217 “RUDE REMARKS NOT FIT TO SMELL”: NEGATIVE VALUE JUDGMENTS RELATING TO SENSORY PERCEPTIONS IN ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA Nicla De Zorzi INTRODUCTION In an Old Babylonian letter, the sender, a man named Zimri-Eraḫ, states the following: Nabium-atpalam imqutma ubtazziʼšu u yâšim magriātim ša ana eṣēnim lā naṭâ idbub (“Nabium-atpalam barged in and proceeded to insult him [i.e., Zimri-Eraḫ’s servant], and even to me he made rude remarks that were not fit to smell”). 1 In his agitated state, which is obvious from the context, the letter writer makes a creative choice of words by replacing the expected “not fit to hear” with “not fit to smell” (ana eṣēnim lā naṭâ). The preference awarded to the sense of smell over hearing, the default choice, is owed to the stronger emotive response triggered by the resulting image. This quote sets the scene for the topic of this paper: sensory perceptions in ancient Mesopotamian sources that prompt a negative emotional response. The paper is confined mostly to perceptions that elicit disgust. 2 It will be shown that I would like to thank the organizers of the symposium “Sounding Sensory Profiles in Antiquity” for inviting me to present a talk at that event. I am grateful to Yoram Cohen (Tell Aviv University), Donald Lateiner (Ohio Wesleyan University), and Ilan Peled (Universiteit van Amsterdam) for providing me with copies of their contributions, which were relevant to the topic treated in this paper. Finally, I am grateful to Michael Jursa (Universität Wien) for reading and commenting on a final version of the paper. 1 AbB 2.115, obv. 9–14. 2 This paper has been inspired by the appearance of Donald Lateiner and Dimos Spatharas, eds., The Ancient Emotion of Disgust (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). The volume explores the vocabulary and semantics of disgust in Greek and Latin literature and the social use of disgust in these sources as a means of stigmatizing morally or socially condemnable behavior and marginalizing individuals or groups of individuals. As far as I know, no comparable study of disgust based on cuneiform material has ever been attempted. However, interesting insights can be gained by a survey of recent studies This e-offprint is provided for the author’s own use; no one else may post it online. Copyright © 2019 by SBL Press.