PHILOLOGICAL COMMENTARY

• The above omen commences a section about lizards falling in relation to (i.e., on top of, in front of, behind, etc.) a man. The opening omens of the Sultantepe recension also address lizards falling in relation to a man. The omens in both the Assur and Sultantepe recensions also show similarities in their structure and in the combination of protasis with apodosis. We therefore reconstruct the protases of the first few broken omens in the Assur recension from Sultantepe omens.

The Sultantepe counterpart to the above omen is 32.S.2, which reads as follows:

[DIŠ EME.ŠID ana] UGU NA ŠUB-ut SÙḪ! ni-ziq-[tu4]
[If a lizard] falls [o]nto a man — confusion!, grie[f].

• Although niziqtu, common in omen apodoses, is often translated as ‘worry’ or ‘grief’, the CAD N/2 (p. 304 s.v. niziqtu) notes the word likely has a wider semantic range. Sibbing-Plantholt (2021, 359–72), in her discussion on the noun and its cognates, argues that instead of the narrower definition ‘to grieve’, the cognates have at their core the meaning ‘to be upset’ or ‘to be distressed’ (371). In any case, the words have a negative interpretation in omens (Rendu Loisel 2016b, 294).

Niziqtu is the opposite of ḫadû ‘to rejoice’ (Sibbing-Plantholt 2021, 362) and can be felt when one is worried about the welfare of loved‑ones (365–67) or when someone dies (363–64), among other situations. Personified, Niziqtu is a winged Mischwesen—variously characterized as a demon (Rendu Loisel 2011, 58), an unnamed, low-ranking goddess representing niziqtu ‘grief’  (Wiggermann 2008, 114–15) or as the personification of an overwhelming emotion (Sibbing-Plantholt 2021, 357, 371)—associated with death and grief (Sibbing-Plantholt 2021, 357; Wiggermann 2008, 114).

There is, as well, an audible onomatopoeic component to both niziqtu and nazāqu (Sibbing-Plantholt 2021, 368–70; Rendu Loisel 2011, 54–60), similar to that of wood creaking, the hissing of a snake[1] (Rendu Loisel 2016b, 294; Sibbing-Plantholt 2021, 369), or the groans of someone who is ill (Sibbing-Plantholt 2021, 370). Rendu-Loisel (2016b, 294) associates nazāqu with a “sharp sound”. The words both “literally and figuratively represent the state and sound of suffering under an unbearable weight, whether wooden beams in a house or a person that feels the burden of distress” (Sibbing-Plantholt 2021, 371).

• In If a City 2 (178, *32.64’), the missing portions of the above omen’s protasis are not reconstructed, but the visible traces are otherwise read as above.