Eine neubabylonische Edition eines mittelbabylonischen Nergal-Balaĝs (BM.35434)

Abstract

Abstract Published here for the first time, the Neo-Babylonian tablet BM.35434 sheds new light on the transmission history of the Sumero-Akkadian balaĝ-prayer a-gal-gal buru₁₄ su-su || butuqtu muṭebbât ebūri “Flood that drowns the harvest” dedicated to Nergal, the god of pestilence and war. Due to its exceptional colophon, BM.35434 makes for an interesting case study in first-millennium scribal practices in the context of ritual lamenting and Emesal prayers: special points of interest are the use of older sign forms, the scribe and the family he comes from, the designation of the tablet as a copy of an “old large tablet” (dub.gal libir.ra), and the insertion of paratextual glosses that describe the state of preservation of the copied exemplar. An appendix contains copies and transliterations of hitherto unpublished fragments and joins that pertain to a-gal-gal buru₁₄ su-su.