Reading akkadian PRayeRs & Hymns An Introduction

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READING AKKADIAN PRAYERS AND HYMNS: AN INTRODUCTION
(lines 10–11), and a petition for protection from those fates (lines 12–13). Based
on this exemplar alone, the end of which is broken, we cannot know the precise
ritual context of that occasion. However, considerable evidence indicates that
shuilla-rituals were sometimes carried out in conjunction with namburbi-rituals,
whose explicit purpose was to dissolve the calamitous fate portended by an
omen (see the introduction, page 36). Such may have been the case for this exemplar.
The complaint in lines 10–11 is a variation on a formulaic expression of concern
over unfavorable omens. 12 Such a complaint is usually followed by one or
more statements in which the speaker expresses fear, turns to the deity, requests
the deity’s attention, or petitions for help. In MS A, however, such a statement is
absent. Consequently, the element of complaint takes the form of a lengthy
prepositional phrase that is grammatically subordinate to the petition:
ina lumun idāti ittāti lemnēti lā ṭābāti Concerning (ina) [the evil omens]
ša ina ekallīya u mātīya ibšâ That occurred in my palace and my land,
lumuššina ayyâši u ekallīya May their evil towards me and my palace
ayy-iṭḫâm ayy-isniq ayy-iqrib ayy-ikšudanni Not approach, not come near,
not come close, not reach me!
This sentence is comprehensible, but awkward. An exemplar of the prayer Nergal
2 contains a nearly identical insertion which also names Shamash-shumukin,
but that exemplar adds a line to the complaint-element. 13 As a result, the
complaint is no longer couched in a subordinate prepositional phrase, but forms
a complete sentence expressing the king’s anxiety:
ina lumun idāti ittāti lemnēti lā ṭābāti As a result of (ina) [the evil omens]
ša ina ekallīya u mātīya ibšâ That occurred in my palace and my land,
palḫāku adrāku u šutādurāku I am afraid, anxious, and panicked.
lumuššina ayyâši u ekallīya May their evil towards me and my palace
ayy-iṭḫâm ayy-isniq ayy-iqrib ayy-ikšudanni Not approach, not come near,
not come close, not reach me!
12 While Werner Mayer includes this complaint formula among exemplars of the so-called “attalû
formula” concerning a lunar eclipse that portends evil for the king’s palace and land, the present
insertion lacks the formula’s first line, which mentions the eclipse (UFBG, 100–102). Of the
twenty-eight occurrences of this formula noted by Mayer, twenty-four occur in shuilla-prayers;
occurrences in the present insertion and in one exemplar of Nergal 2 are the only two in which
the first line, which mentions the eclipse, does not occur. (For a list of all exemplars of this formula
see UFBG, 100, n. 64. For a transliteration of the insertion in this exemplar of Nergal 2, see
UFBG, 480, Text G, lines 12ʹ–18ʹ and page 344 in this book.) Moreover, Mayer describes another
complaint formula that is strikingly similar to the attalû formula, but it lacks the line concerning
the eclipse altogether and refers to evil that threatens the ordinary person’s house and person,
not the king’s palace (Formula α, UFBG, 102–3). The self-identification formula, which may or
may not immediately precede either of these two complaint formulas, may function either as a
subject for what follows or as an independent clause (see UFBG, 46–52).
13 See the previous footnote.