Group B (BPO 3 Venus-omen recension)

Definition

Group B is the secondary content-and-order group of the BPO 3 Venus-omen corpus, comprising scattered Venus omens excerpted from the Group A master tradition and from other sources. Reiner and Pingree identify Group B from its absence of two Group F innovations — references to Venus' ašar niṣirti ("secret place") and to the three Paths of the sky (Enlil/Anu/Ea) — and from its excerpt-character. The principal Group B manuscripts (K.800, K.6021, K.12457, K.6565, K.3111, K.2226, K.35, K.3632) are small, damaged Neo-Babylonian-script tablets.

In Tradition

Reiner and Pingree treat Group B as a derivative recension positioned editorially in relation to Group A: each Group B manuscript is sorted in the BPO 3 critical edition by the first Group A omen it contains, and the apparatus tracks concordance with the VAT 10218 master sequence omen-by-omen. Group B demonstrates how the Babylonian scribal tradition recombined and abridged Venus-omen material across compilations.

In Practice

For the student of how the Babylonian Venus-omen corpus was excerpted and recombined, Group B is the operative-derivative recension. Reiner and Pingree write that "these texts contain scattered omens derived from A-Group texts and other sources" (BPO 3 p. 83). Beyond its Group A excerpts, K.800 — one of the principal Group B witnesses — draws on the Iqqur ipus omen series and on Tablets 50-51 of Enūma Anu Enlil, supplying evidence of intra-EAE cross-borrowing as well as cross-series borrowing from the Iqqur ipus menological omens. Recognizing Group B as an excerpt-and-recombination recension (rather than an independent omen-tradition) lets a reader appraise the BPO 3 manuscript inventory in proper editorial layers: Group A as the antiquity-baseline, Group B as the abridged secondary, Group F as the early-first-millennium-BCE expansion with new innovations. Reiner and Pingree edit the Group B manuscripts (pp. 90-108) as a per-tablet critical apparatus with paired English translations, allowing the reader to follow each excerpted Group B omen back to its Group A or Iqqur ipus source.

Historical Origin

Attested in the Group B manuscript cluster — K.800, K.6021, K.12457, K.6565, K.3111, K.2226, K.35, K.3632 and others — preserved as small Neo-Babylonian-script fragments. Modern critical treatment: Reiner & Pingree, *Babylonian Planetary Omens Part Three* (1998), Group B Notes p. 83 and Group B Manuscripts pp. 83-86 / pp. 90-108.

Further Reading

• Erica Reiner & David Pingree, Babylonian Planetary Omens Part Three