Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 9:56 PM, James Read wrote:
>
> Further, reconstruction of a broken tablet seems to define the rarely
> attested Sapattum or Sabattum as the 15th day of the lunation, more or
> less the full moon. This word is cognate with Hebrew Shabbat, but is
> monthly rather than weekly; it is regarded as a form of Sumerian
> sa-bat ("mid-rest"), attested in Akkadian as um nuh libbi ("day of
> mid-repose"). This conclusion is a contextual restoration of the
> damaged Enûma Eliš creation account, which reads: "[Sa]bbath shalt
> thou then encounter, mid[month]ly."[1]
>
>  From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_calendar

For a more dependable source than Wikipedia, see:
http://oi.uchicago.edu/pdf/cad_s_shin_1.pdf
(p. 449-450, 477-8 in the pdf).

Yitzhak Sapir