Thou givest strength.
Strong art thou, lady of victory, who dost overthrow those who oppose me.’
Addressing her as Gushea,§ the petitioner ex- claims—
ppaored chambers, shrines, temples, and sanctuaries look
to thee.
Where is thy name not (pronounced)? Where is thy decree not (obeyed)?
Where are thine images not made? Where are thy sanc- tuaries not founded?
Where art thou not great? Where art thou not supreme?’
In the second hymn the appeal begins—
*O goddess of men, O goddess of women, whose way
none can fathom !
Where thou lookest in mercy, the dead revives, the sick is healed ;
The afflicted one is redeemed who looks on thy coun- tenance.
I, in humiliation and sorrow, thy servant racked with pain, call on thee.
Look upon me, my lady, hear my supplication ;
Look in mercy on me, hear my prayer ;
Announce my release, || and let thy liver be appeased,—
The release of my suffering body, which is full of distress and pain; :
The release of my sick heart, full of tears and sorrow ;
The release of my suffering entrails, full of distress and
pain ;
The release of my troubled house, shaken with grief ;
The release of my liver,{] which is satiated with tears and sorrow.’ :
In the third hymn the penitent inquires—
‘What have I done, O my god and my goddess?
As though I did not reverence my god and my goddess, am I treated.
Sickness, disease,** ruin, and destruction have overwhelmed me;
Misfortune, turning away of countenance, and fulness of anger are my lot;
* King, Creation Tablets, i. 222-237 (transliteration and trans- lation, ii. pl. 75-84 (text).
+ (a) lines 1-84, (b) 35-50, (c) 51-106.
t In the incantation texts, ¢.g., ‘Labartu’ series (Myhrman, Zeitschr. f. Assyr. xvi. p. 154), Ishtar is addressed as Jrnina.
§ The name also occurs in incantation rituals, e.g. Zimmern, Beitrige zur Kenntnis der Bab. Religion, p. 130 (. 738).
|| The word used here and in the following, akhula(ia), signifying literally ‘how long yet,’ has become a conventional expression for the hoped-for release from suffering. “| de. spirit. ** Lit. “head disease’—here a general term for lingering illness,
RELIGION OF BABYLONIA
RELIGION OF BABYLONIA — 567
Anger, indignation, the fury of gods and men.
I behold, O my lady, days of affliction, months of distress, and years of misfortune ;
I behold, O my mistress, slaughter, turmoil, and rebellion ;
Death and misery have made an end of me.’
Ishtar is his only hope, and to her accordingly he prays—
‘Dissolve my sin, my iniquity, my transgression and sin. Forgive my transgression, accept my supplication.
Guide my steps that I may walk gloriously among men,
Command, and at thy command may the angry god be appeased !
And may the angry goddess turn towards me !
May the dark smoking brazier flame up again !
My extinguished torch be relit !’
There are sufficient signs in this beautiful com- position to indicate a royal personage as the one who thus pours out his soul before the Divine throne; and the same is the case in most of the other ‘ Penitential Psalms’ that have been pre- served. While this is due in large measure to the circumstance that the rulers could more readily have their supplications committed to writing, their position, as those upon whose relationship to the gods the general welfare of the country de- pended, is also to be taken into consideration to explain why the priests were zealous in giving a permanent form to the proper phrases and ex- pressions to be used in times of general distress ascribed to the displeasure of some god or goddess with him in whose hands the affairs of State lay. Despite the advanced religious sentiments ex- pressed in those prayers for forgiveness, they still
rest upon the primitive belief that the ruler must.
have in some way provoked the anger of some deity —through insufficient reverence, or by an unin- tentional disobedience to his dictates. Hence the appeal was accompanied with rites of an expiatory
character; and it seems a sharp descent from a
lofty eminence when we find attached to this fervent supplication to Ishtar, directions for sym- bolical purification by sprinkling water on a green bough, for a fire-oftering and a libation, and for a recital of the prayer three times ‘ without look- ing behind,’ *—precisely as we find such directions in incantation texts proper. The link between the incantations and the hymns, despite the differ- ences in religious conceptions, is illustrated by the retention of the term shiptu, i.e. ‘incantation,’ even to designate the finest and purest appeals for Divine grace and mercy. The ‘ Penitential Psalms ’—the flowering of the religious spirit of Babylonia and Assyria—form no exception; and the hymn to Ishtar, of which extracts have been furnished, is designated both at the beginning and in the colophon as ‘ shiptw.’ ae
The continuity of the development of religious thought in the Euphrates Valley is thus preserved, and finds an expression even in its literature. The ‘new’ sprout is grafted on to the ‘old’ branch, and is nurtured by the same roots ; but the example of the rulers in publicly acknowledging their de- pendence upon the gods was made all the more impressive by the bond thus maintained between the higher flights of religious spirit and the primi- tive rites, which, in the minds of the masses, must have continued to represent the essence of the religion itself,