Literature of Ancient Mesopotamia | Middle East And North Africa

SUMERIANS, PRODUCERS OF THE WORLD’S OLDEST LITERATURE

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Sumerian literature consisted of long epics about gods and heroes and well as poems and songs about love and drinking sung by bards. There were also disputations, essays and lots and lots of proverbs. The earliest known Sumerian literature, dating to around 2400 B.C., is a myth about the storm god Enlil, the main Sumerian deity, and his sister Ninhursag. Sumerians were writing poetry by 2300 B.C. The Assyrians established the world’s first great library. Two songs written by King Sargon’s sister are recorded on a cuneiform tablet. These are the earliest known works written by a woman.

Aaron Skaist wrote in the Encyclopaedia Judaica: The earliest evidence of writing from Mesopotamia — or indeed from anywhere — dates back to around the middle of the fourth millennium B.C. to the period known variously as the Protoliterate period or Uruk iv. Before this, however, literature doubtlessly existed in Mesopotamia in oral form, and as such it probably continued alongside written literature for long spans of time. [Source: Aaron Skaist, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2005, Encyclopedia.com =]

The uses of writing were from the beginning those of aiding memory and of organizing complex data, as is well illustrated by the two genres that comprise the earliest written materials: sign lists and accounts. In time, new genres evolved from these genres: lexical texts, derived from sign lists; contracts and boundary stones, derived from accounts of gifts that accompanied a legal agreement to serve as a testimony to it; and, as a new departure, monumental inscriptions: votive and building inscriptions; and the letter, originally, as shown by its form, an aide-mémoire for the messenger delivering it as an oral message. =

The oral literature of the Sumerians, while continuing in its own medium, must gradually have explored the possibilities of using writing as an aid in memorizing. While the innately written genres were, as has been seen, in general oriented toward serving as reminders and organizing data, the genres which originated as oral genres, and only secondarily took written form, had as a whole a different aim. A magical aspect may be distinguished in oral literature, retained in its pure form in the genre of incantation, where the spoken word is meant to call into actual existence that which it expresses; the more vivid the incantation, the more effective it is, a fact which accounts for its being cast in literary, or even poetic, language and form. The incantation was the province of a professional performer, the incantation priest (Sum. mašmaš, Akk. ašipu).

According to Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature: "The literature written in Sumerian is the oldest human poetry that can be read, dating from approximately 2500 B.C. onwards. It includes narrative poetry, praise poetry, hymns, laments, prayers, songs, fables, didactic poems, debate poems and proverbs." In can also be argued that the Sumerians produced the world’s oldest stories as narrative poems are stories. The Sumerologist Bendt Alster. discusses the topic in the following scholarly article: "On the Earliest Sumerian Literary Tradition", Alster, Bendt, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 28, 1976. 109-126..

Websites on Mesopotamia: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Mesopotamia sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; International Association for Assyriology iaassyriology.com ; Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago isac.uchicago.edu ; University of Chicago Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations nelc.uchicago.edu ; University of Pennsylvania Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations (NELC) nelc.sas.upenn.edu; Penn Museum Near East Section penn.museum; Ancient History Encyclopedia ancient.eu.com/Mesopotamia ; British Museum britishmuseum.org ; Louvre louvre.fr/en/explore ; Metropolitan Museum of Art metmuseum.org/toah ; Ancient Near Eastern Art Metropolitan Museum of Art metmuseum.org; Iraq Museum theiraqmuseum ABZU etana.org/abzubib; Archaeology Websites Archaeology News Report archaeologynewsreport.blogspot.com ; Anthropology.net anthropology.net : archaeologica.org archaeologica.org ; Archaeology in Europe archeurope.com ; Archaeology magazine archaeology.org ; HeritageDaily heritagedaily.com; Live Science livescience.com/

Poets in Ancient Mesopotamia

We can hardly reckon among Babylonian professions that of the poet. It is true that a sort of poet-laureate existed at the court, and that we hear of a piece of land being given by the King to one of them for some verses which he had composed in honor of the sovereign. But poetry was not a separate profession, and the poet must be included in the class of scribes, or among those educated country gentlemen who possessed estates of their own. He was, however, fully appreciated in Babylonia. [Source: “Babylonians And Assyrians: Life And Customs”, Rev. A. H. Sayce, Professor of Assyriology at Oxford, 1900]

The names of the chief poets of the country were never forgotten, and the poems they had written passed through edition after edition down to the later days of Babylonian history. Sin-liqi-unnini, the author of the “Epic of Gilgames,” Nis-Sin, the author of the “Adventures of Etana,” and many others, never passed out of literary remembrance. There was a large reading public, and the literary language of Babylonia changed but little from century to century.

Ancient Mesopotamian Myths

Myths and legends were known to the people and served instead of a cosmology. The struggle between Tiamat and Marduk was depicted on the walls of the temple of Bel at Babylon, and the belief that this world has arisen out of a victory of order over chaos and anarchy was deeply implanted in the mind of the Babylonian. Perhaps it goes back to the time when the soil of Babylonia was won by the cultivator and the engineer from wild and unrestrained nature. Babylonian religion had its sacred books, and, like the official cosmology, a real knowledge of them was probably confined to the priests and educated classes. But a considerable part of their contents must have been more widely known. [Source: “Babylonians And Assyrians: Life And Customs”, Rev. A. H. Sayce, Professor of Assyriology at Oxford, 1900]

Sumerian myths seem to be devoted to a relatively small number of major deities only; Enlil, Ninurta, Enki, Inanna, and Dumuzi are the central figures in most of them. There were a number of forms which made their way from oral into written form, most of them, as far as one can judge, of a popular and informal character with no professional performers in charge of them, but presented as occasion arose by whoever felt like it. Among these were love songs, generally placed in the mouth of women and dealing with gods and kings; wisdom texts, including proverbs and disputation texts pitting different evaluations against one another; didactic compositions such as the so-called Farmer's Almanac; letters to gods with prayer for personal misfortune; and copies of royal diplomatic correspondence, of royal inscriptions of various periods, of legal decisions by courts, and others not lending itself easily to literary classification.

Religious Literature in Ancient Mesopotamia

Morris Jastrow said: “The bulk, nay, practically, the whole of the literature of Babylonia was of a religious character, or touched religion and religious beliefs and customs at some point, in accord with the close bond between religion and culture which, we have seen, was so characteristic a feature of the Euphratean civilisation. The old centres of religion and culture, like Nippur, Sippar, Cuthah, Uruk, and Ur, had retained much of their importance, despite the centralising influence of the capital of the Babylonian empire. Hammurabi and his successors had endeavoured, as we have seen, to give to Marduk the attributes of the other great gods, Enlil, Anu, Ea, Shamash, Adad, and Sin, and, to emphasise it, had placed shrines to these gods and others in the great temples of Marduk, and of his close associate, Nebo, in Babylon, and in the neighbouring Borsippa. [Source: Morris Jastrow, Lectures more than ten years after publishing his book “Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice in Babylonia and Assyria” 1911 ]

“Along with this policy went, also, a centralising tendency in the cult and, as a consequence, the rituals, omens, and incantations produced in the older centres were transferred to Babylon and combined with the indigenous features of the Marduk cult. Yet this process of gathering in one place the literary remains of the past had never been fully carried out. It was left for Ashurbanapal to harvest within his palace the silent witnesses to the glory of these older centres. While Babylon and Borsippa constituted the chief sources whence came the copies that he had prepared for the royal library, internal evidence shows that he also gathered the literary treasures of other centres, such as Sippar, Nippur, Uruk.

“The great bulk of the religious literature in Ashurbanapal’s library represents copies or editions of omen-series, incanta-tion-rituals, myths, legends, and collections of prayers, made for the temple-schools, where the candidates for the various branches of the priesthood received their training. Hence we find supplemental to the literature proper, the pedagogical apparatus of those days—lists of signs, grammatical exercises; analyses of texts, texts with commentaries, and commentaries on texts, specimen texts, and school extracts, and pupils’ exercises.”

Praise Literature and Sumerian Bards

Aaron Skaist wrote in the Encyclopaedia Judaica: A very similar magical purpose also seems to underlie other genres rooted in oral tradition. Myth, epic, and hymns to gods, temples, and kings, all had the purpose of praising somebody or something, and in so doing — as in a blessing — of enhancing or calling into being in the object of the praise, the virtues ascribed to it. This magical dimension of praise can still be seen to be very much alive in the short hymns of praise or blessings spoken by the incantation priest to the various materials he uses in his magical ritual, the so-called Kultmittelgebete, blessings intended to call up in these materials the powers and virtues attributed to them in the blessing. The praise takes in myths and epics the form of narrative presentations of great deeds of gods and heroes, originally, seemingly, to achieve by presenting them a vitalizing of the power to which they testify. In hymns, the praise usually takes the more static form of description of great qualities.[Source: Aaron Skaist, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2005, Encyclopedia.com]

The praise genres were the province of a professional performer, the bard, Sumerian nar, Akkadian nāru, who sang to the accompaniment of a small lyre-like instrument held in the hand. The basic character of the myths, epics, and hymns he recited is indicated by the standard ending for them found over and over again; zag-mì nn, "Praise be nn" where nn is the name of the god, hero, or temple sung about. On the basis of the praise it offered up, the lyre was also called zag-mì, "praise." The bard (nar) was a cherished member of the court of the Sumerian ruler and is depicted reciting at royal banquets, on monuments from around the middle of the Early Dynastic Period.

A praise of a special kind was the lament, the praise of values lost. The lament genre may plausibly be assumed to have originated as lament for human dead and from there to have been extended to use in the rituals marking the death of the god of fertility in his various forms, and to rituals seeking the rebuilding of a destroyed temple. Actually, however, only very few elegies for human dead have come down to us, and on the whole, examples of laments of any kind do not antedate the Third Dynasty of Ur. The genre of laments was the province of a professional performer, the elegist (gala). He was, like his colleague the bard, a fixture at the Sumerian rulers' courts, ready to soothe the dark moments for his master by his elegies. He played, as the texts show, a major role at funerals.

Akkadian Period Literature

Aaron Skaist wrote in the Encyclopaedia Judaica: The Akkadian period (ca. 2340–2159 B.C. ) in which rulers of Semitic origin adopted Sumerian culture, introduced a distinctive type of votive inscription detailing military achievements. From later copies two works credited to the daughter of Sargon of Akkad, Enheduanna, the first named author in history, who served as high priestess of the moon-god Nanna in Ur, are known. One is a series of short hymns to each of the major temples of Sumer and Akkad, the other is a long, impassioned plea to the goddess Inanna. [Source: Aaron Skaist, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2005, Encyclopedia.com]

Of older Sumerian epics that of Lugalbanda — at least its second half — survived as a bilingual. An Akkadian translation of the end of "Gilgamesh, Engidu and the Nether-world" was appended mechanically to the late version of the Gilgamesh Epic as its 12th tablet, probably by a copyist rather than by the author of the version. Of Akkadian epics the Etana Epic and the Narâ m-Sin Epic survived. An epic about Sargon's campaign into Asia Minor, Šar tam ari, "The King of Battle," would seem to have been first composed in Old-Babylonian times. The Gilgamesh Epic, which may have existed as an epic in Old-Babylonian times and which in part builds on Sumerian materials, was reworked traditionally by one Sin-liqi-unninni into the standard later version which has been preserved from Ashurbanipal's library. A completely new epic of this time is a warlike epic about Tukulti-Ninurta's wars with Babylonia.

The short Gutian period that followed the Akkadian period is notable mainly for works produced when it ended. A vivid account by Utu-hegal of Uruk of his war of liberation against the Gutians to "return the kingship of Sumer into its own hands" survives in later copies. To Utu-hegal's reign may also be assigned the composition of the great Sumerian King List, though other scholars prefer a slightly later date. To the end of the Gutian domination belong, furthermore, the famous cylinders a and b of Gudea, inscribed with a hymn to the temple of Ningirsu in Girsu as rebuilt by Gudea. They recount in wonderfully pregnant classical language the divine command to build, the building itself, and lastly the organization of the divine staff serving the needs of Ningirsu and the feast marking the completion of the work.

The perfection and ease of style in the Gudea cylinders show that Gudea's reign was a golden age of literature. In fact under him and in the following period of Ur III, may be placed the main burst of creativity that created Sumerian literature as now known and as it was preserved and handed on in the schools of the Isin-Larsa and Old Babylonian periods which followed Ur III.

Enheduanna — World’s First Named Writer

Enheduana disk

Enheduanna (circa 2354 B.C.) was the first writer whose name was recorded and the first female author. She was the daughter of King Sargon, the great leader of Akkad and the destroyer of Sumeria.Her name means “ornament of heaven” Her birth name is unknown. Yale University Assyriologist Benjamin Foster, said “She’s the only author in the entirety of Sumerian literature whose name we actually know, and the only author in the entire 2,500-year span of Mesopotamian history of whom we have a contemporary illustration.”

Michelle Hart: “Enheduana is becoming known today as the first named author in all of world literature. She is credited by many as having written and compiled what is known as The Sumerian Temple Hymns, consisting of 42 hymns to the temples of Sumer and Akkad as well as a hymnal cycle to the goddess Inanna: 1) in-nin-me-hus-a,(INM), The Myth of Inanna and Ebih, 2) in-nin-sa-gur-ra, (INS),Stout-Hearted Lady, and 3) nin-me-sar-ra,(NMS), Lady of all the Me’s, which is her most famous poem. In addition, Joan Westenholz has also credited her as having written two hymns to the moon god, Nanna [Westenholz,1989]. [Source: Michelle Hart, Angelfire, January, 2001]

Kate Ravilious wrote in Archaeology Magazine: The poetry of Enheduanna, which evokes powerful feelings and records her innermost thoughts, paralleled the revolution in the visual arts. Her work gives scholars a window into rarefied religious and political beliefs of the time, Enheduanna’s song praising Inanna also resonated with later generations of Mesopotamians, most of whom came to speak Akkadian as Sumerian died out, and who regarded the failed rebellion against Naram-Sin as a foundational historical event. The song also became a model of how to interact with the most powerful gods. “For the Akkadians, a ritual involving a song of praise was a crucial means of interaction with the mightiest entities in the universe, who were presumed to have the power to change the course of history,” says Zgoll. By invoking Inanna in the Akkadian Empire’s moment of peril, Enheduanna claimed her place in history not only as the world’s first author, but as a poet who helped ensure the survival of its earliest empire. [Source: Kate Ravilious, Archaeology Magazine, November/December 2022]

Mesopotamian Belles Lettres

Aaron Skaist wrote in the Encyclopaedia Judaica: A certain number of Sumerian myths were translated into Akkadian, seemingly already in Old-Babylonian times, and continued to be copied. Among these were the two Ninurta compositions, Lugal-e, which as has been mentioned, seem to date back to Gudea or earlier, and An-gim-dim4-ma; a bilingual creation myth. [Source: Aaron Skaist, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2005, Encyclopedia.com]

Among Akkadian works, such myths as the one about Anzu and the Atrahasis myth continued to be copied. New additions were the "Dynasty of Dunnum," a tale about the earliest generations of gods, who cheerfully murdered their fathers to take over rule of the world, and then married their mothers or sisters; the myth of "Nergal and Ereshkigal" (cos i, 384–90), which relates how Nergal became lord of the Netherworld and subdued and married its queen, Ereshkigal; and the "Erra Epic" (cos i, 404–16), which describes how Erra tricked Marduk into letting him take over rule of the universe and then embarked upon a veritable orgy of rioting and killing. He was finally pacified by his vizier Ishum, but still had the gall to pride himself on having left "a remnant" and not wiped out everybody. The "Myth of Adapa" (cos i, 449) also deserves mention. Adapa refused, at his master Ea's clever advice, the food of life and water of life offered to him in heaven when he was called to account there before Anu for having broken the wing of the south wind with a spell. Ea, clearly, did not want his clever servant to be other than mortal.

The most substantial and impressive literary work that should be mentioned here is, however, the Babylonian epic of creation Enuma eliš (cos i, 390–402). Scholars differ considerably in their dating of it and estimates range from Old-Babylonian times down to shortly after 1000 B.C. It can be assumed that in essentials it is a creation of late Old-Babylonian times, but that what has been preserved is a late redaction from approximately the beginning of the first millennium B.C. It tells how in the beginning there was only Tiamat, the Sea, and Apsu, the sweet waters under the earth. As their waters mingled the gods were born of them. The gods, as embodiments of activity, found themselves in basic conflict with their first parents. Provoked beyond endurance by the gods, Apsu, at the first, determined to destroy them, but was subdued by Ea with a spell and killed. Ea's son Marduk, playing with the winds which his grandfather Anu had given him, further provoked Tiamat and her brood, and she was brought to attack the gods. She raised an army and placed her second husband, Kingu, in command. Marduk, chosen champion, "king," by the gods, met her in battle and defeated her. Out of her carcass he then created the present universe. Kingu, after he had been indicated as fomenter of the rebellion, was killed, and Marduk had Ea create man from his blood to take over the hard menial work and leave the gods free. Marduk then pardoned those gods who had sided with Tiamat and distributed all the gods as administrators in heaven and on earth. To show their gratitude, the gods then for the last time took tools in hand and built Babylon, the city Marduk had asked for. Here in his temple Esagil they all gathered for a feast and assembly to appoint him permanent king and to celebrate his powers and virtues in 50 names by which they named him, one after the other. The postscript to Enuma eliš suggests that it be read to princes, and it is in fact a paean in praise of the ideal absolute monarch as personified in Marduk. When later in the first millennium the benevolent despot became a rarity in Babylonia, the despot pure and simple seems, in the figure of Erra, to have been a more believable symbol of the power ruling existence. In fact, the Erra Epic looks almost like a deliberate attack on Enuma eliš and its political optimism.

Books and Libraries in Ancient Mesopotamia

A book generally consisted of several tablets, which may consequently be compared with our chapters. At the end of each tablet was a colophon stating what was its number in the series to which it belonged, and giving the first line of the next tablet. The series received its name from the words with which it began; thus the fourth tablet or chapter of the “Epic of the Creation” states that it contains “one hundred and forty-six lines of the fourth tablet (of the work beginning) ‘When on high unproclaimed,’ ” and adds the first line of the tablet which follows. Catalogues were made of the standard books to be found in a library, giving the name of the author and the first line of each; so that it was easy for the reader or librarian to find both the work he wanted and the particular chapter in it he wished to consult. The books were arranged on shelves; M. de Sarzec discovered about 32,000 of them at Tello in Southern Chaldea still in the order in which they had been put in the age of Gudea (2700 B.C.). [Source: “Babylonians And Assyrians: Life And Customs”, Rev. A. H. Sayce, Professor of Assyriology at Oxford, 1900]

Literature of every kind was represented. History and chronology, geography and law, private and public correspondence, despatches from generals and proclamations of the king, philology and mathematics, natural science in the shape of lists of bears and birds, insects and stones, astronomy and astrology, theology and the pseudo-science of omens, all found a place on the shelves, as well as poems and purely literary works. Copies of deeds and contracts, of legal decisions, and even inventories of the property of private individuals, were also stored in the libraries of Babylonia and Assyria, which were thus libraries and archive-chambers in one.

In Babylonia every great city had its collection of books, and scribes were kept constantly employed in it, copying and re-editing the older literature, or providing new works for readers. The re-editing was done with scrupulous care. Where a character was lost in the original text by a fracture of the tablet, the copyist stated the fact, and added whether the loss was recent or not. Where the form of the character was uncertain, both the signs which it resembled are given. Some idea may be formed of the honesty and care with which the Babylonian scribes worked from the fact that the compiler of the Babylonian Chronicle, which contains a synopsis of later Babylonian history, frankly states that he does “not know” the date of the battle of Khalulê, which was fought between the Babylonians and Sennacherib. The materials at his disposal did not enable him to settle it. It so happens that we are in a more fortunate position, as we are able to fix it with the help of the annals of the Assyrian King.

New texts were eagerly collected. The most precious spoils sent to Assur-bani-pal after the capture of the revolted Babylonian cities were tablets containing works which the library of Nineveh did not possess. The Babylonians and Assyrians made war upon men, not upon books, which were, moreover, under the protection of the gods. The library was usually within the walls of a temple; sometimes it was part of the archives of the temple itself. Hence the copying of a text was often undertaken as a pious work, which brought down upon the scribe the blessing of heaven and even the remission of his sins. That the library was open to the public we may infer from the character of some of the literature contained in it. This included private letters as well as contracts and legal documents which could be interesting only to the parties whom they concerned.

Babylonian Literature

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:“Vast as is the material of Babylonian inscriptions, equally varied are their contents. The great majority no doubt of the 300,000 tablets hitherto unearthed deal with business matters rather than with matters literary; contracts, marriage settlements, cadastral surveys, commercial letters, orders for goods or acknowledgments of their receipt, official communications between magistrates and civil or military governors, names, titles, and dates on foundation stones, private correspondence, and so on. Still a fair percentage has a right to be strictly classed as "literature" or "belles-lettres". We must moreover constantly keep in mind that only about one-fifth of the total number of these tablets have been published and that any description of their literature must as yet be fragmentary and tentative. It is convenient to classify as follows: 1) Epics; 2) Psalms; 3) Historical Narratives.” [Source: J.P. Arendzen, transcribed by Rev. Richard Giroux, Catholic Encyclopedia |=|]

Psalms: This species of literature, which formerly seemed almost limited to the Hebrew race, had a luxurious growth on Babylonian soil. These songs to the gods or to some one god are indeed often either weird incantations or dreary litanies; and when after perusal of a good number of them one turns to the Hebrew Psalter, no fair-minded person will deny the almost immeasurable superiority of the latter. On the other hand, naught but unreasoning prejudice would trouble to deny the often touching beauty and nobility of thought in some of these productions of the instinctive piety of a noble race. It is natural moreover that the tone of some Babylonian psalms should strongly remind us of some songs of Israel, where every psalmist boasted that he had as forefather a Babylonian: Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees. Some of these psalms are written in Sumerian with Semitic Babylonian interlinear translations; others in Semitic Babylonian only. They show all sorts of technicalities in versification, parallelism, alliteration, and rhythm. There are acrostics and even double acrostics, the initial and final syllable of each line being the same. These psalms contain praise and supplication of the great gods, but, what is most remarkable, some of them are penitential psalms, the sinner mourning his sin and begging restoration to favour. Moreover, there are a great number of "lamentations" not over personal but over national calamities; and a Babylonian "prophet" wept over the fall of Nippur many centuries before Jeremias wrote his inspired songs of sorrow over the destruction of Jerusalem. Besides these there are numberless omen tablets, magical recipes for all sorts of ills, and rituals of temple service, but they belong to the history of religion and astrology rather than to that of literature.” |=|

Historical Narratives: “The Babylonians seemed to have possessed no ex professo historians, who, like a Herodotus, endeavoured to give a connected narrative of the past. We have to gather their history from the royal inscriptions on monuments and palace walls and state-cylinders, in which each sovereign records his great deeds in perpetuam rei memoriam. Whereas we fortunately possess an abundance of historical texts of the Assyrian kings, thanks to the discovery of Assurbanipal's library, we are as yet not so fortunate in the case of Babylonian kings; of the early Babylonian city-kings we have a number of shorter inscriptions on steles and boundary stones in true lapidary style and longer historical records in the great cylinder inscriptions of Gudea of Lagash. Whereas we possess considerable historical texts of Hammurabi, we possess but very little of his many successors on the Babylonian throne until the Second Babylonian Empire, when long historical texts tell us the doings of Nabopolassar, Nabuchodonosor, and Nabonidus. They are all of a pompous grandeur that palls a little on a Western mind, and their self-adulation comes strange to us. They are in the style which popular imagination is wont to attribute to the utterances of His Celestial Majesty, the Emperor of China. They invariably begin with a long homage to the gods, giving lengthy lists of deities, protectors of the sovereign and state, and end with imprecations on those who destroy, mutilate, or disregard the inscription. The Babylonian royal inscriptions, as far as at present known, are almost without exception peaceful in tone and matter. Their ever recurring themes are the erection, restoration, or adornment of temples and palaces, and the digging of canals. Even when at war, the Babylonian king thought it bad taste to refer to it in his monumental proclamations. No doubt the Babylonians must have despised Assyrian inscriptions as bloodthirsty screeds. Because the genius of Babylon was one of culture and peace; therefore, though a world-centre a thousand years before Ninive, it lasted more than a thousand years after Ninive was destroyed.

In addition to literature given after article Assyria: Boscawen, The First of Empires (2d ed., London, 1905); Bezold, Ninive und Babylon (Leipzig, 1903); Pinches, The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia (London, 1903); Sayce, The Archaeology of the Cuneiform Inscriptions (London, 1907); Jastrow, Die Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens (Giessen, I, 1905; II, 1907); Radau, Early Babylonian History (New York, 1900); Lagrange, Historical Criticism and O.T. (London, 1906); Jeremias, Das Alte Testament in Lichte des alten Orients (Leipzig, 1906); Delitzsch, Babel und Bibel (Leipzig and Stuttgart, 1905) for a collection of texts with immediate bearing on O.T.; Winckler, Keilinschriftliches Textbuch zum Alten Testament (Leipzig, 1903).

Old-Babylonian Literature

Aaron Skaist wrote in the Encyclopaedia Judaica: Cuneiform writing seems to have been used to write Akkadian very early, perhaps already toward the end of the Protoliterate period. Apart from votive inscriptions and royal monumental inscriptions, however, there is little evidence of Akkadian literary activity. Economic texts, contracts, deeds, letters, a few incantations with perhaps a fragment of a royal hymn, seem to be all. It is not until Old-Babylonian times, around 1700 B.C., that more substantial literary activity in Akkadian is attested; quite possibly sparked by a tradition of, and an appreciation for, oral literature among the West Semitic Amorites, who by that time had entered Mesopotamia in large numbers and had furnished such a key ruling dynasty as the First Dynasty of Babylon. [Source: Aaron Skaist, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2005, Encyclopedia.com]

Old-Babylonian literature is, however, clearly written in the country and builds in large measure on Sumerian materials. However, it treats these materials freshly, with notable originality and literary power. The genres represented are first myths, with works such as the "Poem of Agushaya" which tells how Ea created the goddess Saltu, "Strife," to challenge the warlike goddess Ishtar (Agushaya) and the "Myth of Anzu" about the thunderbird which stole the tablets of fate from Enlil, and with them his powers of office. More impressive than these, though, is the remarkable "Myth of Atrahasis," which deals both with the creation of humans and their near destruction by flood (cos i, 450–53).

The gods in those early days had to toil themselves as agricultural workers. After a while, in the first record in history of a strike, they rebelled and rioted in front of Enlil's temple in Nippur. Eventually a compromise was worked out by Enki: a god — presumably the ringleader in the rebellion — was to be killed, and from his flesh and blood man was to be created to take upon himself the toil of the gods. After a while, however, mankind grew so numerous and made so much noise that Enlil found it impossible to sleep. He tried various means to diminish their number and noise, but without lasting effect. Eventually he persuaded the other gods to bring on the Flood and thus to wipe out humanity entirely. Enki, however, as might have been expected, warned his protégé Atrahasis and had him save himself and his family and all species of animals in a big boat. Enlil's anger when he found that a human being had survived was appeased by Enki, who instituted a variety of measures — orders of nuns who were not to conceive and give birth, barren women, and demons killing newborn children — which would serve to hold man's numbers permanently within bounds. Man, the myth seems to say, must know his limitations. He has his place and his useful function in the Universe and will be tolerated by the powers that rule existence, as long as he does not make himself obnoxious to them. The genre of epics is represented by a fragment of the "Epic of Etana" (cos i, 453–57). Etana was the first king, and was carried up to heaven on the back of an eagle he had helped and befriended in order to fetch the plant of birth-giving so that his son could be born. Of special interest are a number of fragments dealing with Gilgamesh.

Hymns to gods and goddesses are well represented. One may mention the Papulegarra Hymn and a hymn to Ishtar with a prayer for Ammi- aduqa. Examples of a new genre, the penitential psalm, which has parallels and perhaps antecedents in the Sumerian "Letters to Gods," makes its appearance. To the genre of love songs, or possibly that of disputes, may be counted a humorous dialogue between a girl and her somewhat naive young man. The dispute genre shows a debate between the tamarisk and the palm. Among the handbook genres mention may be made of the Akkadian "Laws of Eshnunna" and the famous "Code of Hammurapi." They continued — and show distinct influences of — the earlier Sumerian codes of Ur-Nammu and Lipit-Ishtar. Completely new is the prolific genre of omina, which clearly shows work of considerable length and advanced organization of the materials; also the genre of "Mathematical Problem Texts" with the famous Plimpton Tablet, which shows understanding of the laws governing the so-called Pythagorean Theorem, and the Sumerian grammatical texts, which operate with a most ingenious organization scheme, the one column grammatical paradigm.

Standard Babylonian Literature

Aaron Skaist wrote in the Encyclopaedia Judaica: The Old-Babylonian period was followed by a dark age, concerning which little evidence is available. What happened to literature at this time is therefore in some measure a matter for surmise only, but it would seem that a process of selection took place. Only certain works and certain kinds of works survived; others, whether by accident or for reasons of changing taste, were dropped. At the same time there are indications of considerable literary activity during the later half of the Kassite period, from about 1400 B.C. onward. The nature of this activity was to a great extent ordering and canonizing, utilizing more fully the possibilities for organizing and preserving large and complex bodies of data. [Source: Aaron Skaist, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2005, Encyclopedia.com]

At this time, therefore, major series were put together and a standard text established for genre after genre. The result was an emphasis on the informational and utilitarian aspects of literature, rather than on its aesthetic qualities, which is evident not only in the relative number and length of texts in the belletristic and the more practically oriented genres and the vigor and productivity of the latter, but also in the fact that genre like hymns, laments, and prayers through the setting of the texts in instructional framework appear to move toward what have been called the handbook genres. In the belletristic genres proper the spirit of the age leads toward the establishing of relatively large epic cycles such as, e.g., the 12-tablet Gilgamesh epic, trend which was already discernible in the standard body of Sumerian literature.

The standard Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic, for instance, will, with its 12 tablets have covered well over 3,000 lines when complete. Similarly, the appreciation of repetition and ornate description seems to grow. In the genre of laments, for instance, a composition can often be followed from its concise form in the time of standard Sumerian literature to a vastly enlarged, interminably repetitious form which almost makes such narrative elements as it has impossible to follow, in standard Babylonian literature. In part, perhaps such treatment is explicable from the use of the text for recitation in which the music is the main concern. Improved organization, greater length, and less terse language are noticeable also in the genres which specifically grew out of the use of writing to make lasting records: royal memorial inscriptions, legal deeds and contracts, and so on, and which are thus essentially evidential in character. A feature of considerable interest is the occurrence of a tradition about individual authorship of literary works at this time. The works of the standard Babylonian literature may, then, conveniently be considered under the headings of belletristic, handbook, and evidential genres.

Mesopotamian Epics

Aaron Skaist wrote in the Encyclopaedia Judaica: The epics, which deal with great and memorable deeds of men rather than of gods, are more immediately accessible than the myths, which often presuppose a knowledge of what the gods stand for, which is not easily come by. Most of the epics that have come down to us center around rulers of the First Dynasty of Uruk. This was the dynasty from which the kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur thought themselves descended, and it seems likely that what has been transmitted is in effect a choice aimed at the taste of that court, perhaps as it changed with time from one king to the next. [Source: Aaron Skaist, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2005, Encyclopedia.com]

The epic tale "Gilgamesh and Agga (Akka; cos i, 550–52)." It tells how Gilgamesh, vassal ruler of Uruk under Agga of Kish, persuades him to resist performing its corvée duties with weapon in hand. Agga and his longboats soon appear before Uruk's walls. Only Gilgamesh himself is valiant enough to make a successful sortie. He cuts his way to Agga's boat and takes Agga captive. Having thus proved himself, however, he grandly sets Agga free and even reaffirms his overlordship, all in gratitude for the fact that on an earlier occasion Agga had taken Gilgamesh in when the latter sought his protection as a fugitive.

In the epic called after him Lugalbanda is still a young man. It relates how Enmerkar calls up his army for a campaign against the city of Aratta in the eastern highlands. On the march, Lugalbanda falls seriously ill and is left to die in a cave ( urrum) in the mountains by his fellows. He partly recovers, however, and begins fervently to pray to the gods for help. The gods hear his prayers and as he roams the mountains he comes upon the nest of the thunderbird, Anzu, gains its favor, and is granted, at his own wish, supreme powers of speed and endurance. The bird also helps him find his way back to the army, and there, among his comrades,

As for Babylonian epics, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia: “The so called "Seven Tablets of Creation", because written on a series of seven very mutilated tablets in the Kouyunshik Library. Happily the lacunae can here and there be filled up by fragments of duplicates found elsewhere. Borrowing an expression from the early Teuton literature, this might be called the "saga of the primeval chaos". Assyrian scribes called it by its first words "Enuma Elish" (When on high) as the Jews called Genesis "Bereshith" (in the beginning). Although it contains an account of the world's origin, as above contrasted with the account given in the Bible, it is not so much a cosmogony as the story of the heroic deeds of the god Marduk, in his struggle with the Dragon of Chaos. Though the youngest of the gods, Marduk is charged by them to fight Tiamtu and the gods on her side. He wins a glorious victory; he takes the tablets of fate from Kimgu, her husband; he splits open her skull, hews asunder the channels of her blood and makes the north wind carry it away to hidden places. He divides the corpse of the great Dragon and with one half makes a covering for the heavens and thus fixes the waters above the firmament. He then sets about fashioning the universe, and the stars, and the moon; he forms man. "Let me gather my blood and let me set up a man, let me make then men dwelling on the earth." When Marduk has finished his work, he is acclaimed by all the gods with joy and given fifty names. The gods are apparently eager to bestow their own titles upon him. The aim of the poem clearly is to explain how Marduk, the local god of as modern a city as Babylon, had displaced the deities of the older Babylonian cities, "the gods his fathers". [Source: J.P. Arendzen, transcribed by Rev. Richard Giroux, Catholic Encyclopedia |=|]

Babylonian Epics with Parallels to Dante's Inferno and Paradise Lost

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia: “The Adapa-Legend, a sort of "Paradise Lost", probably a standard work of Babylonian literature, as it is found not only in the Ninive library, but even among the Amarna tablets in Egypt. It relates how Adapa, the wise man or Atrachasis, the purveyor to the sanctuary of Ea, is deceived, through the envy of Ea. Anu, the Supreme God, invites him to Paradise, offers him the food and drink of immortality, but Adapa, mistakenly thinking it poison, refuses, and loses life everlasting. Anu scornfully says: "Take him and bring him back to his earth." |[Source: J.P. Arendzen, transcribed by Rev. Richard Giroux, Catholic Encyclopedia |=|]

“"Ishtar's Descent into the Underworld" here and there bearing a surprising resemblance to well-known lines of Dante's Inferno. The goddess of Erech goes:
“To the land whence no one ever returneth,
To the house of gloom where dwelleth Irkalla,
To the house which one enters but nevermore leaveth,
On the way where there is no retracing of footsteps,
To the house which one enters, and daylight all ceases.” |=|

“On an Amarna tablet we find a description ghostly and graphic of a feast, a fight, and a wedding in hell. Likewise fragments of legendary stories about the earliest Babylonian kings have come down to us. One of the most remarkable is that in which Sargon of Akkad, born of a vestal maiden of high degree, is exposed by his mother in a basket of bulrushes and pitch floating on the waters of the Euphrates; he is found by a water carrier and brought up as a gardener. This story cannot but remind us of Moses' birth. |=|

Elegiac Myths

Aaron Skaist wrote in the Encyclopaedia Judaica: Whereas the praise in myths, epics, and hymns is directed toward extant values, in the elegiac genres it is focused on values lost and longed for. In elegiacs corresponding to the myth are narrative accounts of the death of gods; in those corresponding to the epic, accounts of the death of kings and heroes; and in those corresponding to the hymn, dirges for gods, temples, and kings, and in very rare cases for ordinary human dead. [Source: Aaron Skaist, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2005, Encyclopedia.com]

A number of works whose central theme is the death and loss of gods may be characterized as elegiac myths. Among these are first of all a number of cult texts from the cult of the dying gods such as Dumuzi and Damu, apparently meant to be sung as accompaniment to ritual acts such as, e.g., processions into the desert to Dumuzi's deserted fold. An example of such an elegiac is "The Wild Bull Who Has Lain Down," in which Inanna seeks her dead husband, killed by the men of the Bison in the mountains. Another example is "The Bitter Cry For Her Husband," which tells of the attack on Dumuzi's fold, his escape, and his death as he tries to swim to safety across the swollen Euphrates in its flood. Many others could be quoted.

Perhaps the longest such composition is Edinna u saga, "In the Desert in the Early Grass," a Dumuzi text with long insertions of related Damu materials. It tells of the disappearance of the god, and follows his mother and sister as they search for him. It relates how the rough deputies of the Netherworld tore him away from his mother in Girsu on the Euphrates, how she is determined to stand in the gate of their superior claiming her son back, how she asks the cane-brake about him, and how she finally takes the road of no return to the Netherworld. Eventually, it seems, it is his sister rather than his mother who reaches him there. A somewhat similar narrative dealing with Damu describes how his sisters wish to board the boat on which he is taken captive and bound to the Netherworld by a deputy from there, and how on arrival there the deputy's superior frees Damu. While these and other compositions seem to have been used in the cult, purely literary accounts of the attack on Dumuzi and his death are also found. One such is "Dumuzi's Dream" of which we spoke above under myths.

Elegiac epic may be defined as epic tales centering around the death of a king or hero, which do not, however, treat that death as heroic, but rather as pure loss. Such tales are "The Death of Gilgamesh," which we mentioned earlier. It treats of the death and burial of Gilgamesh and contains a long address to him by Enlil, in which Enlil tries to reconcile Gilgamesh to his mortality. Of particular interest in that it shows how old the traditions on which the epic genres build are, is the fact that this text has preserved memories of the ancient custom of having the servants of a ruler follow their master also in death. This custom, which existed in the times of Gilgamesh, is also attested to by the finds in the royal graves of Ur excavated by L. Woolley but must have been abandoned long before the times of the Third Dynasty of Ur. Another work in this genre is "The Death of Ur-Namma," which tells of the death and burial of Ur-Namma, of the honored role he is given in the Netherworld, and, in spite of this, his unhappiness about all he left behind him unfinished.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Mesopotamia sourcebooks.fordham.edu , National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, especially Merle Severy, National Geographic, May 1991 and Marion Steinmann, Smithsonian, December 1988, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated June 2024