Corpus of Akkadian Shuila Prayers Online

This page presents a preliminary catalog of all the individual compositions or prayers included in the shuila-prayer corpus, the most important criteria for which is the attestation of a scribal meta-textual feature, namely, a shuila-rubric subscription, at the conclusion of the prayer and before any associated ritual instructions. (View a compilation of textual witnesses and attested shuila-rubrics →here.) This catalog is indebted to the work of (Mayer 1976; →library) and (Frechette 2012; →library). The notes provided in the table below are mostly intended to justify the inclusion of a prayer within the Akkadian shuila-corpus when none of its textual witnesses (view the full catalog →here) attests a shuila-rubric, though other observations are sometimes included. The features that I have kept in mind while making such decisions have been delineated briefly by Mayer 1976: 377 (see also Frechette 2012: 124) and more fully by Frechette 2012: 121-142, especially 133-140. For convenience, I provide the following summaries of their ideas:

Mayer:

1. The prayer or its incipit occurs on a textual witness that attests other prayers designated as a shuila via rubric.
2. The prayer is prescribed in a ritual that includes other shuila-prayers.
3. The prayer shows some literary features that are commonly found in other prayers known to be included within the shuila-corpus.

Frechette:

1. Shuila-prayers “tend to address only one deity at a time” (133).
2. Shuila-prayers “tend to include a relatively lengthy address of the deity” (134).
3. Shuila-prayers “tend to employ elevated speech” (i.e., “remarkable poetic artistry”) (135).
1. They often employ the Sumerian hymnic strophe (135).
2. They often “include inflated language in the anticipatory praise of the deity” (135) at the prayer’s conclusion.
4. Shuila-prayers “tend to avoid introduction of the petitioner by a third party and so to de-emphasize the presence of the intermediary” (136). The prayers have a “tendency to stylize the petitioner as directly engaging the deity.” The first-person dominates the shuila’s, though there are a couple of examples in which the prayer is written in third-person.
5. Shuila-prayers “tend to address particular concerns either by including complaints or petitions in the canonical prayer, or by inserting complaint formulas into only certain exemplars of the prayer” (137). The latter is distinctive to the shuila-prayers corpus.
6. Shuila-prayers “tend to include expressions seeking reconciliation of the speaker with one or more alienated deities” (138).
7. Shuila-prayers “tend to include petitions seeking a good general human condition” (139).

There is a sizeable number of tablets included among the textual witnesses (view the catalog →here) that bear a shuila-rubric and/or, likely, a shuila-prayer whose addressee is not yet identified (see Q000000). Various tallies related to the prayers (i.e., the presence or absence of a shuila-rubric, prayers only known by incipit, etc.) are listed after the table (→jump there). At the end of the table, I have listed prayers that were included in this project until recently but have now been deleted due to an insufficient basis for identifying them as an Akkadian shuila-prayer. A table presenting information related to Akkadian shuila-prayers cited by incipit in the ritual tablets of Bīt Salāʾ Mê, Bīt Rimki, and other complex rituals will appear on another page in due course. Please note that the bibliography compiled here is incomplete; the work is on-going. For a CSV file of this catalog, click →here.

Clicking on a Q-number in the table below will lead to a page that lists the various manuscripts attesting to that particular prayer. The project has now started to create eclectic text editions for each prayer on the eBL platform. As of June 2025, only shuila-prayers to →Adad are publicly available. There is much work to be done.

Key to Table:
ø = no shuila rubric attested
+ = at least one shuila rubric attested
[+] = the only shuila-rubric among the prayer's witnesses is restored
– = the prayer has been conflated with another one
(i) = known by incipit only
(r) = incipit is only known because cited in ritual instructions
(cl) = incipit is only known as a catchline