Mon dieu qu’ai-je fait?
Les diĝir-šà-dab(5)-ba et la piété privée en Mésopotamie
By (author) Margaret Jaques
The corpus of penitential prayers to the personal god that bear the signature KA-inim-ma digir a-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 whole corpus is important for religious studies.
The corpus of penitential prayers to the personal god that bear the signature KA-inim-ma digir a-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 a-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, urpu, ama-um-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 connections and differences. The corpus of Hittite prayers to the Sun God from 13th century Anatolia, embodies isolated clauses borrowed from the Sumerian digir a-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.
- By (author) Margaret Jaques
Other Titles in this Series
La Septante en Allemagne et en France/Septuaginta Deutsch und Bible d’Alexandrie
Textes de la Septante à traduction double ou à traduction très littérale/Texte der Septuaginta in Doppelüberlieferung oder in wörtlicher Übersetzung
‘Trinkt von dem Wein, den ich mischte!’ ‘Drink of the Wine which I have Mingled!’
Festschrift für Silvia Schroer zum 65. Geburtstag
Volume 303
La Samarie, la Diaspora et l’achèvement de la Torah
Territorialités et internationalités dans l’Hexateuque
The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and Scribal Scholarship in Antiquity
Studies in Honor of Arie van der Kooij on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday
Volume 306
Tabou et transgressions
Actes du colloque organisé par le Collège de France, Paris, les 11-12 avril 2012
The Text of Leviticus
Proceedings of the Third International Colloquium of the Dominique Barthelemy Institute, held in Fribourg (October 2015)
Volume 292
Entre dieux et hommes : anges, démons et autres figures intermédiaires
Actes du colloque organisé par le Collège de France, Paris, les 19 et 20 mai 2014
Bilder als Quellen – Images as Sources
Studies on ancient Near Eastern artefacts and the Bible inspired by the work of Othmar Keel
Le Décalogue et l’histoire du texte
Etudes des formes textuelles du Décalogue et leurs implications dans l’histoire du texte de l’Ancien Testament
Divine Names on the Spot
Towards a Dynamic Approach of Divine Denominations in Greek andSemitic Contexts
Volume 293
Le jeune héros
Recherches sur la formation et la diffusion d’un thème littéraire au Proche-Orient ancien
»Kultprostitution« im Alten Testament?
Die Qedeschen der Hebräischen Bibel und das Motiv der Hurerei
Prééminence de YHWH ou autonomie du prophète
Etude comparative et critique des confessions de Jèrèmie dans le Texte hèbreu Massorétique et la "Septante"
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