"... In official cult activities as in personal beliefs, the prayers composed in the Akkadian language stood alongside different religious texts in both Sumerian and Akkadian – namely, incantations, hymns, lamentations and other kinds of songs as well as longer literary works commonly called myths and epics by modern scholars. Although different ancient terms were used, all Akkadian prayers had more or less similar, if not identical roles in the cult and daily life of these ancient people. It is, however, rather complicated to determine what ‘a prayer’ was in antiquity or what kind of ancient texts belonged to the genre of ‘prayer’. The modern classifications of ancient Mesopotamian texts are normally given on the basis of comparison of the contents of the ancient texts with their equivalents in the Bible but with no regard to the ancient identifications. Hence these categorizations do not always present entirely accurate pictures.15 There are two reasons for such inaccuracy: 1) the difference of conceptions with regard to certain styles of compositions between the Akkadian speakers and modern people, and 2) similarities in formulae and contents shared by different genres.16 Some scholars often classify a text as a prayer while others call the exactly the same text a hymn or a psalm ..."