Nisaba is the grain and the stylus both — oldest child of Enlil, keeper of the scribal arts, her emblem the reed pen. In the first millennium she was considered the wife of Nabu, bound to him by shared mastery of writing. No dedicated temples are attested; she was worshipped at the temple of her daughter Ninlil in Nippur. But her influence ran everywhere. The scribal schools belonged to her. The flour scattered over altars was her body.

A shuilla is a "lifted-hand" prayer. In Mesopotamian ritual, the hands were raised — opened to the sky — as the words were spoken. This prayer asks Nisaba to go before the supplicant's angry personal god and goddess and make them relent. Nisaba is described as a net: one thrown over wild and fierce gods to pacify them. The image fits the ritual action — flour scattered as an offering, the goddess manifest in the grain, cast out like a net to calm divine anger.

The prayer survives in four manuscripts from Nineveh, Sippar, and Kalhu, all first millennium. One manuscript — written for a specific royal occasion — contains an insertion naming King Shamash-shum-ukin of Babylon (667–648 BCE), who used the prayer alongside a complaint about unfavorable omens. That royal variant is preserved here in full.

This is a Good Works Translation from Standard Babylonian Akkadian, produced by the New Tianmu Anglican Church with AI assistance.

O Nisaba, merciful queen,
you who create god, king, and humanity,
net spread over the Anunnaki, over the fierce gods,
who makes the angry god relent, the angry goddess relent —

let me send you to my god who is angry, my goddess who is angry,
whose hearts are wrathful, furious, and burning against me.
Make the angry god relent. Make the angry goddess relent.

The following six lines appear in a single manuscript (MS A), written for the Babylonian king Shamash-shum-ukin. They are an insertion between the initial petition and the forgiveness section, adapting the prayer for a royal context involving ominous signs.

I am Shamash-shum-ukin, son of his god,
whose god is Marduk, whose goddess is Zarpanitu.

Because of the evil of signs and portents — ill-boding, unfavorable —
that have struck my palace and my land:
I am anxious, I am afraid, I am panicked.
May their evil toward me and my palace
not approach, not draw near, not come close, not reach me.

May my offenses be released, my sins swept away.
May my transgressions be forgotten, my guilt dissolved, my constraint loosed.
May my absolution be proclaimed —

may I constantly proclaim the great deeds of your divinity.

Sumerian rubric appended to the prayer:
Wording of a lifted-hand prayer to Nisaba, for turning away divine anger.

Ritual instruction:
To be recited before maṣhatu-flour.

Colophon

Colophon: Standard Babylonian Akkadian, first millennium BCE. Manuscripts: BM 78219 (MS A, Sippar — the royal variant, used by Shamash-shum-ukin of Babylon, 667–648 BCE); K.6028 (MS B, Nineveh); K.3392 (MS C, Nineveh); ND 5493 = IM 67630 (MS D, Kalhu/Nimrud). The manuscripts of MS B–D were written on a tablet from the Temple of Nabu at Nimrud alongside six other prayers to goddesses associated with Nabu. Text and commentary: Christopher Frechette, in Alan Lenzi, ed., Reading Akkadian Prayers and Hymns: An Introduction (Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), pp. 351–365; normalised Akkadian established by Ivan Hrůša. Translation independently derived from the normalised Akkadian; Lenzi's grammatical commentary consulted for difficult forms. Translated by the New Tianmu Anglican Church with AI assistance, March 2026.

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Source Text

Normalised Akkadian Transliteration
(Nisaba 1, Standard Babylonian; text after Frechette/Hrůša in Lenzi 2011)

(šiptu:)
(1) Nisaba šarratu ḫumalīti
(2) bānât ili šarri u amīlūti
(3) sapar Anunnakkī ilī ekdūti
(4) musallimat ila zenâ ištara zenītu

(5) lušpurki ana ilīya zenî ištarīya zenīti
(6) ša kamlu šabsu libbašunū-ma zenû ittīya
(7) sullimīm-ma ilu zenû ištaru zenītu

[MS A insertion — Shamash-shum-ukin:]
(8) anāku Šamaš-šum-ukīn mār ilīšu
(9) ša ilšu Marduk ištaršu Zarpānītu
(10) ina lumun idāti ittāti lemnēti lā ṭābāti
(11) ša ina ekallīya u mātīya ibšâ
⟨palḫāku adrāku u šutādurāku⟩
(12) lumuššina ayyâši u ekallīya
(13) ayy-iṭḫâm ayy-isniq ayy-iqrib ayy-ikšudanni

(14) annūya lippašrū gillātūya linnabkā
(15) ḫiṭâtūya limmašâ eʾiltī lippaṭir kasītī lirtammi
(16) paṭār eʾiltīya liqqabi [...]
(17) narbî ilūtīki kayyān lušāpi

(18) ka-inim-ma šu-íl-lá d nisaba.ke4 dingir-šà-dib-ba gur-ru-da-kám
(ritual instruction: ana maḫar maṣḫati immanni)

Source colophon: Normalised Akkadian as established in Frechette/Hrůša's edition of Nisaba 1, published in Lenzi (2011), pp. 357–362. Line 11 includes a restoration (lines in angle brackets) supplied from a parallel formula in Nergal 2 (MS A of that text, which also names Shamash-shum-ukin). Original cuneiform sources: BM 78219, K.6028, K.3392, ND 5493.

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