How did the world come to be the way it is and what is our place within it? These difficult questions have plagued and stimulated mankind for millennia and the responses found in Sumerian literature are amongst the world’s oldest surviving attempts to tackle them.
A multiplicity of Sumerian creation myths address both the formation of the gods and the construction of the human world. At the beginning of The debate between Sheep and Grain we are taken back to a time before agriculture, when the gods dwelt together on the Holy Mound, created by An, the supreme deity. In Enki and the world order it is Enki who is the creative force, ordering, naming, and allocating responsibility for different aspects of human endeavour to the various gods. In Ninurta’s exploits (Group E), on the other hand, Ninurta finds uses for the various defeated stones and invents the agricultural basis of Sumerian society.
The fragmentary Flood story, by contrast, is about destruction as much as creation, as the original population is wiped out, save for Zi-ud-sura and his followers. The primeval Flood was a powerful motif in Sumerian literature, dividing the past into antediluvian and historical time (see also The instructions ofSuruppag, Group I). At another level, it was a way of coming to terms with the potentially catastrophic inundations from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers every spring caused by the snow melting up in the Taurus mountains at their source.
The landscape of Sumer was an extraordinarily flat alluvial plain. Without careful and labour-intensive water management whole cities could be deluged, or major rivers divert their courses overnight. Canals and irrigation ditches crisscrossed the land, enabling intensive grain agriculture. But herding was equally important to the Sumerian economy, on the field boundaries, fallow land, and uncultivated areas beyond the reach of the watercourses. The tension between the two is expressed in The debate between Sheep and Grain (as indeed in DumuzidandEnkimdu, Group B, in which the shepherd and the farmer vie for Inana’s love).
In the undrained marshland, where thick banks of reeds could grow two metres high, a rich wild flora and fauna flourished. Reeds and other plant products provided essential construction materials for everything from domestic utensils to houses and boats, while the native birds and fish were also hunted and consumed. The debate between Bird and Fish vigorously sets out their more unappetizing features (the smell, the droppings) as well as their benefits to humankind. The heron and the turtle, on the other hand, is not in the least concerned with human utility but vividly dramatizes the predatory dangers of nature in the raw. The narrator of The home of the fish humorously stresses the comforts of the domestic over the hazards of the wild to lure his prey out of the perilous marshland, alive with ravenous fish-eating birds, and into the safety of the homely fish trap.
Hills and mountains were not a feature of the Sumerian local landscape and were therefore seen as particularly magical and thrilling places. (The marshes by contrast, are a familiar environment, of no special danger to human beings.) The cedar forests of Lebanon are inhabited by a spirit, who turns out to be much less threatening than the hero imagines (Gilgames andHuwawa, Group J), while the Zagros mountains of Iran are initially a frightening place in which to be ill, abandoned, and alone (Lugalbanda in the mountain cave, Group A). Rebellions and threats to the calm order of Sumer all stem from the mountain lands too (see for instance Inana and Ebih, Group J, The lament for Sumer and Urim, Group D, The cursing of Agade, Group C). But, in the literary tradition at least, there is always the comfort that the gods of Sumer will prevail and order will return to the Land.
FURTHER READING
Black, J. A., ‘The Sumerians in their Landscape’, in T. Abusch (ed.), Riches Hidden in Secret Places: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Memory of Thorkild Jacobsen (Eisen-brauns: Winona Lake, Ind., 2002), pp. 41-61.
Kramer, S. N., and Maier, J., Myths of Enki, the Crafty God (Oxford University Press: New York/Oxford, 1989).
Reinink, G. J., and Vanstiphout, H. L. J. (eds.), Dispute Poems and Dialogues in the Ancient and Medieval Near East: Forms and Types of Literary Debates in Semitic and Related Literatures (Departement Orientalistiek: Leuven, 1991) places the Sumerian debate poems at the start of a long tradition in the Middle East.
Veldhuis, N., Religion, Literature and Scholarship: The Sumerian Composition NanSe and the Birds (Styx: Groningen, forthcoming) relates The home of the fish and other Sumerian literary works to scribal school exercises.
OTHER COMPOSITIONS ON THIS THEME INCLUDE
Group A The death of Ur-Namma Group B Dumuzid and Enkimdu A hymn to Inana Group C Sulgi and Ninlil’s barge The cursing of Agade
Group D The lament for Sumer and Urim A balbale to Nanna The herds of Nanna Group E Ninurta’s exploits
A balbale to Ninurta
Group F Lu-digira’s message to his mother A love song for Isme-Dagan Group H An adab to Bau for Isme-Dagan A sir-namsub to Utu
A sir-namursaga to Inana for Iddin-Dagan Group I The instructions of Suruppag A hymn to Nisaba Group J A praise poem of Sulgi
A praise poem of Lipit-Estar The song of the hoe Enlil in the E-kur The KeS temple hymn
World History
