It is unfortunate that the text of none of the penitential psalms is perfectly preserved. We must, therefore, content ourselves in our illustrations with more or less imperfect extracts. It is to be noted, too, that often the exact meaning of the lines escapes us, owing to the obscurity of terms employed or to the gaps in the texts themselves. With few exceptions the psalms appear in the double style characteristic of so large a section of the religious literature of the Babylonians, the 'ideographic' composition being accompanied by a phonetic transliteration. The fact, however, that we have at least one text (IVR. 59, no. 2) in the phonetic style alone, is sufficient to show that no special weight is to be attached to the supposed 'bilingual' character of the others. This double style is not a feature that need be taken into account in determining the age of this class of compositions. The historical references in some of them have prompted Zimmern to give his partial assent to the opinion which would assign them, or some of them, to the age of Hammurabi. Beyond such references, which are not as clear as they might be, we have no data through which their age can be determined; but so far as the ideas which they convey and the religious spirit manifested in them are concerned, there is no reason why they should not be assigned to as early a period as some of the incantation texts. It is characteristic of the Babylonian, as, in a measure, of all religions, that the old and the new go hand in hand; that more advanced conceptions, so far from setting aside primitive ones, can live and thrive in the same atmosphere with the latter. We may, therefore, assume that penitential psalms existed as early as 2000 B.C. Whether any of these that have been preserved go back to that period is another question. One gains the impression from a careful study of them that most of these, if not all, belong to a somewhat later period, nearer to the first millennium than to the second millennium before our era. The Assyrians adopted these psalms, as they did the other features of the religious literature of the Babylonians, and enriched the collection by productions of their own which, however, follow closely the Babylonian models.
A particularly beautiful psalm, judging from the portion preserved, represents the penitent addressing his goddess—probably Ishtar—as follows:[470]
I, thy servant, full of sighs, call upon thee;
The fervent prayer of him who has sinned do thou accept.
If thou lookest upon a man, that man lives.
O all-powerful mistress of mankind,
Merciful one, to whom it is good to turn, who hears[471] sighs!
At this point the priest takes up the thread to emphasize the appeal of the penitent by adding to it his own. He prays to the goddess:
His god and goddess being angry with him, he calls upon thee,
Turn towards him thy countenance, take hold of his hand.