PHILOLOGICAL COMMENTARY

• All three recensions feature omens about lizards being seen and/or dying in water or beer or their respective containers: see 32.A.44, 32.A.45 and 32.A.56, the omens on VAT 9906 ii 9 and 10 as well as 32.S.46 through 32.S.48.
• The sign ZI is polyvalent. We follow If a City 2 (171, 32.49) and read ZI.BI as tībšu ‘its revolt/attack’. The sign ZI, however, can also be read as ṣītu ‘loss’ (see 32.A.38 for an example and commentary on that translation). In fact the similar omen preserved on VAT 9906 ii 9 (Assur recension) speaks for such an interpretation

If ditto (= a lizard) falls into a beer jug and dies — losses will occur.
DIŠ MIN (EME.DIR) ana DUG KAŠ ŠUB-ma ÚŠ ZI.GA È 

In the Assur omen, the phrase ZI.GA È is to be read unambiguously as ṣītu uṣṣi, or ‘loss(es) will occur’. Nevertheless in the above apodosis, the second ZI must be a form of the verb tebû ‘to rise up, revolt’. Reading the first and the second ZI as tību ‘revolt, attack’ and tebû ‘to rise up, revolt’, respectively, preserves the figura etymologica formed between ZI.BI and ZI-šú. For another figura etymologica involving the same signs, see 32.A.56. Although 32.A.56 and the above preserve almost the same omen, the Assur’s protasis explicitly states that the lizard is dead.

No matter the translation, the connotations of ‘loss’ would surely have been on the minds of the scribes.

• Collation of K 03730+ 34 reveals the sign ana, before the apodosis’s É, which If a City 2 (193, 32.49’, Ex(1)) omits.