The Hymns and Prayers to the Moon-God, Sîn

It is the purpose of the writer to present a study of the Akkadian hymns and prayers addressed to Sîn. There has been no such work presented to date that goes into this much detail. Included in this work will be the transliteration, normalization, translation, and commentary on six texts. An original and important aspect of this dissertation is the collation of five tablets in text 1 and the collation of three tablets for text 2. Textual variants will be dealt with in the textual apparatus. The lexical and grammatical problems will be covered in the commentary. An attempt will be made to use the most recent scholarly material such as the lexicographical material in The Assyrian Dictionary and the Akkadisches Handwörterbuch. The clearest and most significant motifs will be discussed. Of particular interest are the concepts found in the texts which parallel those in the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern literature. The writer seeks to show that an understanding of the Akkadian hymns and prayers gives direct insight into the hymns and prayers of the Bible. Oftentimes the Akkadian literary style, grammar, epithets, and idioms of these texts may be compared to other Akkadian literature.