A Contribution to the History of Interaction of Akkadian and Sumerian Literature: Enki and Ninmaḫ and Atraḫasis (original) (raw)

The Reception of Sumerian Literature in the Western Periphery. Antichistica 9/Studi Orientali 4

With written sources dated to the end of the fourth millennium B.C., Sumerian is the most ancient language so far documented and remained the language of education in scribal circles for over three millennia. In the Late Bronze Age the dissemination of Sumerian literature, which is best known from Old Babylonian sources, reached the Western periphery, i.e. Syria and Anatolia. This book investigates the transmission of Sumerian literary texts to the Western periphery and offers a comprehensive study of Sumerian literature in the Late Bronze Age.

On the Time of Composition of the Hitherto Undated Sumerian Myths

Studia Orientalia Tartuensia, 2019

The paper points out several similarities in the myths Enki and the World Order, Enki's Journey to Nippur and Enki and Inanna, which seem to reflect the material or ideology also present in the Isin era royal poetry and inscriptions. The objective is not to claim that all the mythological ideas present in the analysed texts had to be created in the Isin period. Large part of the mythological motives used in these myths probably have their origins going back already to the mythology of the Early Dynastic period. The major Sumerian myths are all full of ancient mythological motives which were accessible through written records as well as by their presence in oral folklore or story-telling. However, in addition to the almost precisely datable city-laments, several Sumerian myths also might have originated from the mythological thinking of the Isin period. Mythological motives and sometimes almost identical textual parallels and ideological aspects lead to the conclusion that the myths Enki and the World Order, Enki's Journey to Nippur and Enki and Inanna are most probably Isin time compositions reflecting the ideology and ideological needs of that dynasty and its priests and officials. The chronology of historical Mesopotamian texts is relatively easy to determine since the royal inscriptions and royal hymns, as well as many other literary and official texts, often also mention the name of the ruler

"Introduction: How to Tell a Story in Ancient Mesopotamia” (with Dahlia Shehata). In Contemporary Approaches to Mesopotamian Literature: How to Tell a Story, ed. Dahlia Shehata and Karen Sonik, 1–8. Leiden: Brill, 2024

Contemporary Approaches to Mesopotamian Literature: How to Tell a Story, 2024

This chapter lays theoretical and methodological groundwork for the contemporary analysis of Sumerian and Akkadian narratives. It begins with an introduction to the unique features of the cuneiform literary corpus; the new online tools, databases, and publications that are rendering Sumerian and Akkadian narratives increasingly accessible; and key terms, definitions, and issues of classification and genre as they pertain to Mesopotamian literary texts. Much of the central part of the chapter is dedicated to a consideration of the “lives” of Mesopotamian literary texts, from the earliest known written narratives in the third millennium BCE to some of the standardized compositions of the late second and first millennium BCE, as well as to issues of authorship. The chapter concludes with an outline of key contemporary approaches to Sumerian and Akkadian narratives as drawn from literary theory, beginning with an emphasis on narratological and intertextual approaches and concluding with approaches drawn from theories of the novel and of fiction.

Originators in the Old Babylonian Sumerian literary tradition

Hungarian Assyriological Review 3, 2022

In the Mesopotamian scribal culture, the compositions’ lack of titles and authors was justified by their oral origin. As pieces of literature gained their written form gradually, compilers and editors of the texts were responsible for the long process of selection, edition as well as the arrangement and rearrangement of the material. This resulted in an anonymous and somewhat chaotic textual culture. The birth of the author, or rather, the emergence of several models of authorship attempted to establish order in this chaos. In this paper, I propose four models of attributed authorship based on examples from the Old Babylonian period and elaborate on the functions related to each. Attributed authorship, as I argue, aimed to anchor selected literary compositions in time and space. Authors contributed to the classification and interpretation of a body of ancient or invented literary tradition. Furthermore, attributed authors contributed to the preservation of a given text as a unit that might otherwise have been subject to disintegration or further revision and redaction.

Akkadian and Sumerian Language Contact

The mutual influence of East-Semitic Akkadian and isolate Sumerian on each other is the first known and documented example of contact-induced language change. Speakers of East-Semitic and Sumerian may have been in contact for over a thousand years, and the contact resulted in similarities on the level of phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon. This chapter describes the linguistic traits of Akkadian that may have developed under the influence of Sumerian. Except for a considerable number of loanwords from Sumerian, this influence manifests itself in shared patterns, categories, constructions, and meanings but not in loaned forms, a fact which alone may be an indication of prolonged and stable bilingualism.

Analytical study of Sumerian languages and religions

Throughout human history and to not expose himself to any risks, avoiding fears, premonition, and his apprehension, human being have been in a constant struggle to understand his surroundings and the secrets of natural phenomena, following his advantages and making it a method and principles for his daily life and survival. concurrently rejecting hostile forces as evil in order to overcome the disadvantages, this reflects into the sphere of the history of mythology and cosmology, In addition to language development. At first their thoughts revolve around things that caught their eyes like the phenomenon of night and day, through their occurrence and their resulting qualities, they felt the advantages and the disadvantages. So they began to realize that the night and its darkness bring fear, distress and discomfort, unlike the light of the day, which brings tranquility, happiness and joy. So when the sun rises and spreads its rays, they used the adjective mono, the first rank, and the adjective of prominence to it.