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The Literature of Ancient Sumer
This anthology of Sumerian literature constitutes the most comprehensive collection ever published, and includes examples of most of the different types of composition written in the language, from narrative myths and lyrical hymns to proverbs and love poetry. The translations have benefited both from the work of many scholars and from our ever-increasing understanding of Sumerian. In addition to reflecting the advances made by modern scholarship, the translations are written in clear, accessible English. An extensive introduction discusses the literary qualities of the works, the people who created and copied them in ancient Iraq, and how the study of Sumerian literature has evolved over the last 150 years.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
20 people are currently reading
375 people want to read
About the author
Jeremy A. Black
7 books8 followersThe University of Oxford, Oriental Studies, former faculty member .
Jeremy Allen Black, BA, BPhil, MA, DPhil (1 September 1951 – Oxford 28 April 2004) was a British Assyriologist and Sumerologist, founder of the online Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.[1]
Not to be confused with Jeremy Black https://www.goodreads.com/author/show..., History professor at Oxford
Jeremy Allen Black, BA, BPhil, MA, DPhil (1 September 1951 – Oxford 28 April 2004) was a British Assyriologist and Sumerologist, founder of the online Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.[1]
Not to be confused with Jeremy Black https://www.goodreads.com/author/show..., History professor at Oxford
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 5, 2025
This is the most complete collection I could find of the world’s oldest literature, that of Ancient Sumer. Just the idea of reading some of the world’s oldest literature by itself already had me intrigued to say the least, but there’s also another reason why I picked up this book. As for the book itself, there are a few things that are worth pointing out.
As stated before we get to the actual content, the original stories and hymns are actually more poetic by nature than how they’re translated here. Because the authors went with readability in English for a more academic audience. Though even with the rather dry translations, they are still brimming with ancient story telling magic. There’s also a big introduction about what the definition is of literature and how these stories fit that description. And about what cuneiform is and how this rather complex writing system got deciphered.
To summarize the stories themselves wouldn’t do them justice, but I still want to give you a little bit of a taste of what to expect from this book. A good example is the Descent of Inanna into the Underworld. Inanna is a goddess, the queen of heaven. She goes into the Underworld to overthrow her sister Ereshkigal, who is the queen of the dead and has just become a widow. Long story short: Inanna’s greed ends up costing her as she’s killed by her sister, but she’s brought back to life by Enki. She’s still trapped in the Underworld though, because it is the place of no return. For her to leave, a sacrifice must be made. Someone else needs to take her place. And they find the perfect substitute in her husband. It’s a story about justice and injustice. Because it’s Inanna’s greed that leads to her downfall, so there is a price to pay for her actions. That’s what leads to the injustice that befalls her husband and his sister. It’s also pointed out that this story was used as a way to explain the seasons, as brother and sister alternate their time in the Underworld.
One thing I learned here is that debates were a form of entertainment back then. Like one person would argue in favor of winter, the other for summer. Another thing that stands out to me is that there are a few letters and stories about scribing schools. The book states that the comedy in them seems to suggest these were not meant to be historically accurate representations of the scribing school life. Rather they were more like a form of entertainment in a school setting, like Harry Potter is now for example.
If you’re interested and want to read these stories yourself, you can actually read them for free online on The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. Though you don’t get any extra information about the stories, which you do get in this book. I will admit that I still sometimes wanted some more information. Like a more readable and understandable explanation about the moral or the purpose of the story instead of having to try and figure it out on my own, so there’s a little bit of room for improvement in terms of the packaging. Though this is still a treasure trove of ancient stories just waiting to be re-discovered by the right audience.
As stated before we get to the actual content, the original stories and hymns are actually more poetic by nature than how they’re translated here. Because the authors went with readability in English for a more academic audience. Though even with the rather dry translations, they are still brimming with ancient story telling magic. There’s also a big introduction about what the definition is of literature and how these stories fit that description. And about what cuneiform is and how this rather complex writing system got deciphered.
To summarize the stories themselves wouldn’t do them justice, but I still want to give you a little bit of a taste of what to expect from this book. A good example is the Descent of Inanna into the Underworld. Inanna is a goddess, the queen of heaven. She goes into the Underworld to overthrow her sister Ereshkigal, who is the queen of the dead and has just become a widow. Long story short: Inanna’s greed ends up costing her as she’s killed by her sister, but she’s brought back to life by Enki. She’s still trapped in the Underworld though, because it is the place of no return. For her to leave, a sacrifice must be made. Someone else needs to take her place. And they find the perfect substitute in her husband. It’s a story about justice and injustice. Because it’s Inanna’s greed that leads to her downfall, so there is a price to pay for her actions. That’s what leads to the injustice that befalls her husband and his sister. It’s also pointed out that this story was used as a way to explain the seasons, as brother and sister alternate their time in the Underworld.
One thing I learned here is that debates were a form of entertainment back then. Like one person would argue in favor of winter, the other for summer. Another thing that stands out to me is that there are a few letters and stories about scribing schools. The book states that the comedy in them seems to suggest these were not meant to be historically accurate representations of the scribing school life. Rather they were more like a form of entertainment in a school setting, like Harry Potter is now for example.
If you’re interested and want to read these stories yourself, you can actually read them for free online on The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. Though you don’t get any extra information about the stories, which you do get in this book. I will admit that I still sometimes wanted some more information. Like a more readable and understandable explanation about the moral or the purpose of the story instead of having to try and figure it out on my own, so there’s a little bit of room for improvement in terms of the packaging. Though this is still a treasure trove of ancient stories just waiting to be re-discovered by the right audience.
September 27, 2023
Thorough anthology of Sumerian texts, that is, texts from the earliest history of southern Mesopotamia, approximately the period from 2500 to 1800 before common era. Sumerian was a non-Semitic language, which cannot be traced back to any other known language group. In recent decades, scholars have become less and less certain whether it was the language of a clearly separate people (as specialists such as Jean Bottéro still maintained at the end of the last century). Anyway, in the period in question it was the leading language for texts composed by and for the political and cultural elite, and it remained so for a long time, until it was completely supplanted by Akkadian and later Aramaic. This book offers an interesting, broad sample of Sumerian texts, with a good global explanation and a short introduction per text. It is just a pity that the translators did not attempt a more precise chronological positioning of the individual texts. More in my History account in Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
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October 22, 2024Together with the Ancient Egyptian pyramid and sarcophagus texts, these Sumerian ones must be almost the earliest literary writings of human history, approximately from the period 2500-1800 BCE. The Sumerian texts are even more abundant than those of the Nile Valley, for more than 100,000 of those cuneiform tablets have been found. Most of these are administrative documents, with lexical and accounting information, but a small minority have a literary character ('literary', in the sense that we now understand that). Of course, this book doesn’t offer an exhaustive collection, but Jeremy Black and the other translators have made a wide choice, and have also organized it thematically. Here I'll go over some things that struck me.
For example, the Sumerian texts are much more poetic and richer in images than the Egyptian ones, which are often stiff, less narrative, and to a greater extent connected to mourning rituals. Very similar to the Egyptian ones are the typical instruction and wisdom texts, the disputes, and the gaudy royal hymns. I was also regularly struck by the fresh character of the texts, which I spontaneously (but perhaps that is a romantic prejudice) would attribute to the ease of being a pioneer. Certain stories in which the warmth of a family is highlighted (A babale to Nanna) were heart-warming, and the picture of a prison painted in the Hymn to Lugal was downright terrifying. Also striking is the recurring praise for cities (Sumeria was primarily a country of city-states), with the city walls in particular as a striking physical feature. Even more than in the Egyptian texts, I was struck by the rhetorical skills of the Mesopotamian writers: Sumerian (and later Akkadian) apparently lends itself very well to puns and double entendres, which incorporate both humor and social criticism. As a seasoning, here is a passage from the story of the fisherman who has set a trap and speaks to the fish: “Let your acquaintances come! Let your dear ones come! Let your father and grandfather come! Let the sons of your elder brother and the sons of your younger brother come! Let your little ones come, and your big ones too! Let your wife and your children come! Let your friends and companions come! Let your brother-in-law and your father-in-law come! Let the crowd by the side of your front door come! Don't leave your friends' children outside! Don't leave your neighbours outside, whoever they may be!”
(By the way, just finished a half a day spent in the Near East section of the Louvre in Paris. What a joy to see the cuneiform tablets, the stelae and sculpture I've read so much about!)
For example, the Sumerian texts are much more poetic and richer in images than the Egyptian ones, which are often stiff, less narrative, and to a greater extent connected to mourning rituals. Very similar to the Egyptian ones are the typical instruction and wisdom texts, the disputes, and the gaudy royal hymns. I was also regularly struck by the fresh character of the texts, which I spontaneously (but perhaps that is a romantic prejudice) would attribute to the ease of being a pioneer. Certain stories in which the warmth of a family is highlighted (A babale to Nanna) were heart-warming, and the picture of a prison painted in the Hymn to Lugal was downright terrifying. Also striking is the recurring praise for cities (Sumeria was primarily a country of city-states), with the city walls in particular as a striking physical feature. Even more than in the Egyptian texts, I was struck by the rhetorical skills of the Mesopotamian writers: Sumerian (and later Akkadian) apparently lends itself very well to puns and double entendres, which incorporate both humor and social criticism. As a seasoning, here is a passage from the story of the fisherman who has set a trap and speaks to the fish: “Let your acquaintances come! Let your dear ones come! Let your father and grandfather come! Let the sons of your elder brother and the sons of your younger brother come! Let your little ones come, and your big ones too! Let your wife and your children come! Let your friends and companions come! Let your brother-in-law and your father-in-law come! Let the crowd by the side of your front door come! Don't leave your friends' children outside! Don't leave your neighbours outside, whoever they may be!”
(By the way, just finished a half a day spent in the Near East section of the Louvre in Paris. What a joy to see the cuneiform tablets, the stelae and sculpture I've read so much about!)
March 26, 2024
Okay, I'll cut it with you real straight: despite a very good introduction going over Sumerian literature, its origins as oral tradition and the introduction of writing to storytelling, its different genres, etc, which I genuinely recommend to any student of Mesopotamian literature (specially those just starting out), there is very little point in actually getting this book, at least at the moment, because all of the translations here are in the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, and besides a short intro to each work, there isn't anything here that you cannot find in the ETCSL in more detail, such as, per example, manuscript bibliographies and the original Sumerian transcription.
This really hits me, because, quite simply, from a purely readerly POV, the ETCSL translations are not good - although they are digitally stored (and thus page space is not a concern), they are translated into prose sections of unwieldy and awkward size, which makes the repetition seem beyond inane because the musical character of the composition is obviously lost when you put it into huge chunks of prose text, and in general just assault my eyes with a wall of text. They are also translated to the utmost literalism, which leads to a lot of incredibly long sentences (making the repetition issue even worse) with lots of awkward adverbs and adjectives.
My point is, the ETCSL translations are more concerned with being "accurate" (for a given value of "accurate") over being literature. They are not so good to read, and are meant to help the student of Sumerian and Assyriology in their linguistics and/or religio-mythological studies. If I show you the Sumerian drinking song like this:
You might think "wow that's no fun at all, Sumerians really didn't Have It In Em", but if you listen to it, you will see it actually goes real hard.
Point is, presentation makes a difference and I disagree fundamentally with the statement made in the introduction that either Thorkild Jacobsen's or Kramer's translations are "exoticizing" (or "poetic", in quotes in the introduction too) and "popularizing" respectively, due to the way that they decided to translate them (as poetry proper in the former case, as more literal prosaic verse in the latter). In fact, I would argue that often theirs is more "accurate" in that certain words remain in Sumerian, such as the Mes.
This book, besides a brief intro (one page each, more or less) to each composition, contains no commentary at all - Jacobsen's translations are filled with it, on the other hand, because he saw his goal as recovering Sumerian religion. Kramer wanted to take conclusions from them about Sumerian society - if he took them too literally at times, that is expected of early scholarship. The recalcitrant insistence that very little can be learned from these works because of their fictional or exaggerated nature is frankly unhinged and on the same level as saying nothing can be learned about 90s America from watching like, Seinfeld, because it exaggerates things for comedy's sake.
So, I would recommend you instead go look at Jacobsen and Kramer's works on the matter, specially The Harps that Once..., Treasures of Darkness and History Begins at Sumer.
Beyond that, the works themselves: they are much more varied than you might think! Frankly, maybe more than Akkadian literature, and maybe even than Greek literature, due to the nature of cuneiform tablets which means we aren't reliant on whatever medieval Christian scribes found relevant to transcribe down to us. And this collection does a good work of showcasing that great degree of variety.
Sumerian had the first heroic mythos, with Enmerkar, Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh - what is not so well known, however, is that these "mythical" kings were treated not so differently from definitely historical kings. Around Sargon of Akkad there arouse legends (indeed, one of them seems to be the actual source for Moses' birth and upbringing), and then further into the historical period such narratives were still written about living and dead kings - how they built the temples, songs of self-praise, songs of how they are Inanna's consort, and much more. One sees in Sumerian literature the sort of thing that the Greek mythological heroes, or Mycenaean kings, would've written about themselves, it is seeing a "mythological" epoch in gear.
Not so well-known too is that there's actually quite a few folk-tales in the Sumerian corpus - an amusing example is Enlil and Nam-zid-tara, where a priest of Enlil of the gudug rank (not a high rank, and not tied to a specific deity) gets blessed by Enlil for knowing some obscure Enlil anime lore, after Enlil asks him a question in the form of a raven as if he's fucking, Odin, or something. This leads to the gudug priests serving in the E-kur, Enlil's temple.
Others include animal-type folk tales, like The Debate Between Bird and Fish, The Heron and the Turtle and The home of the fish. Hilariously, many of them quickly turn into the fabulistic animals insulting each other in puerile fashion, before the king settles the question. Again, there is a feeling that we are seeing the written folk-tales of an era, a level of human development, which survives nowhere else plain and simple, for writing did not exist or was not as resistant as clay is.
Some are incredibly specific: the highly amusing Lu-digira’s message to his mother has titular character, when asked for news for his mother by a messenger, goes on at length about his mother's beauty, with a noted humorous awkwardness in trying to flatter one's matter without using the language one would use for a romantic partner. When the messenger asks for news again, the anticlimatic punchline has him reply "tell her I'm well", a type of joke that, previously unbeknownst to me, goes back to primeval times then!
The Sumerian Flood narrative exists in a single extremely damaged tablet - but it is very similar to the Atra-Hasis epic in OB, and the adaptation of it in tablet 11 of the Gilgamesh epic. It's as if it exists solely to make us aware that, yes, it is a Sumerian story, not just a Semitic one.
Many hymns are songs describing in great detail the religious ceremonies of this or that deity - Ninlil's Barge poem, or more famously, the poem for Iddin-Dagan's sacred marriage ceremony with Inanna, written with extreme vividness which the style of translation here does no justice to. Hymns to both deities and kings allow you to see how the deity was seen, its religious purpose, the different views of them (here referring to Enheduanna's two poems about Inanna, which are religiously unusual and might be literary invention of OB-era scribes, but provide for positively fascinating views of that most complex goddess and her worshipers and cultic personnel).
The hymns to kings too, have the advantage of giving us all the tropes for what "good kingship" is, like real-life examples of King Arthur, which substantiates certain old arguments made by Frazerian-inspired scholars that the king had to be physically healthy, attractive, taller than average, and that his main duties - not too unlike the Indo-European ones - were fertility (marriage with Inanna), sovereignty (approval of Enlil) and war. The Lipit-Eshtar self-praise hymn specially feels like it's trying to list of all the Good Kingship™ tropes (maybe that's why it was part of the scribal curriculum).
Even myths proper, even those that can be (in my eyes, only extremely tentatively) called epics, like Lugal-e aka the Ninurta epic, show much more clearly than the Indo-Euro pantheons they were tied to daily religion. Some of these major deities would only get myths proper later on, such as Nergal, god of death, plague, war, pestilence, famine and all inflicted death in general, which got two pretty amazing works in the Semitic languages (Nergal and Ereshkigal, and the Poem of Erra aka Erra and Ishum) but in Sumerian we only have hymns.
The Sumerian poems about Inanna are here but honestly this is not a good way to explore them, I think you should just pick up Wolkstein and Kramer's book with her stories and poems, or even the much inferior translation by Kim Echlin (ignore the commentary though), as it is still fairly accurate and contains most of them (not all, regrettably), despite my criticisms of that book. She's too complex of a character to be contained in a general anthology like this, however, so this is no criticism on this book.
Did you know that... Sumerian scribes invented the first wojak/boomer meme? Yes, Mesopotamian scribes were in general a remarkably smug and cocky bunch of urbanites, and they had their own genre, which lasted into the Semitic periods afterwards, which imo has the best example of the genre, the School Days tablet, which details a comical amount of abuse at the scribal schoolchildren until the father greases up the teacher by wining and dining him. Frankly amazing piece of school fiction, it is even the primeval "school sucks" fiction imo, and I recommend that all of you look for it.
The Sumerian example we have here is the primordial boomer meme, a narrative where the senior boomer scribe tells the younger, based and redpilled scribe how he got to his position by being a hardworking and being absolutely conformist in literally every way, to which the latter epically owns him with facts and logic and is recognized as the real based scribe. It is a real self-insert fantasy moment of petty wish-fulfillment against one's superiors and elders and I am inexpressibly pleased that the oldest literature has such a thing in it.
We have a single proverbs collection (and the Shurrupak instructions which also counts tbh) and that's all that's needed because due to cultural, linguistic, etc difficulties, a lot of these are incomprehensible and that really tickles me. They're also filled with jokes and puns and crudeness - in 2022, one Seth Richardson found out that one seemingly incomprehensible one that went "One has o[pened up] the well, / the (other) two looked on. / Answer: a flaccid penis ⸢and⸣ [testicles]," and concluded that it is a "bofa deez nutz" type school boy joke (I have made a similar argument for the much more famous Sumerian dog tavern joke). So, while two specimens are more than enough, I also recommend you go look for others - the ones about the gala priests are like primeval homophobic humor, some 4000 years before the concept of homosexuality was even a thing (they thought big, and thought ahead).
In conclusion, it is a thoroughly unimpressive collection (although it has a very good introduction that you should read, specially if just starting out) since you can just find this at the ETCSL site, and I would recommend Kramer and Jacobsen for their commentary that goes along with the translations, but nonetheless as an organized anthology to introduce someone to Sumerian literature it is very thorough and it has picked what works to show very well - and ultimately, I am still in love those works themselves.
This really hits me, because, quite simply, from a purely readerly POV, the ETCSL translations are not good - although they are digitally stored (and thus page space is not a concern), they are translated into prose sections of unwieldy and awkward size, which makes the repetition seem beyond inane because the musical character of the composition is obviously lost when you put it into huge chunks of prose text, and in general just assault my eyes with a wall of text. They are also translated to the utmost literalism, which leads to a lot of incredibly long sentences (making the repetition issue even worse) with lots of awkward adverbs and adjectives.
My point is, the ETCSL translations are more concerned with being "accurate" (for a given value of "accurate") over being literature. They are not so good to read, and are meant to help the student of Sumerian and Assyriology in their linguistics and/or religio-mythological studies. If I show you the Sumerian drinking song like this:
1-9. The gakkul vat, the gakkul vat! The gakkul vat, the lamsare vat! The gakkul vat, which puts us in a happy mood! The lamsare vat, which makes the heart rejoice! The ugurbal jar, glory of the house! The šaggub jar, filled with beer! The amam jar, which carries the beer from the lamsare vat! The troughs made with bur grass and the pails for kneading the dough! All the beautiful vessels are ready on their pot stands!
10-20. May the heart of your god be well disposed towards you! Let the eye of the gakkul vat be our eye, and let the heart of the gakkul vat be our heart! What makes your heart feel wonderful in itself also makes our hearts feel wonderful in themselves! We are in a happy mood, our hearts are joyful! You have poured a libation over the fated brick, and you have laid the foundations in peace and prosperity -- now may Ninkasi dwell with you! She should pour beer and wine for you! Let the pouring of the sweet liquor resound pleasantly for you!
21-31. In the troughs made with bur grass, there is sweet beer. I will have the cupbearers, the boys and the brewers stand by. As I spin around the lake of beer, while feeling wonderful, feeling wonderful, while drinking beer, in a blissful mood, while drinking alcohol and feeling exhilarated, with joy in the heart and a contented liver -- my heart is a heart filled with joy! I clothe my contented liver in a garment fit for a queen! The heart of Inana is happy once again; the heart of Inana is happy once again!
32. A …… to Ninkasi.
You might think "wow that's no fun at all, Sumerians really didn't Have It In Em", but if you listen to it, you will see it actually goes real hard.
Point is, presentation makes a difference and I disagree fundamentally with the statement made in the introduction that either Thorkild Jacobsen's or Kramer's translations are "exoticizing" (or "poetic", in quotes in the introduction too) and "popularizing" respectively, due to the way that they decided to translate them (as poetry proper in the former case, as more literal prosaic verse in the latter). In fact, I would argue that often theirs is more "accurate" in that certain words remain in Sumerian, such as the Mes.
This book, besides a brief intro (one page each, more or less) to each composition, contains no commentary at all - Jacobsen's translations are filled with it, on the other hand, because he saw his goal as recovering Sumerian religion. Kramer wanted to take conclusions from them about Sumerian society - if he took them too literally at times, that is expected of early scholarship. The recalcitrant insistence that very little can be learned from these works because of their fictional or exaggerated nature is frankly unhinged and on the same level as saying nothing can be learned about 90s America from watching like, Seinfeld, because it exaggerates things for comedy's sake.
So, I would recommend you instead go look at Jacobsen and Kramer's works on the matter, specially The Harps that Once..., Treasures of Darkness and History Begins at Sumer.
Beyond that, the works themselves: they are much more varied than you might think! Frankly, maybe more than Akkadian literature, and maybe even than Greek literature, due to the nature of cuneiform tablets which means we aren't reliant on whatever medieval Christian scribes found relevant to transcribe down to us. And this collection does a good work of showcasing that great degree of variety.
Sumerian had the first heroic mythos, with Enmerkar, Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh - what is not so well known, however, is that these "mythical" kings were treated not so differently from definitely historical kings. Around Sargon of Akkad there arouse legends (indeed, one of them seems to be the actual source for Moses' birth and upbringing), and then further into the historical period such narratives were still written about living and dead kings - how they built the temples, songs of self-praise, songs of how they are Inanna's consort, and much more. One sees in Sumerian literature the sort of thing that the Greek mythological heroes, or Mycenaean kings, would've written about themselves, it is seeing a "mythological" epoch in gear.
Not so well-known too is that there's actually quite a few folk-tales in the Sumerian corpus - an amusing example is Enlil and Nam-zid-tara, where a priest of Enlil of the gudug rank (not a high rank, and not tied to a specific deity) gets blessed by Enlil for knowing some obscure Enlil anime lore, after Enlil asks him a question in the form of a raven as if he's fucking, Odin, or something. This leads to the gudug priests serving in the E-kur, Enlil's temple.
Others include animal-type folk tales, like The Debate Between Bird and Fish, The Heron and the Turtle and The home of the fish. Hilariously, many of them quickly turn into the fabulistic animals insulting each other in puerile fashion, before the king settles the question. Again, there is a feeling that we are seeing the written folk-tales of an era, a level of human development, which survives nowhere else plain and simple, for writing did not exist or was not as resistant as clay is.
Some are incredibly specific: the highly amusing Lu-digira’s message to his mother has titular character, when asked for news for his mother by a messenger, goes on at length about his mother's beauty, with a noted humorous awkwardness in trying to flatter one's matter without using the language one would use for a romantic partner. When the messenger asks for news again, the anticlimatic punchline has him reply "tell her I'm well", a type of joke that, previously unbeknownst to me, goes back to primeval times then!
The Sumerian Flood narrative exists in a single extremely damaged tablet - but it is very similar to the Atra-Hasis epic in OB, and the adaptation of it in tablet 11 of the Gilgamesh epic. It's as if it exists solely to make us aware that, yes, it is a Sumerian story, not just a Semitic one.
Many hymns are songs describing in great detail the religious ceremonies of this or that deity - Ninlil's Barge poem, or more famously, the poem for Iddin-Dagan's sacred marriage ceremony with Inanna, written with extreme vividness which the style of translation here does no justice to. Hymns to both deities and kings allow you to see how the deity was seen, its religious purpose, the different views of them (here referring to Enheduanna's two poems about Inanna, which are religiously unusual and might be literary invention of OB-era scribes, but provide for positively fascinating views of that most complex goddess and her worshipers and cultic personnel).
The hymns to kings too, have the advantage of giving us all the tropes for what "good kingship" is, like real-life examples of King Arthur, which substantiates certain old arguments made by Frazerian-inspired scholars that the king had to be physically healthy, attractive, taller than average, and that his main duties - not too unlike the Indo-European ones - were fertility (marriage with Inanna), sovereignty (approval of Enlil) and war. The Lipit-Eshtar self-praise hymn specially feels like it's trying to list of all the Good Kingship™ tropes (maybe that's why it was part of the scribal curriculum).
Even myths proper, even those that can be (in my eyes, only extremely tentatively) called epics, like Lugal-e aka the Ninurta epic, show much more clearly than the Indo-Euro pantheons they were tied to daily religion. Some of these major deities would only get myths proper later on, such as Nergal, god of death, plague, war, pestilence, famine and all inflicted death in general, which got two pretty amazing works in the Semitic languages (Nergal and Ereshkigal, and the Poem of Erra aka Erra and Ishum) but in Sumerian we only have hymns.
The Sumerian poems about Inanna are here but honestly this is not a good way to explore them, I think you should just pick up Wolkstein and Kramer's book with her stories and poems, or even the much inferior translation by Kim Echlin (ignore the commentary though), as it is still fairly accurate and contains most of them (not all, regrettably), despite my criticisms of that book. She's too complex of a character to be contained in a general anthology like this, however, so this is no criticism on this book.
Did you know that... Sumerian scribes invented the first wojak/boomer meme? Yes, Mesopotamian scribes were in general a remarkably smug and cocky bunch of urbanites, and they had their own genre, which lasted into the Semitic periods afterwards, which imo has the best example of the genre, the School Days tablet, which details a comical amount of abuse at the scribal schoolchildren until the father greases up the teacher by wining and dining him. Frankly amazing piece of school fiction, it is even the primeval "school sucks" fiction imo, and I recommend that all of you look for it.
The Sumerian example we have here is the primordial boomer meme, a narrative where the senior boomer scribe tells the younger, based and redpilled scribe how he got to his position by being a hardworking and being absolutely conformist in literally every way, to which the latter epically owns him with facts and logic and is recognized as the real based scribe. It is a real self-insert fantasy moment of petty wish-fulfillment against one's superiors and elders and I am inexpressibly pleased that the oldest literature has such a thing in it.
We have a single proverbs collection (and the Shurrupak instructions which also counts tbh) and that's all that's needed because due to cultural, linguistic, etc difficulties, a lot of these are incomprehensible and that really tickles me. They're also filled with jokes and puns and crudeness - in 2022, one Seth Richardson found out that one seemingly incomprehensible one that went "One has o[pened up] the well, / the (other) two looked on. / Answer: a flaccid penis ⸢and⸣ [testicles]," and concluded that it is a "bofa deez nutz" type school boy joke (I have made a similar argument for the much more famous Sumerian dog tavern joke). So, while two specimens are more than enough, I also recommend you go look for others - the ones about the gala priests are like primeval homophobic humor, some 4000 years before the concept of homosexuality was even a thing (they thought big, and thought ahead).
In conclusion, it is a thoroughly unimpressive collection (although it has a very good introduction that you should read, specially if just starting out) since you can just find this at the ETCSL site, and I would recommend Kramer and Jacobsen for their commentary that goes along with the translations, but nonetheless as an organized anthology to introduce someone to Sumerian literature it is very thorough and it has picked what works to show very well - and ultimately, I am still in love those works themselves.
April 16, 2014
This is the earliest literature we've found, and it's as weird, fragmentary and primal as you might expect. But it's also surprising: the Sumerians mastered the use of repetition and iteration in ways that are inspiring my own writing. Their modes of praise, narrative, worship, origin stories, are familiar from Old Testament writings but also have their own distinct character. As an inveterate completist, I was deeply satisfied to find a (more or less) definitive origin point for "impractical" writing, and especially to find a volume as insightful and well-thought-out as this. Our literature, concerns, modes of understanding are almost completely different from the Sumerians. Which is why we're exactly the same.
July 18, 2023
One of the best books on the Ancient Sumerians that I’ve read. Trying to find/read all the Sumerian stories can really be all over the place, but this book helps lay many of them out before you into ten different thematic groups. Includes many of the best stories that have been translated from the ETCSL and, thankfully, does not include writings that have extensively fragmented translations. Very grateful to all the people who have spent their lives learning the ancient, isolated language of the Sumerians so more of us can read their stories.
October 15, 2022
I was drawn to ancient Sumerian literature because it's pretty much the most ancient literature that still exists (aside from some Egyptian and Chinese texts). Its survival to the present day is mostly an accident of history, due to the fact that the ancient Mesopotamians wrote on clay tablets that preserve extremely well in desert environments. The civilizations that produced cuneiform tablets, starting with Sumer and including Babylon, Assyria, and others, were almost entirely forgotten by the beginning of the modern era. Although we take the existence of ancient Mesopotamia for granted today, the discovery of these tablets, buried in "tells", or hills composed of the residues of ancient Mesopotamian cities, was almost like the discovery of a lost civilization, or even an alien civilization. The one difference is that this lost civilization formed the substrate on which our own civilization was built. The impact that ancient Mesopotamia had on our own civilization is most obvious in the Hebrew Bible, which until the discovery of these tablets was one of the only sources on ancient Mesopotamia. Abraham was likely from the Sumerian city of Ur; Marduk, one of the bete noires of the Tanakh, was the patron god of Babylon whose worship had spread to Canaan; the Assyrian destruction of the Kingdom of Israel and its failed siege of Jerusalem are described in the Tanakh; the destruction of the first temple and the Babylonian captivity is one of the climactic moments of the Tanakh; the prophet Ezekiel saw his visions on the Kebar Canal near the Babylonian/Sumerian city of Nippur.
The idol hatred of the Tanakh becomes obvious upon reading the Sumerian texts, which often describe the "journeys" of the Sumerian/Babylonian idols from one city to another to visit each other (Ninurta's Return to Nibru, Enki's Journey to Nibru, Nanna-Suen's Journey to Nibru). Noah's flood story has a direct precedent in the Sumerian/Babylonian flood story of Ziudsura. The Psalms of the Tanakh make more sense in relation to the Sumerian texts, which themselves often take the form of chants/songs that were probably a precedent for the psalms. The ancient Sumerian/Babylonian proverbs were part of ancient "wisdom" literature and were also a direct precedent for the Book of Proverbs. This book also contains sensual love songs that were likely a precedent for the Song of Songs in the Tanakh. The book contains laments on the destructions of Agade (Akkad), Sumer, and Urium (the destruction of cities was a perennial event in Mesopotamia due to its frequent floods and exposure to barbarians from the nearby mountains) that were likely the precedent for the Book of Lamentations and also countless other lamentations that occur throughout the Tanakh. The story of Sargon and Ur-Zababa records the legendary life of Sargon of Akkad, who created one of the first ever empires in history - when he was an infant, his mother sealed him in a basket and let him float down a river, where he was discovered by a water-drawer and raised to be a gardener. Sound familiar?
The writings in this book also show the influence that ancient Mesopotamia had on ancient Greece. A ton of the devotional writing in this book revolves around the worship of Inanna/Ishtar, the patron deity of Uruk. Worship Inanna, a powerful goddess of love and war, spread to ancient Canaan (where she was known as Astarte), then to Cyprus, and from there to ancient Greece as Aphrodite (in Greek myth, Aphrodite is from the island of Cyprus). One of the texts in this book is "The Exploits of Ninurta", which may have been a precedent for the 12 labors of Heracles.
The last form of impact that I'll mention is the impact that Mesopotamia had on our civilization via technology. The ancient Mesopotamians were pioneers of agriculture and urbanization. One of the many consequences of agriculture was the tension it created between pastoralists and farmers. These tensions are highlighted in "Dumuzid and Enkimdu", a poem about a debate between Dumuzid, a shepherd, and Enkimdu, a deity associated with cultivation and representative of farmers, over who is more fit to marry Inana. Inana prefers to Enkimdu over Dumuzid: "I am a woman and I won't do that, I won't! I am a star... and I won't! I won't be the wife of a shepherd!" Her brother Utu wants her to marry Dumuzid and he lists the shepherd's products: good butter, good milk, new wool. The farmer, on the other hand, has fine beer, good bread, beans, and flax. In the end, Enkimdu desists in favor of maintaining good relations between farmer and shepherd. Another interesting story about the tensions between farmers and pastoralists is "The debate between Sheep and Grain" - apparently debates "were a popular form of entertainment at the court of the kings of the Third Dynasty of Urim." The story begins with a creation myth where An created the mound of Earth with humans but no sheep and grain. This is a tantalizing (but probably entirely fictional) memory of a pre-agricultural world: "The people of those days did not know about eating bread. They did not know about wearing clothes; they went about with naked limbs in the Land. Like sheep they ate grass with their mouths and drank water from the ditches." The gods then bestowed Sheep and Grain upon humans. The debate starts when Sheep and Grain get drunk and argue about which one is more useful to humankind. The benefits of sheep and grain are obvious, so I won't repeat them here. What I enjoyed was the aggression of the two characters: "Grain called out to Sheep: 'Sister, I am your better; I take precedence over you... In sheep shacks and milking pens scattered on the high plain, what can you put against me? Answer me what you can reply!' ... I am Grain, I am born for the warrior - I do not give up." Sheep eventually replies, "Grain, heed yourself! You too, just like me, are meant to be eaten." Unlike in the case of Dumuzid vs Enkimdu, Enki eventually decides, "Of the two, Grain shall be the greater. Let Sheep fall on her knees before Grain. Let her kiss the feet of [Grain]." Getting back to the idea of technology, although farming and pastoralism don't seem like "technology" to us today, back then they were literally state of the art and composed the vast majority of the Mesopotamian economy, and they enabled the development of the cities that served as the centers of Mesopotamian religion and administration.
This book contains the translations of around 72 tablets from ancient Sumer. In reality it's a little bit more complicated than that, because often times multiple tablets of the same text are found with different parts missing or in conflict with each other, so the translations in this book have often been synthesized from several or many different tablets. Furthermore, although this book contains ancient "Sumerian" literature, most of these tablets were produced during the Old Babylonian Empire (1894-1595 BC) (think Hammurabi). Apparently the Third Dynasty of Ur (2112-2004 BC) (the last of the major Sumerian empires), was something of a golden age for Sumerian culture, particularly under the 48-year rule of Shulgi. Many of the texts composed during this time became "Sumerian classics" that were preserved for hundreds of years. The Old Babylonian Empire was itself something of a golden age, during which scribal schools flourished and the old classics of ancient Sumer were used as training material for young scribes. It is mostly their tablets, written in Sumerian although the common tongue by that time was Aramaic, that have been preserved.
I'll mention a few other stories that were interesting to me.
The Flood Story: The Sumerian flood story was a predecessor not just of Noah's flood story but also of the flood story found in the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh (where the hero is named Atrahasis). The story contains some interesting information. It talks about the order in which the cities were created: "The first of the cities, Eridu, was given to Nudimmud the leader. The second, Bad-tibira, was given to the Mistress. The third, Larag, was given to Pabilsag. The fourth, Zimbir, was given to the hero Utu. The firth, Suruppag, was given to Sud." These are all real cities, and it's intriguing to me that these cities were not the primary cities of ancient Sumer at all (the primary cities were places like Uruk, Ur, and Lagash), indicating that maybe this list really does record the establishment of cities from an earlier time. The text is corrupted, but it seems as though Ziudsura, the ruler of Shuruppak (Suruppag), is in a temple by a wall, and hears a discussion of the gods: "In the Ki-ur, the gods... a wall. Ziudsura, standing at its side, heard: 'Side-wall standing at my side, left side... Side-wall, I will speak words to you; take heed of my words, pay attention to my instructions. A flood will sweep over the... in all the... A decision that the seed of mankind is to be destroyed has been made." Later, "All the windstorms and gales arose together, and the flood swept over the... After the flood had swept over the land, and waves and windstorms had rocked the huge boat for seven days and seven nights, Utu the sun-god came out, illuminating heaven and earth. Ziudsura could drill an opening in the huge boat and hero Utu entered the huge boat with his rays. Ziudsura the king prostrated himself before Utu." The people and animals that Ziudsura saved in his boat then disembark and Ziudsura settles in Dilmun (Bahrain) for some reason.
The Lugalbanda stories: There are a few stories about Lugalbanda, a king of Uruk and father of Gilgamesh. In "Lugalbanda and the Mountain Cave", Lugalbanda is just the 8th of 8 sons. The city of Uruk organized a military expedition to the mountains to pacify their enemies, and "when they had covered half the way, covered half the way, a sickness befell [Lugalbanda] there, 'head sickness' befell him. He jerked like a snake dragged by its head with a reed; his mouth bit the dust, like a gazelle caught in a snare." His brothers left him in the mountains in a cave, well-supplied with food, although they didn't expect him to live. When he wakes up, Lugalbanda is distraught: "In the mountain cave, the most dreadful spot on earth, let me be ill no longer! Here where there is no mother, there is no father, there is no acquaintance, no one whom I value, my mother is not here to say, 'Alas my child!' My brother is not here to say 'Alas, my brother!' My mother's neighbor who enters our house is not here to weep over me. ... A lost dog is bad; a lost man is terrible." (Side note: there are people who have written that ancient literature doesn't have the same range of emotion that we see in modern literature. That is so untrue!). Utu the sun-god eventually "takes pity" on Lugalbanda and gives him health - however, this could be a metaphor simply for Lugalbanda seeing the sun, being warmed by its rays, and having his hope and health restored by the return of daylight. As Lugalbanda says to the sun, "To him who walks alone, you are his brotherly companion; Utu, you are the third of them who travel in pairs." Recovered, he races to catch up with his brothers: "like a large powerful donkey he raced; a slim donkey, eager to run, he bounded along" (they didn't know about horses yet). That night, Lugalbanda fell asleep: "Sleep overcame the king - sleep, the country of oppression; it is like a towering flood... covering like syrup that which is in front of it, overflowing like syrup onto that which is in front of it; it knows no overseer, knows no captain, yet it is overpowering for the hero.... The king lay down not to sleep, he lay down to dream - not turning back at the door of the dream, not turning back at the door-pivot." (In the dream, a god tells him to make a sacrifice). After this, the narrative kind of breaks up due to lost text unfortunately.
In "Lugalbanda and the Anzu bird", Lugalbanda is still stuck in the mountains, but the monstrous Anzu bird helps him out. Lugalbanda first encounters the Anzu bird's nest in the mountains: "Now the splendid eagle-tree of Enki on the summit of Inana's mountain of multicolored cornelian stood fast on the earth like a tower, all shaggy like an aru. With its shade it covered the highest eminences of the mountains like a cloak, was spread out over them like a tunic. Its roots rested like sag kal snakes in Utu's river of the seven mouths. Near by, in the mountains where no cypresses grow, where no snake slithers, where no scorpion scurries, in the midst of the mountains the buru-az bird had put its nest and laid its eggs inside; near by the Anzu bird had set his nest and settled his young inside." The Anzu bird is gone, but Lugalbanda spoils its chick: "He settled the Anzu chick in its nest, painted its eyes with kohl, dabbed white cedar scent onto its head, put up a twisted roll of salt meat." The Anzu bird and his wife call out to their chick, but the chick doesn't respond: "The bird with this cry of 'Woe!' and his wife with this cry of grief made the Anuna, gods of the mountains, actually crawl into crevices like ants." However when they approach their nest, they see that Lugalbanda has decorated their nest and their chick. The Anzu bird is happy and blesses Lugalbanda: "You shall not grow tired! Strength shall be in your arms! Stretch your arms wide, may your arms not become weak! Moving like the sun, like Inana, like the seven storms of Iskur, leap like a flame, blaze like lightning! Go where you look to, set foot wherever you cast your glance, reach wherever your heart desires, loosen your shoes in whatever place your heart has named to you!" With this blessing and guided by the Anzu bird, Lugalbanda reunites with his brothers' army.
The city laments: "The cursing of Agade (Akkad)" recounts the fall of the Akkadian empire in the 2100s BC. The story begins by telling how Akkad came to power: "After Enlil's frown had slain Kish as if it were the Bull of Heaven, had slaughtered the house of the land of Uruk in the dust as if it were a mighty bull, and then Enlil had given the rulership and kingship from the south as far as the highlands to Sargon, king of Akkad." It's remarkable to me that even in this story about the 'first' empire ever, there were earlier 'empires' worth mentioning - those of Kish and Uruk. Under Inana's patronage, Akkad flourished: "its people would drink splendid beverages; ... those bathed for holidays would rejoice in the courtyards; ... foreigners would cruise about like unusual birds in the sky." However, Enlil, the king of the gods, from his temple called Ekur in Nippur, eventually withdraws his favor, and Inana leaves Akkad. "Not even five or ten days had passed and Ninurta brought the jewels of rulership, the royal crown, the emblem and the royal throne bestowed on Akkad, back into his Eshumesha (temple). Utu took away the eloquence of the city. Enki took away its wisdom. An took up into the midst of heaven its fearsomeness that reaches heaven. Enki tore out its well-anchored holy mooring pole from the Abzu. Inana took away its weapons. The life of Akkad's sanctuary was brought to an end as if it had been only the life of a tiny carp in the deep waters, and all the cities were watching it. As a mighty elephant, it bent its neck to the ground while they all raised their horns like mighty bulls. As a dying dragon, it dragged its head on the earth and they jointly deprived it of honor as in a battle." Naram-suen, the king of Akkad, went into mourning: "Naram-suen persisted for seven years! Who has even seen a king burying his head in his hands for seven years?" He besieged and plundered Enki's Ekur in Nippur. Enlil responds with wrath, sending the barbarous tribes of Gutium to devastate Mesopotamia: "Nothing escaped their clutches, no one left their grasp. Messengers no longer travelled the highways, the courier's boat no longer passed along the rivers... As if it had been before the time when cities were built and founded, the large arable tracts yield no grain, the inundated tracts yield no fish... The old women did not restrain the cry 'Alas for the Ekur!' Its young women did not restrain from tearing their hair. Its young men did not restrain from sharpening their knives. Their laments were as if Enlil's ancestors were performing a lament in the awe-inspiring Holy Mound by the holy knees of Enlil. Because of this Enlil entered his holy bedchamber and lay down fasting." - the destruction of the Gutians actually severely damaged/ weakened Enlil himself. To 'make things right', the rest of the gods team up and curse Akkad: "City, you pounced on Ekur: it is as if you had pounced on Enlil! Akkad, you pounced on Ekur: it is as if you had pounced on Enlil! May your holy walls, to their highest point, resound with mourning! May your giguna shrine be reduced to a pile of dust! May your pilasters with the standing lahama deities fall to the ground... May the cattle slaughterer slaughter his wife, may your sheep butcher butcher his child! ... May your prostitute hang herself at the entrance to her brothel! May your pregnant nugig priestesses and cult prostitutes abort their children! ... May the ukuku, the bird of depression, make its nest in your gateways, established for the Land!"
The book also contains a lament, "The lament for Sumer and Urim", recounting the fall of the Third Dynasty of Ur about 150 years late in around 2000 BC. "An, Enlil, Enki, and Ninhursaga have decided its fate - to overturn the divine powers of Sumer, to lock up the favourable reign in its home, to destroy the city, to destroy the house, to destroy the cattle-pen, to level the sheepfold... that the hoe should not attack the fertile fields, that seed should not be planted in the ground, that the melody of the cowherds' songs should not resound in the open country, that butter and cheese should not be made in the cattle-pen, that dung should not be stacked on the ground, that the shepherd should not enclose the sacred sheepfold with a fence, that the song of the churning should not respond in the sheepfold." "Ningirsu poured Sumer away like milk to the dogs." "Enlil then sent down Gutium from the mountains. Their advance was as the flood of Enlil that cannot be withstood." "[Ur's] king sat immobilized in the palace, all alone. Ibbi-Suen was sitting in anguish in the palace, all alone." The Elamites attacked and carried off Dumuzid and Inana from Ur. "I shall have to ride away from my silver and lapis lazuli, and now I shall be a slave in those parts." "Urim was indeed given kingship but it was not given an eternal reign. From time immemorial, since the Land was founded... who has ever seen a reign of kingship that would take precedence forever?"
The idol hatred of the Tanakh becomes obvious upon reading the Sumerian texts, which often describe the "journeys" of the Sumerian/Babylonian idols from one city to another to visit each other (Ninurta's Return to Nibru, Enki's Journey to Nibru, Nanna-Suen's Journey to Nibru). Noah's flood story has a direct precedent in the Sumerian/Babylonian flood story of Ziudsura. The Psalms of the Tanakh make more sense in relation to the Sumerian texts, which themselves often take the form of chants/songs that were probably a precedent for the psalms. The ancient Sumerian/Babylonian proverbs were part of ancient "wisdom" literature and were also a direct precedent for the Book of Proverbs. This book also contains sensual love songs that were likely a precedent for the Song of Songs in the Tanakh. The book contains laments on the destructions of Agade (Akkad), Sumer, and Urium (the destruction of cities was a perennial event in Mesopotamia due to its frequent floods and exposure to barbarians from the nearby mountains) that were likely the precedent for the Book of Lamentations and also countless other lamentations that occur throughout the Tanakh. The story of Sargon and Ur-Zababa records the legendary life of Sargon of Akkad, who created one of the first ever empires in history - when he was an infant, his mother sealed him in a basket and let him float down a river, where he was discovered by a water-drawer and raised to be a gardener. Sound familiar?
The writings in this book also show the influence that ancient Mesopotamia had on ancient Greece. A ton of the devotional writing in this book revolves around the worship of Inanna/Ishtar, the patron deity of Uruk. Worship Inanna, a powerful goddess of love and war, spread to ancient Canaan (where she was known as Astarte), then to Cyprus, and from there to ancient Greece as Aphrodite (in Greek myth, Aphrodite is from the island of Cyprus). One of the texts in this book is "The Exploits of Ninurta", which may have been a precedent for the 12 labors of Heracles.
The last form of impact that I'll mention is the impact that Mesopotamia had on our civilization via technology. The ancient Mesopotamians were pioneers of agriculture and urbanization. One of the many consequences of agriculture was the tension it created between pastoralists and farmers. These tensions are highlighted in "Dumuzid and Enkimdu", a poem about a debate between Dumuzid, a shepherd, and Enkimdu, a deity associated with cultivation and representative of farmers, over who is more fit to marry Inana. Inana prefers to Enkimdu over Dumuzid: "I am a woman and I won't do that, I won't! I am a star... and I won't! I won't be the wife of a shepherd!" Her brother Utu wants her to marry Dumuzid and he lists the shepherd's products: good butter, good milk, new wool. The farmer, on the other hand, has fine beer, good bread, beans, and flax. In the end, Enkimdu desists in favor of maintaining good relations between farmer and shepherd. Another interesting story about the tensions between farmers and pastoralists is "The debate between Sheep and Grain" - apparently debates "were a popular form of entertainment at the court of the kings of the Third Dynasty of Urim." The story begins with a creation myth where An created the mound of Earth with humans but no sheep and grain. This is a tantalizing (but probably entirely fictional) memory of a pre-agricultural world: "The people of those days did not know about eating bread. They did not know about wearing clothes; they went about with naked limbs in the Land. Like sheep they ate grass with their mouths and drank water from the ditches." The gods then bestowed Sheep and Grain upon humans. The debate starts when Sheep and Grain get drunk and argue about which one is more useful to humankind. The benefits of sheep and grain are obvious, so I won't repeat them here. What I enjoyed was the aggression of the two characters: "Grain called out to Sheep: 'Sister, I am your better; I take precedence over you... In sheep shacks and milking pens scattered on the high plain, what can you put against me? Answer me what you can reply!' ... I am Grain, I am born for the warrior - I do not give up." Sheep eventually replies, "Grain, heed yourself! You too, just like me, are meant to be eaten." Unlike in the case of Dumuzid vs Enkimdu, Enki eventually decides, "Of the two, Grain shall be the greater. Let Sheep fall on her knees before Grain. Let her kiss the feet of [Grain]." Getting back to the idea of technology, although farming and pastoralism don't seem like "technology" to us today, back then they were literally state of the art and composed the vast majority of the Mesopotamian economy, and they enabled the development of the cities that served as the centers of Mesopotamian religion and administration.
This book contains the translations of around 72 tablets from ancient Sumer. In reality it's a little bit more complicated than that, because often times multiple tablets of the same text are found with different parts missing or in conflict with each other, so the translations in this book have often been synthesized from several or many different tablets. Furthermore, although this book contains ancient "Sumerian" literature, most of these tablets were produced during the Old Babylonian Empire (1894-1595 BC) (think Hammurabi). Apparently the Third Dynasty of Ur (2112-2004 BC) (the last of the major Sumerian empires), was something of a golden age for Sumerian culture, particularly under the 48-year rule of Shulgi. Many of the texts composed during this time became "Sumerian classics" that were preserved for hundreds of years. The Old Babylonian Empire was itself something of a golden age, during which scribal schools flourished and the old classics of ancient Sumer were used as training material for young scribes. It is mostly their tablets, written in Sumerian although the common tongue by that time was Aramaic, that have been preserved.
I'll mention a few other stories that were interesting to me.
The Flood Story: The Sumerian flood story was a predecessor not just of Noah's flood story but also of the flood story found in the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh (where the hero is named Atrahasis). The story contains some interesting information. It talks about the order in which the cities were created: "The first of the cities, Eridu, was given to Nudimmud the leader. The second, Bad-tibira, was given to the Mistress. The third, Larag, was given to Pabilsag. The fourth, Zimbir, was given to the hero Utu. The firth, Suruppag, was given to Sud." These are all real cities, and it's intriguing to me that these cities were not the primary cities of ancient Sumer at all (the primary cities were places like Uruk, Ur, and Lagash), indicating that maybe this list really does record the establishment of cities from an earlier time. The text is corrupted, but it seems as though Ziudsura, the ruler of Shuruppak (Suruppag), is in a temple by a wall, and hears a discussion of the gods: "In the Ki-ur, the gods... a wall. Ziudsura, standing at its side, heard: 'Side-wall standing at my side, left side... Side-wall, I will speak words to you; take heed of my words, pay attention to my instructions. A flood will sweep over the... in all the... A decision that the seed of mankind is to be destroyed has been made." Later, "All the windstorms and gales arose together, and the flood swept over the... After the flood had swept over the land, and waves and windstorms had rocked the huge boat for seven days and seven nights, Utu the sun-god came out, illuminating heaven and earth. Ziudsura could drill an opening in the huge boat and hero Utu entered the huge boat with his rays. Ziudsura the king prostrated himself before Utu." The people and animals that Ziudsura saved in his boat then disembark and Ziudsura settles in Dilmun (Bahrain) for some reason.
The Lugalbanda stories: There are a few stories about Lugalbanda, a king of Uruk and father of Gilgamesh. In "Lugalbanda and the Mountain Cave", Lugalbanda is just the 8th of 8 sons. The city of Uruk organized a military expedition to the mountains to pacify their enemies, and "when they had covered half the way, covered half the way, a sickness befell [Lugalbanda] there, 'head sickness' befell him. He jerked like a snake dragged by its head with a reed; his mouth bit the dust, like a gazelle caught in a snare." His brothers left him in the mountains in a cave, well-supplied with food, although they didn't expect him to live. When he wakes up, Lugalbanda is distraught: "In the mountain cave, the most dreadful spot on earth, let me be ill no longer! Here where there is no mother, there is no father, there is no acquaintance, no one whom I value, my mother is not here to say, 'Alas my child!' My brother is not here to say 'Alas, my brother!' My mother's neighbor who enters our house is not here to weep over me. ... A lost dog is bad; a lost man is terrible." (Side note: there are people who have written that ancient literature doesn't have the same range of emotion that we see in modern literature. That is so untrue!). Utu the sun-god eventually "takes pity" on Lugalbanda and gives him health - however, this could be a metaphor simply for Lugalbanda seeing the sun, being warmed by its rays, and having his hope and health restored by the return of daylight. As Lugalbanda says to the sun, "To him who walks alone, you are his brotherly companion; Utu, you are the third of them who travel in pairs." Recovered, he races to catch up with his brothers: "like a large powerful donkey he raced; a slim donkey, eager to run, he bounded along" (they didn't know about horses yet). That night, Lugalbanda fell asleep: "Sleep overcame the king - sleep, the country of oppression; it is like a towering flood... covering like syrup that which is in front of it, overflowing like syrup onto that which is in front of it; it knows no overseer, knows no captain, yet it is overpowering for the hero.... The king lay down not to sleep, he lay down to dream - not turning back at the door of the dream, not turning back at the door-pivot." (In the dream, a god tells him to make a sacrifice). After this, the narrative kind of breaks up due to lost text unfortunately.
In "Lugalbanda and the Anzu bird", Lugalbanda is still stuck in the mountains, but the monstrous Anzu bird helps him out. Lugalbanda first encounters the Anzu bird's nest in the mountains: "Now the splendid eagle-tree of Enki on the summit of Inana's mountain of multicolored cornelian stood fast on the earth like a tower, all shaggy like an aru. With its shade it covered the highest eminences of the mountains like a cloak, was spread out over them like a tunic. Its roots rested like sag kal snakes in Utu's river of the seven mouths. Near by, in the mountains where no cypresses grow, where no snake slithers, where no scorpion scurries, in the midst of the mountains the buru-az bird had put its nest and laid its eggs inside; near by the Anzu bird had set his nest and settled his young inside." The Anzu bird is gone, but Lugalbanda spoils its chick: "He settled the Anzu chick in its nest, painted its eyes with kohl, dabbed white cedar scent onto its head, put up a twisted roll of salt meat." The Anzu bird and his wife call out to their chick, but the chick doesn't respond: "The bird with this cry of 'Woe!' and his wife with this cry of grief made the Anuna, gods of the mountains, actually crawl into crevices like ants." However when they approach their nest, they see that Lugalbanda has decorated their nest and their chick. The Anzu bird is happy and blesses Lugalbanda: "You shall not grow tired! Strength shall be in your arms! Stretch your arms wide, may your arms not become weak! Moving like the sun, like Inana, like the seven storms of Iskur, leap like a flame, blaze like lightning! Go where you look to, set foot wherever you cast your glance, reach wherever your heart desires, loosen your shoes in whatever place your heart has named to you!" With this blessing and guided by the Anzu bird, Lugalbanda reunites with his brothers' army.
The city laments: "The cursing of Agade (Akkad)" recounts the fall of the Akkadian empire in the 2100s BC. The story begins by telling how Akkad came to power: "After Enlil's frown had slain Kish as if it were the Bull of Heaven, had slaughtered the house of the land of Uruk in the dust as if it were a mighty bull, and then Enlil had given the rulership and kingship from the south as far as the highlands to Sargon, king of Akkad." It's remarkable to me that even in this story about the 'first' empire ever, there were earlier 'empires' worth mentioning - those of Kish and Uruk. Under Inana's patronage, Akkad flourished: "its people would drink splendid beverages; ... those bathed for holidays would rejoice in the courtyards; ... foreigners would cruise about like unusual birds in the sky." However, Enlil, the king of the gods, from his temple called Ekur in Nippur, eventually withdraws his favor, and Inana leaves Akkad. "Not even five or ten days had passed and Ninurta brought the jewels of rulership, the royal crown, the emblem and the royal throne bestowed on Akkad, back into his Eshumesha (temple). Utu took away the eloquence of the city. Enki took away its wisdom. An took up into the midst of heaven its fearsomeness that reaches heaven. Enki tore out its well-anchored holy mooring pole from the Abzu. Inana took away its weapons. The life of Akkad's sanctuary was brought to an end as if it had been only the life of a tiny carp in the deep waters, and all the cities were watching it. As a mighty elephant, it bent its neck to the ground while they all raised their horns like mighty bulls. As a dying dragon, it dragged its head on the earth and they jointly deprived it of honor as in a battle." Naram-suen, the king of Akkad, went into mourning: "Naram-suen persisted for seven years! Who has even seen a king burying his head in his hands for seven years?" He besieged and plundered Enki's Ekur in Nippur. Enlil responds with wrath, sending the barbarous tribes of Gutium to devastate Mesopotamia: "Nothing escaped their clutches, no one left their grasp. Messengers no longer travelled the highways, the courier's boat no longer passed along the rivers... As if it had been before the time when cities were built and founded, the large arable tracts yield no grain, the inundated tracts yield no fish... The old women did not restrain the cry 'Alas for the Ekur!' Its young women did not restrain from tearing their hair. Its young men did not restrain from sharpening their knives. Their laments were as if Enlil's ancestors were performing a lament in the awe-inspiring Holy Mound by the holy knees of Enlil. Because of this Enlil entered his holy bedchamber and lay down fasting." - the destruction of the Gutians actually severely damaged/ weakened Enlil himself. To 'make things right', the rest of the gods team up and curse Akkad: "City, you pounced on Ekur: it is as if you had pounced on Enlil! Akkad, you pounced on Ekur: it is as if you had pounced on Enlil! May your holy walls, to their highest point, resound with mourning! May your giguna shrine be reduced to a pile of dust! May your pilasters with the standing lahama deities fall to the ground... May the cattle slaughterer slaughter his wife, may your sheep butcher butcher his child! ... May your prostitute hang herself at the entrance to her brothel! May your pregnant nugig priestesses and cult prostitutes abort their children! ... May the ukuku, the bird of depression, make its nest in your gateways, established for the Land!"
The book also contains a lament, "The lament for Sumer and Urim", recounting the fall of the Third Dynasty of Ur about 150 years late in around 2000 BC. "An, Enlil, Enki, and Ninhursaga have decided its fate - to overturn the divine powers of Sumer, to lock up the favourable reign in its home, to destroy the city, to destroy the house, to destroy the cattle-pen, to level the sheepfold... that the hoe should not attack the fertile fields, that seed should not be planted in the ground, that the melody of the cowherds' songs should not resound in the open country, that butter and cheese should not be made in the cattle-pen, that dung should not be stacked on the ground, that the shepherd should not enclose the sacred sheepfold with a fence, that the song of the churning should not respond in the sheepfold." "Ningirsu poured Sumer away like milk to the dogs." "Enlil then sent down Gutium from the mountains. Their advance was as the flood of Enlil that cannot be withstood." "[Ur's] king sat immobilized in the palace, all alone. Ibbi-Suen was sitting in anguish in the palace, all alone." The Elamites attacked and carried off Dumuzid and Inana from Ur. "I shall have to ride away from my silver and lapis lazuli, and now I shall be a slave in those parts." "Urim was indeed given kingship but it was not given an eternal reign. From time immemorial, since the Land was founded... who has ever seen a reign of kingship that would take precedence forever?"
March 7, 2019
Summary
This is a translation of 70 Sumerian literary works that are part of the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk. The works are translated as prose. It is unclear from the text what chronological extent of the works in Sumerian Cuneiform are included in this work. What do they consider ‘ancient’ Sumer?
The selections are divided thematically and each work is introduced by text which summarizes the story and briefly discusses the composition type. An 84 page introduction talks about the forms found in Sumerian literature, and the process and difficulties of translating a symbolic written language to modern English.
As mentioned the book is divided thematically as follows: Heroes & Kings; Inana & Dumuzid; Enlil & Ninlil; The Moon God Nanna-Suen; the Warrior Gods Nergal, Numusda, & Ninurta; Love & Sex; The Natural Order; the Hymnic Genres; Scribes & Learning; and the Decad, a Scribal Curriculum.
Comments:
After reading the works of Noah Kramer and the retelling by the poet Dian Wolkstein of the Inanna myth, these translations are dry and boring. I understand the authors desire to not imbue modern meaning into 3000-5000 year old texts but I would offer, as there is no way to avoid such imbuement, it behooves the author to make the writing more interesting. For example, within the introduction, the authors discuss the readily apparent rhythm, scansion, alliteration, purposeful use of archaic language, imagery, etc within the untranslated texts, yet the authors make no effort to include such in the English translations. With regard to meanings and modern understandings, the translator makes editorial choices with every word and he/she can do no other. When is a stone a stone, when is it a rock, and when is it a symbol representing the idea of solid immovability - only those in the culture at the time can know for sure so there is no reason to make pedantic, dry choices. Through millennial long lens we are only guessing. In summary, this translation suffer from from the same ills as other literature in translation, keep the poetry or keep the meaning, but in the case of this translation the authors have chose the worse possible choice – and chucked both.
A second complaint is the text selection. Inanna is relegated to mostly a sex goddess and wife. She is one of the 3 major gods of Sumer yet you would not know this from the number of and type of stories selected by the authors. Also, many more of the works so included are concerned with warfare than other collections of Sumerian texts. A third complaint is that all of these translations plus more are available for free from the Oxford website.
The above being said there are three positives to this collection. The first is that although translations are available for free on the Oxford website, the website database can be difficult to navigate, the book is ready to hand. Secondly, the summaries that introduce each tale are really helpful to discern the sometimes very fragmented translations. Lastly, it is always convenient to have a set of bound tales one can hold in hand and carry with you on the bus rather than being tied to your desktop or your internet connection.
Overall, this book bored me and was difficult to finish. Although at some point I may return to analyze particular tales that are themes I am interested in. I am moving on from Sumerian Mythology to mythologies of other societies
This is a translation of 70 Sumerian literary works that are part of the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk. The works are translated as prose. It is unclear from the text what chronological extent of the works in Sumerian Cuneiform are included in this work. What do they consider ‘ancient’ Sumer?
The selections are divided thematically and each work is introduced by text which summarizes the story and briefly discusses the composition type. An 84 page introduction talks about the forms found in Sumerian literature, and the process and difficulties of translating a symbolic written language to modern English.
As mentioned the book is divided thematically as follows: Heroes & Kings; Inana & Dumuzid; Enlil & Ninlil; The Moon God Nanna-Suen; the Warrior Gods Nergal, Numusda, & Ninurta; Love & Sex; The Natural Order; the Hymnic Genres; Scribes & Learning; and the Decad, a Scribal Curriculum.
Comments:
After reading the works of Noah Kramer and the retelling by the poet Dian Wolkstein of the Inanna myth, these translations are dry and boring. I understand the authors desire to not imbue modern meaning into 3000-5000 year old texts but I would offer, as there is no way to avoid such imbuement, it behooves the author to make the writing more interesting. For example, within the introduction, the authors discuss the readily apparent rhythm, scansion, alliteration, purposeful use of archaic language, imagery, etc within the untranslated texts, yet the authors make no effort to include such in the English translations. With regard to meanings and modern understandings, the translator makes editorial choices with every word and he/she can do no other. When is a stone a stone, when is it a rock, and when is it a symbol representing the idea of solid immovability - only those in the culture at the time can know for sure so there is no reason to make pedantic, dry choices. Through millennial long lens we are only guessing. In summary, this translation suffer from from the same ills as other literature in translation, keep the poetry or keep the meaning, but in the case of this translation the authors have chose the worse possible choice – and chucked both.
A second complaint is the text selection. Inanna is relegated to mostly a sex goddess and wife. She is one of the 3 major gods of Sumer yet you would not know this from the number of and type of stories selected by the authors. Also, many more of the works so included are concerned with warfare than other collections of Sumerian texts. A third complaint is that all of these translations plus more are available for free from the Oxford website.
The above being said there are three positives to this collection. The first is that although translations are available for free on the Oxford website, the website database can be difficult to navigate, the book is ready to hand. Secondly, the summaries that introduce each tale are really helpful to discern the sometimes very fragmented translations. Lastly, it is always convenient to have a set of bound tales one can hold in hand and carry with you on the bus rather than being tied to your desktop or your internet connection.
Overall, this book bored me and was difficult to finish. Although at some point I may return to analyze particular tales that are themes I am interested in. I am moving on from Sumerian Mythology to mythologies of other societies
May 26, 2023
My first thoughts after finishing what is essentially the entire Sumerian literary canon were how pale it is in comparison to its other Mesopotamian counterparts such as Akkadian and Ugaritic. Perhaps this is the fault of Black’s translations and for this reason I will aim to review other translations of some of the major works. But overall much of it was quite disappointing. The Lugalbanda epics where definitely overhyped, particularly ‘Lugalbanda and the Anzu bird’ which barely contained an ounce of action, the ‘debate between Fish and Bird’ was not a philosophical allegory like the Persian poem but rather it was literally a fish debating a bird about who’s the better species, the authors must have had a good laugh writing that one. There’s even one about a sheep debating grain. While I appreciate its ancient and historical value, very little of this meets the bar set by other Mesopotamian literary canons. There are exceptions, notably most of the epics featuring Inana as protagonist, such as ‘Inana’s descent into the Underworld’ and ‘Inana and Duzumid’. I also greatly appreciated the very useful introductions before each work although the way in which the works were categorised clearly needed more thought. Nonetheless this isn’t a bad way to get (more or less) the full package of Sumerian literature.
November 2, 2012
Just finished best book on Sumerian literature for me so far. Textually deep, detailed, with various versions of texts, glossary, and maps. Great intros to text. Next stop "Before The Muses: An Anthology Of Akkadian Literature"! Oh baby the weight!
January 2, 2021
Perhaps the most diverse collection of Sumerian writings available. It's also ridiculously expensive.
Read
March 8, 20252600s - ? - genre. language. Region. Origin(if adapted). notes.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
Debate Between Winter and Summer
City of rainbows, one of the oldest folktales
Fart jokes
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
2000 BCE - 1500 BCE https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
c. 2000 BCE first riddle
1900 BCE https://www.wlv.ac.uk/news-and-events...
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorian...
The fall of civilizations podcast- YouTube
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
Debate Between Winter and Summer
City of rainbows, one of the oldest folktales
Fart jokes
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
2000 BCE - 1500 BCE https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
c. 2000 BCE first riddle
1900 BCE https://www.wlv.ac.uk/news-and-events...
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorian...
The fall of civilizations podcast- YouTube
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...
April 5, 2012
very scholarly and most of the stories are incomplete/fragmentary so quite hard to get into.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews