The handcopy shows two vertical wedges but on the basis of the 3D scan -ma is more likely.
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Possibly, the augur is Zapalli, the author of the only two entries where the augur’s name is preserved. However, we cannot rule out the possibility that other augurs also contributed to this text (see also the discussion in Introductio).
This sentence is unusual for two reasons: the subject is not expressed, and the formula is atypical, as flights from the ‘unfavorable’ side are as a rule only associated with the adverb ‘down’ (not ‘up’). One might expect the bird’s name to follow in the break, but the word order is atypical in the standard formulary. Otherwise, the sentence cannot refer to the previously mentioned bird, since this bird “flew away,” a movement that typically concludes the description of a bird's flight.
Unless this is talliya- ‘to call upon (a god), beseech’ (thus Sakuma Y. 2009b, II, 436). This interpretation seems less likely, as the expected spelling would be tal-li-…; this verb is otherwise not attested in the first person (see Kloekhorst A. 2008a, 819). Or: “these very of[fences …]”.
Tentative: nu=z[a appa/EGIR dāš].
Cf. Sakuma Y. 2009b, II, 439, who interprets the first term as a verbal form: “ [… ] … er sieht sich keines [wegs … ]”. The formula arḫa=wa pe[ššer] is indented in rev. 20´, but the name of the augur (Zapalli?) would not fit in the small residual space: most likely, there was no text at all. Instead, UM-[MA …] was apparently already written in rev. 19´, and the name or title of the augur followed on the same line.
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