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Tablets from the Sippar Library, II. Tablet II of the Babylonian Creation Epic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

F. N. H. Al-Rawi  and
A. R. George
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Extract

As work continues on the Neo-Babylonian library recently discovered within the precincts of the temple of Shamash at Sippar, it is becoming clearer that much of its contents is already well known to us. Only a very small number of completely new texts have been identified so far, and our reaction to the material retrieved is at present much as that of a previous generation of scholars to the Sultantepe tablets. We are confirmed in our belief that the major products of the Babylonian literary tradition are, in varying states of preservation, already to hand. A corollary of this belief is that future discoveries of Neo-Babylonian libraries should be expected to yield more literature not so much by furnishing new literary texts as by filling the lacunæ in texts of the established corpus. It goes without saying that since many known texts are still in a very poor state of preservation this is an exciting prospect.

The importance of the Sippar library, then, will principally lie in its capacity to restore known but damaged texts to a more satisfactory state of completion. This capacity is already well demonstrated by the inauguration of this series of texts from the Sippar library with a surprising new source for the composition previously known as the Weidner Chronicle. The present article continues this pattern, though with less unforeseen results, by publishing a manuscript of Tablet II of the Babylonian Creation Epic. The tablet came from niche 5 C of the library—that is the third niche from the ground in the fifth row from the left. Enūma eliš II has remained until now the least well preserved of the Seven Tablets of Creation, the middle part being very badly damaged. Four sections of disconnected text were separated, as it seemed, by three gaps of uncertain length. The line-count of the Tablet was itself unknown.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 52 , 1990 , pp. 149 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1990

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References

Notes

50. šapassu ittašqa, literally “he kissed his lip”, is a poor variant—repeated on an unpublished exercise tablet (courtesy Lambert)—for the other manuscripts' rather better šapassu ittaška.

51. na-a-ḫa against the composite text's nāḫat (CT 13 5, obv. 20′): despite the opinion of CAD, karšu is as often masculine as feminine—in the Creation Epic itself cf. ra-pa-aška-ra⌈as⌉-su (VII 155).

58. As we are reminded by Lambert, assuming this is a standard poetic line of four metrical units a caesura will fall between né-me-qu and i-li, and thus prohibit a construct phrase nēmequ ilī. But it is also possible to envisage a line of three units (bānû, nēmequ ilī, Nudimmud) rather than four—as also, for example, ll. 84, 89, 94, 95, 101, etc.—and so to offer an alternative rendition of the line: “who created the gods' wisdom, Nudimmud”. The “wisdom of the gods”, a phrase also found in the NB personal name Nabû-nēmeq-ilī, alludes to the traditional idea that all knowledge was of divine origin, its use by mankind being supervised by individual gods specializing in particular skills (writing, for example, being typically the “wisdom” of Nabû). The ultimate source of this wisdom was, of course, Ea-Nudimmud.

59. tanēḫu is taken here as a synonym of tanēḫtu, “peace”, and so not the same word as tānēḫu, “sigh”, the sense of which is less appropriate.

65. The composite text should be emended to šá ta-mu !-⌈ka ⌉. This is also a possible reading in the Sippar manuscript, of course, since the traces of the sign before ta are ambiguous. But the sense of inimmê ša tamûka in the present context is obscure to us, while inimmê ātammūka fits the passage well and has the further advantage of being a known idiom in Enūma eliš (VI 22: ke-na-a-ti a-ta-ma-a i-nim-ma-a it-ti-ia).

66. Composite text: ⌈šu-du ⌉-ud l[ib-.

67. The composite text will have to read a !-n[a-.

67–70. The point of these two couplets, as we understand them, is that Ea's slaying of Apsû was necessary for the development of the cosmos and those in it to the present status quo: one remembers how the first stable element of the universe was founded on his dead body (I 69-78).

69. yāti as subject is a mark of later Standard Babylonian style: cf. three examples in NB royal inscriptions quoted in CAD I/J, p. 329, and see also von Soden, GAG Ergänzungsheft, § 41 e.

73. As Lambert points out to us, e-li-iš here not the eliš of the epic's incipit, but a form of iliš. It is a variation typically found elsewhere in Enūma eliš (III 28 etc.), and also in Ludlul (BWL, p. 40, 31, var. MSS).

74. The composite text apparently preserves a rather different text: … mi-iḫ]-ṣa la [s]i-im-ti le-ʾ-⌈i ⌉ [… In our manuscript derivation of te-le-e-IM from the verb lêmu, “to consume, swallow”, which would look the best option from the point of view of form, seems to be ruled out on contextual grounds. So perhaps emendation to te-le-e-'i is required.

75–76. The repeated couplet is omitted by the source of the composite text.

78. The composite text (76) ought to help restore the missing word, but we have no suggestion that will tally with its traces: lu]-⌈ú ⌉šu-X[-X]-X[…

79. The composite copy (77) uses, exceptionally, NITA for zikru, “word”.

84. unnenna ṣabātu has here the same force as suppê ṣabātu (see CAD S, p. 32, “to beseech with prayers”).

85. Here fits a previously unplaced line of the commentary tablet K 10008 (STC I 189, now + 7038 + 12102), 8′: -t]ir̍-ma.

86. = 110 Reading mālakša, but also possible is malākša, i.e. “I sought out her scheme” (Lambert).

97. For ka-a-nu-ú the source of the composite text ([73]) reads ka-a]n-nu-ú (CT 13 6: 79–7-8, 178, obv. 5′). Compare māru/aplu kunnû, a stock phrase describing gods in relation to their elders in SB literature: it is used of Sîn (Perry, , Sin, p. 23, no. 5a, 9Google Scholar: ap-lu kun-nu-u), of Ninurta in Bullussa-rabi's hymn to Gula (Lambert, , BWL, p. 212Google Scholar = OrNS 36 (1967), p. 120, 76Google Scholar: ap-lu kun-nu-ú), and of Nabû in Nabû-šuma-imbi's inscription (Lambert, , JAOS 88 (1968), p. 125Google Scholar, i a 7: māru kun-nu-ú). In bilinguals the phrase occurs in a hymn to Nergal (IV R 2 24, no. 1, 15-16: a zur.zur.re = ma-ru kun-nu-ú) and, used of Nabû, in a votive inscription of Adad-apla-iddina (Gadd, , StOr 1 (1925), p. 32, 3-4Google Scholar: dumu z[ur.zur.re] = ma-[r]i ⌈kun ⌉-ni-i). The implication is that we have in kānû/kannû an alternative (literary and archaizing?) to the standard adjective kunnû.

The use of kašūšu, a divine weapon, as an epithet of a god—here Anu, but characteristically Nergal, the most typical agent of divinely inspired annihilation—is explained in the synonym lists by the equation ka-šu-šu = qar-ra-du (Malku I 24, etc.), and our translation follows the ancient suggestion.

118. Composite text ([85]): [la-a]m !.

123. The last word of this line is still a problem. The Sippar source rules out a reading qí-in-g[iš !], “against Qingu”, in the composite text ([90]). There KI-in-t[i ?] is possible, if one reads Sippar as KI-nit ?-[ti ?], but with what meaning?

124. Only one short sign is missing at the end of the line, according to the unpublished source of the composite copy ([91]), and our restoration is difficult to avoid. The expression ina šaptīšu is elliptical for ina zikir šaptīšu, perhaps: no-one would act upon the utterance of Anshar's lips and go out to meet Ti'āmat. If so the phrase complements the proposed qibītuš of the preceding line.

126. The traces on KAR 5, rev. 7′, also suggest u[l (coll. Lambert), and he further informs us that the composite text ([93]), using an unpublished MS from Asshur, should now most probably read [l]a i-šas-⌈si ⌉mam-ma-⌈an ⌉. Traces of this phrase must also survive in CT 13 5, rev. 1′, where [… i-šas-sa]-⌈a ?ma ⌉-[am-man] is the likely reading. Anshar's exasperation as expressed here—“His heart was so furious that he summoned nobody”—allows the ambitious young Marduk to put himself forward.

128. Sippar confirms von Soden's emendation of the composite text's ḫa-ṣI-áš to ḫa-ia-áš (AHw, p. 309, on KAR 5, rev. 9′).