Babyloniaca, études de philologie assyro-babylonienne.

A FRAGMENT OF A NIPPUTRIAN LITURGY.

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series agalgal gel-sud-sud of which K 69 is the first tablet is catalogued
at I 33.
The ame baranara series no. X in SBP, which is the only Enlil
liturgy preserved in comparatively complete form, may have been
catalogued in the break col. I 20-24. Curiously the opening lines of
what I classified as tablet four, p. 112, begins exactly as the elum gud
sun series on the VIROLLEAUD text. If the late ame barana series really
be identical with the classical elum gudsun, then tablet four of my
arrangement would be tablet one. Series so far as we have their first
tablets always begin with their titles, but none of the six tablets constituting the ame barana series begin with ame barana. There is, there
fore, considerable reason to suppose that the name elum gudsun,
whose opening lines are identical with ame barana tab. IV(?), was
changed by the later liturgists. Against this I may urge that the two
last sections preserved on this tablet do not agree with any part of
ame barana. I shall conclude at least for the present that the two
series are independent one of the other and that the arrangement of
the ame barana tablets given by me in SBP no. X is correct.
I have in several instances emphasized the secondary character of
the interlinear texts, a thesis which obtains undeniable support from
this tablet. We have here a fragment of the classical period which
presents the pure Sumerian text, not a copy with interlinear Semitic
translations and glosses. Our copy of the related Enlil liturgy ame
barana depends evidently upon a similar Sumerian original. The arrangement of sections may have suffered alteration at the hands of the
Semitic liturgists who added the translations. Insertions of minor
importance, especially of divine names to whose cults the redactors
belonged, are frequently met with, but the Nippurian theology which
had constructed a natural pantheon about Enlil and elevated him into
a pantheistic world spirit remained the essential theological element
in Babylonian liturgy.