The book under review is an edition of a Mesopotamian composition known in antiquity as muššu'u or “massage” (also translated “rubbing”). This consists of a long string of at least 47 incantations, most in Akkadian, some in Sumerian, and some in magical abracadabra. The author was able to draw on important previous work, notably by F. Köcher, I. L. Finkel and W. Schramm. Nonetheless, muššu'u has never before been edited in full, so the author's edition, to which she has herself contributed many new manuscripts, is a (modern) world premiere.
The book begins with a substantial introduction discussing the content, nature, function, structure and history of muššu'u. This is rich in insightful observations. The actual edition ensues: each of the composition's nine tablets is provided with synoptic transliteration, translation and commentary. The commentary reflects the author's deep engagement with Mesopotamian incantations. Then come indexes, bibliography, and finally the hand copies of previously unpublished cuneiform tablets. The book is well produced, and nicely laid out.
The author deserves special commendation for taking the trouble to present extant manuscripts arranged by site in the introduction. It might have been desirable to give the sites when arranging manuscripts by the tablet of muššu'u to which they belong, as some interesting features would have stood out. Both at Nineveh and elsewhere the highest number of extant manuscripts is scored by Tablet V, with eight MSS from Nineveh (the next highest at Nineveh being VIII, with seven, then II with six) and eight from elsewhere (more than double any other tablet: I, II, III, VII and VIII have four manuscripts, IV has five). This distribution suggests that muššu'u was not much used in scribal education, for compositions which were so used tend to have more extant non-Ninevite manuscripts for the first tablet (A. R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic (Oxford, 2003), 38).
In light of this, it is interesting that manuscripts of Tablet VI are so far only extant from Nineveh, while for tablet IX there are no certain manuscripts at all, even at Nineveh: it seems that whereas the Ninevite librarians strove for completeness of holdings, elsewhere tablets were owned as needed, with VI not being much needed at all (future research is necessary into why this was). The absence of manuscripts of Tablet IX from Nineveh (where all other tablets are present with a minimum of two manuscripts each) is surprising. One wonders whether the Nineveh libraries held an eight-tablet recension. Apropos of different recensions, it is also worth observing that a tablet cited as a manuscript of Tablet VIII identifies itself in the colophon as a manuscript of Tablet IX (BM 38786 + 38857, cf. p. 297 and plate XLII). This could of course be explained away as a scribal error, though it would be an odd one, and one would like to see the matter discussed: was the text of two tablets sometimes compressed onto one (or vice-versa was the text of one tablet sometimes spread over two)? Pace p. 71, one should reckon with the possibility of variant recensions.
Since Tablet VI is not attested outside Nineveh, and IX even at Nineveh, it is highly suggestive that precisely these two tablets should be missing from the otherwise complete set of muššu'u written by Tanittu-Bēl in the British Museum's 81-7-28 collection, pieced together and identified by I. L. Finkel. Though absence of evidence is never conclusive evidence of absence, in view of the manuscript distribution overall it would not be surprising if manuscripts of muššu'u VI and IX written by Tanittu-Bēl were never found: he may well never have copied VI because he did not need it, and IX because in the recension of muššu'u he used no IX existed.
The edition of the incantations in muššu'u takes into account sources which reproduce this or that incantation without being manuscripts of muššu'u proper. Accordingly, the total number of witnesses is very large, and as expected there are many recensional variants. These are not always identified in the translation (though one can always check if a particular manuscript omits lines by consulting the synoptic transliteration). The translation is thus to be understood more as an aid to researchers than a definitive resource intended for use by non-philologists.
As is almost inevitable with first-time editions in Assyriology, in a number of places one may disagree with the author on readings, points of textual criticism, etc. Usually, tablets are transliterated as they stand, without emendation – even when this seems necessary (e.g. p. 153 l. 15, manuscript F: li-pa-áš-<ši>-ra-k[a]). Some general comments: one wishes that the approximate length of lacunae were more clearly indicated; and that, as is becoming standard, Assyrian and Babylonian manuscripts had been distinguished through upper and lower case siglae.
Some comments on points of details, by page number: 46: GIG is more probably “patient” than “die befallene Stelle”; 48 and elsewhere: the subject of nâḫu is more likely to be the patient than the disease (trans. “he will find relief”); 50: HI.HI “miteinander” goes with “du vermengst” rather than “du zerstösst”; 60 and elsewhere: KA INIM.MA SA.GAL.LA.KÁM is more likely to mean “Recitation for sagallu” (sagallu as disease) than “Wortlaut bei Sagallu” (Sagallu as the homonymous composition); 69: ázag.gig.ga is more probably “krankheits(bringende) Asakku-Dämonen” than “kranke Asakku-Dämonen”; 84 n. 162: šumma amēlu sa úr-šú ka-la-šu-ma tab-ku is oddly phrased, so, in view of the similar passage cited in n. 163, perhaps presume corruption and emend ka-la-šu-ma tab-ku to the reasonably similar sign sequence ka-la-šu gu7-šu; 111 ad line 31: since manuscript F uses gú for gu4 in line 26, it hardly suffices by itself to invalidate the reading of BÚR as ušum; 161: ú-tal-li for ūtallil “he was purified” occurs twice on manuscript E, and so is hard to emend away – in the mind of the scribe, it must have been a Dt form of elû “he was raised high”; 177: it is observed that on p. 155 ba-la-ṣu is an error for la-ba-ṣu – that the same error is attested on manuscripts from two different sites (Sultantepe and Assur) suggests that they drew on a common source, or that the textual material used in provincial Sultantepe (in Turkey) was imported from the Assyrian capital; 179: gú-šu “his neck”, normalized kišādašu, is more probably a morphographemic spelling for kišāssu; 187: muruṣ kīs libbi “disease of kīs libbi” (manuscript A): muruṣ, absent from manuscripts B, K and L, is very odd and should be emended away; 192 line 30: there is a possible echo of Gilgamesh I 110–12; 211 “sei herausgerissen”: it is now clear from a study not available to the author at the time of writing (W. Farber in Studies Stol (Bethesda, 2008) 11–18) that the correct translation is simply “reiss aus!”; 216–17: the discussion of medical identification of diseases should refer to J. A. Scurlock and B. R. Andersen, Diagnoses in Assyrian and Babylonian Medicine (Champaign, 2005); 220: 309: one can take anḫḫū as a substantivized plural adjective (with noun ending), eliminating the incongruence with the verb; 280: pace p. 309, in view of lú on manuscript f read tam-mi-ši as a !-mi-lim; 313: are the Sumerian examples fully-fledged adynata, or should they simply be interpreted as ironic insults?
The volume contains a sizeable number of misprints, usually inconsequential (though at p. 85 n. 170 the ungrammatical dù uzu should according to the copy in AMT 91, 1:4 be dù uzu-šú). Not all manuscripts cited in the edition appear in the list of manuscripts arranged by site.
Despite the scope for criticism (which, it should be repeated, is almost inevitable in a first-time edition of a cuneiform composition), scholars in many fields of research will be deeply grateful to the author for this ground-breaking piece of work which at last renders muššu'u available for study. Both the primary sources edited and the volume introduction are essential reading for all interested in Mesopotamian magic and medicine.
