This beautiful and interesting hymn begins with a picturesque and lordly epithet of the god whose full face so often shone upon the worshipper night by night. His fatherly nature and his full-orbed glory are dwelt upon in adoring and glowing terms. The name of his city and temple are mentioned. His power to lighten the world is acknowledged. His peculiar relation of “son to Bêl” is announced. The phenomenon of his appearance in the heavens as the full moon is described to us from several points of view. This is the famous Nannar, dwelling in the temple of E-gišširgal at the ancient city of Ur. The sacred ship, becoming a peculiar emblem in Babylonian worship, symbolized several important ideas connected with Nannar’s transit through the heavens by night or during the month. Perhaps Nannar was in the beginning a water-god. His power over the waters is graphically described.
Obverse
[1.] mà-gur azag an-na še-ir-ma-al nì-te-na
O shining ship of the heavens, majestic by thyself!
mà-gur is a boat of crescent form. Sin is a man sitting in the half circle of the moon and sailing across the firmament of the heavens as in a majestic ship. mà: the sign MÙ was originally pictorial and represented the rudder of the ship. The sign of our tablet is New-Babylonian and can be found in the inscriptions of Nebuchadrezzar II. It is half way between the old pictorial and the usual Assyrian MÙ. gur: the sign ḤAR probably refers to the body of the ship as “an enclosure”, or more particularly to “the crescent form” of the ship, since ḤAR means “circular enclosure”. The ḤAR of our text is much like the linear form found in the Stèle des Vautours.
azag equals ellu, “shining”, (Br. 9890). The sign also has the value ku with the meaning ellu. azag, “shining”, refers to the moon and the moon looks like a ship.
an-na (see [Hymn to Bêl, line 18]).
še-ir-ma-al nì-te-na (see [Hymn to Bêl, line 1]). The ideas of these two words find their way into the first line of the Ašurbânipal Hymn to Sin, K. 2861, (IV R. 9). še-ir-ma-al appears especially as ner-gal (š-n and m-g) and nì-te-na as aš-ni maḥ-àm; e-diš-ši-šu ṣi-i-ru.
[2.] a-a dimmer Šis-ki ù-mu-un-e Šis-unu-ki-ma
O father Nannar, lord of Ur!