Two Nimrud Incantations of the Utukku Type

THE Nimrud tablet IM 676i8/ND 5576 was excavated at Nimrud in the I956 campaign. During a stay in Baghdad in the autumn of i964 I copied the text and identified it as a duplicate of IM 676i 9/ND 5 577, the tablet found next to it in the excavation. Both tablets were found in the ruins of the Ezida Temple, in the pit in NT I 2.1 When excavated they were unburnt. ND 5 576 is a fragment of a tablet the lower part of which is preserved. It measures I2 z 8 X IO cms. ND 5 5 77 is a tablet with both obverse and reverse preserved. The obverse is much defaced and its upper part is almost destroyed. The tablet has no colophon. It measures 25 X IO 5 cms. The text of ND 5577 was copied and edited by the present writer some years ago.2 It contains three bilingual incantations. According to their subscriptions the first (obv. I-26) and the second (obv. 27-43) were catalogued as n a m e r i m b u r r u d a " (incantation) for absolving evil ". The third incantation (ob. 44-rev. 48) has an abbreviated ritual subscription mentioning the god Nun-ura. In their style and phraseology they offer strong resemblance to the texts of the series Utukki lemniti. ND 5 576 provides another version of the greater part of the third incantation preserved on ND 5 5 77. The present article will give a revised edition of the first incantation of ND 5 5 77 based on a renewed collation of the text and a critical edition of the two versions of the third incantation. Copies of the text of ND 5 576 will be found on Plates XXXIII-XXXIV.