Ad astra: Graphic Signalling in the Acrostic Hymn of Nebuchadnezzar II (BM 55469)

§A) Graphic signalling of a change in divine agency

Before discussing the orthography of the last stanza of this hymn, I provide a collated transliteration and translation of it, as well as a commentary on individual lines in footnotes where pertinent for the following discussion. I will then proceed to discuss the usage of graphic signalling in this stanza, on which my interpretation, and therefore translation, of the text rests. The orthographic features in question are highlighted in bold. The transliteration, including readings in the breaks, follows Oshima (2014: 475f.), except for minor deviations such as the suggested beginning of l. 39. Oshima’s autograph copy of the text is available at https://cdli.ucla.edu/dl/lineart/P499560_l.jpg (accessed 31.08.2020). The translation is my own.

As mentioned above, this last stanza is of interest for its ambivalent distribution of actors. It cites Marduk alone in connection with establishing Nabû-kudurrī-uṣur II’s rule, while any transition to Nabû as the acting deity is not made explicitly. According to the translations of this stanza given by Seux (1976: 128) and Foster (³2005: 851), for example, the action does not revert to Nabû.^[8]Oshima (2014: 474), on the other hand, argues that Nabû must be the acting deity in the final section of the stanza (ll. 38–40). My translation takes up this reading of the text. Oshima bases his argument on the content of line 38, where the king is handed his sceptre by a deity. According to Oshima, this deity must be Nabû, who, according to a reconstruction of the Babylonian coronation ritual as well as parallel text passages, is responsible for handing the sceptre to the king (George 1996: 383f.). In his commentary to this line, Oshima (2014: 480) states that the text itself provides “no internal evidence” for the switch back to Nabû.

In fact, two, possibly three, arguments support Oshima’s understanding of this stanza. The first argument builds on the linguistic level, while the second builds on the orthographic level of the text.^[9] Additionally, the structure of the text may serve as another indicator. We will start with the linguistic level, in this case, the choice of words. The verbal form employed to express Nabû’s handing over of the sceptre, [ušatm]iḫ (line 38), is a Š-stem of the verb tamāḫu. This specific stem of the verbal form is only attested for Nabû handing over a just sceptre (ḫaṭṭu išartu) to the king in Neo-Babylonian royal inscriptions. It occurs several times in the royal inscriptions of Nabû-kudurrī-uṣur II.^[10] Other deities, including Marduk, are associated with different forms of this verb, with other verbs altogether when handing over a sceptre to the king, or with handing over a different item, or they do not employ the adjective išartu.^[11] It is likely that this association evoked a link to Nabû for some of the audiences of this text.^[12]

On the orthographic level, the passage about Marduk is framed by lines 34 and 37, which start with the sign u₂ (šam), in line with the acrostic. Usually in this stanza, u₂ at the beginning of the line is used to introduce verbal forms. This is maintained throughout most of the stanza. Only in these two lines does u₂ serve as a connective u, a function usually expressed with u₃ or u.^[13] Deviations from this distribution of u-signs in various texts are often taken to be peculiar or even erroneous spellings: see, for instance, Da Riva’s (2008: 85) remarks on the “unusual (from the Neo-Babylonian point of view) usage of some sign values,” under which she lists the usage of u₃ instead of u₂ in some Neo-Babylonian royal inscriptions (Da Riva 2008: 86). Perhaps more commonly, such unusual spellings can be subsumed under writing mistakes, see, e.g., George (2013: 137) on divinatory tablets dating to the first Sealand dynasty, who also gives further examples.^[14]

In line with these observations, the acrostic hymn to Nabû normally uses u₃ (not u or u₂) to link elements (cf., e.g., ll. 3, 4, [9], 12, 17, 18, 25, 27, 35).^[15] The usage of u₂ in this section of the text therefore stands out. Jastrow (1905: 512 note 4), one of the early commentators of this text, interpreted the usage of u₂ in this context as superfluous, the sign having been used only to preserve the acrostic. Such a negative evaluation underestimates the author(s)’ creativity and the care invested in the writing of this hymn. The two unusual instances of u₂ where u₃ would be expected mark a change in divine agency, from Nabû to Marduk and back to Nabû, with u₂ in l. 34 opening the passage focusing on Marduk, and u₂ in l. 37 signalling the conclusion of this passage with this line.^[16] The construction thereby also indicates the textual structure. The demarcation expressed by u₂ in l. 37 is fully in line with the reversion to Nabû as acting deity suggested by Oshima (2014: 474, 480) based on ritual information and on a parallel text in which Nabû hands a sceptre to a king. A similar deviation from an acrostic, though in this case for an explicit change in focus, from the general to the specific, can be found in the Babylonian Theodicy, l. 275, where after ten lines which employ u₂at the beginning of verbal forms and nouns, the last line uses it for the conjunction u: u₂ ia-a-ši et-nu-šu be-le pa-ni re-dan-n[i], “And as for me, the penurious, a nouveau riche is persecuting me” (translation quoted from Lambert 1996 [1963, 1960]: 87).^[17]

The notion of ll. 34–37 framing a section with Marduk as the acting party is also supported by the larger structure of the fourth stanza, as well as the prominent literary device, the acrostic. With regard to the latter, the pattern of the acrostic in this stanza leads one to expect a verbal form starting with u₂-, as can be found in all lines except ll. 34 and 37. This alone suggests that the use of u₂ to write connective u is an intentional variant meant to mark an important passage in the text. Another structural element may provide additional support for this suggestion. The sections preceding and following the insertion about Marduk (ll. 31–33, 38–40) are each of three lines’ length and they share the same topic. The first three lines, ll. 31–33, describe Nabû’s actions for the king with regard to other humans, as do the last three lines, ll. 38–40, though here, other humans mainly represent enemies. The lines are, for the most part, built on a repetitive pattern, with an initial verbal form followed by a word or expression with the suffix -šu in different functions. The only exception to this is the closing line of the hymn, in which the suffix is attached directly to the verbal form. This deviation from the pattern seems to represent an indication of the end of the text. This regular frame highlights the specificity of the insertion marked with u₂.^[18]

In sum, the lines discussed here show a marked usage of connective u as a structural device guiding the interpretation of a controversial passage in the text. In the following, I will present another example of marked orthography in the acrostic hymn to Nabû, in this case enhancing the message of the first stanza of the text.

§B) Graphic signalling to enhance the content of the text

I will focus here on the graphic dimension of the first stanza (ll. 1–10). Below, I first provide a transliteration and a translation of the stanza, highlighting the relevant features in bold, before proceeding to discuss graphic signalling in this section, as this phenomenon informs my interpretation of the text. Again, the transliteration, except for minor changes, follows Oshima (2014). The translation is my own. The commentary given in the footnotes is restricted to elements with a bearing on the following discussion.

The first stanza is marked by the usage of the sign dingir at the beginning of each line, forming the acrostic. Its usage, however, goes beyond the acrostic. The sign itself can be used in various ways in cuneiform writing, and this polyvalence is exploited extensively in the first stanza of our text. The sign is used as a determinative for divine entities, as a logogram for deities and heaven (in the readings dingir and an, respectively), as well as for its syllabic value ‑an. This leads to the striking occurrence of probably 36 instances of the sign dingir in the first ten lines of the text, an average of 3.6 per line.^[27] This accumulation does not continue in the other three stanzas (which feature eleven, eleven and four occurrences, respectively), and it is significantly higher than in other similar length sections of texts praising Nabû. For instance, the syncretistic hymn to Nabû (LKA 16) contains 24 occurrences in 18 lines, an average of 1.33 per line. Because of the less frequent usage in the other stanzas of our acrostic hymn, the average for the entire text (40 lines) is 1.55 instances per line.

The acrostic in part accounts for this phenomenon. The usage of the sign dingir for the acrostic element at the beginning of the lines seems to have been restricted to the divine determinative for names and the logogram for “god(s)”,^[28] while the usage in the rest of the stanza goes beyond this. The intensive usage of dingir is most obvious in line 6, where we likely find dingir six times in a row, four times in direct sequence, and with at least one, but probably two more instances after an inserted ša (-andingir dingir.dingir šadin[gir.dingir]).^[29] Another possible way to express the plural of “gods” (ilū/ilānu) would be dingir^meš. This type of writing occurs only once in the hymn, in the third stanza (l. 22), while all other preserved instances of the plural of dingir are spelled dingir.dingir. Most other expressions of the plural in the text, like ad^meš (“fathers,” l. 2), use a different system for plural terms. Both these factors further underline the probability that the sign is used with a deliberately high frequency.

The orthographic representation of the plural in Akkadian is not fixed. The spelling dingir.dingir is the most common way to express the plural of “god” in some texts.^[30] Indeed, the choice of orthographic means can be influenced by various factors, among them text genre, but such distinctions are rather complex. For instance, while dingir.dingir seems prevalent in Enūma eliš, individual manuscripts of the text prefer dingir^meš (see, e.g., Talon 2005: 33 for variants to Ee. I 7), and the spelling of the plural can also be mixed within a single manuscript (see, e.g., Talon 2005: 34 on Ee. I 21).^[31] Wisdom compositions show similar variation between manuscripts, such as l. 55 of Ludlul bēl nēmeqi, or within one manuscript of a text, such as the Babylonian Fürstenspiegel (dingir^mešgal^meš in l. 7, but dingir.dingir gal.gal in ll. 29, 57 and 58 in the manuscript DT 1)^[32] or, possibly closer to our acrostic hymn, the Great Prayer to Nabû (⸢dingir⸣.dingir in ll. 14′ and 16′).^[33] Babylonian royal inscriptions likewise show a preponderance of dingir^meš over dingir.dingir in inscriptions from the Middle Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian periods,^[34] while dingir.dingir accounts for almost all instances of the plural in the inscriptions of Nabû-kudurrī-uṣur II. Although this may have a bearing on the choices made in our text, even the royal inscriptions of Nabû-kudurrī-uṣur II show variation. For instance, they often employ dingir.dingir gal.gal to express the plural ilū rabûtu, but they can also simply write dingir gal.gal.^[35] It is exactly this orthographic freedom which makes it possible for orthography to be exploited as a meaning-making device in various combinations and settings.

While one could attribute this accumulation of the sign dingir in the hymn simply to a graphic play relating to the acrostic, the other stanzas do not show a similar patterning. Their acrostic elements do not repeat themselves at such a conspicuously high frequency. Therefore, another nuance to this phenomenon seems likely. The hymn itself progresses gradually from an entirely supernatural and transcendent approach to Nabû in the first stanza,^[36] to mentioning the king, the first human element, in the second stanza. It then centres on the role of Nabû for humankind and the king in the third stanza. The progression culminates in the fourth and last stanza, which focuses on the appointment of king Nabû-kudurrī-uṣur II.^[37] This progression from a heavenly to a human level befits the distribution of the usage of dingir in the text, which starts with the high number of 36 instances in the section that focuses exclusively on Nabû’s roles and positions in the non-human realm, and recedes to a dwindling four attestations in the last stanza, which focuses on the king. In this stanza, the spelling of the royal name contains “Nabû” as well, and could therefore have contained another instance of the sign dingir. This, however, is not the case, as here, and only here in this text as far as it is preserved, Nabû is spelled with a ligature, ^d+ag, not syllabically, as in the acrostic and likely in the first line, or as ^dpa, another possible spelling of Nabû.^[38] Thus, the transcendent focus of our first stanza is correlated consistently with an intentional proliferation of the sign dingir in this text: orthography mirrors content, or rather, enhances the text’s message on an orthographic level.