Reading akkadian PRayeRs & Hymns An Introduction

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READING AKKADIAN PRAYERS AND HYMNS: AN INTRODUCTION
were seventy tablets total in Enūma Anu Enlil. 3 ) Tablets 1–14 treat the appearance
of the moon’s first crescent (tāmarāti ša Sîn), and tablets 15–22 deal with
the middle of the month, the potential time for a lunar eclipse. 4 This background
informs lines 18–19 of our prayer.
Sin was represented in iconography by a number of symbols, the most important
of which is the recumbent crescent moon. This symbol is sometimes understood
as the horns of a bull, the animal associated with Sin (see the incantatory
text A Cow of Sin5 ), or a boat. In keeping with his calendrical duties, Sin’s
divine number was 30.
A few biblical names show Sin as their theophoric element: Sennacherib
(Heb. בירִ חֵ ְנס; ַ Akk. Sîn-aḫḫē-erība, “Sin has replaced the brothers”), Sanballat
(Heb. ט ַלּבַ ְנס; ַ Akk. Sîn-uballiṭ, “Sin has brought back to life”), and Shenazzar
(Heb. ר ַצּ ַא ְנ ֶשׁ; Akk. Sîn-uṣur, “O Sin, protect!”). 6
THE PRAYER:
The most recent edition of this prayer lists nine MSS that preserve parts of
the prayer and/or ritual instructions. This MS tradition shows significant textual
diversity, which must be related to the fact that the prayer was used in the Bīt
rimki ritual series (actually noted by Butler’s MS A) as well as in a namburbi to
dispel the evil of a lunar eclipse. 7 For the sake of illustration, a few examples of
this textual variation follow. MSS A 1 and B 1 include an attalû formula in its version
of the prayer between our lines 12 and 16 while MSS C 1 and F 1, the other
two MSS attesting this part of the prayer, do not. 8 MS F 1 does, however, make an
addition in its place: it contains a self-presentation formula that names Ashurbanipal
as the supplicant of the prayer. In contrast to this identification, MSS A
and B name Shamash-shum-ukin in our line 22 of the prayer as the supplicant.
MS C 1, though leaving out the attalû formula, presents a fuller text of the prayer
in other places, with additions after our lines 8, 16 (several lines), and 26.
3 For an introduction to Enūma Anu Enlil, see Francesca Rochberg, The Heavenly Writing: Divination,
Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004), 66–78.
4 See Francesca Rochberg-Halton, Aspects of Babylonian Celestial Divination: The Lunar Eclipse
Tablets of Enūma Anu Enlil (AfO Beiheft 22; Horn: Ferdinand Berger & Söhne, 1988) for an edition
of these omens.
5 See Niek Veldhuis’s treatment in A Cow of Sin (Library of Oriental Texts 2; Groningen: Styx,
1991).
6 See A. R. Millard, “Assyrian Royal Names in Biblical Hebrew,” JSS 21 (1976), 1–14.
7 The ritual instructions cite our prayer’s incipit (see Butler, 381). For an edition of the namburbi,
see Maul, ZB, 458–60. The incipit is cited in obv. 13´ (see 459, n.5 for Maul’s identification).
Christopher Frechette, Mesopotamian Ritual-prayers (Šuillas): A Case Study Investigating
Idiom, Rubric, Form and Function (AOAT 379; Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, forthcoming), §6 offers a
fuller discussion of how the shuilla was integrated into the namburbi.
8 For a fuller discussion of this formula, see Mayer, UFBG, 100–102.