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Old Babylonian Greetings Formulae and the Iltani Archive from Rimah

Many of the Old Babylonian letters in the Iltani archive from Rimah include a greetings formula, in which one or two deities are invoked and the hope is expressed that they will give long life to the recipient.' The purpose of this study is twofold: to determine the reasons why different deities were invoked; and to discover whether the choice of deities in any of the letters is evidence for identifying the patron deity of Rimah. All the variations of the formulae in published Old Babylonian letters have conveniently been collected by E. Salonen;2 however, he does not attempt to discover why different deities are invoked in different letters, nor does he discuss possible influences on the choice of deities. Since there is a variety of deities invoked in the Iltani letters, the different influences at work in the choice of deities deserves further examination.3 It is well known that every city in Mesopotamia had its own local deity who was the chief deity of that city: Marduk at Babylon, Shamash at Sippar, Ishtar at Uruk and Ashur at the city Ashur, to name a few examples. This connection of each deity with a city is fundamental in at least some of the factors affecting the choice of invocation. Possible factors governing the choice of deities are listed as follows: 1. A man might include his own city god. 2. He might recognize the city god of the addressee too. 3. If his home town owed allegiance to a different city, he might include both his local god and the god of the dominating city. 4. He might have a personal deity, perhaps reflected in his personal name, who was different from his local god, which would influence his choice.