The Decad is the clearest example we have of a curricular grouping of Sumerian literary compositions. As its name suggests, there are ten works in the group. Evidence for its existence comes from a variety of sources.
First, there are two ancient catalogues of Sumerian literary works, one excavated at Nibru (Literary catalogue from Nibru), and one unprovenanced but strikingly similar to the first, which both start by listing the members of the Decad in the same order. Another one, from Sippar, shares the first nine of those entries. Second, several large tablets and four-sided clay prisms contain sequences of two or more Decad compositions in identical order to the catalogues.
The catalogues and ‘collective’ tablets prove the existence of a fixed sequence of ten literary works which clearly has no overriding thematic principles. It starts with two very different royal hymns of self-praise, one focused on a particular event and the other very generally on the attributes of good kingship. Then comes The song of the hoe, an extraordinary extended play on the syllable al ‘hoe’. Three hymns to major deities and temples follow: to Inana, ostensibly by En-hedu-ana, daughter of king Sargon the Great; to Enlil and his temple E-kur; and to the great temple at Kes. Continuing the temple thread, Enki’s journey to Nibru is a narrative centred around the construction of his temple E-Engur in Eridug, then Inana and Ebih moves us firmly to the realm of mythical battles. A hymn to the minor goddess Nungal, patron deity of prisons (which once again is as much about a building as a deity), is followed by an epic adventure which pits GilgameS and his servant Enkidu against Huwawa, spirit of the cedar forests.
What the Decad members do have in common is length—all are between I00 and 200 lines long—and an absence of formal divisional and generic labels that appear to mark out the hymnic genres (see Group H). And they were very widely copied: nearly 80 manuscripts, on average, are known for each Decad composition, compared to a small handful for most Sumerian literary works. Some 80 per cent of known Decad tablets are from Nibru, and a third of those—a quarter of the total—are from the scribal school now called House F (see the Introduction to this book). This is the clinching evidence for the Decad as a curricular sequence as opposed to some other sort of grouping: even within House F it stands out as having some twenty manuscript sources for each composition compared to an overall average of eight tablets per work across the house as a whole.
Two other curricular sequences of Sumerian literary works are known. The four-member Tetrad, including A hymn to Nisaba (Group I), sometimes served as a bridge between elementary scribal education and Sumerian literary studies, and is well attested from Unug and Isin as well as Larsa. The ‘House F Fourteen’, as its name suggests, is another group of literary works well attested at House F (with around eighteen manuscript sources each) and partially represented in the ancient catalogues, but which did not have the same currency as the Decad, even within Nibru.
FURTHER READING
Tinney, S. J., ‘On the Curricular Setting of Sumerian Literature’, Iraq, 59 (1999), 159—72, presents the evidence for the existence of the Tetrad and Decad. Vanstiphout, H. L. J., ‘How Did they Learn Sumerian?’ Journal of Cuneiform Studies, 31 (1979), 118—26, analyses a Sumerian literary work (which we now know belongs to the Tetrad) in purely pedagogical terms.
Veldhuis, N., ‘Sumerian Proverbs in their Curricular Context’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 120 (2000), 383—99, shows how proverbs fit into elementary education at Nibru.
OTHER COMPOSITIONS KNOWN TO BELONG TO CURRICULAR GROUPINGS INCLUDE
Group A Gilgames, Enkidu, and the Underworld Group B Dumuzid’s dream Group C The cursing of Agade Group E Ninurta’s exploits Group G The debate between Sheep and Grain Group I A supervisor’s advice to a young scribe The instructions of Suruppag A hymn to Nisaba
World History
