Hymns, Sumerian; Sumerian language -- Texts; Sumerians -- Religion
From the point of view of the history of religion I would assign the
liturgical texts to the second group in order of importance. Surprisingly
few fragments from the long canonical daily prayer services have been
found. In fact, about all of the perfected liturgies such as we know the
Sumerian temples to have possessed belong to the cults of deified kings.
In the entire religious literature of Nippur, not one approximately
complete canonical prayer service has survived. Only fragments bear
witness to their existence in the public song services of the great
temples in Nippur. A small tablet(10) published in part two of this volume
carries a few lines of the titular or theological litany of a canonical or
musically completed prayer book as they finally emerged from the
liturgical schools throughout Sumer. Long liturgical services were evolved
in the temples at Nippur as we know from a few fragments of large five
column tablets.(11) The completed composite liturgies or canonical
breviaries as they finally received form throughout Sumer in the Isin
period were made by selecting old songs of lament and praise and
re-editing them so as to develop theological ideas. Characteristic of
these final song services is the titular litany as the penultimate song
and a final song as an intercession. A considerable number of such
perfected services exist in the Berlin collection. These were obtained
apparently from Sippar.(12) The writer has made special efforts to
reconstruct the Sumerian canonical series as they existed in the age of
Isin and the first Babylonian dynasty. On the basis of tablets not
excavated at Nippur but belonging partly to the University Museum and
partly to the Berlin collection the writer restored the greater part of an
Enlil liturgy in part 2, pp. 155-167.(13) In the present and final part of
this volume another Enlil liturgy has been largely reconstructed on pages
290-306.(14) From these two partially reconstructed song services the
reader will obtain an approximate idea of the elaborate liturgical worship
of the late Sumerian period. These were adopted by the Babylonians and
Assyrians as canonical and were employed in interlinear editions by these
Semitic peoples. Naturally the liturgical remains of the Babylonian and
Assyrian breviaries are much more numerous and on the basis of these the
writer was able in previous volumes to identify and reconstruct a large
number of the Sumerian canonical musical services. But a large measure of
success has not yet attended his efforts to reconstruct the original
unilingual liturgies commonly written on one huge tablet of ten columns.
Obviously the priestly schools of the great religious center at Nippur
possessed these perfected prayer books but their great size was fatal to
their preservation. It must be admitted that the Nippur collection has
contributed almost nothing from the great canonical Sumerian liturgies
which surely existed there.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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