Tablets from the Sippar Library XIII Enūma Anu Ellil XX

Abstract

The Sippar Library tablet IM 124485 is a new source for Tablet XX of Enūma Anu Ellil (EAE), the great compilation of Babylonian celestial and meteorological omens. The twentieth tablet of the series, which deals principally with lunar eclipses on the fourteenth day of each month of the year, was edited by Francesca Rochberg in 1988 along with all the other tablets of lunar-eclipse omens in EAE(Rochberg-Halton 1988: Chapter 10). Rochberg was unable to report the whole text of her MS M = ND 4357, a Neo-Assyrian tablet from the library of the temple of Nabû at Kalaḫ; it can now be consulted as CTN IV 5 (Wiseman and Black 1996: Pls. 5–6, 145), though the copy of the reverse is inadequate. In addition a Late Babylonian exemplar of a further commentary, written in the time of Philip Arrhidaeus for the scholar Iqīša of Uruk, has come to light in W23300 (now IM 75990), published as Uruk IV 162 (von Weiher 1993: 103–5, 186). Despite these additions to knowledge, some of the text of EAE XX remained poorly enough preserved to make the discovery of a new manuscript very welcome. The new tablet allows seven sections of the text of EAE XX to be reconstructed in full, and our understanding of the technical terminology refined as a consequence. The chief interest of this tablet of EAE emerges more clearly than before. The common denominator of the twelve lunar-eclipse omens of EAE XX is eclipses that, at least notionally, set in “above” and clear “below”, as observed in 1. 66 of the tablet published here. However, the observed phenomena that especially distinguish the protases of EAE XX from those of other calendrical lunar-eclipse tablets appear to be particular to partial eclipses. The progress of the eclipse to a point at which the disk is half eclipsed (imšul) or more (eli mašāli illik) is explicitly recorded on six occasions (§§1.2, IV, V, VII, VIII, IX). The portents relate either to the moon's “emblem” (šurinnu), a term that signifies the moon in eclipse (§§1.1, IV), to its “horns” (qarnu), i.e. the cusps of the partially eclipsed disk (§§VIII, IX, X, XI, XII), or to both (§§V, VII). It seems that what the compiler of EAE XX considered most portentous were the appearance, behaviour and other aspects of the lunar disk while the moon was half, or more than half, eclipsed.