BM 34138 (Bab. 2)

Obv.?

ii 1' . . .

ii 2' [. . .] . . . [. . .]

ii 3' [. . .] . . . [. . .]

ii 4' [. . .] the open . . . [. . .]

ii 5' . . . [. . .]

----

ii 6' "Oh Hursagkalama, the city of the beautiful (women) – how [was its celebration silenced?]”

ii 7' “Oh Yamutbal! Oh the é-maš-dà^meš – how [was] its celeb[ration silenced?]”

ii 8' “Oh the small canal! Oh the house of stacks! – how [was] its celebration [silenced]?”

ii 9' “Oh the cut-off field, the (land of) thirst – how was its celebration [silenced]?”

ii 10' “Oh the edge of the marshland, the . . . ; the furrow – how was its celebration [silenced]?”

----

ii 11' “Oh Hursagkalama, the city of beautiful (women) – I did not pass. . . [. . .]”

ii 12' “Oh Yamutbal! Oh the é-maš-dà^meš – I did not pass. . . [. . .]”

ii 13' “Oh the small canal! Oh the house of stacks! – I did not pass. . . [. . .]”

ii 14' “Oh cut-off field; Oh (land of) thirst – I did not pass . . . [. . .]”

ii 15' “Oh the edge of the marshland; Oh . . . ; Oh furrow – I did not pass. . . [. . .]”

ii 16' “(On) the road of Kutha, I will arise and go. The roads to the E-nam….”

ii 17' “Oh my loaded donkey, filled up with my peas, (with) peas (and) stinking plants [. . ]”

ii 18' (with) peas, (with) peas (and) stinking plants, in addition to cucumbers, pomegranates [. . .].

ii 19' So that not to reach the city-gate, not to approa[ch] the city ditch [. . .]

ii 20' My donkey stood still against my will; my dear belittled [me].

ii 21' With the plants in (my) hands, I departed; with my hostile word, my dear . [. . .]’ the plants.

ii 22' “Get up, donkey! Eat the plants!’ ‘Get up my dear! [Eat(?)] the peas!”

ii 23' “My dear should not rise up from my bed! May she not [. . .]!”

ii 24' Their(f.) broken(?) servant, the unplowed-woman, lifting th[ighs not . . .]

ii 25' The ‘protruded one’ rose and went around. – “May the ‘sealed gate’ be opened for y[ou . . .!]”

ii 26' “May your sealed gate be opened for you in the assembly(?) [. . .]”

ii 27' “May the day of the chicks of a swallow repeat as much as [you] can say (lit. ‘as much as [your] mouth’)”

----

ii 28' The goaty girl – a g.-stone. How purp[le wool, blueish wool?]

ii 29' Light-red wool – you(f.) to ditto ditto, red wool [. . .]

ii 30' [Pu]rple wool.

ii 6'-10' and 11'-15': These two paragraphs are paralleled by BM 67554 i 4'-8'.

ii 7'–10': el-la-su: Although cursively written, /el/ is clear on the tablet (esp. in ii 9'). The poorly attested ellatu/illatu B “exultation” (CAD I/J 85) can be compared to rīštu (pl. rīšātu) in the antiphon rīšātumma išdum ana āli (a love and sex composition related to Ištar, see Wasserman 2016, 146–149).

ii 7': é maš.dà^meš: Lambert (REF.) reads É-šú DÙ.MEŠ “its temples are built(?).” The second sign, however, is ME or MAŠ. (In ii 12' the sign in question is worn off, while in the parallel text BM 67554 i' 5' reading šú cannot be excluded). Temple named é-maš-dà^meš (presumably “Temple of the Gazelles”) is unknown, but é-maš-da is found in litanies (George 1993 No. 741: “a sanctuary of the goddess ^de.re.da/ereš.da”). Another possibility is that é-maš-dà^meš is a fanciful spelling of the well-attested é-máš-da-ri “House of Animal Offerings” – an abode of Ištar of Agade in Babylon, or a shrine in the Esagil complex, or still another temple (George 1993, Nos. 743–745). – Yamutbal is a well-attested ethno-geographical term in the 2^nd millennium, designating the southern part of the Mesopotamian plain, especially around Larsa (Stol 1976, 68.). It also refers to an area in northern Mesopotamia, around Jebel Sinjar, also inhabited by Amorite population. Yamutbal is also attested in 1^st millennium Assyrian sources. In different inscriptions of Assurbanipal, Yamutbal is the region around the city of Dēr,[1] In scholarly text The Sargon Geography (Horowitz 1998, 70: 25, and 84), Emutbal is mentioned along other geographical terms known from the OB period (Ida-maraṣ, Malgium, Mari, Mutiabal). The appearance of Yamutbal in our late corpus is therefore not so surprising.

ii 8': bīt sarrūtu: sarrūtu “treachery” makes little sense here (and no such temple exists). The context of these lamenting lines is that agricultural setting, hence sarrūtu must be connect to sarru A “shock, stack (of sheaves of barley)”, or to ša sarrim the “agricultural worker in charge of making shocks” (CAD S 184). Note that the pl. form of sarru is sarrū, while our text shows an adjectival pl. form sarrūtu.

ii 9': Abrupt syntax. ṣumāmītu stands elliptically for qaqqar ṣumāmītu (cf. CAD Ṣ 243f.).

ii 10': mir-di remains unsolved (mirtu “agricultural tool”, CAD M/2, 109a, is difficult). We expect a agro-geographical designation.

ii 16': é-n[am-…]: There are not a few temples whose name begin with Enam.... Given that our ritual takes place in Babylon, the Enamtila temple of Enlil as Bēl-mātāti in Babylon is a plausible option (George 1993, No. 849).

ii 17': nadi(šub)-ma “to load (on an animal or a boat)”, see CAD N/1, 82a.

ii 18': ḫal-lu-ru^! is written with a slight inaccuracy: instead of RU the text has the not so different ʾ-sign.  – Consuming the badly smelling plant is mentioned in the ritual tablet BM 40900+ ii 19: a-ki-lat bu-šá-ni-tu₄ ultu(ta) é-qu-le-e⌈adi(en)⌉ ⌈é-ká⌉-[gu-la x x x x] and see comm. to this line.

ii 19': ḫa-ri-tu₄ āli is a hitherto unlisted variant of ḫirīt āli “city ditch”.[2]

ii 20': it-ta-ši-iz-za-an-ni is not easy to construe. Formally it is a form of izuzzum G-pf., with the first sibilant dissimilated to /š/ and the final consonant doubled before a vowel. However, izuzzum does not normally take accusative. Another path is that the final double -zz- is a glide linking the core verb to the attached pronoun -anni, as happens in later in the same line in uq-te-tin-ne-an[-ni], i.e. uqtettinNEanni. If this is the case, then other verbs come up: √NSS/NZZ, or √ʾŠŠ. These options require to spell it-ta-si₁₇(ŠI)-is-sà-an-ni. The syllabic value /sà/ is not common in NB, as it is in OB, but does occur. Starting with the latter possibility, neither ašāšu A “to become worried, in despair” (CAD A/1 422–424), or ašāšu B “to catch in a net, to engulf” (CAD A/1, 424f.) fit our context, nor do they belong to the i-class. As for the prima-nun verbs √NSS/NZZ, nasāsu “to sing, wail, complain” (CAD N/2, 23f.), or nazāzu “to squeal, grunt, hiss” (CAD N/2, 140f.) could make a sense here (the donkey uttering a strange sound in protest), but again, they all belong to the u-class, and being intransitive, they take no accusative. As a last resort, one could turn to nussusu “to shake out hair, to waive the tail, to flap the wings” (CAD N/2, 353). This verb is transitive, and could fit our context (donkeys do waive their tail), only that our verb is not in the D-stem. Emending ittasissanni to uttassisanni (nussusu-D-pf.) would result in “my donkey shook me off”. Still, preferring not to correct the text, we take ittašizzanni (< izuzzum) and translate “my donkey stood still against my will” which fits the continuation of the line “my dear-one belittled me”. If one so wishes, a Biblical parallel present itself, namely Balaam’s stubborn she-ass refusing to move in accordance to divine will (Num. 22:21–35).

ii 21': a-tal-kam for attalkam (<alākum Gt-Pret.). – For ina ša-ni-ti-iá see CAD Š/1, 388 s.v. šinītu “hostile, inimical word or matter”.

ii 22': ak-kul must stand for the Imp. akul.

ii 24: ṣeḫḫret(tur)-si-na: we see no other possibility but ṣeḫḫretu or ṣuḫartu although ^mítur is expected. The adj. which follows, ḫi-⌈pa^?⌉-tú, rests obscure, but the parallel ḫi-ip^?-tum (BM 46280 ii 11) confirms that this is the f. form of ḫīpu “broken”. – tur-ba-li-tu₄, the f. form of turballû “(a designation of a fallow field”) (CAD T 485) is understood as referring to a woman who was not ‘plowed’, i.e. did not have sex, a virgin. (For plowing a field, in love and sex-related literature, used as a metaphorical term for copulation, see Wasserman 2016, 40). – The combination dīk(u) ḫallū is unknown to us elsewhere but dekû with other body parts (hand, arm, head, eye) are known (AHw 166, 4). Thus, ‘raising the thighs’, in this context, seem to suggest that the young unwed servant will engage in sexual activity.

ii 25': The “protruded one” (mukkuku/muggugu) thrashing the “sealed gate” (bābu kanku) and trying to open it, can hardly refer to anything else but to the penetrating erection.

ii 27': We suggest that the “day of the chicks of a swallow” (ūmu^sic līdānū ša sinūnū lištanû ma-la pî(k[a . . .], reading secure), refers metaphorically to the day of love making, for which avian imagery is typically used (Wasserman 2016, 44). – Swallows in particular are mentioned in another LB ritual (BM 32482+ iii 7'–13' = Da Riva 2019, 95), where this bird is caught in the vicinity of the Ištar-Gate and the Eturkalamma, and a band of red wool tied to its paw.

ii 28': kizzanitu, “a goat-like girl” is found also in Si 861 + Si 870: i' 10' and in K 4247+ i 36 and 1883-01-18, 464 i 5 (broken context). The meaning of this appellation is not clear: could it refer to the pubic hair? – akkāʾi is spelled here without -ʾ- (cf. ii 6' ak-ka-ʾ^?-⌈i^?⌉). – ^na4gal.la is unclear. – Reading ta₅-kíl-t[i^?. . .] is questionable, as the spelling is unusual and a logographic spelling comes in l. 30. However, the following ^na₄?sag^?.gil^?.mud^?], here and in the parallel, alleviates the doubts. – For ^na₄sag.gil.mud = sangilmud or ḫašmānu, see Black 2001.

ii 29': tabarrū is usually written síg.ḫé.me.da, but síg.ḫe.me.da is also attested.