PHILOLOGICAL COMMENTARY

• For the idiomatic phrase GÙ … ŠUB.ŠUB-di meaning ‘to utter a sound’, see CAD N/1, 94 s.v. nadû 6­-rigmu. See also the commentary on animal noises at 32.N.47’.
• In If a City 2 (p. 200 omen 112’ C r.51’), the eighth sign is incorrectly read as PAP, instead of DÙ ‘all, totality’. This carries over to If a City 2’s (p. 180 omen 112’) reconstruction of the above omen. The sign PAP corresponds to napḫaru ‘the entirety of (something)’. As this is comparable to DÙ’s meaning, the translation of the protasis in If a City 2 (p. 181 omen 112’) remains similar

         If a lizard in a man’s house keeps making a noise all day, there will be decease.

KAL 1 (p. 72 Vs. 51) translates the omen as

Wenn eine Eidechse im Haus eines Mannes den ganzen Tag Lärm macht: ein Sturz wird eintreten.

The different translations in the apodoses are due to the multiple meanings of the word miqittu. See CAD M.2 p. 100 s.v. miqittu. All of the translations are valid, and all result in a negative prognosis.

• The above omen is paired with the subsequent omen Assur 52, which involves a noisy lizard in the night. The Nineveh recension also has a pair of omens about a lizard making noise, though the verb is GÙ.DÉ.DÉ ‘to call out’, first all day long (Nineveh 47’) and then the entire night (Nineveh 48’). The apodoses of the Nineveh omens are both negative, but otherwise show no similarities to Assur 51 and 52.
• See the omen on VAT 9906 v 15’ (Assur recension); it preserves the same omen, but with slight orthographic differences.