This composition can perhaps best be described as a fable, although one scene, where one of the two protagonists takes her case to the god Enki in Eridug for adjudication, resembles the debates (The debate between Sheep and
Grain and The debate between Bird and Fish). The last part of the composition is missing completely, and the second half of what survives is damaged and difficult to make sense of.
The turtle and the heron are portrayed as having human characters. The quarrelsome and malicious turtle overturns the heron’s nest, tipping out her fledgelings and bloodying the bird herself in the ensuing struggle.
Enki’s response is damaged but seems to involve building a construction of some sort, possibly a sluice or gate that would protect the heron’s nest from the turtle in future (A107—66). A subsequent damaged episode (A167-208) has Enki creating a vegetable from the dirt under his fingernail (see Inana’s descent to the Underworld, Group B, lines 222—5). This leads to the growth of the flax plant, which may have been used to make linen cord for a hunting net. The remainder of the fable, which still includes the turtle, is obscure and unrecoverable at present.
The opening section (A1—21) of this composition evokes the tone of an oral folk-tale, setting the location over quite a wide range of areas along the major rivers, wherever there were reed-beds, including Tutub (on the river Diyala), Aksak (on the Tigris), and Eridug and Urim (near the Euphrates). Different types of reeds and aquatic plants typical of these regions are described, with their appearance characterized in human terms. The various plants are repeatedly named through the composition, reinforcing the marshland landscape setting.
World History
