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June 17, 2008
The Story in a Colophon, Part I
Text A of the three copies of the Letter of Gilgamesh from Sultantepe in Turkey (aka STT 40) has a rather complex two part colophon. One of the copies has no colophon preserved and the third only has qātēII m[ . . . ], "by the hand of [ . . .]." But given that the text of these tablets purports to be a letter, Text A's colophon is abnormally interesting indeed. Here are its two lines in transcription and translation.
[If you see squares, rectangles or something else that doesn't look right, please install the Charis SIL font.]
Colophon of Text A:
LIBRA.RA.BI.GIM(kīma libīrišu) š[à-ṭir-ma ba-ri . . . . ]-ša-mir šamma-lù-ú šu-bul TIN.BI li-gi-mu-u
ša itabbalu dEa(DIŠ) [lit-bal-šu dŠamaš] ēnēII.meš-šú litbal ša x ú- šam-[sa-ku? ina qātēII dNabû ḫa-an-[ṭiš . . . . ]
According to its original, w[ritten and collated, . . . ]-šamir, the apprentice, descendant of Nergaltukulti, the scribe.
Whoever takes (it) away, may Ea [take him way, may Shamash] take away his eyes. Whoever damag[es . . ., by the hands of Nabû [he shall] a once[ . . . . ]
The text is Gurney's, 132, but in my next post I will discuss an alternate reconstruction of the second line proposed by Hunger, 113. The translation is mine with a little help from Gurney, 133, and Hunger, 113.
The first part of the first line is not particularly exceptional although not exactly what one would expect if this were a real letter. Except for the name ending in -šamir, the broken part is easily reconstruction based on numerous other examples. See, for example, Hunger 85:2 (LKU 54), 192:1 (BAM 50), or 372:1 (STT 342). As Gurney, 127, points out libīru normally means "archetype." On the surface, this might indicate that the text is "part of traditional Babylonian literature." But since the text is unknown outside of Sultantepe, this seems unlikely. I'll return to this subject in my next post on the colophon of this "letter."
The text next tells us that ?šamir is a šammalû šubultinbi. This may be some kind of an apprentice, perhaps a level in scribal training. See Gurney, 135; Hunger, 174; and CAD, Š1, 294, and Š3, 187. Hunger 372:2 (STT 342) also provides a good parallel example of this expression. In fact, Hunger 372 has several close parallels to line one of our colophon. Here and elsewhere in colophons, ligimû, "offshoot," means "descendent" or the like. See CAD, L, 133. Our colophon is Hunger 361 and he translates ligimû, "der Sohn des."
The first line of the colophon seems normal enough for a copy of some kind of traditional literature prepared by a student scribe even if it is not intrinsically so with a letter. But the second line seems, at first glance, quite abnormal. I'll have more to say about it in an upcoming post.
References:
Gurney, O. R., "The Sultantepe Tablets (continued)," Anatolian Studies, 7 (1957), 127-136.
Posted by Duane Smith at June 17, 2008 8:55 PM | Read more on Akkadian |
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