Ludlul Bel Nemeqi
Creators: name: Lenzi, Alan
Publisher: name: Database of Religious History (DRH)
Year: 2023

description: Ludlul bēl nēmeqi, “I will praise the lord of wisdom,” is the incipit title of a Babylonian narrative poem that recounts the divinely-imposed suffering of the poem’s protagonist, one Shubshi-meshre-Shakkan, and his divinely-effected restoration. The poem is sometimes referred to as the “Babylonian Job,” though its contents differ significantly from the biblical book. About seventy cuneiform tablets and fragments attest the poem (a number that grows every few months due to new discoveries), from which scholars have reconstructed about three-quarters of its original text. The poem likely extended to some six hundred lines in antiquity, which ancient copyists divided into five sections called “Tablets.” Modern scholars number these with Roman numerals (I–V); Arabic numerals indicate line numbers within each Tablet. The poem opens in the first-person voice of the protagonist, who praises the wrath and mercy of the Babylonian high god Marduk (I 1–40), the deity responsible for the man’s suffering and eventual recovery. In the lines immediately following the hymn the protagonist describes in a retrospective manner Marduk’s past anger toward him, which resulted in his loss of divine protectors and his reception of unfavorable signs and terrifying dreams. Expelled from his house, the protagonist recounts how he evoked the ire of his king and the jealousy of his colleagues, who schemed against him. Alienated from his community, family, and friends, the protagonist found himself completely alone; no one came to his aide. At the end of Tablet I without possessions, property, or professional position; grief-stricken, afraid, and helpless, Shubshi-meshreShakkan resolutely hoped for the arrival of relief. But, at the start of Tablet II, the second year of his trials, he was utterly disappointed. Surrounded by evil and without help from his personal deities and ritual experts, the protagonist tells how confused he was about his mistreat despite his sincere piety and ritual observances. This cognitive dissonance induced doubt in him about the knowability of the gods and elicited musings on the frailty and vacillations of human life. Giving up on such lofty and troubling thoughts, the protagonist describes a litany of demonically-delivered infirmities that plagued him, the language of which resonates strongly with lamentations and lists of symptoms in medical texts. As his condition worsened, he was confined to his bed; he gained no help from ritual specialists; and he received no mercy from his gods. At the end of Tablet II, with burial preparations and mourning complete, he tells how he awaited death. In the first half of Tablet III, the protagonist describes (three or) four dreams (interpretations vary), in which several divine beings appeared to him, speaking a message of deliverance and healing. Marduk’s wrath was finally appeased; the high god had heard the man’s pleas for salvation. In a broken passage, it seems that the protagonist admits to his sins and acts of negligence. In the remainder of Tablet III, the ending of which is unrecovered, the protagonist describes the reversal of his infirmities, which continues into the very fragmentary and incompletely reconstructed Tablet IV. At the opening of Tablet V, Shubshi-meshre-Shakkan, now fully restored to health, praises Marduk, who is explicitly and emphatically referred to as the protagonist’s lord. Shubshi-meshre-Shakkan describes how after his restoration he entered the Esagil temple complex, the temple of Marduk in Babylon, to perform rituals of thanksgiving. As he entered twelve different temple gates, he received items related to his restoration (e.g., abundance, life, clear signs, release from guilt, relief of lamentation, etc.). After recounting these ritual activities at the temple, the poem leaves the protagonist’s first-person voice behind as it offers a crescendo of praise that moves from the citizens of Babylon to all of humanity. Although the conclusion to the poem, now cast in the voice of an omniscient third-person narrator, is not entirely recovered, its doxological intent is without doubt: “your (Marduk’s) praise is sweet!” (V 120). Ludlul bēl nēmeqi was a literary classic in ancient Mesopotamia. The dozens of inscribed tablets bearing the poem’s text all come from major libraries and archives in first millennium BCE cities, including Nineveh, Ashur, Kalḫu, Sippar, Babylon, and Kish. At least fifteen of these textual witnesses are school exercise tablets, providing evidence of the poem’s use in scribal training and enculturation. The poem was also the subject of an ancient commentary, which indicates an active interest in the poem in the middle of the first millennium. Moreover, a few of the poem’s lines are used as explanatory citations in commentaries on other texts, including one from Hellenistic Uruk (late 4th century BCE), which attests to the poem’s on-going cultural cachet. Many scholars believe the poem was composed in the last quarter of the second millennium, but there is currently no solid proof for this reasonable hypothesis. It was certainly composed sometime between the reign of Babylonian Kassite king Nazimaruttash (r. 1301–1277 BCE), who the poem mentions by name (in V 100 or V 101 [reconstructions vary]), and the copying of the earliest Neo-Assyrian textual witnesses (c. 9–8th century BCE). The author of the poem is unknown. Since, however, the poem betrays a knowledge of medical vocabulary, the incantatory and lament traditions, anti-witchcraft texts, demonology, temple ritual and geography, as well as learned scribal hermeneutics, its author was very likely a scribal scholar from the ranks of the professional exorcists.