Balaĝ and Eršema are two genres of prayers which were written in the Emesal register of Sumerian. Both genres are documented for around two millennia, from the beginning of the second millennium BC. However, the performative annotations only appear in selected manuscripts from the last few centuries of their textual transmission, namely the late first millennium BC. The performative annotations consist primarily of vocal notes, which apparently served as indicators of melismatic singing, as markers for prosodic units and rhetorical emphasis. In addition, indicative notes on musical instruments and other performative aspects seem to have served, at least partly, to mark emphasis and dramatic effect. Sam Mirelman examines the corpus of seventy-one tablets of these prayers, including performative annotations and explores its scribal contexts, with particular emphasis to the colophons present. He also focuses on the geographical and/or diachronic variations within the corpus, distinguishing between a ‘northern’ style of performative annotations known from Babylon and Borsippa, versus a more elaborate ‘southern’ style known from Uruk, Dēr and Ur.weiterlesen