Bright is thy light in heaven,
Brilliant is thy flame like the fire god.
Thy brightness fills the broad earth;
The mortals rejoice, they grow strong who see thee.
O Anu of the heavens whose purpose no man understands,
Overwhelming is thy light like Shamash thy first born;
Before thy face the great gods bow down, the fate of the world is determined by thee.
Chapter VII
ASSYRIAN ANTIPHONAL HYMNS
There is also among the Assyrian hymns addressed in the second person to deity a group of hymns, which are distinguished by refrains, frequent repetitions of a phrase or clause, or marked parallelisms of lines. It is, however, in most cases very difficult to know whether the hymn is actually antiphonal or not.
Nergal No. 4 is a hymn fragment of ten lines. For the first eight lines, the second half of each line is the refrain: “Destroyer of the hostile land,” while the first half of each line gives a separate title of the god. Thus: