Visualization of the scene featuring a person falling sick on the seal impression on the cuneiform tablet’s envelope from Kültepe (collection of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, I 2 b 1589)

The article is devoted to the publication of a fragment of a cuneiform tablet’s envelope with the image of interesting composition of a magical nature (Fig. 1; 2). The study revealed that the plot’s central scene is the scene depicting the process of getting sick. Nergal, the god of the Underworld, whom we can recognize by his symbol – a two-headed scepter, sends a lion-headed demon on the sinner to inflict punishment by making the sinner fall ill (many diseases were caused by anger of a deity according to the Ancient Mesopotamian conceptions/ideas). The main analogy to this image is the composition on another Old Babylonian seal (Fig. 3). The fragment of the envelope I 2 b 1589 also contains two symbols – a vessel and a ball-staff. It has been established that the combination of these symbols is most often found on seals from Sippar or the Diyala region, which implies that either the studied seal or its carver came from the northern part of Lower Mesopotamia.