>>18887674Unexpectedly, hope comes back in Tablet 3, of which there is no manuscript in Huzirina or Kalhu. In a series of dreams, Šubši-mešre-Šakkan encounters different figures, human and non-human, who perform rituals and incantations in his behalf. Finally, an āšipu named Ur-Nintinugga carries out the ritual that releases him from Marduk's wrath. He is cured of all the illnesses that affected him in the second Tablet.
At the beginning of Tablet 4, of which there is only one small surviving fragment in Huzirina, STT 1, 27), Marduk takes Šubši-mešre-Šakkan's hand, and helps him to punish all those who were against him in the first Tablet. After having accomplished a series of appropriate rituals in the Esagil, Marduk's temple in Babylon, the protagonist walks through a series of twelve doors, where he is given back all that was taken from him in the first Tablet, his property as well as his protective deity. A hymn of praise to Marduk and the expression of the narrator's happiness follow. The final moral recalls how Marduk's praise is sweet.
Manuscripts of this composition have been found all over Mesopotamia, so that it clearly seems to belong to the "classic" scribal curriculum of the first millennium, as Petra Gesche has suggested. It is thus not surprising to find it in both Kalhu and Huzirina; the colophon of the Huzirina manuscript even states that it is a copy by a scribal apprentice (lu2ŠAB.TUR), named Iddi-Meslamtaea PGP
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