MUŠEN

Authors: Gennady E. Kurtik, David Hilder, Susanne M Hoffmann, Wayne Horowitz, Euin Choung Kim

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Babylonian version of the "Hydra, Corvus" super-constellation, visualized in Stellarium (drawing by Jessica Gullberg).

^mulMUŠEN (𒀯𒄷) = ^muliṣṣuru (𒀯𒄑𒍮𒊒), 'The Bird' is an ancient Mesopotamian asterism, or perhaps full constellation. The lexical entry cannot affirm this suggestion, but the only other context we have is in the Dalbanna text where it is a bird on the tail of a snake, i.e. Corvus (UGA) on Hydra (^{mul (d)}MUŠ).

It only occurs in rather late texts, and is likely an uninformed description of the constellation now called Corvus, Babylonian UGA (a bird shaped asterism sitting on the tail of a snake).

Concordance, Etymology, History

^(mul)Iṣṣuru, the Akkadian parallel to ^mulMUŠEN "bird" literally occurs in the Urra XXII series texts and in the dbn-text.

Kurtik with Hilder, Hoffmann, Horowitz, Kim

Sources	Identifications
Lexical texts. In the Urra XXII series: mulmušen = iṣ-ṣu-ru [Bloch-Horowitz 2015, 111:319ʹ] with variant iṣ-ṣur [SpTU III, 114A v 59] (a) mulmušen = iṣ-ṣu-ri A / iṣ-ṣu-ru B [Emar VI/4, 151:179].
Dalbanna-text. §O. MUŠEN (sign ḪU), see (Kurtik m18) MAŠ.TAB.BA.TUR.TUR where the same dal.ba.an.na pattern is discussed	Dlb. §O comes in three versions. Only one of them has the phrase "head of the Snake-with-Bird". It is obviously a specifier to distinguish one snake from another one without a bird. The dlb-text does not follow the standard language of Mesopotamian mathematical astronomy. Because of this and astronomical reasons, we suggest to interpret the "Snake with Bird" as Hydra+Corvus. MUŠEN would then be identified with Corvus. Leo and Virgo above the MUŠ-Dragon, two claytablet drawings from the Seleucid era (roughly 2nd century BCE), CC BY SMH based upon the drawings by E. Weidner (1967) and Thureau-Dangin (1922).

       

Historical Dictionaries

Kurtik (2022, i16)
аккадская параллель к mulMUŠEN «Птица»; в текстах серии Urra XXII и в dbn-тексте, см m46MUŠEN.
Kurtik (2022, m46)	Gössmann (1950)
вар. чтения: (mul)ḪU; = iṣṣūru «Птица». I. Источники. Лексич. тексты. В серии Urra XXII: (a) mulmušen = iṣ-ṣu-ri A / iṣ-ṣu-ru  B [Emar VI/4, 151:179], (b) mulmušen = iṣ-ṣur [SpTU III, 114A v 59], (c) mulmušen = iṣ-ṣu-ru [Bloch–Horowitz 2015, 111:319ʹ]. Dalbanna-текст. §O. ḪU, см. m18MAŠ.TAB.BA.TUR.TUR. Остается неизвестным местоположение на небе этого созвездия/звезды.	Example

References

• Kurtik's references