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The Great Hymn to Šamaš

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.