This large fragment of oracle tablet includes a series of bird oracle reports. The only two entries where the augur’s name survives were authored by Zapalli, but it is uncertain whether the other oracles were his responsibility as well, also due to some differences in the appearance of the script on the tablet (see infra). Due to the fragmentary state of the text, it is also unclear whether each oracle, typically covering one paragraph of the tablet, belonged to a series of oracles dedicated to the same matter or problem. In the oracles which preserve part of the question, the inquiry seems concerned with cultic issues or the performance of offering rites (a keldi- offering rite, k. 15; offerings, k. 28; offences against the Storm god of Urikina, k. 57; the festival of the New Year, k. 105).

Urikina was a town located in the vicinities of Šamuḫa (Monte G.F. del – Tischler J. 1978a, 460); Zitḫara was in the Upper Land (Monte G.F. del – Tischler J. 1978a, 512-513).

• Y. Sakuma, Diss., 2009: II 433-440

Sakuma Y. 2009b, II, 433-440.

The surface of the obverse is very difficult to read. In his edition, Sakuma provides several readings/restorations, which cannot be verified on the basis of the available photosand 3D model. The present edition presents a more conservative text.

Autography: H. Otten – C. Rüster (KBo 24).

NS (jh.); diagnostic signs: AL (not LNS/IIIc), ḪAR, IT, LI, TAR, URU.

This tablet presents some variation in the cuneiform script across the text. First of all, macroscopically the obverse and reverse appear quite different in terms of writing, if one observes photographs of the two at once. In addition, one also finds evident differences across different paragraphs within the text on both sides.

In the obverse, the paragraph obv. 16´-20´ is a block of text written in a densely packed, smaller script than the following paragraph; approximately, these five lines correspond in size to ca. 3.5 lines of the rest of the text in the obverse. This section is preceded and followed by some blank lines and contains an oracles about an “offering” (section 3 in our text edition). Potentially, the three lines obv. 12´-14´ also appear somewhat different from the ‘regular’ text of the tablet (e.g. obv. 20´-32´), but this is more difficult to establish from the photographs.

In the reverse, a portion of the second paragraph (rev. 6´-11´) does not recall any of the writings in the obverse and also stands out in comparison with the remainder of the reverse. It was written in a kind of script, more loosely written and less deeply impressed, whose features might suggest writing at a different moment than the rest, such as when the clay was drier or on clay that was made wet superficially for re-writing.Although poorly preserved, there are some loosely written signs also in rev. 23´-27´, but in this case, it is difficult to get a good impression due to the limited extent of preserved text.It seems significant that, in their respective paragraphs, these sections correspond with the flight’s observation, following the oracular question written in the “regular” script. On the other hand, the central paragraph in the reverse (rev. 12´-20´) does not present such a difference.

The report in rev. 6´-11´ was “signed” by the augur Zapalli but, very frustratingly, in none of the other paragraphs on the tablet the augur’s name is preserved, which would allow to verify whether the writing differences could correlate with oracles performed by different augurs and inscribed on the tablet at different moments/by different individuals.

For a discussion of other examples of multiple scripts on oracular tablets, see Trameri A. 2024x.