Ait Said-Ghanem, Nadia

SOAS Research Online

NABU 2020 nᵒ 3 (septembre) – 182 – 87) SM 36013 – an account of goods (aklum) on a tirānu model in the Slemani Museum — During my stay in Iraqi Kurdistan in March 2020*, the director of the Slemani Museum Hashim Hama generously alerted me to the fragment SM 036013, an inscribed tirānu model in the collection of the museum. The model is part of a number of tablets rescued from looters by the Slemani Museum since 2003 to ensure that objects illegally on their way out of Iraq to be sold on the antiquities market had a chance to remain in their country. I am much indebted to Director Hashim Hama for allowing me to study this fragment and publish this note, and to the Slemani Museum’s curators and staff who allowed me access to the collection at a time when Iraqi Kurdistan was entering into full lockdown in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. I thank Farouk Al-Rawi for his kind assistance: it is his study of the museum’s collection that made this object emerge out of our search so easily. I am also grateful to Andrew George for reading line 2’ with me, the decipherment of which is George’s, and to Barbara Böck and Ignacio Marquez Rowe who kindly discussed tirānu models with me, and informed me of their forthcoming study on these objects and texts in Anatomical clay representations of the sheep intestines for divination in Ancient Mesopotamia. Description: SM 36013 is the broken half of a tablet that appears circular, and whose obverse is modelled in the shape of a tirānu, the coils of the colon. The fragment represents the lower part of the model. The reverse preserves the final lines of a text that includes the scribe’s signature and a date, two features that seldom appear, whether alone or together, on the tirānu models we know to date. The mask of Huwawa, as BM 116624 is known (Smith 1924; Nougayrol 1972:144-145), and the ‘scorpion-tirānu’, BM 97877 (Nougayrol 1972:143), are both signed by their respective scribes for example, while tablet no. 32 in George 2013:226-227 (CDLI P431309) preserves a year name. Inscribed tirānu models and tablets on which one face is incised with a tirānu or spiral drawing are few but their style can substantially vary (see recension in George 2013:273–4, and Böck and Marquez Rowe, forthcoming). Their inscriptions do not always preserve omens: DCS 152 (Charpin and Durand 1987, pl. 61) is inscribed with an extispicy report for example (as is the liver model IM 106795, Sib 388 in Al-Rawi 1994:38-39). SM 036013 is all the more unusual and unique in that it appears to be inscribed with an account of goods’ expenditure. I do not know of any other tirānu model inscribed with an account, nor any model of other types of entrails. As pointed out to me by Böck, the number of coils can be reconstructed to 14. Text Translation 1’- […] UD .6. kam  […] 1’- …6… {separating line}  2’- 3 (PI) 2 (BÁN) ŠU.NIGIN 1 (AŠ) GUR ak-lum  2’- 41 litres in total (and) 60 litres expenditure 3’- ŠU Ita-ri-bu 3’- (by) the hand of Taribu 4’- ITI DU₆.KÙ UD.7.KAM 4’- Month of Tashritu on the 7th day 5’- MU […] 5’- Year […] 2’) CAD A:28, aklum b) meaning expenditure, remarks that “The term is attested only in MB administrative records from Nippur and Ur”. The provenience of SM 36013 is unknown, and its period cannot be ascertained, but I would categorise it as Old Babylonian.  Text Model Acknowledgement: This research was made possible by funding from the British Academy. NABU 2020 nᵒ 3 (septembre) – 183 – Bibliography AL-RAWI. 1994. Texts from Tell Haddad and Elsewhere, Iraq 56, pp. 35-43. BÖCk, B. and Marquez ROWE, I. forthcoming. Anatomical clay representations of the sheep intestines for divination in Ancient Mesopotamia. CHARPIN, D. and DURAND, J.-M. 1987. Documents cunéiformes de Strasbourg, Recherche sur les grandes civilisations, Cahier no. 4, Tome 1. GEORGE, A. 2013. CUSAS 18: Babylonian Divinatory Texts Chiefly in the Schøyen Collection. NOUGAYROL, J. 1972. Textes religieux II, in RA 66, No. 2, pp. 141-145. SMITH, S. 1924. ‘The face of Humbaba’, Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology (Liverpool), vol. 11/3: 107–114. Nadia AIT SAID-GHANEM <ng31@soas.ac.uk> SOAS University of London (UK) 

SM 36013 – an account of goods (aklum) on a tirānu model in the Slemani Museum

https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/36225/1/NABU%202020-3_87%20Ait%20Said%20Ghanem.pdf

SM 36013 – an account of goods (aklum) on a tirānu model in the Slemani Museum

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

SOAS Research Online