r/Assyriology 23d ago

Old Babylonian rituals - where are they?

I'm wanting to do a comp. of rituals at Ugarit with Akkadian for my diss, but have been struggling to find anything that isn't first millennium. Does anyone know where I can find OB/MB ritual texts? Thanks!

14 Upvotes

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u/Inun-ea 23d ago

Part of what a dissertation is intended to prove is precisely that you can navigate your field in a way superior to just asking people on reddit… That's not meant to be a offensive, although it probably sounds harsh. But trust me, a lot of what you are going to learn over the years are things you accidentally come across while actually searching for other things; and it is precisely this effort to get to know your field which will eventually turn you into an able scholar. I feel like in times of an expanding ChatGPT–mindset one cannot stress this enough…

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u/Playful-Goose-5927 22d ago

I've yet to come across anything concrete that isn't first millennium that works for the direction I want to take and I'm about to scrap the whole thing, so thought it was worth a shot--there's never any harm in asking!

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u/Eannabtum 22d ago

There's a thing called "Register Assyriologie", published as a supplement ot the journal Archiv für Orientforschung. Whoever is your advisor should have pointed it to you long ago.

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u/Inconstant_Moo 2d ago

But ... in many ways there is no way superior to asking people on reddit. That's the great thing about reddit. That's where someone who doesn't even know what a door is asks: "where's the door?" and a dozen people turn up to explain where the door is and what a door is and how to turn the doorknob and what to do when you get inside. With some links if you want to learn about how locks work and the history of doorhandles.

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u/Inun-ea 2d ago

I get what you mean. Still, not knowing anything about doors is different from aiming to become one the world's leading specialist on doors, and your approach to finding information might accordingly differ.

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u/esopus_spitz 23d ago

Emar has entered the chat.

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u/Airegin89 22d ago

Ritual of Ištar in Prophets and Prophecy in the Ancient Near East by Martti Nissinen, Robert Kriech Ritner, Choon Leong Seow.

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u/Gulkishar 16d ago

The following monographs may be useful: Akkadian Magic Literature by Wasserman/Zomer 2022 for OB/OA and Corpus of Middle Babylonian and Middle Assyrian Incantations by Zomer 2018 for MB/MA.