collection by
productions of their own which, however, follow closely the Babylonian
models.

A particularly beautiful psalm, judging from the portion preserved,
represents the penitent addressing his goddess--probably Ishtar--as
follows:[470]

I, thy servant, full of sighs, call upon thee;
The fervent prayer of him who has sinned do thou accept.
If thou lookest upon a man, that man lives.
O all-powerful mistress of mankind,
Merciful one, to whom it is good to turn, who hears[471] sighs!

At this point the priest takes up the thread to emphasize the appeal of
the penitent by adding to it his own. He prays to the goddess:

His god and goddess being angry with him, he calls upon thee,
Turn towards him thy countenance, take hold of his hand.

The penitent continues:

Besides thee, there is no guiding deity.
I implore thee to look upon me and hear my sighs.
Proclaim pacification,[472] and may thy soul be appeased.
How long, O my mistress, till thy countenance be turned towards me.
Like doves, I lament, I satiate myself with sighs.

The priest once more sums up the penitent's prayer:

With pain and ache, his soul is full of sighs;
Tears he weeps, he pours forth lament (?).

A trait which appears in many of these psalms is the anonymity beneath
which the offended deity is veiled. His or her name is often not
mentioned, the deity being simply referred to as god or goddess, and at
times it is left doubtful whether the sinner has 'sinned' against the
demands of a god or a goddess, or against several deities. This feature
is not without significance. In some cases, no doubt, the name of the
specific deity was to be added by the penitent,[473] but in others this
does not appear to be indicated. The anonymity is the natural result of
the conception of sin involved in these productions. The sinner,
becoming conscious of his guilt only as a conclusion drawn from the fact
of his suffering from some misfortune, could only surmise, but never be
entirely certain, wherein his offence consisted or what deity he had
offended. In the case of the recital of incantation formulas, the
question as to the offended deity was a minor one, and may indeed, at an
earlier stage of thought, not have entered into consideration at all.
This anonymity, therefore, which characterized the penitential psalms
was not due to any advance in thought, but one can easily see how it led
to such an advance. What may be called