The various words in Sumerian and Akkadian which are translated as ‘sin’ (offences against moral or divine law) are equally used to refer to ‘crime’ (infringement of civil or criminal law) or to social sills, such as the prevalence of crime in a country. Assyrian kings were fond of talking about ‘punishing’ the ‘crimes’ of their enemies (crimes which consisted in resisting the Assyrian Empire or failing to adhere to a treaty imposed upon them), but this is largely propaganda. Nonetheless, a distinction was recognized between offences that had to be dealt with by the courts and offences of a more social nature. Such ‘sins’ might be deliberate, but one whole magical rite is devoted to relieving the patient of the numerous sins which might be committed by negligence unwittingly. The patient might not even know which god or goddess he or she had offended. Such a sin could be ‘undone’, ‘expelled’ or ‘annulled’ by a god, and it is stressed that ‘prayer can undo sin’. The use of the word ‘patient’ in this context emphasizes the Babylonian view of sin as comparable with disease. Sin could be transmitted by relatives or inherited from parents; it could be ‘caught’ by, for example, sitting on the same chair as had been sat on by a tabooed person. Like disease, it too could be cured by magic ritual involving potions and herbal ointments accompanied by incantations. In this we can recognize as ‘sin’ a conscious feeling of sin and guilt, a conscience, which can be salved by magical practices or by prayer. Looking at it another way, we can say that manifestations of psychological disturbance were interpreted as evidence of ‘sin’ and may well have been cured by rituals in which the patient had faith. The Babylonians did not have a doctrine of original sin, but they believed that we are all very prone to sin.