The New Year’s celebration, the ak¦¯tu, was a cultic festival celebrated from the Middle Babylonian period onwards (see the Concise Dictionary of Akkadian, J. Black, A. George, and N. Postgate, [Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2000], p. 10). For an account of the Babylonian New Year’s Day ritual, see A. Sachs “Temple Program for the New Year’s Festivals at Babylon,” in J. B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1950), pp. 331–334.
