to the second person singular subject afformative. However, these variations may in fact
relate to phonetic differences between the scribes, and so also be treated as possible dif-
ferences in pronunciation (see the comments in note above).
Stylistic Variants (Type 1)
There are two occurrences of differences in the grammatical number of nouns in the ac-
cusative. Plural nouns are required by the context in both places. Interestingly, both
nouns relate to objects made from reeds, so there may be some collective meaning to the
singular nouns in each instance. The first instance (P2) appears in one of the Late-
Babylonian school texts (tablet S) so may be considered unreliable for that reason. The
second instance (P18), occurring in tablet I, is better read as a defective plural noun given
the context.^705
On a more minor level there is one instance of an omitted conjunction (P9), and one in-
stance of an omitted relative particle (P24). The latter variation occurs in a Late Babylo-
nian school text (U), while the former occurs in tablet I which has a high number of vari-
ants compared to the other sources. The same tablet partially preserves a fully written in-
cipit where two parallel sources (A and K) abbreviate the incipit with Wiederholungszei-
chen (P15).
(^705) See note above.