periodically have the apocopated bound form of the nomen regens that lacks the case
vowel (see H107 and H117, but cf. H130), and its use of anaptyctic vowels (cf. the oppo-
site in tablet J, H166, H212 and H246). Tablet B also exhibits a proclivity towards writ-
ing diphthongal vowels that may or may not reflect some underlying aspect of that
scribe’s particular pronunciation.
Stylistic Variants (Type 1)
Minor changes in style occur throughout the entire text of the Laws, however some types
of changes are more common in the poetic sections (the prologue and epilogue) rather
than in the intervening law section. For example, changes in the gender of pronouns, de-
scribing both objects and subjects, are found in the prologue (H8 and H34) and in the epi-
logue (H252) but not in the laws themselves. This is effectively an argument from silence
on account of the fact that the sources for the poetic sections (tablets B, C, D, and e) typi-
cally do not preserve any significant sections of the laws, though tablet e provides some
overlap between the last laws and the epilogue. The differences between the types of
variations in the poetic sections and those in the law section warrant further discussion,
and will be returned to in the concluding remarks.
One type of minor stylistic variation that occurs in all sections of the text is the inter-
change of lexemes with other lexemes of a similar semantic range. Though the substi-
tuted lexemes are often not strictly synonymous, the semantic integrity of the text is rela-
tively uncompromised by these interchanges. In the prologue, tablet B shows that certain