Mathis Kreitzscheck (Hrsg.)

CTH 532.1

Fragment of Hittite lunar eclipse omens during the vigils of the night

introductio



Kurzbeschreibung

CTH 532.1 consists only of the fragment KUB 34.9, the remnant of a tablet containing Hittite lunar eclipse omens for specific times of the night. The verb used for the eclipse is puš-, like in CTH 532.5.

Texte

Exemplar AKUB 34.9290/bBk. A

Inhaltsübersicht

Abschnitt 1ID=1.1Eclipses during different stages of the night

History of publication

The tablet was copied by H. Ehelolf in KUB 34. An edition is offered by Riemschneider K.K. 2004a: 116–117.

Palaeography and handwriting

A: New Script: The text has DA without a broken central horizontal.

General information

Only fragments of two omens survive, one after half the night and one when the ‘night begins to end’, followed by a double paragraph line. An omen for the first night watch likely preceded the two, and such triplets of eclipses during the beginning, middle, and end of the night appear in the second-millennium introductory sections of EAE 22, e. g., in the Old Babylonian tablets BM 22696 and BM 86381 and the Middle Babylonian tablet from Alalakh AlT 452. Note, however, that the first omen in CTH 532.1, during the middle of the night, has the same apodosis as the one for the first vigil in the second-millennium texts outside of Ḫattuša. Such triplets also occur at the beginning of each monthly section in the first-millennium version of EAE 17–18 and in one first-millennium witness of EAE 16 (Rochberg-Halton F. 1988a: 97–98), but in CTH 532.1, no month name is preserved. The fragment thus also relates to CTH 532.8C and 532.12, although we cannot establish any clear connection.

Editio ultima: 2024-07-02