The Babylonian Penitential Psalms

In the penitential psalms the religious beliefs of the Babylonians and Assyrians attain their ethical zenith. The term "penitential psalms" is, of course, purely general; but in view of the striking similarity which some of these compositions bear to certain Biblical psalms, both in tone and sometimes even in phraseology, the term on the whole constitutes a fairly apt designation of those Assyrian and Babylonian religious texts in which the keynote is a consciousness of sin and shortcoming ...