CTH 536.4 is the best-preserved Hittite terrestrial omen text. One of its witnesses (KUB 29.9) also contains lunar eclipse omens edited under CTH 532.6.

The tablets were first published in a hand copy by H. Otten and Ch. Rüster (KBo 34) as well as H. Ehelolf (KUB 29). Manuscripts B and C were edited and commented on briefly by Güterbock H.G. 1957-1958a: 78–80. The parallels to the Old Babylonian tablet VAT 7525 and several Neo-Assyrian manuscripts of šumma ālu were first pointed out by Köcher F. – Oppenheim A.L. 1957a: 74–75. Riemschneider subsequently did not treat the text in his omen edition (Riemschneider K.K. 2004: 108). The current editor identified Manuscript A as belonging to the same text. The editors of KBo 34 suggest an indirect join with KBo 34.132 (VI), which is similar to the physiognomy sections in B and C. The fragment will be edited separately, although the join is possible.

A: Two joining pieces from the left side of a tablet with a slightly worn surface and fewer than sixty signs preserved.

B: Large, roughly trapezoidal piece of a two-column tablet with most of col. II–III gone and parts of column I and IV preserved (almost 450 signs). The paragraphs have a spacious layout.

C: Oblong piece from the left of a two- or three-columned tablet with spacious paragraph layout and roughly 120 signs preserved.

A: New Script: New AḪ; E’s first vertical cuts the upper horizontal; AZ with subscript.

B: New Script: The text uses old LI and middle AḪ and ḪAR, but new AG. Á and DA have a broken central horizontal. AL is written with an angular wedge between the two verticals, which is, however, realized almost as another horizontal, giving it an appearance similar to AG. There is a DI with two verticals in obv. I, 16′.

C: New Script: New AG; E with high first horizontal.

The language is what we expect from New Hittite: medio-passive forms are consistently written with the -ri ending, the local particle is mostly =kan, though twice we find =šan (A 13′; B obv. I, 18′). Some common words that are often expressed by logograms are sometimes spelled syllabically: an-tu-wa-aḫ-ḫa-aš (C obv. I, 4′), iš-ša-az (B l. col., 10′), pár-ni (B l. col., 3′; C obv. I, 8′), ša-a-ku-i, ša-a-ku-wa-aš (A 2′.8′; C obv. I, 5′). If the preference for syllabic rather than logographic spellings is taken as an indicator of age, then these may be considered remnants of older language. The only real indicator for a pre-New Hittite date is the Hittite enclitic possessive in parni=šši (B l. col., 3′; C obv. I, 8′).

Besides the three witnesses A, B, and C, which all overlap, KUB 43.17 is a strong candidate as another witness. It contains phrases which we find in the section about a man falling out of bed and may contain the text that once immediately followed the break in the obv. of B. Similar to the physiognomic sections in B and C are the texts KBo 34.129 (indirect join proposed in KBo 34) and IBoT 2.132+, whose script differs from all the other manuscripts and which is thus not an indirect join. As there is no overlap, the fragments will be edited separately.

The text has some parallels with the Old Babylonian tablet VAT 7525 (Köcher F. – Oppenheim A.L. 1957a: 74–75) and with tablet 84 of the Nineveh recension of šumma ālu (e. g., 84, 41–42; see AMT 65.4, 11′–12′; eBL edition, https://www.ebl.lmu.de/library/K.4134, accessed 04.04.2025).

An Akkadian original from Ḫattuša has not yet been identified. However, manuscript B also contains a section on lunar eclipse omens, a translation of Akkadian lunar omens from KBo 13.27+. Both tablets have a colophon after an omen about a lunar eclipse in month four, and KUB 29.9 notes that this is a tablet ‘of man and moon.’ It is therefore possible that KBo 13.27+ was in fact an Akkadian version of this text. But as only the lunar sections are preserved and the text is written in the Ḫattuša fashion, it is possible that this unique combination of omen genres was already a product of Hittite scribes.

The text opens with omens about sight impediments such as darkness and vertigo when a man enters his house. It continues with sleep omens, in which the usual dichotomy of left and right is reversed, so that left means ‘good’ and right ‘bad’. After a break in the text, we find omens that appear to deal with paired body parts, and another section that deals with a man’s lips. This combination of terrestrial omens with physiognomy can already be found in the Old Babylonian period and could suggest that KBo 34.132 and IBoT 2.132+, which also deal with body parts, may in fact belong to the same text. As usual in terrestrial and physiognomic omens, the predictions of the omens deal with the man’s personal fate and future, not the world at large.