Reading Akkadian Prayers (Still)

With the Ludlul volume done and at the printers, I've got my next project off and running. Reading Akkadian Prayers, introduced here, here, and here, is now my primary research project for the next eight months. It's already been accepted to the SBL's Ancient Near East Monographs series (about which, see my essay here). I've assigned myself 8 of the 30 prayers in the volume. About eight others will work on the remaining 22. I also have to write the volume's introduction, which I'll do this summer.

For now, I'm working on the technical notes to the fourth of my eight prayers; it's a shuilla called Marduk 4 (according to Werner Mayer's numbering of the prayers). Here's a draft sample of the opening lines of this interesting prayer. This also gives you an idea of what this new volume will do for 30 prayers, totaling over 700 lines of Akkadian. For a sample of an entire prayer, go here.

{{I'm posting the sample in a Unicode font (Dejavu) that is supposed to display correctly. I'd like to know if it doesn't.}}

1. én ur.sag ^damar.utu šá e-ziz-su a-bu-bu

2. nap-šur-šu a-bu re-mé-nu-ú

3. qa-bu-ú u la še-mu-ú id-dal-pan-ni

4. ša-su-ú u la a-pa-lu id-da-ṣa-an-ni

5. am-ma-ti-ia ina lìb-bi-ia uš-te-ṣi-ma

---

Line 1: én = šiptu, “incantation.” This word marks the beginning of the prayer. It is not a part of the prayer itself. ur.sag = qarrādu, “hero, warrior.” ^damar.utu = Marduk. Ezēzu, “to be(come) angry, furious.” Ezissu is a 3ms predicative + 3ms (resumptive) pronominal suffix, which literally means “his being angry,” that is, Marduk’s present state of rage. It is best rendered by “his anger.” The pronominal suffix resumes the relative pronoun ša at the head of the nominal phrase (ša ezissu abūbu). Abūbu, “flood.” The prayer opens immediately with an invocation filled with divine epithets for Marduk.

qarrādu Marduk ša ezissu abūbu

Line 2: Napšuru (N of pašāru), “to be released, to be reconciled to, to be dissipated.” Abu, “father.” Rēmēnû, “merciful.” Abu, a positive image here, plays on the negative abūbu in line 1. The use of eziz and napšur here at the beginning of the prayer recalls the second line in the opening hymn of Ludlul (see page 000): eziz mūši muppašir urri, “he is angry at night but relenting at daybreak” (I 2).

napšuršu abu rēmēnû

Line 3: Qabû, “to speak.” Lā, “not.” Šemû, “to hear.” The infinitives are being used as nouns here (more specifically, gerunds), “speaking and not hearing.” Ineffective speech, to speak an unheeded word, is a common Mesopotamian concern. When in the context of other humans, this anxiety may be related to a (perceived) loss of communal respect or self-esteem. In a context of divine communication, the supplicant expresses worries that his petitions are ignored. The heavens have become brass. Dalāpu, “to keep someone awake, to harrass.” The –dd– in the verb is the result of an assimilation of the perfect’s infixed –t. See also the verb in line 4.

qabû u lā šemû iddalpanni

Line 4: Šasû, “to shout, to call out.” Apālu, “to answer.” Dâṣu, “to treat with injustice, to treat with disrespect.” With perfect grammatical parallelism, line 4 restates line 3; semantically speaking, however, the two lines bear witness to an intensifying of the anxiety. The verbs in the lines move from reception of the spoken word (“hearing”) to active response (“answering”), precisely what the supplicant wants (but does not get).

šasû u lā apālu iddāṣanni

Line 5: Ammatu, literally, “forearm, cubit,” but seems to have a metaphorical meaning here (and only here), “strength” (see CAD A/2, 70, which says the meaning of this passage is uncertain). Libbu, “heart, mind.” Šūṣû (Š of aṣû), “to cause to go out, to expel.” Given the odd use of ammatu and the same word’s phonological similarities to amatu, “word, matter,” one might well wonder if there is a double meaning to this line. The primary one is clear: the supplicant’s strength is sapped; the secondary one, reading the verb as a 1cs, is more subtle: the supplicant has revealed the secrets of his heart, presumably to the god. For amata šūṣû, “to reveal a matter (i.e., secret),” see CAD A/2, 372–373. On this reading, line 5 is a sort of conceptual pivot point between lines 3–4 and line 6.

ammatīya ina libbīya uštēṣī-ma

A Book Trailer

Here's a book trailer I made for my wife's new (as yet unpublished) novel, set in Iceland, c. 998 CE.

Be sure and turn up the volume. The music is quiet at first.

Click here for a larger version.

2009 in Academic Review

Six classes taught (2 spring, 1 summer,  3 fall).
Three papers accepted to journals.
One co-authored text edition manuscript completed.
Two book reviews written.
Two conference papers presented.
Two grants written.
Two community lectures delivered.
One book proposal accepted.
One public lecture organized.
One invited academic lecture given.
One conference session moderated.
One faculty seminar led (six 3-hour sessions).
Third year review passed.

Literature is Dangerous

Looking back over my reading habits for the last ten or fifteen years, I have to admit that I just don't read a lot of fiction. I've usually had so much to read that was related to my education, my teaching, my research, and/or things I want to know about in other fields of knowledge that I just haven't made enough time for fiction, whether classic literature or contemporary works of fiction. I have tried, however, to make more time for it in 2009 and it's been very enriching . . . and discomfiting. Why? Because literature is dangerous. And I think it's this very quality that makes it all the more important for me to make more room for fiction in my reading schedule for 2010 and beyond.

Literature is dangerous on a lot of different levels, but I want to focus on how literature is dangerous to individuals (societies or political entities are not in my view here).

Literature is dangerous because it makes us see through other people's eyes---all kinds of other people---as they live through all kinds of events and situations that may be very different from our own circumstances. Don't you think that's dangerous? If we live through these alien circumstances while seeing through other people's eyes, we may learn something, something that makes us see the smallness of our own viewpoint, the quaintness of our own well-inscribed boundaries, the pettiness of some of our own characteristics, the arbitrariness of our own place in the world. We may rethink our values, our priorities, our relationships, our life-philosophy or religion. Everything is potentially up for grabs, it seems to me, when we take another person's viewpoint and circumstances seriously. And that's what good fiction does, even good fiction that would fall short of the loaded-label of "literature." When we read, we empathize with another person, sometimes unexpectedly. We allow their choices, their values, their ideas to wash over us as we follow their story. Sometimes this attracts us to the character and at others, it repulses us. But in either case, following the story, living with the characters causes us to react. And reactions in humans can be complex and unpredictable. Fiction can change us. Ask anyone. And that's why literature is dangerous.

But here's the thing about danger: it's what makes the story worth reading. Without some conflict, some obstacle, some danger, why read? If that's true about fiction, what does it say about the importance of danger in our own lives, by which I mean the danger of opening ourselves up to others' viewpoints in the course of a literary journey? I need to read more fiction in 2010.

I know I'm not saying anything new here. And I'm sure countless others have said the same thing more eloquently or with a view to much broader implications (e.g., it's no accident that governments have often tried to censor works of fiction). But I'm thinking about it today on a personal level for good reason: because I'm reading some great fiction. And I wanted to write out my thoughts about my thoughts here: it's part of my reaction.

Oxford UP Gift Certificate

Yep, I got a $25 gift certificate to that over-priced university press that publishes a ton of really interesting books that I can't afford. Why I got this gift certificate has nothing to do with Christmas. About a month ago I got an email from OUP asking me to fill out a survey on-line. They promised a $25 gift certificate if I would. So I did (in five minutes) and they made good on their promise. I got it yesterday. And this is what I bought:

Here's the description from their website:

The family dinner, the client luncheon, the holiday spread--the idea of people coming together for a meal seems the most natural thing in the world. But that is certainly not the case for most other members of the animal kingdom. In Feast , archeologist Martin Jones presents both historic and modern scientific evidence to illuminate how prehistoric humans first came to share food and to trace the ways in which the human meal has shaped our cultural evolution.

Jones shows that by studying the activities of our closest animal relative, the chimpanzee, and by unearthing ancient hearths, some more than 30,000 years old, scientists have been able to piece together a picture of how our ancient ancestors found, killed, cooked, and divided food. In sites uncovered all over the world, fragments of bone, remnants of charred food, pieces of stone or clay serving vessels, and the outlines of ancient halls tell the story of how we slowly developed the complex traditions of eating we recognize in our own societies today. Jones takes us on a tour of the most fascinating sites and artifacts that have been discovered, and shows us how archeologists have made many fascinating discoveries. In addition, he traces the rise of such recent phenomena as biscuits, "going out to eat," and the Thanksgiving-themed TV dinner.

From the earliest evidence of human consumption around half a million years ago to the era of the drive-through diner, this fascinating account unfolds the history of the human meal and its profound impact on human society.

Looks like a fun diversion, no?

Cover of Ludlul SAACT 7

Here's a penutlimate version of the cover for Ludlul SAACT 7.

Sumerians Look on in Confusion as Christian God Creates World

{Update: You may think the story below is poking fun at a straw man. But read this part of the Statement of Faith at Wheaton, and you'll understand the humor a bit more I think:

WE BELIEVE that God directly created Adam and Eve, the historical parents of the entire human race; and that they were created in His own image, distinct from all other living creatures, and in a state of original righteousness.

According to first paragraph of the Statement, "[t]he doctrinal statement of Wheaton College, reaffirmed annually by its Board of Trustees, faculty, and staff, provides a summary of biblical doctrine that is consonant with evangelical Christianity."

Biologists, geologists, archaeologists, biblical scholars, and everyone else at Wheaton are supposed to affirm that statement! I'll bet there are plenty of people crossing their fingers when they sign the statement.}

Members of the earth's earliest known civilization, the Sumerians, looked on in shock and confusion some 6,000 years ago as God, the Lord Almighty, created Heaven and Earth.

According to recently excavated clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform script, thousands of Sumerians—the first humans to establish systems of writing, agriculture, and government—were working on their sophisticated irrigation systems when the Father of All Creation reached down from the ether and blew the divine spirit of life into their thriving civilization.

"I do not understand," reads an ancient line of pictographs depicting the sun, the moon, water, and a Sumerian who appears to be scratching his head. "A booming voice is saying, 'Let there be light,' but there is already light. It is saying, 'Let the earth bring forth grass,' but I am already standing on grass."

"Everything is here already," the pictograph continues. "We do not need more stars."

Historians believe that, immediately following the biblical event, Sumerian witnesses returned to the city of Eridu, a bustling metropolis built 1,500 years before God called for the appearance of dry land, to discuss the new development. According to records, Sumerian farmers, priests, and civic administrators were not only befuddled, but also took issue with the face of God moving across the water, saying that He scared away those who were traveling to Mesopotamia to participate in their vast and intricate trade system.

Moreover, the Sumerians were taken aback by the creation of the same animals and herb-yielding seeds that they had been domesticating and cultivating for hundreds of generations.

"The Sumerian people must have found God's making of heaven and earth in the middle of their well-established society to be more of an annoyance than anything else," said Paul Helund, ancient history professor at Cornell University. "If what the pictographs indicate are true, His loud voice interrupted their ancient prayer rituals for an entire week."

According to the cuneiform tablets, Sumerians found God's most puzzling act to be the creation from dust of the first two human beings.

"These two people made in his image do not know how to communicate, lack skills in both mathematics and farming, and have the intellectual capacity of an infant," one Sumerian philosopher wrote. "They must be the creation of a complete idiot."

----------

This piece is part of The Onion's Our Annual Year: The Top 10 Stories Of The Last 4.5 Billion Years

(HT: Agade Listserve)

A Staple Evangelical Genre . . . "How My Ministry Almost Destroyed My Marriage"

It's a common tale with an unspoken, but well-known form: the Evangelical "how-my-ministry-almost-destroyed-my-marriage" tale. My limited field data (my anecdotal knowledge) restricts my ability to make global generalizations, but I can say that this folktale is prevalent among American Evangelicals. I would not be surprised, however, if its geographic distribution is as widespread as Evangelicalism itself.

I recall hearing a number of variants of this tale as a child, especially from on-the-road evangelists, church planters, and over-worked assistant/youth pastors. I heard it almost monthly at the Bible college I attended. I didn't think much about it really back then until I got married (8/17/1991). After that, I cringed every time I heard another rendition of the tale. Despite not attending any Evangelical church for years, I've recently come across another version of this tale (I won't say where so the person doesn't feel I'm picking on them). As an unbeliever, I think I now really understand this tale and the reasons for its varied propagation. So I offer here a brief summary of the form of the tale and running analysis.

Before I do, let me preface my analysis with this: My thinking about this matter is a generalization based on my 35 years spent in some form of American Evangelicalism. It is my opinion. I'm not a sociologist of religion. My analysis of this collective form is not intended to derogate individual's who have experienced something like the tale recounts. (Or those who did lose their marriage because of ministry.) It is clear that the tale arises from real experiences within these religious communities. And the telling of the tale is certainly well-intentioned by those doing the telling; they are trying to share their hard-won wisdom with others so these others are spared the trauma the teller recounts. Still, this insider perspective is only part of the story. My analysis tries to see another perspective, one that is essentially hidden from the insider. This perspective unmasks some of the ways the tale perpetuates specific social structures. 

So on with the summary and analysis.

The "how-my-ministry-almost-destroyed-my-marriage" tale is always spoken by a male. Female tellers are non-existent. Why? The leadership of American Evangelicalism has been predominantly male, and the telling of the tale perpetuates the justification of that leadership implicitly (see below).

The tale always begins with the man describing his zeal for the Lord, his passion for "the lost," his missionary heart, or his desire to "make a difference" with his ministry. This is the first layer of context for the man's "fall" and recovery.

The tale also very often talks about how wonderful and caring his wife is/was or how strong and loving their marriage is/was. This provides the audience with the second layer of context: the guy's marriage started off solid. This and what I described in the previous paragraph convince  the audience that our teller of the tale was a "good Christian man." His heart and house were in order.

The tale proceeds to a second stage wherein the teller describes his inability to keep things in perspective. He was so zealous for the Lord, so concerned about "the lost," or so keen on going on the mission field in Zimbabwe that he lost focus of the other defining feature of his status as a "good Christian man": his marriage. Rarely does one hear a confession of infidelity. One hears rather about how the man with severely displaced priorities caused resentment and other emotional distress in his lovely, long-suffering wife. The man castigates himself for being so foolish. He asserts that he thought he was doing the right thing, putting ministry first, though not conscious of the fact at the time that that was what he was actually doing. One might even hear the man say something to the effect that he thought his wife "just wasn't on board" with what the Lord wanted from them. Etc.

Alongside this confession and implicit, but ultimately wrong-headed assessment of his wife's spiritual disposition, one will often hear a hagiographical account of his long-suffering wife's spiritual virtues. She was submissive, prayerful, self-sacrificing, vigilant, and ultimately right about the problems in the man's life. In her own quiet way, she helped the man see what god truly wanted from him: a balance between his ministry and his marriage. She provides confirmation for what the man was sensing from the lord or had learned from a brother in the lord, etc. God provides the wake up call; the wife is there to help clean-up the mess.

This long part of the tale is a kind of self-deprecation that is both public confession of "sin" and implicit public assertion of piety. The man was right to be zealous for the Lord. He just had failed to keep it in the proper perspective. Ultimately, he was doing too much of a good thing so that he lost his focus and almost lost the most important person god had given him: his help-mate of a wife. The man, although in the wrong, valorizes his own spiritual zeal to do the lord's work as well as his spiritual sensitivity by waking up to what god really wanted. The whole dilemma shows the teller to be a good Christian man who ends up doing the right things in balance: fixing his marriage and keeping the ministry in perspective.

The thread of the tale attached to the wife, meanwhile, perpetuates the stereotypical "quiet, submissive, fortress-of-faith" wife. She confirms what god was saying to the man (however he received this information) while her own spirituality is affirmed, although usually only secondarily, via the man's spiritual renewal.

The tale always concludes with an account of how the teller struck a proper balance in his life, which is followed by a sermonic generalization that applies the story to all the listener's lives. In this way, the tale acts as a model for the community. The gender roles, specifically, I think, are held up as model for everyone in the audience. The tale tells us that men lead, even when they are wrong; god will correct them eventually when they err. And women in the audience hear how even the minister's woman has to go through Hell sometimes following her man. The coded message to them: you too can endure trials when your man's leadership is a disaster; the lord will see you through.

Perhaps this is overly cynical. Perhaps I've totally read too much into a common kind of testimonial from ministers. But I don't think so.

Tales like this do something in a social formation. And in a recursive kind of way I think the most telling sign of what this tale does is the fact that women sit and listen as their men stand before their peers and speak it.

Every time I hear this tale from a man, I think immediately about the wife. What does she really think about this man using his own failings publicly as a means to valorize his spirituality? How does she feel as the man recounts how he trampled their marriage or took his wife for granted in order to produce a moving sermon illustration? Sure, the tale ends well; but the recounting must be painful. Would the man stand for it if the table's were reversed? Would he sit calmly in the pew, nodding, while his wife recounted her trials in keeping their marriage in proper perspective or showing proper affection and care for her husband? Would it be too emasculating to stand idly by and listen? I wonder.

Artist Chris Jordan

We talked about Chris Jordan's art in my freshman seminar last week. His work attempts to raise public awareness about the collective ramifications of our individual decisions on a number of issues, environmental, economic, personal, social, etc. Basically, he takes alarming statistics and transforms them into an image in order to help people see the enormity of the collective impact of our (often mal-adjusted) cultural behaviors.

Tonight I stumbled upon his TED talk. His passion really shows through as he discusses his work. This is especially evident in the last four minutes or so of the talk, in which Jordan shares why he produces his art.

Ludlul SAACT 7

Well, it's official. The Ludlul volume in the SAACT series will be lucky number seven (not eight, as I thought until yesterday). Wanna see the title page?

Wetlands in Southern Iraq

If you've read much about Mesopotamian mythology or political history, you know how much the reed marshes in the south shaped ancient Mesopotamia. Recently, CBS's "60 Minutes" did a segment on the Marsh Arabs in southern Iraq and what Saddam Hussein did to destroy their ancient homeland and culture among the reed marshes. For those of us unable or unwilling to go to Iraq, this segment gives a great introduction to the region and its contemporary plight. As the correspondent and engineer in the clip show, the reed marsh landscape still evokes the ancient stories from the region. It's great fuel for the historical imagination. The print story is here. (HT: AGADE listserv). Here's the video:





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Cosmopolitanism according to Appiah

Tomorrow I will be discussing with my freshman seminar ("What Is A Good Society?") Kwame Anthony Appiah's Introduction to his book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. I can't speak to the rest of the book because I haven't read it. But his Introduction offers an interesting (and brief) discussion about what it means to be "cosmopolitan." Here are a few representative quotes.

Each person you know about and can affect is someone to whom you have responsiblities: to say this is just to affirm the very idea of morality. The challenge, then, is to take minds and hearts formed over the long millenia of living in local troops and equip them with ideas and institutions that will allow us to live together as the global tribe we have become.

So there are two strands that intertwine in the notion of cosmopolitanism. One is the idea that we have obligations to others, obligations that stretch beyond those to whom we are related by the ties of kith and kin, or even the more formal ties of a shared citizenship. The other is that we take seriously the value not just of human life but of particular human lives, which means taking an interest in the practices and beliefs that lend them significance. People are different, the cosmopolitan knows, and there is much to learn from our differences. Because there are so many human possibilities worth exploring, we neither expect nor desire that every person or every society should converge on a single mode of life. Whatever our obligations are to others (or theirs to us) they often have the right to go their own way. As we'll see, there will be times when these ideals---universal concern and respect for legitimate differences---clash. There's a sense in which cosmopolitanism is not the name of the solution but of the challenge.

[T]he one thought that cosmopolitans share is that no local loyalty can ever justify forgetting that each human being has responsibilities to every other.

Cosmopolitanism is an adventure and an ideal; but you can't have any respect for human diversity and expect everyone to become cosmopolitan.

I want to hold on to at least one important aspect of the objectivity of values: that there are some values that are, and should be, universal, just as there are lots of values that are, and must be, local. We can't hope to reach a final consensus on how to rank and order such values. That's why the model I'll be returning to is that of conversation---and, in particular, conversation between people from different ways of life. The world is getting more crowded: in the next half a century the population of our once foraging species will approach nine billion. Depending on the circumstances, conversations across boundaries can be delightful, or just vexing: what they mainly are, though, is inevitable.

There are a lot of thorny issues to be considered here. It would be easy to keep the conversation at an abstract, theoretical level. But hopefully, I'll be able to think of some scenarios to ground our discussion in concrete situations. Thinking. . . .

Semiotics for Beginners

I stumbled upon this site last night called "Semiotics for Beginners" by Daniel Chandler of Aberystwyth University (Wales, UK) and read through a good chunk of his treatment of signs as developed by structuralist linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Good stuff. It's perfect for getting an overview of the important theorists and developments in cultural theory. . . . Just sharing.

Ape Accepts Jesus into Heart

Researchers studying the impact of TV on primate behavior at Northwestern Freewill Baptist University were shocked when one of their subjects, JonnyG, speaking through sign language, asked who Jesus was. "It makes total sense that JonnyG would pick up on this. Religious programming is all over the television," said Prof. Jim Johnson, the lead researcher. Thrilled if not entirely surprised that the ape had asked the question, they attempted in the next few sessions to describe to him the story of Jesus in simple terms. The university released a statement just this morning that JonnyG, after much deliberation, accepted Jesus into his heart, becoming the first ape destined for heaven. Implications are still being sorted out. But several big donors to the university have offered to help found a school of missions explicitly for the purpose of evangelizing primates around the globe.

* * *

I thought of this little piece of satire tonight at dinner while we (me, my wife, and three kids) were discussing evidence that animals posit and respond to unseen agents (like we do with gods). One of the key examples was the reaction some primates exhibit to thunder. I'll put the citation up when I can access the book (at the office).

Sharing the Road

I just saw an interesting story in today's LA Times about problems between cars and bikes sharing the road. That's not news. Not to me. I experience this everyday. But the statistics used in the article are interesting and worthy of sharing. According to the research cited in the article, cycling is WAY up (I think it said 43% up nation wide), the benefits of cycling far out weigh the risks (20 to 1), and the average cyclist has a serious accident only once in every 8.7 years. I'm going from memory on a couple of those because I need to be doing something else. But take a look at the article. It's interesting. (And then get on a bike and start reaping the benefits.) Bikes and cars: Can we share the road? -- latimes.com

Ludlul and “Wisdom”

     Whether one chooses to impose a modern definition of “wisdom” upon the ancient data or decides to allow indigenous categorization (as best as we can reconstruct it) to steer one’s approach, whether one chooses to look at “wisdom” conceptually or decides to understand it in terms of literary genre – how one defines the category will determine how one populates it. Like other categories used to organize cultural data (e.g., “religion,” “art,” and “kinship”), “wisdom” does not exist objectively. People, both ancient Mesopotamians and modern scholars, create “wisdom” as a rubric to associate and classify various items in a culture. We do well to keep this in mind as we attempt to understand how the terms “wisdom” and “wisdom literature” have been used in reference to Ludlul.

     Lambert’s inclusion of Ludlul in his book Babylonian Wisdom Literature has obviously influenced a generation of scholars to see the poem as “wisdom literature.”[1] But Lambert is quick to note that he borrowed the terms “wisdom” and “wisdom literature” from Biblical Studies and applied it to the Mesopotamian materials only on account of broad similarities between the contents of his texts and those of the wisdom books in the Hebrew Bible: Proverbs, Qohelet, and Job.[2] (Thus one might reason as follows: because Ludlul and the biblical Book of Job both deal with human suffering in relation to a god and Job is “wisdom literature,” Ludlul is also “wisdom literature.”) This content-based categorization, rooted as it is in biblical scholarship, has its advantages, especially for comparative work. But it is important to recognize (as Lambert does; see likewise Beaulieu 2007, 3) that it is a modern categorizational imposition.[3] Even as this understanding of “wisdom literature” opens interesting possibilities for comparing Mesopotamian and biblical literatures, it also obscures our understanding of Ludlul within its Mesopotamian literary, cultural, and scribal contexts.

     On the same page that Lambert appropriates the biblical terminology for his Mesopotamian materials, he also notes that “wisdom” generally “refers to skill in cult and magic lore” (BWL, 1) in the late second and throughout the first millennia. In fact, all of the ancient scholarly corpora (ummânūtu) – divination (bārûtu), exorcism (āšipūtu), astrology (ţupšarrūtu), lamentation (kalûtu), and medicine (asûtu) – that the Mesopotamian scholars (ummânū) created and preserved refer to themselves as nēmequ, “wisdom” (see Lenzi 2008, 67-104 and Pongratz-Leisten 1999, 286-288, with references to earlier literature). If there was an ancient indigenous body of “wisdom literature” in post-Kassite Mesopotamia, it belonged to these scholars. Given the various connections Ludlul has to ancient scholarship, especially exorcism and medicine, it is not only appropriate but imperative to read the poem in light of it. (Beaulieu 2007 is a programmatic essay in this regard and essential reading for anyone wishing to understand Ludlul as a product of ancient scholarship.) One might even be tempted to include Ludlul among these scholarly “wisdom” texts; that is, one might be tempted to call Ludlul “wisdom literature” as indigenously defined because it looks like it belongs among scholarly texts. Despite, however, the connections our poem shows to this material, despite the way Ludlul draws on the various scholarly corpora throughout its lines, the poem itself is not actually part of any one of them. Ludlul is not an exorcism text, a medical text, an omen text, prayer or lamentation; rather, it is a narrative poem that incorporates ideas and tropes from such texts while it recounts the various experiences of a particular man. From this circumscribed, indigenous perspective of “wisdom,” Ludlul is not “wisdom literature.”

     There are, however, other ways of defining “wisdom” from a Mesopotamian perspective. Denning-Bolle (1992), for example, takes a broader, conceptual view.[4] After surveying various Akkadian lexemes and texts, she concludes that “[b]oth the sagacity gained from experience and the sapiential skill of the magical expert constituted ‘wisdom’ for the ancient Mesopotamian” (67). According to her definition, then, “wisdom literature” in Mesopotamia can be expanded beyond scholarly texts to include the Epic of Gilgamesh (47-48) and Ludlul (59, 62), among others. But one might also argue for an indigenous scribal perspective on “wisdom” that is an even more inclusive category than Dennning-Bolle’s. Since the scribal craft itself was equated with the wisdom of Nabû and the totality of scholarship,[5] one could classify any text that was part of the scribal curriculum as “wisdom literature.” In both of these indigenous classificatory schemes Ludlul is “wisdom literature.”
     To demand a simple, singular answer to the question of Ludlul’s status as “wisdom literature” is to misunderstand the pragmatic and interpretive nature of categorization. According to all but the strictest definition surveyed here, Ludlul is “wisdom literature.” But each understanding of this category, including the one that excludes Ludlul, provides a slightly different perspective for understanding the poem. Each gives the reader a perspective to aide in the task of interpretation and comparison. The reader must decide which one (or some other one) to use in light of their specific interpretive purpose.

---

[1] For a survey of how various anthologies have populated the category “Mesopotamian wisdom literature,” see Clifford 2007. Ludlul is almost always included among such texts.

[2] In the Hebraic tradition, Lambert says, “‘Wisdom’ is a common topic and is extolled as the greatest virtue. While it embraces intellectual ability the emphasis is more on pious living.” He contrasts this with Mesopotamia, where the term “wisdom” designates a “skill in cult and magic lore.” Despite  this difference, however, he explains that the term “wisdom” “has been used [in BWL] for a group of texts which correspond in subject-matter with the Hebrew Wisdom books, and may be retained as a convenient short description” (BWL, 1).

[3] We should also note that this approach treats biblical “wisdom” rather monolithically and therefore fails to appreciate the fact that neither the Bible nor modern biblical scholars is univocal about what comprises “wisdom” (or “wisdom literature”).

[4] See also the rather abstract discussion in Buccellati 1981, where he concludes as follows: “On the arc of progressive differentiation which characterizes the evolution of human culture, wisdom marks the first explicit attempt to gain some distance from one’s own inner self, and to cast the particular in a universal mold which can be described rationally and critically. It is at once epistemology, ethics, ontology, and lyrical introspection. Thus it can be said that wisdom has an internal coherence of its own, but as a dimension or attitude, not as an institution; it is not amorphous, but also it is not organized along systematic lines. It is, we might say, a cultural tradition” (44).

[5] See VAB VII, 4 i 31-33 (with collations from Borger and Fuchs 1996, 16), cited and discussed in Lenzi 2008, 144.

Ludlul SAACT

I got the first test pages of typeset cuneiform this week for the new SAACT edition of Ludlul. Amar Annus and I have been working on this for the last two years. And we're just about done. I don't know when it will be available from Eisenbrauns, but I'm guessing sometime in (mid?) 2010.


Here are the first four lines (click to see the whole thing):

Ain't they pretty?

"Professor" Ranked Third Best Job

CNNMoney.com has ranked "being a professor" the third best job in America. Check their analysis and then look at the comments section to get a dose of reality.

Article on Adda, the Storm God

One of my Classicist colleagues just alerted me to an interesting article about Adda, the Syrian Storm God. The latest issue (Nov/Dec 09) of Archaeology has a nice little piece about Kay Kohlmeyer's excavations of Adda's temple on the citadel in Aleppo. Here's an abstract:

A massive citadel built atop a 150-foot-tall hill of solid rock looms over Aleppo's old quarter. Fortresses have risen above this northern Syrian city since Roman times. But at the heart of the citadel, amid ruins of Ottoman palaces and hidden behind high walls that date to the Crusader era, a team of German and Syrian archaeologists is clearing debris from a large pit that shows this hilltop was significant long before the Romans arrived. Here, amid clouds of dust, a battered basalt sphinx and a lion--both standing seven feet tall--guard the entrance to one of the great religious centers of ancient times, the sanctuary of the storm god Adda.

Kay Kohlmeyer, an archaeologist at Berlin's University of Applied Sciences and the excavation codirector, has spent more than 10 years peeling away the layers of rubble that conceal the rich history of this temple. He's found that it was first constructed by Early Bronze Age peoples, then rebuilt by a succession of cultures, including the Hittites, the Indo-European empire-builders whose domain spread from Anatolia to northern Syria in the 14th century B.C. Through the millennia, as Syrian, Anatolian, and Mesopotamian cultures mixed and blurred at this ancient crossroads, Adda was known variously as Addu, Teshup, Tarhunta, and Hadad. But as artistic styles and languages came and went, the storm god's temple endured.

On a hot April morning, Kohlmeyer welcomes me into the shade of the corrugated roof that now covers Adda's sanctuary. As my eyes adjust to the sudden gloom, I spy a row of stone friezes of gods and mythical creatures still standing in a neat row at the far end of the temple. Their modest size (most are no taller than three feet), clear lines, and almost whimsical subjects--human figures in pointy shoes and hats, a bull pulling a chariot--seem more like a series of three-dimensional cartoon panels than a powerful and magical tableau. Yet even in the shadows, the sharply chiseled surfaces are so fresh they look as if the sculptors just laid down their tools for a lunch break.

Kohlmeyer and his team were not the first to uncover the mesmerizing friezes, which were buried when the temple was abandoned in the ninth century B.C. Trenches that date to six centuries later show that Hellenistic people, perhaps digging for valuables, exposed some of the reliefs. Awed by what they found, and possibly fearful of desecrating an ancient holy site, they left the stones intact. Exposed for a century or so until it was swallowed again by debris, the temple may have been an early Near Eastern tourist attraction. And if archaeologists, preservationists, and Syrian government officials have their way, the site will soon offer visitors the rare opportunity to tread the floor of a 5,000-year-old place of worship.

Andrew Lawler is a staff writer for Science.

Go to the link above for some pictures. The print-version has many more. What is really striking is how similar some of the reliefs (shown in the print version) are to later Assyrian palace reliefs.

RELI 034 Introduction to (the Critical Study of) Religion

Along with a couple of other books I've used in the past (this and this), I've decided to read these two books with my students in Intro to Religion next semester:

Phil Zuckerman's Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about Contentment (discussed here).

and

Dennis Covington's Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake-Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia.

Sort of extremes in the religious spectrum, which is exactly why I've chosen them.