The caudate lobe was known to the classical writers as the "head of the liver" (caput iecoris), the lobe of the liver par excellence, and to the Mesopotamian diviners as the 'finger' (ubānu, logograms ŠU.SI and U). The 'finger' and its parts are well represented both in the omen texts and extispicy reports from the OB period on. The seventh chapter of the Neo-Assyrian omen corpus bārûtu is devoted to it.
Of the parts of the 'finger' mention must be made especially of the "surfaces" of the 'finger,' of which there were apparently three. For descriptive and predictive purposes, the caudate lobe was evidently considered a solid triangle with three "surfaces."[[153]]
A further part, DAGAL ŠU.SI, is attested in syllabic writing in an OB extispicy report,[[155]] and is evidently to be read rupuš ubāni, "wide part of "finger'." References to this part of the 'finger' in extispicy reports are mostly to its left side.[[156]] For omens showing the relationship between ṣēr ubāni, rupuš ubāni and ekal ubāni, see Boissier DA 222:10-15 and 223:22-33.
A verb commonly associated with the 'finger' and its parts is ekēmu "to take away, absorb" especially in the statival meaning "to be atrophied"[[157]], and one of its characteristic is the predilection of its parts to "absorb" one another, e.g. "the right side of the 'finger' absorbs (i-te-ki-im) its left," YOS 10 33 iv 24ff, and vice versa in line 26.[[158]] A common protasis in the Sargonid reports and queries is ubāni ebbet, "the 'finger' is thick," e.g. no. 10 r.3, and passim in these texts.
153 See Starr, AfO 26 (1978-79) 49.
154 The "palace" is sometimes in late texts used interchangeably with the "land," e.g. DA 222:10-15 (É.GAL) = CT 31 43:7-12 (KUR), obviously because KUR in Neo-Assyrian script also served as a logoşram for "palace." That the two were distinct parts of the 'finger' is clear from BRM 4 12:28, referring to SUHUŠ KUR É.GAL ŠU.SI.
155 ru-pu-us, JCS 21 225 K:4.
156 E.g. JCS 37 149:33, 150:47, 132:4, 133:14, but note DAGAL imitti ubāni, ibid. 139 no. 7:5. A very common protasis in the Sargonid reports is "there is a hole in the wide part/base of the left side of the 'finger' at the side of the middle surface of the 'finger'"; see, for example, nos. 282:16; 285:11; 301:1, 15.
157 E.g. CT 44 37 r.3, "the 'palace' of the 'finger' is atrophied in the top/middle/base of the 'finger.'" Also passim in the OB text YOS 10 33, e.g. iii 25ff.
158 See also ibid, 14ff, said of the median area of the 'finger,' Note CT 44 37 r,6, "in the middle surface of the 'finger,' the right side absorbs the left: the left side absorbs the right," and cf. CAD E 68 s.v. ekēmu.
Ivan Starr
Ivan Starr, 'The 'Finger' (ubānu)', Queries to the Sungod: Divination and Politics in Sargonid Assyria, SAA 4. Original publication: Helsinki, Helsinki University Press, 1990; online contents: SAAo/SAA04 Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2020 [http://oracc.org/saao/saa04/theliveranditsparts/thefinger/]