CivilWar’s Reviews > The Literature of Ancient Sumer > Status Update

Absolutely fascinating view of prisons in the Hymn to Nungal, no doubt the first piece of writing ever on prisons: already viewed as both a terrifying doom cage, a grinding crusher, but also as a redemptive, rehabilitative institution. Nungal herself sings a self-praise hymn as a caring mother-goddess, and as tempering the worst punishments.

The Inanna and Ebiḫ myth is so essential to understanding Inanna and the general role as goddess of war (one of the few where she shows up as only in that capacity). Also the second scene where Inanna, like in Gilgamesh and extending to Anat and Athena, is shown asking her father to attack something on earth, but unlike those later two here she is told no and just does it anyway (she's too cool)

Enlil as a deity like Kumarbi, Dagon, etc is here very clear, which makes him also like Kronos of Greek myth - yet it is clear that Kronos was only ever a "fictional" god, a literary character, that came from the Kumarbi Cycle into Greece due to the influence of that work (or its myths rather) into Greek theogony. But mankind did have supreme deities like that, just not Greek mankind, hehe

based song of the hoe
t. urbanite scribe who has never as much as seen a hoe or any agricultural implement

Lowkey based how Lipit-Eshtar did every single "kingship requirements" trope possible in his self-praise hymn just from this you could illustrate everything from Sumerian and onward factual Bronze Age kingship, to Agamemnon and co to King Arthur

For athleticism we have the frankly ridiculous case here of going from Nippur to Ur on foot which is 120 miles or something
"I, the fast runner, summoned my strength and, to prove my speed,
my heart prompted me to make a return journey from Nippur to brick-built Ur as if it were only the distance of a danna."

self-praise poems for Shulgi and Lipit-Eshtar are very solid sources for the little known fact today that the bronze age king had to be healthy, athletic, beautiful and taller than average: "I am Shulgi, who has been chosen by Inana for his attractiveness."