this is the sixty-third tablet in the series Enūma Anu Enlil, and also contains the personal
name Nergal-uballit.^137
The script is Neo-Babylonian, as is indicated by Reiner, in agreement with Langdon &
Fotheringham and also Weir.^138 The cuneiform is carefully written, and the layout fol-
lows the convention for this type of text, with fixed left and right margins, and ruled sec-
tions that generally separate each omen.^139 Smoothed areas of clay which have been
overwritten indicate corrections were made in line 5 on the obverse, and similarly in line
17 of the reverse.
The size of the tablet appears to have been roughly identical to C, the most complete tab-
let examined here, being ca. 10 cm wide and 20 cm high. The preserved portions allow
the observation that the original tablet was about 2 centimetres thick at the edges, widen-
ing to approximately 3-4 cm thick at the centre. There is noticeable vertical convection
on the reverse while the obverse is relatively flat. These seem to be the standard dimen-
sions for a tablet of this text-type and quality.
The clay appears to be of reasonable quality with no noticeable impurities, such as stones
or other foreign material, visible in the cross section. The coloration is pale grey-brown,
with some small sections of burnt orange in the middle-left part of A, and at the lower
(^137) See H. Hunger, Babylonische und Assyrische Kolophone (^) (Kevelaer: Butson & Bercker, 1968) 132, no.
- Hunger lists this tablet among those that are “unbekannter Herkunft,” that is, of unknown origin. The
colophon appears on the reverse at line 28 with the incipit of the following tablet in the series, after which
is written “DUB 1 UŠ 3 KAM DIŠ UD An 138 dEn-líl.”
See E. Reiner, BPO 1, 11, and previously S. Langdon, J.K. Fotheringham, and C. Schoch, Venus Tab-
lets, 1, and J.D. Weir, The Venus Tablets of Ammizaduga (Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch
Instituut, 1972) 24-25. The signs are typically 2-3 mm high, with some extending to around 4 mm. 139
Exceptions for K2321+3032 are: on the obverse, the single ruled section that contains lines 1-3, and the
single lines followed by rulings in lines 20 and 21. On the reverse, ruled sections that contain only one line
occur in lines 14, 15, 18 and 29. The left margin is straight on both sides of the tablet, and the right margin
is only exceeded in ruled sections that contain a single line (an exception is line 23 on the obverse). On the
other hand, K3105 has some lines that exceed the right edge, e.g. lines 3, 4, 7 and 8 of the obverse, and
lines 2, 3 and 9 of the reverse.