G60 J 1 ii 17’ Ì.GIŠ Not Counted – The signs are marked in
Young’s study as an orthographic variant, but we consider that the ligature in T is a palaeo-
graphic variant.^539
T 1 ii 8 Ì+GIŠ
G61 T J 1 ii 10a [ ]-ri SV(2) – T has the other sources.an extra line that is omitted in (^540)
W^1 ii 18-19 omits
j ii 23-24^1 ii 16 omits omits
G62 J T 1 ii 19’ [ š]ú Not Counted – The sign in W is too damaged to allow a certain reading.
W^1 ii 10b 1 ii 16b ip-pu-šú [ š]u?^
(^) G63 J
T^11 ii 19’ ii 10b ki-ma ki-i SV(1) – Lexical interchange.^541
W 1 ii 16b ki-i
(^) G64 J
T^1 ii 25b e-ṣe-en-ši OV(l) – Possible difference in pronuncia-tion.^542
1 ii 16b i- ṣe-en-ši
G65 J 1 ii 28’ u OV – Different spellings of the conjunction.
W 1 ii 22 ˹ ù˺ (^)
G66 J T 1 ii 28’ sa-lat-ia OV – J has CVC-VV against [CV]-CV-VV in T. (^543)
1 ii 18 [ ]ti-ia
(^539) I. Young kindly made his unpublished notes on the specific variations between the first millennium
sources for Gilgamesh XI available to me. (^540) The working assumption in the present study is that additional material which is of uncertain content
does not introduce contrary information and is therefore not considered as a hermeneutic variant. Instead
the variant is considered to introduce expansionary or additional information and so is counted as SV(2).
See the comments in note. 541
542 See also G163 and G212 below, and the comments in note.
An analogous shift of initial /i/ > /e/ in primae aleph verbs is considered an Assyrian dialect form (cf. J.
Huehnergard, Grammar, 602; A.R. George, Gilgamesh, 349), so this variant could reflect a similar phe-
nomenon. See also note above for analogous forms that exhibit the vowel shift /i/ > /e/ in Assyrian pronun-
ciation. Here the form is 1cs, so the vowel indicates a verbal preformative rather than a root vowel for pri-
mae aleph (the root here is ṣênu, “to load cargo”). According to A.R. George, Gilgamesh, 816,
“... examples of writings of the first-person conjugation prefix /e/ with signs normally displaying /i/ are not
uncommon.” For another variation in the orthography of the 1cs preformative morpheme where /a/ > /e/ see
G207 below.