PHILOLOGICAL COMMENTARY

• For LUḪ with the reading galātu ‘to twitch’, see CAD G, 12 s.v. galātu. Although MUNUS.LUḪ is not otherwise attested for galātu, we follow KAL 1 (16-17 Vs. 19 A19), which translates the omen as follows:

[Wenn eine Eidechse] auf den linken Fuß eines Mannes fällt: Er wird ein Zittern seiner Füße [bekommen].

• The use of MUNUS ‘woman’ before LUḪ and the sign’s other reading mesû ‘to wash’ (CAD M/2, 30 s.v. mesû) likely explains If a City 2’s (179, *32.80’) translation

         [If a lizard] falls onto a man’s left foot, [he will acquire] a female foot-washer.

While there is an attestation of a slave woman washing her master’s feet in a text from the Old Babylonian period (see Figulla and Martin, 1953 UET 5 plate 366 line 12; discussed in Guichard and Marti 2013, 75 n. 112; translated in Charpin 1986, 475–76), LUḪ is used as a verb in that attestation and not as a profession as If a City 2 has interpreted it.

Although If a City 2’s (178, *32.80’) reconstructed transliteration reads SAL.LUḪ, it reads line VAT 10167 19 (198, *32.80’ C r.19’) as SAL.LUḪ₃.

• That the lizard falls onto the man’s feet in the protasis obviously cues the mention of feet in the apodosis. The combination of LUḪ and GÌR.MEŠ occurs in two other omens: 32.S.15, which bears striking similarities with the above omen (differences: ‘left’ is written with the number 150; MUNUS is omitted before LUḪ) and 32.A.106’, which has the same apodosis, but a different protasis.