ABSTRACT
Religious practices and beliefs in any society cannot be simply summarised or brought to a common denominator because of the very personal nature of people’s attitudes which may change as a person matures, quite apart from the different degrees of their involvement in religious rituals or observances. A literate, full-time temple officiant would have an infinitely more detailed knowledge of the liturgical procedures and the right formulae than an ordinary
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householder. People’s inner convictions or sense of piety are difficult to express and research even in contemporary societies; for a longvanished culture, such as that of the Babylonians, it is quite impossible. Leo Oppenheim once wrote that ‘an account of Mesopotamian religion should not be written’.4 He warned that despite the great number of tablets discovered among the ruins of temples and in the royal libraries, and the rich archaeological record of apparently sacred buildings, as well as the iconography on seals and other artefacts, ‘the mechanics and functioning, and the meanings which motivated the enactments of the cult, remain removed from us as if pertaining to another dimension’.5
