Page:An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic - Morris - 1920.djvu/85

 Line 93. zi-ma-at (for simat) ba-la-ṭi-im is not “conformity of life” as Langdon renders, but that which “belongs to life” like si-mat pag-ri-šá, “belonging to her body,” in the Assyrian version III, 2a, 3 (Jensen, page 146). “Food,” says the woman, “is the staff of life.”

Line 94. Langdon’s strange rendering “of the conditions and fate of the land” rests upon an erroneous reading (see the corrections, Appendix I), which is the more inexcusable because in line 97 the same ideogram, Kàš = šikaru, “wine,” occurs, and is correctly rendered by him. Šimti mâti is not the “fate of the land,” but the “fixed custom of the land.”

Line 98. aṣ-ṣa-mi-im (plural of aṣṣamu), which Langdon takes as an adverb in the sense of “times,” is a well-known word for a large “goblet,” which occurs in Incantation texts, e.g., CT XVI, 24, obv. 1, 19, mê a-ṣa-am-mi-e šú-puk, “pour out goblets of water.” Line 18 of the passage shoves that aṣammu is a Sumerian loan word.

Line 99. it-tap-šar, I, 2, from pašâru, “loosen.” In combination with kabtatum (from kabitatum, yielding two forms: kabtatum, by elision of i, and kabittu, by elision of a), “liver,” pašâru has the force of becoming cheerful. Cf. ka-bit-ta-ki lip-pa-šir (ZA V., p. 67, line 14).

Line 100, note the customary combination of “liver” (kabtatum) and “heart” (libbu) for “disposition” and “mind,” just as in the standing phrase in penitential prayers: “May thy liver be appeased, thy heart be quieted.”

Line 102. The restoration [lùŠÚ]-I = gallabu “barber” (Delitzsch, Sumer. Glossar, p. 267) was suggested to me by Dr. H. F. Lutz. The ideographic writing “raising the hand” is interesting as recalling the gesture of shaving or cutting. Cf. a reference to a barber in Lutz, Early Babylonian Letters from Larsa, No. 109, 6.

Line 103. Langdon has correctly rendered šuḫuru as “hair,” and has seen that we have here a loan-word from the Sumerian Suḫur = kimmatu, “hair,” according to the Syllabary Sb 357 (cf. Delitzsch, Sumer. Glossar., p. 253). For kimmatu, “hair,” more specifically hair of the head and face, see Holma, Namen der Körperteile, page 3. The same sign Suḫur or Suḫ (Brünnow No. 8615), with Lal, i.e., “hanging hair,” designates the “beard” (ziḳnu, cf. Brünnow, No. 8620, and Holma, l. c., p. 36), and it is interesting to