Infant mortality, stillborn children, miscarriages, abnormal births and related problems were most common in ancient Mesopotamia, as in all pre-modern societies. It is thus not surprising to find a whole divinatory series devoted to monstrous births, both human and animal.
However, Šumma Izbu, "If an anomaly", does not have much in common with the modern study of foetuses, in the sense that the interest does not lie in the study of the anomaly itself but on the prediction it gives. The oldest known omens on this subject date from the early second millennium, and some have been found all over the cuneiform-literate Middle East. In the first millennium, Šumma Izbu was divided into 24 Tablets, totalling approximately 2,000 omens. It was actually composed of two distinct sub-series: Šumma Sinnistu Arâtma, "If a woman is pregnant" (Tablets 1-4) and Šumma Izbu, "If an anomaly" (Tablets 5-24).
All kinds of abnormal births or malformations are described in Šumma Izbu. Some are "expected", almost common (multiple births, double-headed foetus, missing or superfluous limbs), whereas others are improbable (foetuses born with various animals' heads or anomalies covered with ears). Some anomalies are obviously very unpropitious (open belly, no head, etc.), while others are benign (spots on the skin, lack of an ear or extra fingers). The realism of the descriptions is sometimes questionable. Most of them are subjective or approximate, and maybe difficult to interpret or even impossible to translate. This lack of realism may be due to the tendency towards systematisation in the production of the omens.
SpTU 3, 91 [/cams/gkab/P348695/], a manuscript of Tablet 5 from Uruk, illustrates this process: it has around 100 omens that consider the case of a ewe giving birth to a lion, describing successively the various peculiarities of this lion. By contrast, the omen of "an ewe giving birth to a lion" is mentioned only once in the other surviving manuscripts of this Tablet.
Most first-millennium manuscripts of Šumma Izbu come from Nineveh. Unexpectedly, the series is not well represented in the other Assyrian "libraries": there are nine fragmentary manuscripts from Kalhu, but five belong to the same tablet (see CTN 4, 31-35 [/cams/gkab/P363446,P363447,P363448,P363449,P363450/]), and only one from Huzirina (STT 2, 307 [/cams/gkab/P338622/]). By contrast, there are four and six manuscripts respectively from both Late Achaemenid and Early Hellenistic Uruk, as well as commentaries (e.g., SpTU 2, 37 [/cams/gkab/P348642/]) that indicate the Uruk scholars' interest in the series.
Marie-Françoise Besnier
Marie-Françoise Besnier, 'Birth omens: Šumma Izbu', The Geography of Knowledge, The GKAB Project, 2019 [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/cams/gkab/theworldoftheipu/divinatoryseries/birthomens/]