The Performance of Balag and Eršema Prayers in the Late First Millennium BC

The Performance of Balag and Eršema Prayers in the Late First Millennium BC investigates the corpus of seventy-one tablets of such prayers which include performative annotations (designated here as “performative indications”). Balag and Eršema are two genres of prayers which were written in the Emesal register of Sumerian. Both genres are attested for about two millennia, from the beginning of the second millennium BC onwards. But the performative indications appear only in selected manuscripts in the last few centuries of their textual transmission, namely the late first millennium BC. The performative indications consist primarily of vocalic annotations, which seem to have functioned as indicators of melismatic song, as markers of prosodic units, and for rhetorical emphasis. In addition, directive indications concerning percussion instruments and other performative aspects seem to have functioned, at least partly, as a means of marking emphasis and dramatic effect. The book examines the scribal contexts of the corpus, with particular emphasis on the available colophons. The study also focuses on the geographical and/or diachronic variations within the corpus, distinguishing between a “northern” style of performative indications known from Babylon and Borsippa, versus a more elaborate “southern” style known from Uruk, Der and Ur.