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Among many other insights, J.J.A. van Dijk has provided a new and profound appreciation of the genre of "non-canonical incantations". This genre is already attested by the middle of the third millennium in texts from Ebla, Fara and early Lagash. The text is a lenticular or "lentil-shaped" tablet with ten cases on the obverse and eight on the reverse. Although lenticular tablets of literary content are so far known only from the Old Babylonian schools, they were used for archival purposes as early as Neo-Sumerian times and occasionally in the preceding Old Akkadian period. The chapter offers transliterations of the two OB texts and a transcription of the NB one. It also attempts to provide translations of two of them with minimum comment.
Keywords: incantations; Neo-Sumerian times; OB texts; Old Akkadian period; Old Babylonian schools