On Wood Statues, Beds, and Daughter-in-laws

This paper is the result of a long turn. It started as a survey of wooden statuary evidence in third millennium Mesopotamia and ended to emend the few references in this respect. In fact, the sign NU2 is very similar to ALAN and has been systematically confused with the latter in the passages quoted here. Thus, the close analysis of the texts resulted in no references to “wood statues” (ĝišalan) and an abundance of “beds” in the Neo-Sumerian corpus. A collateral outcome is a discussion of the ceremony of the “installation of the bed” (ĝišnu2 gub-ba) performed in relationship with the daughter-in-law (e2-gi4-a).