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June 21, 2008
I Should Have Known Better
I thought my second post on the colophon of one of the Letter of Gilgamesh tablets would be just a vague memory by now. I thought I'd report on a couple of other examples of tablets with ša itabbalu DN litbalšu, "Whoever takes (it) away, may DN take him way" ("DN" means "divine name"), in their colophons; repeat a few wise words from Hunger's study and a couple of other studies; and be on my way to the third and final post on this exhilarating subject. It shows you just how wrong I can be!
The more examples I looked at, the more confused I got. I now have a list of over 50 tablets whose colophons and texts seem relevant. And if it were only the colophons, I might even those reviewed by now. But what I'm really interested in is the role of this type of expression in a colophon and why it was used with the Letter of Gilgamesh. For that, I need to look at the texts of many of the tablets that contain the phrase or something very much like it. I want to understand, in some detail, the various genres of these texts. I also worry that I may need to look at some other texts like boundary stone inscriptions for example.
Oh yeah, I'm no longer as sure of the precise reconstruction of the second line of the colophon on text A as I once was. Please stand by!
Posted by Duane Smith at June 21, 2008 3:44 PM | Read more on Akkadian |
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Comments
Well, since they are not "boundary stones" (and, yes, I sure did examine these artifacts and their entitlements) you might want to check out Slanski on narus. It's on-line at: http://www.asor.org/pubs/jcs/52/slanski.pdf
Posted by: Rochelle at June 21, 2008 8:47 PM
Rochelle,
Thanks for the reference. Correctly or not, I think most Assyriologists still tend to call a certain class of inscribed (and uninscribed) stones "boundary stones." Slanski does make strong case that they are something else. So I guess I will need to look at couple of "entitlement stones" instead. :-)
I know that you discussed entitlements in your Antiguo Oriente paper in some detail. I don't see that you looked specifically at any of the formulae that are more or less like the ones I am considering, "Whoever carries this off, may Shamash carry him off," or "Whoever, takes this away, may Shamash take away his eyes," and other things of this nature in that paper. I'm looking at a couple of rather specific Akkadian phrases that use the verb tābalu in this kind of expression.
Posted by: Duane at June 22, 2008 8:34 AM
I know; you are checking out specific wording in curse formulae. I checked out the narus on the entitlement side; I was not checking on curse formulae... but, they sure do have curse formulae. (Couldn't help but notice ) The curse formulae make more sense as narus than as "boundary stones" -- particularly as a large proportion of the provenanced narus were from temple complexes... and I do go into what being located in a temple complex means.
Slanski's work is recent -- it will take some time for the trickle effect to change terminological habits.
Posted by: Rochelle at June 22, 2008 11:22 AM
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