COMMENTARIES
The so-called Esoteric Commentary from the Late Babylonian period (Biggs 1968; Bock 2000b) — which, in fact, is not a commentary proper but a treatise in its own right — provides a good example of this idea of “grammatology.” It associates, in lines 14-18, the sign sequence tu : ta : ti — the incipit of an acrophonic sign list mostly known from the Old Babylonian period —, and the sequence ü : a : ia : e — Sumerian affixes listed in the beginnings of the first twelve entries of the Neo-Babylonian Grammatical Text no.
I (MSL 4, 130)7 — with cosmic abodes and what appears to be a Mesopotamian version of the four elements of Greek tradition: fire, water, air, and “earth” (hursänu, lit., “mountain“). Both individual cuneiform signs and specific elements of Sumerian, a language that remained a central pillar of Mesopotamian scholarship up to the end of cuneiform civilization, are presented in this entry as being deeply meaningful and transcending their function as phonetic indicators and grammatical morphemes.The “grammatology” underlying Babylonian and Assyrian text commentaries is informed by the same ideas that can be found in the Esoteric Commentary. Text commentaries, now attested on more than a thousand clay tablets and fragments, were introduced in Mesopotamia in the early centuries of the first millennium B.C.8 The ancient scribes who composed them
often focused on the phonemic and graphemic “fabric” of their base texts, and not just on contents. To simplify a rather complicated matter, one could argue that the explanations in Babylonian and Assyrian commentaries are, for the most part, based on two complementary hermeneutical procedures: the finding of synonyms on one hand, and of homonyms on the other. Synonymity was used by the commentators in order to clarify the literal meaning of obscure words or expressions through the act of providing more common equivalents, often excerpted from lexical lists.
Homonymity, in contrast, was employed whenever a commentator wished to establish a non-literal explanation of a given passage. In these cases, he would choose a word that sounded similar to the lemma in question, but meant something completely different. Closely related to this “etymological” (or pseudo-etymological) approach is an “ety- mographic” method of explanation.9 * Here, the commentator would analyze the signs used to write specific lemmata with an eye on the many other meanings these signs could have. Often etymological and etymographic modes of interpretation were combined and based not only on an Akkadian, but also a Sumerian reading of the lemmata that required explanation.One of the main goals of commentaries employing etymology and etymography was to produce the illusion of an esoteric inner coherence of the texts they dealt with. A late Nippur commentary,10 now accompanied by a partial duplicate from Ur,11 on a collection of incantations and magico-medical prescriptions to help a woman in childbirth provides a good example. Among the ingredients recommended in the base text for the treatment of the woman is oil, Akkadian samnu. The commentary entry on this word (lines 11-12) reads as follows:
sd-am-nu : ni-ig GAR sin-nis-ti : am : ze-ri : nu : ba-nu-u sd-nis i N1 / sd-am-nu
: i : a-su-u sd NUMUN
“Oil” (samnu, written sd-am-nu) — (this is what it means): (the sign) GAR (which is identical with sd), (when read) nig(2), (means) “woman,” am (means) “offspring,” (and) nu (means) “to create.” (The sign) N1, (when read) i(3), (means) “oil,” (while) i(1) (means) “to emerge,” with regard to offspring.
The commentator deals with the word samnu in two steps. He first dissects it along the boundaries of its syllabic spelling, and then refers to a homophone of the Sumerian reading of the logogram used to write the word, i3. The putative background of the equations provided in the entry has been discussed by Civil (1974) and needs no reassessment here; most of them are taken from — bilingual and monolingual — lexical lists.
The goal of the entry is obvious: the commentator wants to demonstrate that there is an immediate connection between the name of the ingredient used in the magico-medical ritual described in the base text, and the effect it was supposed to produce, namely the easy birth of the child. His interpretation is, for the most part, based on etymological speculation, but in the first explanation, where sd isread as nig and explained as sinnistu “woman,”12 etymography accompanies the etymological approach.
In some instances, text commentaries analyze the individual components of composite signs. A rather complex example of this procedure can be found in a commentary from Assurbanipal’s library that deals with omens from the astrological series Enuma Anu Enlil. The entry in question explains the protasis DIS GIg ni5(NE)-pi-ih IZI SIG-ma ha( °a4)-ku6-ku6- tu> nap-hat “If the night (sky) is tinged with fiery light and an abnormally red glow (akukutu) blazes.” It reads (Virolleaud 1907-1909: no. 33, K 50, rev. 10'-11'):
mu-U+PA+KAB(copy: DI EN) ha-ku6-ku6-tu4 mu i-sd-tu> eme-sal / gi-ra-a [g]i-fkur-ru-u(?)l ge-es-tar-kap-pa-ak-ku sd-mu-u
The sign sequence mu-U+PA+KAB (represents) (h)akukutu (because), (in) Emesal, mu (means) “fire” (isatu), (and) giguru gestarkappaku (i.e., the sign U+PA+KAB), (when read) gi-ra-a, (means) “sky” (samu).
The aim of this explanation is to clarify the meaning of the word akukutu by demonstrating that the two main components of its complicated logographic spelling provide the meaning “fire of the sky.” The entry is based on passages from the lexical lists Antagal and Aa.13 *
Even more sophisticated is the analysis of a cuneiform sign found in a late Uruk commentary (and its partial duplicate) on the first tablet of the diagnostic series Sa-gig (Hunger 1976: no. 27, rev. 23-26; George 1991: 161). One of the entries of this tablet reads: DIS glsGIGIR IGI GIG BI SU &Is°-tdr “If (the exorcist on his way to the patient) sees a chariot, that patient suffers from the hand of Istar.” The commentary, after establishing other links between the chariot mentioned in the protasis of the omen and the goddess Istar featured in its apodosis, concludes with the statement:
U-buubux(U) : di-l[i-pat / assu(?) u]-bu : (1)ban 3 qa : u-bu : 15 : d15
(The sign) U, (when read) ubu(x), (means) Dilipat (Venus), [for] ubu (corresponds to) one seah and three liters, (so) ubu is 15 (and thus represents) Istar (d15).
As shown by Hunger and George, this explanation is apparently based on an older form of the sign GIGIR, the logogram used to write narkabtu “chariot.” This older form consists of a frame, not with an inserted BAD, as in the form common in the first millennium, but with a single Winkelhaken, which has the reading U, inside. It seems the commentator took this U as a depiction of the planet Venus residing in Auriga, the constellation representing a chariot. His identification of the U-sign with Istar was based on the idea that U could also be read ubu, a Babylonian surface and capacity measure. By making use of the same metrological calculations that are preserved in the Uruk colophon of the Esagil tablet (George 1992: 118, line 3), the commentator claimed that one ubu corresponded to 15 qu or liters14 — and 15 was the
holy number of the goddess Istar. The explanation does obviously not reflect the thoughts of the author of the base text. Originally, the protasis-apodosis string of the omen may have been motivated by the fact that both the chariot and the deity were associated with warfare.
By using pseudo-etymological speculation as well as etymography in order to extract various meanings from such entries, the Mesopotamian commentators anticipated a hermeneutical strategy well known from classical and medieval Christian exegesis, where it is rooted in the Platonic semiotics of immediate signification, and also from rabbinical interpretation (Lieberman 1987; Cavigneaux 1987). In these traditions, however, with their far more onedimensional writing systems, the application of notarikon, gematriah, and other forms of grapheme-related hermeneutical techniques seems rather artificial, while the multiple meanings of most of the cuneiform signs provide every Babylonian text in a far more organic way with an inherent set of possible alternative readings.