An Accadian Penitential Psalm

← Ancient texts · Mesopotamian

Sumerian, with an Assyrian interlinear translation · Composed before the 17th century BC (when Sumerian died out as a spoken language); our copy is from Ashurbanipal's library.

Translation: A. H. Sayce, 1887 — Babylonian and Assyrian Literature (Colonial Press, 1901), reprinting Sayce's Records of the Past translation. Public domain.

A prayer for the forgiveness of sins — unknowing sins as much as deliberate ones. 'My transgressions are many, great are my sins.' 'How long, O my god, until thy heart be at rest?' 'The transgression that I committed, let the wind carry away.' 'Seven times seven are my transgressions.' It has the parallelism of Hebrew poetry and the mood of Psalm 51, Psalm 103 and Psalm 130, and its 'seven times seven' is the phrase behind Jesus's answer to Peter in Matthew 18:22. Sayce, who translated it in the 1880s, called it 'remarkable alike for its deeply spiritual tone and for its antiquity'.

What it lacks is as telling as what it shares: the worshipper does not know which god he has offended, and prays to 'the god I know and the god I do not know'.

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