Towards a reconstruction of SUALU IV: Can we localize K 2386+ in the therapeutic corpus?

This paper argues that the well-known “fever” tablet K 2386+, the tablet that Stol used as the center-piece of his discussion of his “Fevers in Babylonia” paper (Stol 2007), actually can be assigned to the fourth tablet of the therapeutic subcorpus known as SUALU. Although no direct join to the known pieces of SUALU IV has yet been identified, several different arguments suggest that K 2386+ should be located at the bottom of the first column of SUALU IV. This placement of K 2386+ in SUALU, a subcorpus that is otherwise largely concerned with diseases of the lower digestive tract and several forms of jaundice, raises a number of important questions as to the place of therapies against fever in the therapeutic corpus generally. The paper concludes with a discussion of mixed prognostic / therapeutic materials from the late second millennium BCE and their relationship to later diagnostic and
therapeutic compendia.