About the Director
Alan Lenzi is Professor of Humanities and History in the →History Department at →University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA). He earned his Ph.D. in Ancient Near Eastern Studies and Hebrew Bible from →Brandeis University in 2006. He specializes in
the study of first millennium ancient Near Eastern religious
traditions, including the interconnections between ancient Mesopotamia
and biblical literature. His work on a new edition and
translation of the Babylonian poem Ludlul
bēl nēmeqi (with Amar Annus in 2010; →library) led him back to the topic of Akkadian
prayers, especially the shuilas, which he had studied previously under
Tzvi Abusch at Brandeis. During the work on Reading Akkadian Prayers and
Hymns: An Introduction (2011; →library; →full text), which introduces, annotates, and translates twenty-nine
Akkadian prayers (several of which are shuila-prayers) for students of
the Akkadian language, he became aware of the great need for a new
critical edition of the shuila-prayer corpus. →The Corpus of Akkadian Shuila-Prayers Online (CASPo), begun in the fall of 2013, is the first step in that direction. The Akkadian Prayer Miscellany is an offshoot of that project and reflects Lenzi’s broad interests in human-divine interactions in the Ancient Near East.
For more of Lenzi’s work, see →here.