Old Babylonian oracle
The Old Babylonian oracle is a Sumerian myth, written on clay tablets dated to between 2340 and 2200 BC. The myth was discovered on the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, catalogue of the Babylonian section (CBS), tablet number 8322 from their excavations at the temple library at Nippur. This was translated by George Aaron Barton in 1918 and first published as "Sumerian religious texts" in Miscellaneous Babylonian Inscriptions, number two, entitled "An Old Babylonian Oracle". The tablet is  by  by  at its thickest point. Barton suggests the text is difficult and enigmatic, he confesses the interpretation put forward is uncertain and with great reserve. He suggests that it describes an oracle given by a seer for a priest called "Allu-Kal" who wished to rebuild dwellings or a temple of cedar wood. Barton suggests Enlil then appears and takes Enki's axe, presumably to chop cedars for the building he proceeds to guard. Allu-Kal then entreats the gods for protection of the dwellings of cedar to which the gods exalt him in reply and he is called a "bearded prince," suggested as a hint that he may be deified as were Naram-Sin, Gudea and Shulgi. See also
 Barton Cylinder
 Debate between Winter and Summer
 Debate between sheep and grain
 Enlil and Ninlil
 Self-praise of Shulgi (Shulgi D)
 Hymn to Enlil
 Kesh temple hymn
 Lament for Ur
 Sumerian religion
 Sumerian literature

References

External links
 CDLI University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Museum no. : CBS 08322
 Barton, George Aaron., Miscellaneous Babylonian Inscriptions, Yale University Press, 1918. Online Version

3rd-millennium BC literature
1918 archaeological discoveries
Sumerian texts
Clay tablets
Mesopotamian myths
Classical oracles
Religious cosmologies
Comparative mythology