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The Sultantepe Tablets (Continued) III. The Poem of the Righteous Sufferer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

W. G. Lambert  and
O. R. Gurney
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Extract

The discovery of new tablets of Ludlul bêl nêmeqi, which was announced in Anatolian Studies, II, p. 28, comes as a very welcome supplement to the extant Akkadian Wisdom literature, a field which has been singularly barren in new finds for several decades now, as a recent writer has commented. There are parts of two tablets: the lower portion of a well-preserved copy of tablet I, and a copy of tablet II made up from several fragments, the lower quarter of which is badly damaged. The first is particularly valuable as this tablet has been known previously only from a few small fragments and some odd lines quoted in a native commentary. Of the second tablet quite a number of sizeable pieces are already published. The new text offers the customary scribal variants, one of which is clearly superior to the reading of an Assurbanipal tablet (l. 17), and restores some of the lacuna which exists in the middle of the tablet. It is at this place, however, that the new tablet is defective, and so some half dozen lines are still only half preserved.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anatolian Studies , Volume 4 , December 1954 , pp. 65 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1954

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References

page 65 note 2 Van Dijk, J. J. A., La Sagesse suméro-accadienne (Leiden, 1953)Google Scholar, Préface.

page 65 note 3 A small fragment was noted in Anatolian Studies, II, p. 32Google Scholar, as probably belonging to the Third Tablet, but this identification now proves to be incorrect.

page 65 note 4 BiOr., X, 8–12Google Scholar.

page 67 note 1 cf. in Sumerian: Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta (Kramer) 177, 379, 516; several incantations (bilingual in late copies), see LSS. NF. I, 25Google Scholar; IV R 17 obv. 40—= OECT., VI, p. 47Google Scholar (bilingual prayer). In Akkadian there are the most interesting examples TCL. XXIV, no. 40, 13, TCL. XXIII, no. 90, 19 (Mari letters), which show that this phrase was no mere literary convention; Ludlul III, 15, 41Google Scholar. Langdon's objection that since gods are the subjects of the verbs in the other examples, Làl-úr-alim cannot be the subject here (p. 135), presumes a fuller knowledge than we have.

page 67 note 2 The name is a Sumerian name Làl-úr-alim, rendered into Akkadian as Ṭâbi-utul-Enlil (Stamm, , MVAG. 44, p. 236)Google Scholar. This personage is mentioned again in contexts which suggest some kind of legendary hero, but nothing is really known of him.

page 67 note 3 “I am treated as though I did not reverence my god and goddess,” ki-i la pa-liḫili-ia 5u dištari-ia 5ana-ku ip-še-ik: STC. II, pls. 75–84, 68; also VAB. VII, p. 252, l. 15Google Scholar.

page 68 note 1 This procedure is found in the series ana marṣi ina ṭeḫêka (TDP., p. 18—), CT. 17, 9, and the hymn KAR. 102, 19–33. Contrast Song of Songs 7: 1–5.

page 79 note 1 Also BRM. IV 33, 1Google Scholar: PA.PA (??) = ṣi-pi-ru şa îni.

page 93 note 1 Now published by Finkelstein, J. J. in JCS. VII 4, no. 3Google Scholar.

page 96 note 1 So K.3705 (collated).