This small fragment of the lower left corner of a tablet was found by Hormuzd Rassam at the Babylonian site of Jimjima and entered the collection of the British Museum in 1881. Unfortunately, nothing of its subscript or colophon is preserved, but its entries refer clearly to the 3rd tablet of the lexical series Ea. This commentary preserves a rather interesting part of the tablet, namely combinations of the sign ka inscribed with one or more graphemes. The lexical treatment of ka-compounds reaches back as far as the Early Dynastic period.1

The commentary, as far as it is preserved, first quotes the base text followed by comments in intended lines. This format is similar to the Aa commentary CCP 6.1.16.B. The complex graphemes are written in a comparatively archaic script and the inserted signs are repeated thereafter. This follows the standards of the lists Ea and its cognate Aa.2

The explanations are based on etymographical considerations. In doing so, the complex graphemes are disassembled and each element explained separately. Thus, for the complex grapheme ka×me.gi explains each element (gi is not preserved) in order to explain šurbûtu, “burning thirst.” This approach follows in line of contemporary analytical renderings of cuneiform characters (i.e., sign names).3

• 1. See, for instance, the ED IIIb sign list MS 3200, the Old Akkadian tablet MDP 14, 87, and the unpublished sign inventory YBC 4615 (see Wagensonner [forthcoming])
• 2. See also the Middle Assyrian tablet VAT 10172 with combinations of the sign lagab.
• 3. For a recent treatment of such renderings see Y. Gong, Die Namen der Keilschriftzeichen. Ugarit-Verlag, 2000.