The corpus of penitential prayers to the personal god that bear the
signature KA-inim-ma digir sa-dab(5)-ba gur-ru-da-kam Incantation to
return the “tied heart’ of the god gives us an overview of how the
inhabitants of Mesopotamia represented to themselves what we would call
private piety . Focusing on this corpus, this book includes texts from
the genre’s origin in Old Babylonian private devotion up to its use in
official Assyrian kings’ rituals.
The Old Babylonian corpus consists of about 10 tablets in Sumerian that
were excavated in various Mesopotamian cities. These tablets include
only one prayer, addressed to the personal god. This prayer gives an
idea of the wealth of metaphors used to talk about guilt, shame or
sorrow. Identical metaphors appear in other similar literary texts and
letters.
The texts of the Assyrian corpus are either bilinguals (Akkadian and
Sumerian) or purely Akkadian. Most of them were discovered in
Assurbanipal’s library in Niniveh. The Akkadian texts consist of a
corpus of prayers in which the Old Babylonian prayer is the fifth one.
This prayer derived directly from the ancient Sumerian digir
sa-dab(5)-ba and was incorporated into official royal rituals, where it
took on the character of an incantation-prayer . The other prayers of
the corpus are found in different rituals like Bit rimki, Surpu,
Samas-sum-ukin Dream Rituals, and therapeutic texts of the SA.GIG
series, magical texts and omen texts. The prayers were first published
in 1974, but without the rituals. However, prayers and rituals should be
analysed both individually and as a whole, while considering their
connexions and differences.
The corpus of Hittite prayers to the Sun God from 13th century Anatolia,
embodies isolated clauses borrowed from the Sumerian digir sa-dab(5)-ba.
The research published here considers the migration of these sentences
from the Sumerian corpus to the Hittite texts, and analyses their use
and interpretations in the new context. The Hittite texts are published
by Daniel Schwemer in a separate chapter.
The whole corpus is important for religious studies. First, it provides
insight into private devotion in Mesopotamia, still a very little known
topic. Second, the problem of evil is treated, its causes and its
deflection or palliation. Naturally, evil is a source of emotions and
the way these emotions are expressed in prayers has to be considered in
comparison with other kinds of expressions in Mesopotamian culture.
Finally, the way a text changes while traveling from one place to
another and from one period to another has to be analysed. Study of this
corpus illustrates how both historical and synthetic analyses can
interact and support each other in order to enhance our understanding of
religion in the ancient Near East.
