-millennium texts from Nineveh have ḫušaḫḫu. The second part of the apodosis about the sale of children is the same and follows logically from ubbuṭu/ ḫušaḫḫu, but not from tuliyaš, ‘assembly’. Hence the conjunction našma in Hittite. Note, however, that the Old Babylonian tablets BM 86381 and BM 22696 from Babylon write napḫānu, ‘swelling(?)’ (cf. George A. 2013a: 84 (translates ‘kwashiorkor’)), in month 12, day 14, where other witnesses including the ones from Ḫattuša have ubbuṭu or a synonym. If not a deliberate variant, tuliyaš may result from a Vorlage that had napḫānu here as well and be due to a misinterpretation, or due to a misreading as napḫaru, ‘totality’, from paḫāru, ‘to gather, assemble’. Alternatively, a graphic confusion of UKKIN and GU₇ is possible. Weeden M. 2011a: 283 n. 1303 translates ‘the city, the assembly, the person’, meaning ‘everyone’. Puhvel J. 2009b: 56 translates the ‘entire city’. panku- is the translation of nakbatu in BoTU 8 III 61-62 and the Old Babylonian witnesses from Babylonia have URUKI kab-tam, ‘an important city’. Following Weeden’s correct assessment, that we’d expect an adjective to precede, I assume that the Hittite scribe took kabtam for a noun.
From the Old Babylonian texts from Babylon we expect MUL.GAL im-qú-ut in the apodosis. It is unclear if the Hittite scribe understood this to be a modifying protasis or an alternative apodosis, both can be expressed with an additional mān.
Where the passage is preserved, day seventeen of month one is only found here and in the Middle Babylonian tablet from Alalakh AlT 452. Only a single NE is preserved in the apodosis, which in that text is used for zunnu, ‘rain’. In the Old Babylonian witnesses, there follows a day 19, in the first millennium the ‘regular’ day 20.
This alternative apodosis is not attested in any other witness.
In most instances there is another phrase before mān D30-aš aki, usually written ku-it-ma-an ITU GIBIL ti-i-e-ez-zi, but it is occasionally missing, e. g. here and in the same omen in K.
Thus the extant Old Babylonian witnesses, Emar 6.652, MDP 18.258 from Susa and the first-millennium tablets.
Day 21 of the second month is also absent in AlT 452.
This apodosis is only found in the first-millennium version and partially in AlT 452.
From the Old Babylonian witnesses and the tablet Emar 6.652 we know this was an omen about the usurpation of the throne of Subartu by the king’s brother and about rivers drying up. More parts of the Hittite version are preserved on the fragment Bo 6688, which is supposed to be published by N. Aslantürk. There, however, the number of the day seems to be at least day 20 and the preceding paragraph is difficult to bring in accord with day 15 in the remaining witnesses. Sometimes, entries were accidentally moved (e. g. in exemplar E). From the variants in D we may also surmise that there were varying versions as there were in Old Babylonian. Also note that there is an another version of EAE 22 from Ḫattuša (CTH 532.8).
The Hittite translation of mātu rabû ana māti ṣeḫri ana butalluṭ illak can be restored from this passage together with KBo 71.51, 4, thus confirming the suggestion by Riemschneider K.K. 2004a: 167. Month five, day 21 is missing in the Ḫattuša-version, unless it was forgotten and added later (cf. for that practice exemplar E). The Old Babylonian texts from Babylon, the tablet Emar 6.652, the Middle Assyrian tablet BM 121034, and the first-millennium version all deal with a particular type of fish (agargarû) for simply fish (BM 121034) appearing in the rivers while the goods of the sea perish. Perhaps the rare vocabulary lead a scribe to simply skipping this entry (similar unease with rare Akkadian forms can be observed in KUB 4.1, rev. IV, 25′-26′).
Unless arunaz is an otherwise unattested nominative, we are missing an explicit subject for the predicate. The only other extant witness to this passage is Emar 6.652, obv. 28: mi-lu ina ÍD i-sa-dar LU[GAL] ana LUGAL s[a-li-ma i-šap-pa-ar]. The first part thematically fits the Hittite, the second part differs.
Perhaps: ‘[Copy of a s]ingle column tablet’. The parallel exemplar to the obv. of exemplar P, tablet B, is in fact a single-column tablet and has much longer lines. If P was a single-column tablet, it must have been very narrow.
As observed already by Riemschneider K.K. 2004a: 243, GIŠGU.ZA parā nai- is the translation of Akkadian kussâ ulabbar, lit. ‘he will make the throne old’. Note that while in the Old Babylonian witnesses from Babylonia there is a negation NU/ ul, whereas in Hattuša, Emar, and the first millennium it is a positive statement Month eight, day fourteen is missing in Ḫattuša, whereas day fifteen starts similar to day fourteen in the Mesopotamian tradition but then differs substantially. Day sixteen then contains the same omen as the first-millennium version’s day fifteen, with the last apodosis of the Old Babylonian version’s day fourteen added. Day twenty follows the Mesopotamian witnesses, whereas day 21 thematically is close to Emar 6.652, obv. 45, but still differs. Note that day 21 is different in every extant witness, with the exception of a parallel between the first-millennium version and CTH 532.8.
Thus all extant Old Babylonian witnesses, Emar 6.652, the Middle Assyrian tablet from Aššur BM 121034, and the first-millennium version.
The lions are the only more or less certain element of this omen, since they are attested in all extant Old Babylonian and later witnesses. ḫaḫrannaš is so far only known as the gen. sg. of the verbal noun ḫaḫratar, ‘the digging’, which features in the name of a festival, which may explain the genitive here. It is difficult to see how the Hittite relates to the Akkadian texts; we expect a translation of nēšū innaddarūma/išeggûma alakta iparrasū. Either the text is corrupt or this may be a particular Hittite interpretation of the omen.
The Middle Assyrian witness has ana] DANNA-a i-ḫar-ru-ub, which is not found in the other witnesses. Perhaps the Vorlage of the Hittite text had a similar apodosis.
luri- is usually the equivalent ibissû/I.BÍ.ZA. Emar 6.652 and BM 121034 are fragmentary here, but have arbūtu and ubbuṭu, respectively.
Perhaps to month 11, days 16-21? If so, the fragment J is from close to the lower edge.
The use of the old connector ta-a is found in the same phrase CTH 532.13 (KBo 8.128 r. col 3′; KBo 13.36, rev. 8′), a text to which this tablet possibly also belongs.
The phrase is usually just KI.LAM SIG₅-in/tēpawēšzi etc. This may be a translation of phrase such as a-na KI.LAM TUR-ra, a-na KI.LAM GI.NA etc.
A full introduction and commentary of the terrestrial passages is provided in the according section of CTH 536.
The Akkadian verb for the eclipse is lost. From the Hittite kattanta pāuwaš mēḫuni it is clear that the text deals with eclipses during the setting of the moon. The phrase mūša uštenmer is apparently a Št-passive or reflexive of namāru. A Štlex of that root is so far not attested and thus it is possible that mūša uštenmer is a causative t-Perf and means ‘and it then illuminates the night’, perhaps meaning the sun, i. e. ‘it becomes morning’. The Hittite translation išpan laknuzzi however means ‘it spends the night’ (cf. CHD/L-N, 20a) and definitely understood the form to be intransitive, which is followed in the translation above.
Not only is išpan laknuzzi either missing or was written on the intercolumnium/into the right column, the pronoun apūn also implies that that a relative clause or a pending noun phrase must have preceded that contained LUGAL or ḫaššu-. Either the scribe made extensive use of the intercolumnium or the right column or he accidentally skipped one or two clauses.
The form with geminated t also appears in the Akkadian manuscripts of the solar omen text CTH 534.1. Perfect forms in šumma-clauses are rare, and it it possible that the text had no introductory conjunction like CTH 532.9. The varying position of antallû on the tablet shows that the omens must have started with something other than the word of eclipse, however.
This was likely an omen about the king falling in battle and not about the king’s weapon as shown by the Akkadian parallels in Old Babylonian (BM 86381 obv. II 28), from Emar (Emar 6.652 obv. 14) and the first millennium (EAE 22).
This reconstruction of the formula is warranted by KBo 34.110+, obv. 11′ and KBo 71.51, 4, confirming the proposal of Riemschneider K.K. 2004a: 167. The meaning of walk- is disputed because it is barely attested. If the proposal by Riemschneider K.K. 2004a: 73 is correct and this fragment treats months eight and nine, then it is likely a translation of inaqqar (BM 86381 rev. III 56) or innaqqar (first millennium EAE 22). This in turn concurs with earlier proposals by Oettinger N. 1979a: 234, cf. HEG IV/U-Z, 266-267. Riemschneider K.K. 2004a: 72 follows Weidner’s copy in KUB 8.3 and reads NA₄KIŠIB ḫa-a-ti. The photographs of HPM in my opinion rather show na-at ḫa-a-ti ( na-at perhaps written on erasure), which does, however, barely help. It is unclear what is supposed to dry up and why this follows the apodosis about famine. The Akkadian parallels for month nine are either destroyed or have very different apodoses. In omen apodoses, NA₄KIŠIB can appear in phrases such as É NA₄KIŠIB (…) i-re-e-qú: ‘The storehouse (…) will go empty’ (KUB 4.66 obv. II 6-7). But unless the Hittite is a figure of speech, I cannot explain why a storehouse would dry up instead of go empty ( šannapili-), and there is no É.
The text KUB 8.3 is the only witness for the word ašpuzza. From similar texts such as KUB 4.64+ it is likely that its meaning is “eclipse” or “darkening”. Riemschneider K.K. 2004a: 197 linked it to the word puš- “to diminish, to darken”, which is contextually correct, but there is no Hittite or Luwian word formation that convincingly explains the way from puš- to ašpuzza. It could in theory be a Hurrian word ( Weitenberg J.J.S. 1972a: n. 633), but that idea mainly goes back to groundless phonetic associations with Hurrian wúú-zu-e and pu-ú-zu-e ( Kammenhuber A. 1976c: 101), and there is to date no Hurrian root ašp- that could help explain the word (S. Fischer, personal communication, cf. also the critique by Koch-Westenholz U. 1993a: 233-234 n. 14). Note also that clearly identifiable Hurrian words are virtually absent from the astrological corpus from Ḫattuša. Tischler J. 1999a: 699-700, assumes it is a scribal error for BEpu-uš-za = mān puszi, admitting, however, that this leaves us with incorrect syntax. If we assume a scribal mistake, I’d rather propose that the frequent repetition of ḫa-li-ia-aš pu-uš-za or DUTU-aš pu-uš-za lead to a dittography or misattribution of aš in the text’s Vorlage or during the copying process. This would also explain why the word is limited to this text. LÚ-aš with the meaning ‘prince, lord, city ruler’ as opposed to LUGAL appears also in the Akkadian-Hittite liver models (e. g. KBo 25.1 a. 2; KUB 37.223 d. 2). Whether this is due to Assyrian influence that often uses rubû instead of šarru in omen texts is difficult to determine, however.
The term pár-ki-i is attested only here and obscure. CHD/p 160a and EDHIL 636 offer a possible connection to park-, ‘to raise, lift’, but CHD/p 160a rightly concedes: ‘Without context we simply cannot be sure of case (…) or meaning.’ I have unfortunately been unable to find a parallel for the fragmentary context.
Polvani A.M. 1988d: 11-12 assumes this is a stone or mineral named NA₄aš-ša-a-ra-ia, but the spacing on the tablet clearly implies that a-ra-i is a separate word. In any case, the context is fragmentary so it is difficult to surmise what this is supposed to mean. The most tempting solution is to assume this is a translation of ŠÈG NA₄DU or abnu izannun or an equivalent, “Rain of stones (=hail) will come”. The reading NA₄-ašš=a also implies that this is part of the protasis, unless the protasis only consisted of KI.MIN, for which we have no Hittite example. This further complicates things, since hail in lunar omen protases is rare, cf. e. g. Rm.124, eBL edition (https://www.ebl.lmu.de/fragmentarium/Rm.124), accessed 18.05.2024, and the indices in the editions of Rochberg-Halton F. 1988a and Verderame 2002a. If it is about hail, the closest parallels are likely the weather omens from Enūma Anu Enlil 46-48, in which hail is amply attested but which do not feature eclipses.
The supinum is rare in Hittite omen text, but appears e.g. in the lunar eclipse omens of CTH 532.8 (KBo 13.36 rev. 9′ + Dupl.).
Cf. CTH 533.3B/KUB 8.30, rev. 17′-21′. This is in fact the only sentence that resembles a typical omen.
Since the last and next visible subjects are plural, I find a reading -a]n BAD-an, with a new sentence starting with BAD-an less likely.
The logogram for nawāru is usually ZÁLAG, which is very similar but not identical. Riemschneider K.K. 2004a: 56 hesitantly proposed a reading u-UD.UD for unammer. ebēbu is usually not used with the moon. In EAE 16, §11, 12-13 ( Rocheberg-Halton F. 1988a, 105) maṣṣarta igmur is used differently from maṣṣarta uštanīḫ, ‘it lasts through the watch’. Thus maṣṣarta igmur likely means that the eclipse ends together with the respective night watch. The sign sign between the two ŠÚ-signs is damaged, but looks like RU. The logograms for erēpu, ‘to cloud over’, is usually ŠÚ or ŠÚ.SÚ.RU. This could be a shortened logogram or accidental haplography or even switch of sign order, but there seems to be no other example for this. šurru erēbi is thus a tentative compromise to avoid conjecture.
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