Cover image for The Great Hymn to Šamaš By Geraldina Rozzi

The Great Hymn to Šamaš

Geraldina Rozzi

Coming in January

$40.00 | Paperback Edition
ISBN: 978-951-51-8586-0
Coming in January

128 pages
6.93" × 9.85"
2026
Distributed by Penn State University Press for Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project

State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts

The Great Hymn to Šamaš

Geraldina Rozzi

This study presents a new and updated edition of the Great Hymn to Šamaš, a two-hundred-line Akkadian hymn that stands out for its remarkable poetic sophistication and the wisdom section embedded in its center. The edition, originally prepared by the author for the Electronic Babylonian Literature (eBL) project led by E. Jiménez at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, incorporates all the manuscripts of the Great Hymn to Šamaš discovered so far. The recent identification of numerous fragments, which were unknown at the time of the text’s first edition (in W. G. Lambert’s Babylonian Wisdom Literature, 1960), has allowed for an almost complete reconstruction of the hymn that corrects previous readings and erroneous restorations. The present study also includes an in-depth introduction to the text, covering both formal aspects (e.g., the hymn’s structure and poetic devices) and content-related aspects (e.g., the wisdom section). It provides the reconstructed cuneiform text, a transliteration, and a translation by B. Foster. Additionally, the edition is accompanied by a commentary that discusses relevant philological features, along with a glossary and sign list.

 

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This study presents a new and updated edition of the Great Hymn to Šamaš, a two-hundred-line Akkadian hymn that stands out for its remarkable poetic sophistication and the wisdom section embedded in its center. The edition, originally prepared by the author for the Electronic Babylonian Literature (eBL) project led by E. Jiménez at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, incorporates all the manuscripts of the Great Hymn to Šamaš discovered so far. The recent identification of numerous fragments, which were unknown at the time of the text’s first edition (in W. G. Lambert’s Babylonian Wisdom Literature, 1960), has allowed for an almost complete reconstruction of the hymn that corrects previous readings and erroneous restorations. The present study also includes an in-depth introduction to the text, covering both formal aspects (e.g., the hymn’s structure and poetic devices) and content-related aspects (e.g., the wisdom section). It provides the reconstructed cuneiform text, a transliteration, and a translation by B. Foster. Additionally, the edition is accompanied by a commentary that discusses relevant philological features, along with a glossary and sign list.

Geraldina Rozzi is Akademische Rätin at the Institute of Assyriology and Hittitology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Her research interests include Akkadian language and lexicography, literature, and poetry.