World Literature - First Lecture  
 

Home Page


WORLD LITERATURE
FIRST LECTURE:
Sumeria and the Inanna Texts
August 23, 2004

HISTORY OF MESOPOTAMIA
HISTORY OF OUR NOTIONS ABOUT MESOPOTAMIA
CULTURE OF SUMER
THE INANNA TEXT
THE HULUPPU-TREE - A CLOSE READING
 

HISTORY:

Sumeria (Sumer) - southern half of modern Iraq, in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, between modern Baghdad and the Persian Gulf - about 10,000 sq. miles (about one-seventh the size of Oklahoma). It's sometimes called "Mesopotamia," which is Greek for "between the rivers." The area was first settled around the fifth millennium B.C.E.

The Sumerians invented the first urban centers, starting with Ur, which is why we still use the word "ur" to mean "first" (such as an "ur-text," the first, often long-lost, oral or written source from which all variants and translations of a single literary work originated).

Very straightforward people: the king was called the "lugal," which literally means "big man." The first king mentioned in the king lists was one Etana, King of Kish, at the beginning of the third millennium B.C.E.; Kish later became less important than Uruk (Gilgamesh and perhaps Dumuzi were kings of Uruk)

Somewhere around 2300 B.C.E., King Sargon founded the first Semitic dynasty and conquered all of Sumer as well as a good deal of western Asia. He established his capital at Akkad (which is mentioned in the Bible), and then the culture became known as Sumer-Akkad. Akkadian is a Semitic tongue, but the culture remained mostly Sumerian. Sargon's daughter, Enheduanna, was a priestess of Inanna. Her poem/prayer, "The Exaltation of Inanna," is the oldest work in the world for which we know the author's name.

What we don't know is why Enheduanna is complaining so bitterly about her loss of power and the loss of virtue in general in the cities--we do know that the Akkadians were more of a male-centered society, and that might have something to do with it. This sense of separation can be seen in the literature; for instance, in the Sumerian Inanna stories, Gilgamesh is Inanna's brother and ally. In the Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh, which we will read for Wednesday, he is her enemy (the Akkadians called her Ishtar). We also know that in Sumer-Akkad writing was becoming more of a professional activity and establishing itself as part of the political, masculine role, so maybe inserting her name into her poem was an act of defiance on Enheduanna's part.

This is not to say that the Sumerian society was matriarchal and woman-centered and we've been misreading it all this time--the very oldest tablets, which haven't yet been deciphered, don't deal with Inanna but rather with the god Enki--but it wasn't as hopelessly sexist as we've been led to believe. In fact, women were far more liberated in ancient Sumeria than they were later in classical Athens. Women could hold property and qualify as a witness in court, though their husbands could divorce them easily and could take a second wife if she didn't bear him any children.

Another Sumerian king was Hammurabi of Babylon, c.1750 BCE, who made Babylon the main city. You may have heard elsewhere of the famous Code of Hammurabi, one of the earliest examples of a codified system of laws.

OUR NOTION OF MESOPOTAMIAN TEXTS AND CULTURE

Translations of Akkadian texts have been around for a while, but the older Sumerian texts have only been translated very recently. "The Descent of Inanna," for instance, wasn't reconstructed until this century, after it was discovered on a number of fragmented tablets during an excavation by the University of Pennsylvania at Nippur in 1889-90. The entire text wasn't translated into English along with interpretation until 1974, and that translation was, to be honest, kind of boring. Therefore, most of our ideas about Mesopotamian texts and culture are inherited from the nineteenth century rather than from a long tradition of study and criticism, as is the case with some other ancient cultures, especially Greek and Roman. Our ideas are very western-based, and also almost all Akkadian (even our own textbook starts with the Epic of Gilgamesh).

Our views are probably affected by the fact that the study of these texts goes back to the Victorian period, since it was a common idea in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe that eastern cultures were sexist and illogical--they were associated with harems and exoticism. In addition, the scholars of that time were far more interested in the Akkadian period because that's the earliest era when the Mesopotamians would have had contact with the ancient Greeks, whom the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholars considered the high point of civilization. Admittedly it was the Bronze Age, or Mycenean, Greeks, rather than those of the classical period, but they were still Greeks and that automatically made them more "civilized" than their counterparts to the east.

THE CULTURE OF SUMER

Each city belonged to a main god, which is why Inanna speaks of "my" cities. Uruk, for instance, is under her particular protection. The temple corporation owned some of the land, which they rented to share croppers. There were travelling merchants by land and sea, and money in the form of a disk or ring of silver in a standard weight.

Slavery was an accepted institution. Many slaves were prisoners of war, often from neighboring Sumerian cities. Freemen, too, could be reduced to slavery as punishment and parents could sell their children into slavery if they were really broke. If a man were really in serious debt, he could sell his entire family into slavery, but for no more than three years. Selling one's children into slavery was not a common practice; remember that this is the very beginning of cities and the people were still very agriculturally-oriented, so children were a form of wealth. A lot of children was a highly valued thing, and people often adopted children as a form of insurance against old age. This is one of the reasons why Inanna, the fertility goddess, is so important.

The society wound up a bit schizophrenic, though, because these first cities also brought in the problem of overcrowding: famine and plague are urban problems. Sumerians were very prone to anxiety. They were terrified of flooding until a dam was built on the Euphrates river just a few decades ago (some people in the countryside in Syria and Iraq are still nervous of the river, since floods were still a serious problem within their living memory). If there's a thaw up in Turkey at the same time as the annual swelling of the rivers, great flooding happens fast. The pattern is irregular and completely unpredictable, even today, though the flooding has been cut down considerably.

This is a real contrast with Egypt, where the flooding of the Nile was gentle and so beneficial there were two harvests every year--well, up until they got their 20th-century dam at Aswan. Ancient Egyptian literature has a serene sense of an eternal, benevolent cycle. Their afterlife is almost identical to life on earth, since they considered life to be very pleasant and seemed to feel that it just wouldn't be fair to have to stop enjoying it. Quite different from the gloomy view we see in The Descent of Inanna and The Epic of Gilgamesh.

In many ways, the Sumerians were similar to the Egyptians--they believed that the souls of the dead went to the underworld, so pots, tools, weapons, and jewels were buried with the dead. Some early kings had servants and attendants and animals buried with them. However, Sumerian mausoleums were generally underneath the house. Knowing that your relatives were continually underfoot, even after death, would be likely to have a sobering effect.

According to Sumerian mythology, humans were fashioned for one purpose: to serve the gods with food, drink, and shelter so they could have leisure to go about their divine activities. This tour of duty continued in the afterlife, which was just a drearier reflection of a life of servitude on earth. The gods were whimsical and might ignore your prayers, or they might just be too busy to hear them. So each family had a personal god, rather like a guardian angel, that they could pray to and who would intercede for them. Some of you might remember the Biblical story of Rachel, the wife of Jacob, who stole her father's household gods and hid them in her camel's saddle when they left her father's house. The idea of household gods continued up through the Roman empire.

The Sumerians might sound like terribly depressing and pessimistic people. For instance, although they do have a flood account, they don't have an equivalent of the Adam and Eve story. Since men were created just as servants, there wasn't any state of grace to fall from. However, some of the literature is quite earthy and humorous, and the art is also kind of cheerful. Which brings us to the Inanna stories and hymns.

THE INANNA TEXT

We don't know exactly what all these things mean. What is a huluppu-tree? What is an Anzu-bird? We do know what an Abzu is; that's where the god Enki lives. He's the god of wisdom and is Inanna's uncle. "Abzu" is frequently translated as "abyss" and is considered to be related to that word. In some Biblical texts of Genesis, the spirit of God is described as moving on the face of the "abyss"--which is translated in the King James Bible as "the deep."

Another term we've encountered is the me. We have an idea of what that means. The me are sort of like the software of the universe--think of it as being on a series of CD ROM disks. Without them, the system won't work, and whoever possesses the me can run the universe. However, the me are also like software because if you don't know how to run them and you try to run them anyway, you're in big trouble. The computer crashes. There are a lot of stories where somebody steals the me and everything falls apart--sexuality and reproduction collapse, parents and children fight, and the gods squabble over the me. In the second selection we read tonight, Inanna gets Enki drunk and gets the me away from him, but she knows how to use them. Which is a good thing because she doesn't give them back.

You never see a god creating one, or some part of the me operating on its own. The me simply are, and always were.

THE HULUPPU-TREE

This is the very first story we looked at, and it contains an interesting example of bardic repetition, the method by which a poet giving an oral presentation can both set a solemn mood and remember his place if he happens to forget what he was about to say. It gives him a little time to think. The story begins like this:

Look at the repetition: first days/first days, bread/bread, moved away/separated... Then we get to "And the name of man was fixed." This is important, and it stands out. Consciousness and intention have begun. Life as we know it has been set into a discernible pattern. Fixed.

Now the gods are named and start carrying out their intentions, until we get to Ereshkigal.

    When the Sky God, An, had carried off the heavens,
    And the Air God, Enlil, had carried off the earth,
    When the Queen of the Great Below, Ereshkigal, was given the underworld for her domain...
Ereshkigal got shorted. She got the underworld, which, remember, is not exactly a bargain if you happen to be a Sumerian. This is the 13th line--in the Sumerian culture, 13 was the number of death. The flow of creation has halted and set Ereshkigal up in opposition to Inanna, who is the creative force. No wonder Ereshkigal is mad and opposes Enki. When he tries to overpower her and enter her realm, they have a struggle. Ereshkigal successfully repels him, and the tree comes into existence.
    At that time, a tree, a single tree, a huluppu-tree
    Was planted by the banks of the Euphrates.
    The tree was nurtured by the waters of the Euphrates.
    The whirling South Wind arose, pulling at its roots
    And ripping at its branches
    Until the waters of the Euphrates carried it away.
Inanna rescues the tree and brings it into cultivation in her garden: it would have perished if it had been left in a state of nature. Given the hot climate and dry soil of places like Sumer and Egypt, it's not surprising that generally myths about creation begin in a garden; in ancient Greece, another hot climate, the word for garden or park was paradeisos, which is where we get our word "paradise."

This huluppu-tree, due to the manner of its creation, combines the earth, the underworld, and the heavens.

    Inanna cared for the tree with her hand.
    She settled the earth around the tree with her foot.
    She wondered:
      "How long will it be until I have a shining throne to sit upon?"
      "How long will it be until I have a shining bed to lie upon?"
Inanna wants a throne and a bed: power and sex. Some things about human nature never change.

Snakes are associated with immortality because they shed their skins. Snakes are often associated with sex, as well. Some people claim that this is because of their phallic shape, but it is also true that sex is associated with immortality, especially in a preliterate culture. You can live on through your children. But there are snakes, and then there are snakes:

    Then a serpent who could not be charmed
    Made its nest in the roots of the huluppu-tree.
    The Anzu-bird set his young in the branches of the tree.
    And the dark maid Lilith built her home in the trunk.
    The young woman who loved to laugh wept.
    How Inanna wept!
    (Yet they would not leave her tree.)
Like most young women, Inanna is intensely interested in her own sexuality but is also rather afraid of it: the fact that this serpent can not "be charmed" indicates something out of control, and that isn't what she had in mind. The Anzu-bird is often associated with power, and, again, he is frequently out of control (in one story, he tries to steal the me). This is the only Sumerian mention of Lilith. In Hebrew legend, she's the first bride of Adam but--according to some legends--she won't have sex with him because she insists on equality and won't be underneath him. She represents a sort of aggressive independence outside of human regulation.

Inanna is going to have to become independent of her family when she marries, but at this point she's got anxieties about that, as we'll see in the story where she's contemplating marriage. Right now she still looks to her family for help. First she asks her brother Utu, the Sun God, for help in ousting these intruders, giving him the entire story all over again from line 11 in a fine example of bardic repetition and, possibly, as a way of showing that she is a "team player" and has been a part of the divine story all along.

Nevertheless, Inanna's divine brother won't help her. He himself doesn't need anything, and never does need anything or anybody's help. He's self sufficient. The problem with being an immortal being is you can sometimes wind up with very little empathy for vulnerability.

Inanna's brother Gilgamesh, on the other hand, is part mortal and agrees to help her. Gilgamesh comes in and tames the creatures with his bronze axe, symbol of civilization (this is the bronze age, after all). His axe weighs 450 pounds, and his armor weighs 60 pounds. He's the hero-king, part god, performing the same civilized tasks that he will perform against Shamash's forest and Ishtar's Bull of Heaven in The Epic of Gilgamesh.

In this Sumerian story, then, Gilgamesh and Inanna are allies, even siblings, rather than the enemies they become in the Akkadian epic. He even sees to it that Inanna gets her throne and her bed, carved from the huluppu-tree's trunk. At the end of the story Inanna rewards Gilgamesh with two mysterious objects, a pukku and a mikku. We don't know exactly what they are, but probably they were the symbols of kingship. Remember that Gilgamesh was a real Sumerian king, so this might be a proof of divine sanction for his rule.

After Gilgamesh and the people of the city come to her aid Inanna becomes a deity associated with the city, a role of which she is very proud. Note that when she goes to visit Enki in the Abzu she first puts on her "crown of the steppe" that displays this fact. Note, also, that in The Descent of Inanna the crown is the first thing the jealous Ereshkigal requires her to remove.

Male/Female: Enemies in the case of Enki and Ereshkigal, allies in the case of Inanna and Gilgamesh

Mortal/Immortal: Here a mortal and immortal join together to assist one another--Inanna is different from the other gods, who are distant and don't care about human beings.

The translation quoted above is that of Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer, Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth, New York: Harper & Row, 1983


Back to the top of this page