Reading akkadian PRayeRs & Hymns An Introduction

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READING AKKADIAN PRAYERS AND HYMNS: AN INTRODUCTION
As one might surmise from the prominence of Shamash, god of justice, in
the ritual recitations, namburbi-rituals are permeated with legal language. Despite
the legal imagery’s importance, it is probably overstepping the bounds of
evidence to suggest, as does Maul, that the namburbi-ritual is patterned exclusively
on a legal trial, 129 ending with a river ordeal for the evil bearer. 130 As
Veldhuis points out, the legal imagery is an important perspective to keep in
mind while interpreting the namburbis but not all examples fit this model as
well as others. 131 For example, not all namburbis end with the evil bearer being
cast into the river (see Maul, ZB, 89–90). Moreover, focus on the legal aspects
may lead to neglecting other useful perspectives.
Although there are a couple of Akkadian and Hittite tablets from Hattusha
that preserve rituals of releasing evil, suggesting OB forerunners for namburbiritual
texts, by far our most numerous sources for namburbi-rituals come from
first millennium sites in Babylonia and Assyria and are written in SB Akkadian.
132 The textual witnesses to namburbi-rituals come down to us in various
forms: some rituals appear in the omen tablets themselves as a brief insertion
after the related omens that the namburbi-ritual counteracts; a couple of rituals
are part of a larger medical-ritual compendium that includes various other texts;
many namburbi-rituals are preserved individually on a tablet, one ritual per
tablet; others are transmitted on Sammeltafeln, that is, tablets that collect a number
of namburbi-rituals, which may or may not be thematically organized; finally,
some namburbi-rituals are preserved on amulets, suggesting that even the
inscribed tablet itself had apotropaic effectiveness. 133 According to Maul, evidence
suggests that namburbi-rituals were arranged into a series of at least 136
tablets for Ashurbanipal’s library. Unfortunately, evidence is currently too sparse
to reconstruct the series. 134 Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian scholars to the
king, however, provide important evidence for the preparation and actual execution
of namburbi-rituals in the Assyrian capital. 135
Dingirshadibbas:
Essential Bibliography: W. G. Lambert, “DINGIR.ŠÀ.DIB.BA Incantations.” JNES 33
(1974), 267–322. {A text edition of the prayers. It is now out-dated and does not deal
with the ritual contexts of the prayers. But it is the only available edition at the time
129 See ibid., 60–71 especially, but this view informs Maul’s general treatment of the ritual materials
and its application to a namburbi-ritual against lightning (ibid., 39–113 and 117–56). More
concisely, see his “How the Babylonians Protected Themselves against Calamities Announced by
Omens.”
130 See Maul, ZB, 85–89.
131 “On Interpreting Mesopotamian Namburbi Rituals,” 150–51.
132 See Maul, ZB, 159.
133 See ibid., 163–81 for a full discussion of the forms in which namburbis were preserved in the
written record.
134 See ibid., 216–21 for a general discussion of Ashurbanipal’s series and 217 for the specific
number of tablets.
135 See footnote 109 above.