Message #44602

[Bianca]

In the arrangement and interpretation of the text of the Seventh Tablet we receive considerable assistance from some fragments of Assyrian commentaries which have come down to us. These were compiled by the Assyrian scribes in order to explain that composition, and they are of the greatest value for the study of the text. The contents of these documents, and their relation to the text of the Seventh

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[paragraph continues] Tablet, are described in detail in Appendix I, 1 but the following facts with regard to the size of the tablets inscribed with the commentaries, and to previous publications of portions of them, may here be conveniently given.

The most important class of commentary takes the form of a bilingual list, and, as has been pointed out elsewhere, 2 presupposes the existence of a Sumerian version of part of the text of the Seventh Tablet of the Creation Series. The text of the commentary is inscribed in a series of double columns; in the left half of each column it gives a list of the Sumerian words, or ideograms, and, in the right half, opposite each word is added its Assyrian equivalent. It is noteworthy that the list is generally arranged in the order in which the words occur in the Assyrian text of the Seventh Tablet. The columns of the commentary are divided into a number of compartments, or sections, by horizontal lines impressed upon the clay, and the words within each compartment refer either to separate couplets, or to separate lines, of the Seventh Tablet. Of this class of commentary we possess six fragments of two large tablets which were inscribed with five or six double columns of writing on each side; the two tablets are duplicates of one another, having been inscribed with the same



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version of the commentary. The following is a description of the six separate fragments, the two large tablets, to which they belong, being headed respectively A and B:--

A. (1) S. II + S. 980+ S. 1,416. For the text, see Vol. II, pls. li-liii and lv; cf. also App. I, pp. 158 ff., 167f.

The fragment is the top left hand portion of the tablet; it measures 4 in. by 7 in. The text of S. II + S. 980 was published in V R., pl. 21, No. 4. The fragment S. 1,416, which I have joined to the other two, has not been previously published.

(2) K. 4,406. For the text, see Vol. II, pls. liv-lv; cf. also App. I, pp. 163 ff.

The fragment is the top right hand portion of the tablet; it measures 4 1/4 in. by 4 7/8 in. The text has been previously published in II R., pl. 31, No. 2.

(3) 82-3-23, 151. For the text, see Vol. II, pl. liv; cf. also App. I, p. 162.

The fragment measures 1 3/8 in. by 2 1/8 in.; it has not been previously published.