HS2439, TMH 6 19 (Ritual Instruction)

[us4-he2-gal2]

TMH 6 19


"(For the making) of the Figurine of the Abzu"

Hey e n e n u r u -







Below I have examined an Ur III ritual instruction, which is included in Geller's 2003 treatment of Ur III incantations from the Jena collection. Geller's translation of this text was previously posted on enenuru (see post Dec 17, 2007 at the Ur III Ritual and Ceremony thread), however, in this post I examine the Sumerian language of this text in detail and make these notes available.

Extent tablets containing ritual instructions from the early periods are indeed a rarity, whereas we are comparatively abundant indication of the texts concerning the incantations themselves. This tablet seems to include a list of materials needed for an exorcist to construct a 'figurine of the Abzu' (whatever that was used for) and the text appears to contain a spoken word ritual component, an incantation, following the word enenuru on col. III line 5.


As an explanation about my post and my work on this text: this is meant as a student's exercise, not as a scholarly edition, or some sort of update or correction to Geller. This is the first time I that I have attempted to work with the Sumerian language of an Ur III incantation / ritual, and I was often hard pressed to make sense of it. Safe to say without Geller's pioneering interpretations I would not have finished the exercise. But my aim is to work with Sumerian even extremely difficult Sumerian like this, and I hope this corner of enenuru will help readers engage more with the language. Errors in the following are entirely possible.


Thanks to our member Darkl2030 who offered advice on a few grammatical particulars In the unlikely event someone may want to work with the original word document, this has been linked at the bottom.

Word document is available here.

[hukkana]

I'm really curious about the name "Bahar-Enunaku" as I get exactly zero results when trying to look it up online.

[us4-he2-gal2]

Hukkanu:



Well, there are 2 reasons you can't find anything on Bahar-Enunaku - I appear to have made a typo. It is supposed to be spelled Bahar-enunzaku with z in there... although, at the time I made the typo I was probably puzzling over the way the name is written cuneiform, in this particular text, it is quite defective. Secondly, the god is exceedingly obscure. We made a point of singling him out for investigation back in 2007 (see this thread). But little has been determined.


In any case, I think I have just found some new information about the god..will create a new thread on the Deity, Demon, Agents of Illness board.
Please see the following new thread.