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May 30, 2008
Sheep Omens, Akkadian in Greek Letters and Other Mysteries
The latest online edition of the Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie is available (Volume 97, Issue 2, December 2007). Are they running five to six months late or am I? Oh well, I'm just now reading through the journal and I found two papers of abnormal interest. "Akkadian Omens from Hattuša and Emar: The šumma immeru and šumma ālu Omens" by Yoram Cohen is yet another reminder of the ubiquity of omen texts in antiquity and the effort to achieve universality through the proliferation of specific examples.
[If a sheep] tu[rns] [its head bac]k to its right-side […]
[If a sheep] tu[rns] [its head] back to its left-side […]
[If a sheep] bites its [right foot] – attack of the en[emy …].
[If a sheep] bites its [lef ]t [foot] – attack of (my) a[rmy against the enemy’s land].
[If a sheep], its right-side [rib]-cage becomes displaced (vel sim.) – the camp/ambush [of my army].
and on and on and on. The paper isn't really about the issue of universality but about the texts themselves and their relationship to canonical versions of the same or vary similar texts. In addition to presenting the fragmentary omen texts from Hattuša and Emar, Cohen discusses their compositional and structural traits and their literary relationships.
The second paper that caught my eye is by Aage Westenholz, "The Graeco-Babyloniaca Once Again". Westenholz takes another look at several tablets from 0 BCE/CE ± 50 years or so that contain Akkadian texts transliterated into Greek. I had heard of these tablets before but had never taken the time to look at them closely. That picture over there is from Westenholz' paper.
These tablets were likely school texts for beginners who may not have known Akkaidian as a spoken language. Most of them have cuneiform written on one side and Greek transliteration (not translation) on the other. Much of the paper concerns when cuneiform writing went out of use. This is a fairly long paper, 52 pages, and I haven't finished it as yet but so far it is abnormally interesting.
Posted by Duane Smith at May 30, 2008 2:51 PM | Read more on Akkadian |
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Comments
Thanks Duane, this is very helpful.
Posted by: Charles Halton at May 31, 2008 7:49 AM
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