PRAYER OF THE RAISING OF THE HAND TO ISHTAR

Origin/Historian/Author: Babylonian (ca 1700 BCE)
Source: The Sacred Books and Literature of the East, By Prof. Charles F. Horne, Ph.D.
The Sacred Books and Literature of the East Translations conducted by:
Morris Jastrow, Jr., LL.D., Rev. A.H. Sayce, LL.D., Robert W. Rogers, LL.D., George A. Barton, LL.D., Leonard W. King, F.S.A., Stephen Langdon, PH.D., Arno Poebel, PH.D., and other scholars.

Full Text Below

This shalt thou do … a green bough shalt thou sprinkle with pure water; four bricks from a ruin (9) shalt thou set in place;
a lamb shalt thou take; with sarbatu-wood shalt thou fill the censer, and thou shalt set fire thereto; sweet scented woods, some upuntu-plant and some cypresswood
shalt thou heap up; a drink-offering shalt thou offer, but thou shalt not bow thyself down. This incantation before the goddess Ishtar
three times shalt thou recite, . . . and thou shalt not look behind thee.
” O exalted Ishtar, that givest light unto the four quarters of the world! ” (10)
This copy from Borsippa, made like unto its original, hath Nergal-balatsu-ikbi, the son of Atarad-kalme, the magician,
written for the preservation of his life, and he hath revised it, and hath deposited it within the temple of E-sagila.

Footnotes
(9) In the four bricks, which, if the suggested rendering is correct, are here directed to be brought from a ruin, we may perhaps see a symbolical offering to Ishtar in her character of the goddess of battle and destruction.
(10) This line gives the catch-line for the next tablet.