PHILOLOGICAL COMMENTARY

• As KAL 1 (77, n. II 18-21) notes, the damage to manuscript VAT 09906 renders it unclear whether lines ii 18-21 form two separate omens or are one longer omen. As was done in KAL 1, the lines have been interpreted here as two separate omens.

If the lines form but one omen, however, lines ii 18-20 likely form the protasis (note the use of the preterit for the verb in line ii 20) and the apodosis is likely only to be found in line ii 21.

• The meaning of ana É^? [U]MBIN.MEŠ GAR.GAR, translated here as ‘repeatedly scratches at a house^?’, is uncertain. There are attestations of UMBIN ‘nails’ being used with the verb šakānu ‘to set, to place’, but they refer to the pressing of fingernails into the clay of contract tablets in place of seals to identify contractual parties and witnesses. See CAD Ṣ, 252 s.v. ṣupru A2.
• The translation of kullati is also unclear in the above omen. Besides ‘clay pit’, it can also be translated as ‘potter’s clay’. Neither meaning fits well; though there are attestations of clay pits in rituals and medical texts.[1] Another word for ‘clay pit’ is the Sumerian loan word issû, which may explain the connection with lizards. EME.DIR can, in Assyrian, occasionally be read as iṣṣû—indicated to be a small gecko pizallurtu in medical texts (Landsberger 1934, 117)(CAD I/J, 206–7 s.v. iṣṣû). In the Practical Vocabulary Assur, EME.ŠID and EME.DIR are actually differentiated: the former as ṣurīrittu and EME.DIR as iṣṣû. As noted by CAD Ṣ, 256 s.v. ṣurāru, iṣṣû may be the Assyrian correspondence to the Babylonian ṣurāru.