Sin (Akkadian Sîn; Sumerian Nanna) was the moon-god of ancient Mesopotamia and one of the great triad of the Babylonian sky: Anu above, Enlil the wind, and Sin the moon. His primary temple stood at Ur, the city of his first devotion; his cult reached as far as Harran in Syria, where it survived well into the first millennium of our era. His divine number was 30, which is also the number of days in a month — for Sin was the keeper of time, the regulator of the calendar, the god whose crescent marked the beginning of each new month and whose round face marked the full.

This prayer is a shuilla — a "lifted-hand prayer," named for the gesture of the supplicant raising open palms toward the divine. It is long for its genre: twenty lines of hymn before the first petition is spoken. Those twenty lines do not merely praise; they build a case. Sin is more than the moon. He is the source of all light the night knows. He surpasses his own firstborn son Shamash in radiance. The great gods kneel before him. The fates of all nations are set in his presence. At Ekur — Enlil's own temple — the divine assembly inquires of his counsel. He determines the length of the month, the new moon's secret. When the thirtieth day arrives, all of heaven celebrates.

Only when this case is made does the supplicant step forward — the king of Babylon, his personal gods estranged from him, his path gone crooked. He has made the offerings. He has pronounced the words. He has sent the dream-god Anzagar as his intermediary. He asks now for one thing first: a favorable oracle. Then for reconciliation. Then for a straight road. The prayer ends as all shuillas end: with a promise of eternal praise.

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

(šiptu: incantation)

Sin, luminary of the sky, brilliant one, foremost of the gods —
Sin, the ever-renewing one, who lights the dark,
who sets radiance before the teeming peoples.

Over the black-headed ones your rays pour forth.
Your light shines in the pure heavens.
Your torch blazes magnificently, burning like Girra.
Your terrible radiance fills the wide earth.
The people press upon one another, straining to behold you.

Anu of the heavens, whose counsel none can fathom —
your radiance surpasses even Shamash, your firstborn son.
The great gods kneel before you.
The verdicts of all the lands are set in your presence.

[Some manuscripts insert here the attalû formula:]
For the evil of the eclipse of Sin, which occurred in such-and-such month, on such-and-such day —
the evil of ill signs and malign portents
that have appeared in my palace and in my land —

The great gods inquire of you, and you dispense your counsel.
They sit in assembly at your feet, deliberating.

O Sin, brilliant one of Ekur —
to you they bring the oracular question of the great gods.
The new moon is the day of your oracle, secret of the great gods.
The thirtieth day is your feast, the day that rejoices in your divinity.

O Namraṣīt, power without rival,
whose counsel none can fathom —

I, Shamash-shum-ukin, am your servant.

I have strewn before you the pure offering of night.
I have poured out for you the finest beer, the sweet honey.
In the consecrated vessel I have called your name.
I have called to you, my lord, amid the pure heavens —
I have knelt; I stand; I seek you.

Grant me an oracle of good fortune and right dealing.

My god and my goddess,
who for many long days have raged against me —
may they be reconciled with me in truth and right.
May my road go well; may my path run straight.

I have sent Anzagar, the god of dreams.
In the dead of night, may he undo my guilt.
May my offense be healed; may I be made clean.

Forever let me proclaim your praises.

(Sumerian rubric: It is the wording of a lifted-hand prayer to Sin.)

(Ritual instruction: Its ritual: before Sin you set up a tamarisk table. Twelve loaves of thyme, twelve loaves of sesame. Strew dates and fine flour; set out mersu-cake, honey, and ghee. Libate beer. Recite the incantation three times. Set an incense burner of juniper for Anzagar at the head of his bed. Wash his hands and feet in the aprušu and qulqullānu plants, which are the herbs that turn back the anger of a personal god. Bind salt, qulqullānu, juniper, and a gate-lump in the fringe of his garment.)

Colophon

Colophon: Standard Babylonian Akkadian, first millennium BCE. Classified as Sin 1 in the corpus of shuilla prayers. The prayer survives in nine manuscripts with significant textual diversity — it was used in the Bīt rimki ritual series and also adapted for a namburbi to dispel the evil of a lunar eclipse. The attalû formula (lines 13–15 in this edition) appears in two manuscripts (Butler's A1 and B1), inserted between the prayer's twelfth and sixteenth lines; it is given here in italics as a variant. The self-presentation formula (line 22) names Shamash-shum-ukin, king of Babylon (667–648 BCE), in two manuscripts; a third names Ashurbanipal; the name is left as a placeholder in other witnesses. The petition section is carefully structured: ritual recollection (lines 23–27), appeal for the god's attention (lines 25–27), petition for an oracle (line 28), statement of estrangement from personal gods (line 29), petitions for reconciliation (lines 30–31), commissioning of the dream-god (line 32), petitions through the dream-god (lines 33–34), and closing promise of praise (line 35). Text edition: S. A. L. Butler, Mesopotamian Conceptions of Dreams and Dream Rituals (AOAT 258; Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1998), 379–98. Introduction and commentary: Alan Lenzi, in Reading Akkadian Prayers and Hymns: An Introduction (Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), pp. 385–401. Normalised Akkadian assembled line by line from Lenzi's grammatical commentary. Translation independently derived from the normalised Akkadian; Lenzi's commentary consulted for verbal forms and manuscript variants; Lenzi's English not used. Translated by the New Tianmu Anglican Church with AI assistance, March 2026.

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Source Text

Normalised Akkadian Transliteration
(Sin 1, Standard Babylonian; text after Lenzi/Butler, AOAT 258, 1998)

(šiptu:)
(1) Sîn nannāru šūpû ašarēd ilī
(2) Sîn eddeššû munammir ukli
(3) šākin namirti ana nišī apâti
(4) ana nišī ṣalmāt qaqqadi uššurū šarūrūka
(5) namrat ṣētka ina šamê ellūti
(6) šarḫat dipāraka kīma Girra ḫimiṭka
(7) malû namrirrūka erṣeta rapašta
(8) šarḫa nišū ugdaššarā ana amāri kâta
(9) Anum šamê ša lā ilammadu milikšu mammam
(10) šūturat ṣētka kīma Šamaš bukrīka
(11) kamsū maḫarka ilū rabûtu
(12) purussû mātāti šakin ina maḫrīka

[Attalû formula, attested in MSS A1 and B1:]
(13) ina lumun attalî Sîn ša ina arḫi annanna ūmi annanna iššakna
(14) lumun idāti ittāti lemnēti lā ṭābāti
(15) ša ina ekallīya u mātīya ibšâ

(16) ilū rabûtu išallûkā-ma tanaddin milka
(17) ašbū puḫuršunu uštammû ina šaplīka
(18) Sîn šūpû ša E-kur išallûkā-ma tāmīt ilī rabûti
(19) bibbulu ūm tāmittīka pirišti ilī rabûti
(20) UD.30.KÁM isinnaka ūm tašīlti ilūtīka
(21) Namraṣīt ēmūq lā šanān ša lā ilammadu milikšu mamman
(22) anāku Šamaš-šum-ukīn aradka
(23) asruqka širiq mūši ella
(24) aqqīka rēštâ šikara dašpa
(25) ina GIŠ.GÁN.LAGAB qudduši šumka azkur
(26) alsīka bēlī ina qereb šamê ellūti
(27) kamsāku azzaz ašēʾ kâša
(28) egerrê dumqi u mīšari šukun elīya
(29) ilī u ištarī ša ištu ūmī maʾdūtu isbusu elīya
(30) ina kitti u mīšari lislimū ittīya
(31) urḫī lidmiq padānī līšir
(32) umaʾʾir-ma Anzagar ili ša šunāti
(33) ina šāt mūšim lipaṭṭira arnīya
(34) lušlim šērtī lūtallil anāku
(35) ana dārâti dalīlīka ludlul

(36) ka-inim-ma šu-íl-lá dzuen-na-kám
(37–44) Ritual instruction: see colophon above.

Source colophon: Normalised Akkadian assembled line by line from Lenzi's grammatical commentary in Reading Akkadian Prayers and Hymns (2011), pp. 388–396, following the base text of Butler, AOAT 258 (1998), 379–98. The attalû formula (lines 13–15) is given in italics as a textual variant attested in Butler's MSS A1 and B1; it is not part of the base text. Line 25 contains the logogram GIŠ.GÁN.LAGAB, which Lenzi notes is obscure; the normalised form ina GIŠ.GÁN.LAGAB follows his reading without further resolution. The self-presentation formula in line 22 gives the royal name as attested in Butler's MSS A and b; other MSS vary.

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