The short narrative poem Enlil and Nam-zid-tara is like a fable or a folk-tale. Nam-zid-tara is a gudug priest. Mesopotamian temples had elaborate and complex hierarchies of staff, from temple administrators to courtyard sweepers, and including a bewildering variety of religious practitioners with particular specialities, such as diviners, magicians, snake charmers, musicians and dancers, not to mention the butchers, cooks, and brewers who were responsible for preparing the daily meals offered regularly to the gods. The gudug priests were not a very elevated rank of religious personnel, and were not specialized to the cult of a particular deity but served in many temples.
Nam-zid-tara has been performing his priestly duties at a temple and is walking home. The god Enlil disguises himself as a raven before accosting the priest and engaging him in conversation. In their exchange, Nam-zid-tara is able to recognize that the raven really is Enlil, and is not merely claiming to be. Replying to the god, he alludes to a rather obscure myth about the captivity of En-me-sara, an ancient god known from other sources as an ancestor of Enlil. Enlil is evidently impressed by the priest’s knowledge and in return assigns a blessing of some sort to Nam-zid-tara and the gudug priests in general, to ‘come and go regularly’ in the temple of Enlil.
Clearly the narrative is rather abbreviated, and the full details would have been known to the original audience. The motif of a god disguising his true appearance as an animal before speaking to a human is well known from folk-tales from around the world, as is the contrast between a supremely powerful god and a humble human. Similarly the motif of an animal that can speak with a human voice is a feature of other Sumerian narratives (for instance the fly who addresses Inana at the end of Inana’s descent to the Underworld, Group B). The idea that the gudug priests were rewarded in perpetuity because of a clever response by one of their number might suggest that this little tale originated in the milieu of these temple servants.
World History
