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Short description |
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CTH 532.6 is a collection of monthly lunar eclipse omens. The text survives on an Akkadian tablet (B: KBo 13.27+) and a passage of a Hittite Sammeltafel (A: KUB 29.9 rev. IV), both fragmentary. There are some thematic and lexical overlaps with CTH 532.2 (KBo 34.118), but no clear connection can be established. The listing of monthly omens is also found in CTH 532.4 and CTH 532.5.
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Texts |
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History of publication |
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The tablets were copied by H. Otten (KBo 13), H. Ehelolf (KUB 29), and A. Götze (VBoT). Editions can be found with Güterbock H.G. 1957-1958a: 80(A), Riemschneider K.K. 2004a: 39–40(B), Torri G. − Barsacchi F.G. 2018b: 29(B) and Torri G. 2022a: 63 (B colophon).
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Tablet characteristics |
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A: Large piece from the top left obverse and bottom left reverse of a two-column tablet. Contains 29 complete lines of tidy cuneiform script and another 21 damaged lines. The script in the second column is slanted upwards.
B: Two small joining fragments from the end of a tablet with remnants of fourteen lines of neat, spacious script. The join sketch in the online concordance is incorrect: The fragments join vertically, not horizontally.
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Palaeography and handwriting |
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A: 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′.
B: Not much is preserved and no diagnostics survive; the sumerograms KI and BURU₁₄ have older rather than younger forms (HZL 274/14 and 313/1). From the scribe’s name we know that the tablet dates to the reign of Ḫattušili III or Tudḫaliya IV (Hout Th.P.J. van den 1995c: 216–225).
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Linguistic characteristics |
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The Akkadian witness uses a numbering system to introduce the omens not attested elsewhere in the Ḫattuša omen corpus: KI.1 ITU KI.1/KI.2 ITU KI.2 etc. This numbering system is sometimes found in Kassite compositions instead of KI.MIN (e. g. HS 1911/KAL 10.81, namburbû). However, it usually stands in for otherwise repeated text, which – if the Hittite translator was correct – should only be šumma. The rare form uštenmer in B also points to a Middle Babylonian original.
The few Hittite lines of the lunar section are not enough to comment meaningfully on the language. The Hittite of the terrestrial section concurs with what we expect from New Hittite, albeit a few potential archaisms (see the comment in KBo 34.129 and its duplicates/CTH 536.4 for more).
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Text transmission |
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Manuscript A is a Sammeltafel with mainly omens concerning human behavior, which have a duplicate in KUB 29.10 and were edited by Güterbock H.G. 1957-1958a: 79–80. The colophon describes the tablet as DUB 1KAM UN-aš DEN.ZU-aš, ‘first tablet of man and moon’, or ‘one tablet of man and moon’.
Manuscript B is also one of the few omen tablets with a (partially) surviving colophon: The scribe Pallā belonged to the scribes trained and/or supervised by the famous Anuwanza and later had a political career (Hout Th.P.J. van den 1995c: 216–225; Torri G. 2022a: 63).
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General information |
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The entries contain omens concerning eclipses during the moon's setting in specific months, without specifying individual days. Manuscript B uses the in Ḫattuša otherwise unknown phrase KI 4 ITU KI 4 D30 to introduce the omens; the Akkadian verb for the eclipse, however, 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 Št of that root is so far not attested, and thus mūša uštenmer may be causative t-perfect and means ‘and it then illuminates the night’, perhaps referring to the sun, i. e., ‘it dawns’. The Hittite translation išpan laknuzzi, however, means ‘it spends the night’ (cf. CHD/L–N, 20a) and definitely understood the form to be intransitive.
Manuscript A uses the verb ak-, ‘to die’, to describe the eclipse, same as in the monthly eclipse omens of CTH 532.3, but different from the monthly eclipse omens in CTH 532.5. Interestingly, both exemplars A and B end after the fourth month and include a colophon. It is thus possible that A was a translation of an Akkadian Sammeltafel (B?) or that the excerpt of lunar eclipses was used as a teaching text.
Although the introduction of paragraphs with KI 4 ITU KI 4 D30 is unusual, similar monthly eclipse sections are known from Old Babylonian Mari (ARM 26.248), the late Middle Assyrian fragment KAL 13.10 obv. I, 1′–10′ from Aššur, and the first-millennium hemerological series iqqur īpuš (Labat R. 1965c: 142–163), although none can be considered an actual parallel.
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Overview of contents |
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