YOS 11, 29a
Coll. Farber, YOS 11, p. 74.
Transliteration
19 ÉN!(MIN+AN) KAL KÙ.GI ši-na i-ṭe-en-ni-a-am mu-ši ù ur-ri-im
20 at-ti a-na ra-mi-ia e tar-ku-si-im bi-it-[ki]
21 a-na dam-qí-im bi-ši qá-ti-i-ki e ta-pa-al-s[í-im]
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22 murram(ŠIM.ŠEŠ) i-na mu-úḫ-ḫi ši-in-ni ša t[u]-⌈ul-tum⌉ [x x x x x]
23 ⌈murram(ŠIM.ŠEŠ) x x x x x⌉-tim i-ša-ak-ka-an-ma i-ba-lu-uṭ
Translation
19 Incantation. Precious as gold(?). (The worm) is continually grinding the tooth, night and day.
20 You(f. = the worm) should not attach your house to my love!
21 You(f. = the worm) should not look favorably upon the possession of your hands!
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22 (He will apply) myrrh on the tooth which the w[orm has eaten].
23 He will place the myth [on the …] and he (the patient) will get well.
Commentary
The incantation is against toothache, as the broken procedure which follows shows, but interestingly, it uses phrases that are known from love incantations (see the partial parallel in YOS 11, 87: 18–20 and Collins 1999, 274–275). In love incantations, the yearning lover asks his girlfriend not to be attached to her father's house and to her domestic duties; here, the same phraseology is used à l'inverse: the speaker orders the worm not to attach its house to his beloved (the tooth), and to be ready to separate itself of its possessions, i.e. to leave the cavity in the tooth and go. A parody?
19: KAL KÙ.GI: unclear to us. Perhaps a PN, Waqrat-ḫurāṣim, similar to Dam-ḫurāṣim (the queen of Mari)? – ši-na i-TE-en-ni-a-am: Contra Collins 1999, 275 ("šina as referring to the two kidneys, and itenniam as the Gtn preterite of enû"), ši-na is a defective spelling of šinna "the tooth" (acc.) and the verb is i-ṭe-en-ni-a-am (ṭênum-G present + ventive "to me"): "it (the worm) is continually grinding the tooth, night and day".
20: rāmiya, or râmiya is the tooth.
Michael P. Streck and Nathan Wasserman, Sources of Early Akkadian Literature (SEAL), seal.huji.ac.il. No commercial use is allowed. Published under CC BY-NC-ND (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives). Reproduced unmodified. Cite as SEAL no. 7153; view on seal.huji.ac.il.