Reading akkadian PRayeRs & Hymns An Introduction

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READING AKKADIAN PRAYERS AND HYMNS: AN INTRODUCTION
rain that watered crops and animals (see, e.g., Atram-ḫasīs II i 11–16, 30–33), 1
and wreaking devastation, on the other, with powerful storms and floods (see,
e.g., Atram-ḫasīs III ii 48–55). 2 Due to the latter association, Adad was an important
war god, especially evident among Middle and Neo-Assyrian sources.
Along with his role as a storm god, Adad was also a guardian of oaths. In
Sippar, for example, he was closely associated with Shamash, who together with
Adad was invoked to bear witness to legal cases and contracts. This must be
significant for their association in divinatory texts, attested as early as OB
times. 3
To explain Adad’s rather unexpected role in oracular divination, Daniel
Schwemer offers two suggestions. First, Adad “was a celestial god who . . . had
power over numerous ominous phenomena and dwelled in immediate proximity
to the celestial sun-god.” And second, he “was lord of the winds, which were
seen in Mesopotamia as the divine carriers,” 4 perhaps thereby providing the
means to communicate the extispicy verdict to the human diviner. 5
THE PRAYER:
This OB prayer was used in the diviner’s extispicy ritual to petition the high
gods in charge of the oracular decision: Shamash and Adad. (It is closely associated
with the OB Prayer to the Gods of the Night, see page 71). After the diviner
had gathered the gods via this prayer and made them amenable to hear inquiries,
the diviner may have made his inquiry in the form of a tamitu-prayer (see
page 465). In order to learn the answer to his inquiry, the diviner would examine
the animal sacrificed in the extispicy and read the signs that the gods had
placed in its exta. In this way, the diviner could learn the will of the gods in the
matter about which he had inquired.
The prayer falls into two main parts. In the first ten lines the diviner undertakes
his ritual purification. 6 In the remainder of the text (lines 11–66), the diviner
performs six more ritual actions, directed at Shamash alone, and asks
Shamash, 7 sometimes including Adad, eight times in the course of the prayer to
1 See W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard, Atra-ḫasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1969; repr., Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 73.
2 See ibid., 93.
3 For brief thoughts about the close association of Shamash and Adad and their role in Babylonian
extispicy, see W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Oracle Questions (Mesopotamian Civilizations 13;
Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2007), 1–5.
4 Schwemer, “Storm Gods, Part I,” 150.
5 For Adad’s possible role in communicating the extispicy verdict, see Steinkeller, 43–45.
6 See W. Sallaberger, “Reinheit. A. Mesopotamien,” RlA 11 (2006–2008), 295–99 for a general
discussion of purity in Mesopotamia.
7 Shamash is mentioned seventeen times in the text: 1, 11, 14, 19, 21, 24, 25, 26, 34, 36, 42, 44,
50, 51, 54, 55, and 58. Adad is mentioned only six times: lines 11, 27, 36, 44, 51, 55, always in
tandem with an invocation of Shamash. Only Shamash is invoked at the beginning of each of
seven ritual actions described in the text (see lines 1, 14, 19, 25, 34, 42, 50; and Starr, 46).