The Birds of the Assyrian Monuments and Records, 113 
Delitzsch that the scribe is in error. These exceptions occur 
in W.A.I., II, 24, 14, 15, in a list which contains the names of 
dog, deer, serpents, &c. ; the names of two insects are given, 
one, 'e-ri-bu, " a locust," the other " zir-zir-bu" which the 
Accadian tells us is a " very little insect," i.e., " the ant." 
Instead of the usual D.P., ^-|<y ^y khu bir, of an insect, the 
scribe has written ^y<|^ NAM bir, the D.P. of a bird. 
What is the real import of these two determinatives ? Before 
what kinds is the bird-D.P. placed, and why is it placed 
before these and not before others ? Unfortunately, in two 
of the tablets on plate 37, W.A.I., Vol. II, the Accadian word 
is in every single instance lost, with the exception of a few 
fragments of character, though the usual bird affix *~^<] is in 
almost every instance preserved. In the larger tablet, No. 2 
(same plate), out of about forty-five words, not more than 
twenty-two are complete. In W.A.I., V, 2 7, we meet with nine- 
teen birds' names with the Accadian preserved. In this tablet 
the D.P. NAM BIR does not once occur. Of the twenty-two 
complete Accadian names on plate 37, only four have the D.P. 
complete ; these are the itstsur cisi, " bird of the papyrus " ; 
itstsur asagi = diddle, the buridu or silikku, and the atdn nari or 
abbunnu ; but from remains of characters in two other places 
(lines 32. 33), it is clear that both the burrumtu or dharru 
have, and the butsu or itstsur kharri had, this prefix NAM BIR in 
the corresponding Accadian columns. The compound ideo- 
graph >~y<y^ ^ resolves itself into the two elements of 
>~y<y^S and ; the first character denotes abstract nouns in 
Accadian, as well as "destiny"; the second "hosts," "multi- 
tudes," &c. Sometimes the first character stands alone for 
some bird, as for the swallow (sinun tuv) in the Deluge Tablet. 
It is clear that the composite character is not synonymous 
with its first element, because sometimes the full com- 
pound character occurs with its latter element in the same 
bird-name. Thus we have NAM BIR NAM KHU (1. 48) for the 
silikku. I think that the composite prefix denotes, and 
originally had special, if not exclusive, reference to, birds 
which associate, either habitually, or at certain times, as in 
their migrations, in large numbers, though this distinction is 
Yol. VIII. 8 
