THE CUNEIFORM CORPUS
The first systematic treatment of physiognomic omens is owed to F. R. Kraus. In his work Die physiognomischen Omina der Babylonier (1935), Kraus provides an introduction to the handbook, which includes descriptions of its internal organization, function, and textual
BARBARA BOCK
history.
Some years later, in 1939, appeared his Texte zur babylonischen Physiognomatik (= TBP), which contains a catalog of all physiognomic texts and fragments known to him at that time. The material Kraus has published in the form of cuneiform autographs is about 66 percent of the corpus we know today.2 The present author has identified some 18 percent, which are included in Die babylonisch-assyrische Morphoskopie.3 Single contributions and text editions carried out by a number of scholars amount to 16 percent of the material.4 * Now, as regards the critical text edition of this corpus, 5 percent have been treated by various scholars, 15 percent are owed to Kraus, and the remaining 80 percent have been published by the present author.Physiognomic omens are first attested in the Old Babylonian period. The bulk of text material, however, dates from the first millennium B.C., like most of cuneiform scholarly literature. The great majority of copies comes from Esarhaddon’s and Assurbanipal’s libraries at Nineveh, others have been unearthed at the ancient cities of Assur, Nimrud, Sultantepe, Sippar, Babylon, Kis, Ur, and Uruk. The handbook Alandimmu contains various sub-series, one entitled like the whole series of twelve tablets on the physical appearance of male anatomy, another sub-series of two tablets called in Akkadian Summa nigdimdimmu (“If the outward look”), the sub-series Kataduggu “Statement,” the sub-series on women’s physiognomy, the sub-series of birthmarks, and, finally, the sub-series on muscle twitching. There are twentyseven chapters in total, twenty-two of which are still preserved.
Moreover, a considerable amount of commentaries and extra-serial tablets are to be added to this corpus.The physiognomic handbook was arranged and edited, as it seems, by a single scholar, a certain Esagil-kin-apli, exorcist at the court of the eleventh-century Babylonian king Adad- apla-iddina. Esagil-kin-apli was also responsible for the redaction of the corpus of diagnostic and prognostic texts Sakikku.5 As far as the number of tablets comprised in both handbooks is concerned, J. Scurlock has put forward that the forty tablets constituting Sakikku refer to the god Ea, whom some traditions consider as the author of the handbook. Accordingly, the number of tablets of the handbook Alandimmu should also implicitly be linked to a god. She proposed thirty tablets evoking the moon-god Sin.6 There is, however, no space for thirty incipits in the catalog of Esagil-kin-apli. At most, twenty-seven incipits can be restored in the broken passage quoting the titles of the different sub-chapters on omens from flecks and macula. This number, furthermore, is reconstructed on the basis of the preserved colophons. I should add that there are traditions that also attribute the Alandimmu handbook to the god of wisdom and magic.