CTH 531.1/KUB 34.12 is a small fragment from the beginning of a tablet containing the mythological opening to the later astrological series Enūma Anu Enlil, followed by lunar omens.

• K.K. Riemschneider, DBH 12, 2004: 119f.

A: A slim fragment from the left margin of a tablet with parts of the upper margin preserved. It contains the beginnings of fourteen lines of cuneiform script. The reverse has no preserved writing surface.

A: New Script?: There is perhaps a new LI in l. 2, but the sign is written over an erasure and difficult to identify. Other good diagnostics are missing. The first vertical of E has the same height as the second one, not exclusive to but more typical for New Script tablets.

The text KUB 34.12 was assigned its own CTH-number in Laroche’s catalog, because it is the only witness of a Hittite translation of the introductory part to Enūma Anu Enlil, found at the beginning of tablet one in the first-millennium series and at the end of Emar 6.652. It should technically be considered a lunar omen tablet (CTH 533), since the Hittite introduction is followed by omen entries just as in the first-millennium tablets and is not attested independently at Ḫattuša and is found only on KUB 34.12. The CTH-numbering is followed here for the sake of convenience.

The text was copied by H. Ehelolf in KUB 34 and edited by (Riemschneider K.K. 2004a: 119–120). It is so badly damaged that hardly more than the first phrase of the introduction and the conjunctions at the beginning of the omen lines survive. It is, for example, unclear whether the text started with Da-nu-uš D[EN.LÍL or with Da-nu-uš D[ku-mar-bi-iš, a translation one would expect from the bilingual omen tablet KUB 4.1 rev. IV, 22′–24′. It is also uncertain whether it was more similar to the later Sumerian or Akkadian versions or had its own twist. Linguistic information is likewise limited. The spelling ⸢na⸣-aš-še instead of na-aš-ši for n=aš=šše/i seems to be more common for the 13th century (Heinhold-Krahmer S. et al. 1979a: 240). Other than that, not much can be said.

The details of the omens following the introduction are also mostly lost. However, it is clear from the few traces preserved of the apodoses that they must have differed from the later standard version: the king does not appear in any of the first four omens of EAE 1. Nevertheless, this tablet can perhaps be regarded as an early example of standardization and serialization, because the introduction – like the appendix to Emar 6.652 – anchors the entirety of astrological lore in a primeval divine act, signaling that there was, if not a canon, a concept of astrology that transcended individual manuscripts of, say, lunar omens. The fragment may thus belong to the pre-first-millennium standardization process that is also observable in the extispicy tablet KBo 7.4 and the birth omen tablet KBo 13.34.