A King's Prayer to Gula, the Great Physician

First English translation. A Vigslist translation.

A King's Prayer to Gula, the Great Physician. A sick king begs Gula, whose share of creation is healing itself; the prayer's only edition (Jakob, KAL 9, 2018) is German.

First English translation — the first located in any source checked. The edition of record is Stefan Jakob, Keilschriftliche Aktenkunde und Textkataloge — KAL 9 no. 6 (2018) (German). No English translation of this text was located in any source checked.

Tablets: VAT 9898 + VAT 10964 (Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin) — two joined fragments of one early Neo-Assyrian two-column tablet (110 × 152 × 35 mm), a piece of the left edge preserved. Obverse: col. I 28 lines, col. II 24 lines, in remnants. Reverse: col. III 26 lines, col. IV 30 lines, in remnants, the surface partly heavily abraded. Older copies: VS 24, no. 19 (VAT 9898); KAR 315 (VAT 10964). No CDLI number on the records.

Composition: an Akkadian prayer to the goddess Gula, edited as Text Nr. 6 in Stefan Jakob, Ritualbeschreibungen und Gebete III (Keilschrifttexte aus Assur literarischen Inhalts 9, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2018), Katalog p. 6 and Textbearbeitungen pp. 26–30. Jakob's Katalog heading: "Gebet (eines Königs?) an Gula" — prayer (of a king?) to Gula. The suppliant never names himself in what survives; that he is a king is the editor's inference from two lines of the second column: "the throne of dominion" (II 15′) and "my wives, daughters of princes" (II 21′). The prayer stands in the volume's first section, "Prayers of Assyrian kings to individual deities" (Texte Nr. 1–9). No other witness is known; the tablet is the composition's only manuscript.

Gates, on the face

1. EDITION (German): Jakob, KAL 9 (2018), Text Nr. 6, pp. 26–29 (transliteration and German translation), commentary pp. 29–30. Eyeballed tonight, 2026-10-22, in the publisher-grade open digitization of KAL 9 at the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften (digi.hadw-bw.de/view/kal9; Katalog scan 0019 = p. 6; Textbearbeitung scans 0039–0043 = pp. 26–30). The edition is German only: transliteration, a German Übersetzung, and German Bemerkungen. No English translation is cited anywhere in the text's apparatus, the Katalog entry, or the volume's concordances (scans 0144/0146 list VAT 9898 + VAT 10964 under Nr. 6 and nowhere else). 2. TRANSLATION BEFORE TONIGHT: none found in any language besides Jakob's German (2018). The older copies (VS 24, 19; KAR 315) are hand copies without translation. The eBL records' full reference lists name only the KAL 9 edition ("Ältere Kopie, Bearbeitung: –" in the volume itself). 3. #tr.en census: the group's served text carries #tr.en 0 throughout — VAT 9898's record serves the whole score (108 line-units) with no English segment; VAT 10964's record serves no text of its own. 4. Collation: the served eBL text was checked line by line against KAL 9's printed transliteration (pp. 26–28). The two agree in every readable line. Where they differ, the difference sits in the served text's #note: lines, which carry variant readings from Lambert Folios 9267 and 9450 (I 6′, I 21′, I 25′, II 14′, II 17′, II 18′, II 19′, II 20′). Those folio readings are a scholar's unpublished notebook variants; they are credited here and in the notes below, and no rendering in this build rests on a folio reading against the printed text. 5. Counts: 108 line-units — 1 WHOLE / 33 PART / 28 FRAGMENT / 46 TRACE / 0 INVENTED. Trace units (signs only, nothing renderable) are printed as trace lines, not filled. The prayer's beginning is lost with the top of col. I; nothing before line I 1′ is supplied. 6. Dragon/serpent scan: NONE. No ušum, ušumgal, muš, mušḫuššu, bašmu, ṣerru or Ningišzida/Nirah wording anywhere in the score, and none in Jakob's commentary on the text. (The mu- sequences in the transliteration — mu-kin-na-at, "who establishes" — are verb prefixes, not serpents; printed here so the false positive is on the record.)

Source note: the record was re-fetched live from the eBL API tonight (2026-10-22) and its served ATF is byte-identical to the record as served to Waves D6/D7 earlier tonight (4,838 characters, #tr.en 0). The reading rests on that verified served text, collated against KAL 9's printed transliteration as in gate 4.

The text (as preserved on VAT 9898 + VAT 10964)

A sick man speaks — in the second column he drags himself through a day of eating, drinking and lying down that sickness has ruined — and over him stands Gula, the healing goddess, praised in the prayer's one fully surviving stanza: mother of the gods, whose sign is healing, who gathers the sick into her lap and knows how to save. The voice is a patient's; the furniture — a throne, wives of princely birth — is a king's.

Obverse, column I

1′. [……] … [……] (trace) 2′. [……] your […] … [……] 3′. [……] I had (them) used for your gates. 4′. [……] … kneels before your face. 5′. [… the … of] hardship you give over in the morning. 6′. [……] mine […] — let him speak, and you turn my evil (away). 7′. [……] … before you […]. My lady — the bodies: sick, I drag myself along. 8′. In the midst of the […]… — your face is (full of) hatred. 9′. [… grant] me peace — what you wish, I will give you as your own! 10′. [……] bring me back, lift me up — what reverence for you commands, I will do! 11′. [G]ula, lady, great chief-physician, great one, 12′. [Mo]ther, creatrix of the gods, who establishes mercy(?), 13′. [I have felt(?)] your blow […] — your [wo]rd I besought (margin: "I besought and …"). 14′. … you stood … [……] 15′. [V]ery sparing is (your) hand […] — your incantation is pronounced over […]. 16′. Your hands are appointed for everything, for good. 17′. At the beginning, the Igigi fixed the ground-stock of everything; 18′. in equal measure they assigned them their shares. 19′. Your sign, your share, lady, is healing and success. 20′. In your lap you gathered (them); to save, you well know how. 21′. I kept sealing for you what [I had] left […]. 22′. [……] … the life of the sick man … [……] 23′. [……] … lady, you turn … [……] 24′. […… his …] — prolongation of life […]. 25′. [……] your [found]ation(?) for all […]. 26′. [……] your […] for future days […]. 27′. [……] … [……] (trace) 28′. [……] … [……] (trace)

Obverse, column II

1′. … [……] (trace) 2′. Lo[rd/lady …] 3′. The ut[terance …] 4′. who appointed […] 5′. Whoever … [……] 6′. Make (it) fitting, so that my belly […]. 7′. I watch for the one who eats […]. 8′. I baked the meal of plea[sure …]. 9′. A drink at the me[al …]. 10′. [……] … [……] (trace) 11′. I waste away, to […]. 12′. Who cuts off the innards, with […]. 13′. I cut off what is alive […]. 14′. Anoint yourself with oil, and a garme[nt put on(?)]. (Lambert Folio 9267 reads the last word lu-bu-tu or lu-pu-[uš]; the rendering follows the printed text.) 15′. On the throne of dominion […]. 16′. The bed of the sigû-lament […]. 17′. I mourn […]. 18′. As with her, the mour[ning garment …]. (Folio 9267 offers ta-a[b …] at the line's end; not used.) 19′. Shining […] garment […]. 20′. To the garment of the goddess(?) […]. (Folio 9267 reads a-na-ku, "I", at the start; Jakob rejects it on syntactic grounds, and the printed text is followed.) 21′. My wives, daughters of princes […]. 22′. The bodies are provided with […]. 23′. Their eyebrows […] like […]. 24′. [……] … [……] (trace)

Reverse, column III

1′–16′. (traces and isolated signs; nothing renderable. Line 12′ preserves a phrase inside the loss: "… I saw a bed before my eyes, like …") 17′. I returned […]. 18′. It became heavy for me […]. 19′. … [……] (trace) 20′. Dry are [your] lips […]. 21′. The tongue in thirst […]. 22′. The fire of your heart […]. 23′. He had […] carried off […]. 24′. [… of your] heart […]. 25′. I swore […]. 26′. [……] … [……] (trace)

Reverse, column IV

1′–5′. (traces; line 5′ preserves the word "prince" (NUN) inside the loss) 6′. […] like one who has eaten a tabu, sick I drag myself along. 7′. […] like one who causes hardship, I […]. 8′–30′. (fragments and traces; line 9′ preserves "… Ištar", line 12′ "my king", inside the loss — nothing further renderable)

Notes

• I 6′: the folio variant (Lambert Folio 9267: liq-bi li?-ni-i) is recorded on the served text; the rendering follows the printed line.
• I 12′: the verb of the second half-line is uncertain in both the printed text and the served score (mu-kin-na-at / mu-ḫar-na-at / mu-la-at re-me); "who establishes mercy" follows Jakob's German ("die Erbarmen (?) schafft"), question mark his.
• I 13′: the words e-riš-ma … are written on the tablet's margin between columns I and II, per the served text's own note; Jakob prints them as a marginal addition ("Rd.") and renders them as a parenthesis. They are rendered here the same way.
• II 15′ and II 21′ are the two lines on which the Katalog's "(eines Königs?)" rests; they are the only furniture of kingship in the surviving text, and the heading of this build carries the editor's question mark with them.
• IV 6′: AZAG (asakku) is the tabu — a forbidden thing eaten. Jakob's commentary (p. 30): "like one who has violated a tabu, I drag myself along in sickness." The same "dragging" verb (zabālu) closes I 7′: the sick man's self-description frames the prayer at both ends.
• VAT 10577 (KAL 9 Nr. 18) preserves another prayer to Gula and is named in the Katalog entries to Nrn. 8–9 as a formal relative of this text's neighbourhood; it is a separate composition and is not treated here.

Nuvira Technologies conducts this research with AI assistance, cross-verified against the primary sources to scholarly integrity standards. Uncertain readings are marked; broken lines are left broken.

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