Lamentation to Innini on the Sorrows of Erech. 13859 (Poebel No. 26)

This well preserved single column tablet is published by Poebel in PBS. V 26. The composition reflects the standard theological ideas found in the canonical psalms and liturgies. The mother goddess Innini is represented as a divine mother wailing for the misery of her city and her people. The calamity [pg 273] consists in the pillage of the city and its holy places by a foreign invader, who is repeatedly compared to an ox. Like the ordinary psalms of public service the singers abruptly introduce the goddess speaking in the first person as in lines 16; 18-20; 33-4. But the lamentation does not have refrains and at the end the style approaches nearly that of a prayer. The tablet also bears no liturgical note at the end. For these reasons and because of the general impression which the lines leave with the present interpreter, he classifies this text as the product of a scholastic liturgist of the Ur or Isin period whose work was not incorporated into the corpus of the official breviary.

Obverse

1. zabar aga-[zu?] im-gūr-gūr-ri