sealPacific

Akkadian Prayer Miscellany

Alan Lenzi, University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA)

courtyard tablet

SB Prayer to Ningal in Sargon's Palace at Dūr-Šarrukīn


This prayer was inscribed on a stone threshold and placed at the entryway to the deity's chapel, accessed through what archaeologists have labeled courtyard XXXI in the complex of Sargon's palace (see figures to the right). Presumably, the inscription remains in situ (see Frame 2021: 187). The copy presented here comes from the hand of Thorkild Jacobsen, who produced an edition of the text for the field reports of the University of Chicago's excavations at Khorsabad in the 1930's. See Loud 1936 (→bibliography; →open-access) and Loud and Altman 1938 (→bibliography; →open-access). For Jacobsen's princeps edition, see Loud 1936: 133 (inscription no. 7). The most recent edition is Frame 2021 = RINAP 2, no. 20 (→bibliography; →library; and →open-access on ORACC), who provides comprehensive bibliography for the text. Translations include Foster 2005: 786 (English); Seux 1976: 528 (French); and von Soden (German) in Falkenstein and von Soden 1953: 280.











tablet