PHILOLOGICAL COMMENTARY

• The G stem plural stative of patālu and the phonetic complement on the verb ŠUB indicate that EME.ŠID should be interpreted as a plural (see 32.A.53 for commentary on interpreting EME.ŠID as a plural). See also the pertinent commentary at 32.A.78’, whose protasis also involves lizards plaited together like date-palm fibers walking about a man’s house. The commentary there also addresses If a City 2’s use of the word ‘knot’ in its translation of both the Assur and the above omen.
• The apodosis’s miqitti has several meanings, all of them negative. See CAD M/2, 100–102 s.v. miqittu for details. It can mean ‘downfall’ as read above, or ‘epidemic’ or ‘death’ as If a City 2 (189, 32.66) seems to have interpreted it.

Using downfall in the apodosis mirrors the lizards’ fall in the protasis. Additionally the downfall of a legal adversary is a common lizard apodosis and might be suggested as a reconstruction.

While ŠUB-at is a more common way to write ‘downfall’, 32.N.22 has an example of downfall written as ŠUB-tì.