CNI Publications 43

PROBLEMS OF CANONICITY AND IDENTITY FORMATION IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND MESOPOTAMIA

Edited by

KIM RYHOLT GOJKO BARJAMOVIC DEPARTMENT OF CROSS-CULTURAL AND REGIONAL STUDIES 2016 UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN MUSEUM TUSCULANUM PRESS

CNI Publications 43 Problems of Canonicity and Identity Formation in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia © Museum Tusculanum Press and CNI Publications, 2016 Cover design by Thora Fisker Text set in Times Roman by the editors Printed in Denmark by Special-Trykkeriet Viborg a/s ISBN 978 87 635 4372 9 ISSN 0902 5499 (CNI Publications) Editorial board of CNI Publications

Paul John Frandsen D. T. Potts Aage Westenholz Published and distributed by Museum Tusculanum Press University of Copenhagen Birketinget 6 DK-2300 Copenhagen S www.mtp.dk

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface page v

Sumerian Literature and Sumerian Identity 1 Jerrold S. Cooper

Literature and Identity in Mesopotamia during the Old Babylonian Period 19 Paul Delnero

Closed Canon vs. Creative Chaos: An In-depth Look at (Real and Supposed) Mortuary Texts from Ancient Egypt 51 Alexandra von Lieven

Canonical motifs in the Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions 79 Mario Liverani

The last stand? What remains Egyptian in Oxyrhynchus 105 Joachim Friedrich Quack

Who Writes the Literary in Late Middle Kingdom Lahun? 127 Stephen Quirke

‘The Pen Promoted My Station’: Scholarship and Distinction in New Kingdom Biographies 153 Chloé Ragazzoli

King Petemenekh: New Kingdom Royal Sarcophagi Texts on a Private Coffin 179 Robert K. Ritner

Constructing Elite Group and Individual Identity within the Canon of 18th Dynasty Theban Tomb Chapel Decoration 201 Gay Robins

Canon and Power in Cuneiform Scribal Scholarship 217 Francesca Rochberg

The Inventions of Sumerian: Literature and the Artifacts of Identity 231 Gonzalo Rubio

A Babylonian Cosmopolis 259 Marc Van De Mieroop

L’écrit et la Canonicité dans la Civilisation Pharaonique 271 Pascal Vernus

THE INVENTIONS OF SUMERIAN: LITERATURE AND THE ARTIFACTS OF IDENTITY

GONZALO RUBIO

The presence of the Sumerian language does not translate into the existence of a Sumerian ethnic identity. Literature in Sumerian functioned as a blank slate for different scribal traditions to manufacture their own identities. In the mid-third millennium, Sumerian compositions provided the writing tools and literary devices for the textualization of Semitic literature. In the Old-Babylonian South, the creation of a Sumerian literary corpus embodied a discourse grounded in the nostalgia of the power Sumer had once had and lost. Then, as now, any notion of Sumerian identity was an intellectual construct.

Que d’autres écrivent à ma place, à cette place sans occupant qui est ma seule identité, voilà ce qui rend un instant la mort joyeuse, aléatoire.

Blanchot, L’entretien infini, III, iv.

1. SUMERIAN AND SEMITIC IN EARLY MESOPOTAMIA

In Ancient Mesopotamia, two languages dominated the various realms of textual production throughout its history: Sumerian and Akkadian. Akkadian is the umbrella term that covers all East Semitic dialects used in the North (Assyria) and the South (Babylonia). Sumerian was the language spoken in the South during the third millennium, which continued to be used in writing for belles lettres, liturgy, and magic for an additional two millennia. Sumerian presents a number of inherent challenges. To begin with, it is an isolate, that is, a language with no relatives. Moreover, Sumerian is structurally very different from Akkadian. As all Semitic – and for that matter, Indo-European – languages, Akkadian is flectional. In flectional languages, stems can undergo apophony or Ablaut, as sing, sang, sung in English, and other alterations in internal pattern (e.g., Akkadian ikšud ‘he arrived’ vs. ikaššad ‘he will arrive’). By contrast, Sumerian is agglutinative, like Turkish, Finnish, Korean, and Japanese, so stems do not exhibit those sorts of changes, and grammatical categories are marked by adding prefixes and suffixes. To complicate matters further, Sumerian is an

232 Gonzalo Rubio

ergative language, i.e., it treats and marks the subject of an intransitive sentence (she goes) the same way as the object of a transitive one (he sees her), as if one were to say **her goes and **him sleeps. All this makes the grammars of Akkadian and Sumerian as different as those of French and Tibetan.1

Sumerian is first attested in the so-called archaic or proto-cuneiform texts from the late fourth and early third millennia.2 These earlier texts are very elliptical and cannot be fully understood, but they do include a few Semitic loanwords. This fact points to the presence of both Sumerian and Semitic speakers in Mesopotamia at least from the very beginning of the third millennium.

3200-

2900

Uruk III and Jemdet Naṣr

2900-

2340

Early Dynastic I & II

Early Dynastic III (2600-2340)

2340-

2150

Sargonic Period

2100-

2000

Ur III

2000-

1600

Old Babylonian Old Assyrian

1600-

1000

Middle Babylonian Middle Assyrian

1000-

Neo-Babylonian (-539)

Late Babylonian (539-ca. 100

CE)

Neo-Assyrian (-612)

Fig. 1. Basic sketch of Mesopotamian historical periods.

1 For accessible and up-to-date overviews of Sumerian grammar, see Michalowski,

‘Sumerian,’ 2004, and Rubio, ‘Sumerian Morphology,’ 2007. 2 On the language of the archaic texts, see Wilcke, ‘ED LÚ und die Sprache(n) der

archaischen Texte’, 2005, and Rubio, ‘The Linguistic Landscape of Early Mesopotamia’, 2005. A detailed survey of the evidence can be found in Englund, ‘Texts from the Late Uruk Period’, 1998.

The Inventions of Sumerian 233

There is a sizable corpus of Sumerian texts found in Southern Mesopotamia, which dates to the mid-third millennium (the Early Dynastic period). This corpus includes a large number of administrative documents, alongside lexical lists and literary compositions. The Early Dynastic period was followed by that of the Sargonic Dynasty, which lasted a couple of centuries and during which the power center moved to the north, to the newly founded city of Akkad (probably near modern Baghdad). During the Sargonic period, most administrative documents and inscriptions were in Akkadian, though some royal inscriptions were bilingual (Akkadian and Sumerian) and a few in Sumerian alone. Moreover, a small handful of Sargonic literary texts, almost all of them in Akkadian, have survived.3

The end of the third millennium is the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur (Ur III). A very large number of Ur III administrative documents have survived – about 90,000 published or catalogued to date – and they all come from a handful of sites in the South: especially Umma, Girsu in the Lagash state, Drehem, and, to a lesser extent, Nippur and Ur (Molina 2008: 52-53). There is a small but unique corpus of Ur III literary texts in Sumerian, found at Nippur in the mid 1950s and about to be published after decades in limbo.4 This abundance of Sumerian documents is particularly intriguing if one realizes that this is the period

3 For a historical overview of Sumerian literature, see Rubio, ‘Sumerian Literature’,

2009. Borrowing from Dupont, The invention of Literature, 1999 [French ed. 1994], Charpin, ‘Chroniques bibliographiques 11. Se faire un nom,’ 2008, p. 150 has challenged the use of the term ‘literature’ in the case of the Sumerian and Akkadian traditions. He argues that generic labels such as šir3 ‘song’ and others referring to musical instruments (tigi, balag, etc.) ‘montrent bien qu’il ne s’agit pas de ‘littérature’ ou de ‘poésie’ au sens courant de ce terme, même si leurs textes ont été ‘récupérés’ par les maîtres d’école pour apprendre le sumérien à leurs élèves.’ Dupont’s reductionist argument regarding the invention of ‘the ideology of literary culture’ is based on the assumption that there is a consensus of what constitutes literature, an assumption that is as intellectually naive as it is historically false. Charpin’s own concerns with the transition from lyrics to poetry could be eased by looking into better documented historical processes of a similar nature, such as the medieval troubadours and Minnesänger, see Galvez, Songbook: How Lyrics Became Poetry in Medieval Europe, 2012. In one of the overwhelmingly critical reviews elicited by Dupont’s book (e.g., Feeney in the April 28, 2000 issue of TLS; Markus in BMCR 2000.06.07), Davidson, ‘Review of F. Dupont,’ 2000, p. 144 has noted that the ‘desire for the original authentic speech-act which precedes literature is created by literature, that is one of literature’s tricks (...) looking for cante puro before the invention of literature, is like searching, before the invention of tourism, for an exotic holiday on an unspoilt beach’ (cante puro refers to a purportedly more authentic variety of flamenco singing, which Dupont mythologizes and exoticizes throughout her book).

4 Rubio, ‘On the Orthography of the Sumerian Literary Texts from the Ur III Period,’ 2000.

234 Gonzalo Rubio

during which Sumerian died out as a spoken language.5 Sumerian was by then an administrative language deeply associated with the South of Mesopotamia. Throughout the second and first millennia, Sumerian continued to be used for a number of specific genres, from literature of all kinds to religious performative texts, such as songs and laments. Thus, one may wonder why Sumerian was used for an additional two thousand years after it had ceased to be anyone’s mother tongue, and why this continuous use was so intimately (if not solely) associated with the transmission of Sumerian literary and liturgical compositions. Moreover, one can ask whether Sumerian was linked to an ethnic group, a region, or a cultural tradition, a link that could explain this post mortem and mostly uninterrupted chain of transmission and tradition for so many centuries.

2. LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY IN UR III

It may seem counterintuitive that Sumerian must have died out precisely during the period that has yielded such a vast corpus of administrative and economic documents written in Sumerian. Ur III documents exhibit a limited inventory of verbal forms and syntactical constructions, which fits quite well the nature of a merely written language with little or no spoken currency. Nevertheless, the native tongue of the kings of Ur, particularly Šulgi, has been a matter of debate. The idea that Šulgi must have had Sumerian as his native tongue because the ruler of Sumer must have had a ‘Sumerian identity’ is predicated upon a simplistic and unsupported link between language and ethnic identity in third-millennium Mesopotamia.6 References to ‘Sumerian ancestry’ or ‘Sumerian seed’ occur in Old Babylonian manuscripts of literary compositions that do not even amount to ethnic references, but rather to claims pertaining to (real or perceived) geographical roots. In the Old Babylonian manuscripts of a literary letter (Correspondence of the Kings of Ur 24: A 16/B 21), the last king of the Ur III Dynasty, Ibbi-Sîn, is made to say of Išbi-Erra, founder of the Isin Dynasty (early Old Babylonian period), that the latter ‘is not of the seed of Sumer’ (numun ki-en-gi-ra nu-me-a).7 This unique expression simply means that Išbi-Erra is from outside Babylonia, since he is said to be ‘a man from Mari’ (lu2 ma2-ri2

ki). The same happens when Šulgi hymn B (209-210),

5 For different approaches to the death of Sumerian and what is meant by it, see Michalowski, ‘Life and Death,’ 2000; Sallaberger, ‘Das Ende,’ 2004; Woods, ‘Bilingualism,’ 2006; Rubio, ‘Eblaite, Akkadian, and East Semitic,’ 2006.

6 E.g. Vacín, ‘On Šulgi and the Death of Sumerian,’ 2009; Durand, ‘Réflexions sur un fantôme linguistique,’ 2012, p. 167.

7 Michalowski, The Correspondence of the Kings of Ur, 2011, p. 468, 472, 477.

The Inventions of Sumerian 235

attested only in Old Babylonian manuscripts, puts these words in the king’s mouth:8

dumu ki-en-giki-ra numun-ba ga2-me-en

ur-sag ki-en-gi-ra ur-sag ga2-me-en

I am a son of Sumer by ancestry (lit. in its seed),

I am a warrior, a warrior of Sumer.

Even if these passages may well transmit original Ur III statements – especially in the case of Šulgi hymn B – the context of these claims clearly points to an identification with the land of Sumer, the southernmost part of Mesopotamia. There is here no basis whatsoever on which to construct a Sumerian identity as such, far less if this is predicated on a linkage with the Sumerian language. In fact, while Sumerian was still a spoken language – i.e., before the Old Babylonian period – in the whole third millennium there seems to be only one instance in which the term ‘Sumerian’ is used to refer to persons. There is a single fragment from the Sargonic period9 that mentions ‘men of Akkadian stock’ and ‘of Sumerian language’ (X lu2 a-uri?-me Y eme-gi7).

10 All other possible ethnonymic uses of ‘Sumer’ or ‘Sumerian’ are exclusively limited to Old Babylonian (1990-1600 B.C.E.) manuscripts of compositions pertaining to Ur III kings (2100-200 B.C.E.).11 Concerning what names may or may not imply in terms of linguistic and group-identification, one should remember that, as it pertains to the royal mothers’ own tongues, it seems that the mothers of the Ur III kings (and most royal women in the period) had Semitic names. Although the family tree of the Ur III Dynasty is far from clear, and the names of some possible royal mothers are not otherwise uncommon (e.g., Kubātum), the name of Ur-Namma’s mother was, in all likelihood,

8 Rubio, ‘Shulgi and the Death of Sumerian,’ 2006, p. 169; Keetman ‘Enmerkar und

Sulge als sumerische Muttersprachler nach literarischen Quellen,’ 2010, p. 28. 9 MAD 4, p. 161. 10 For a nuanced discussion of the label ‘Sumerian,’ see Cooper, ‘Sumer. A. Sumer,

Sumerisch,’ 2012, p. 291-94 and his contribution in this volume. See also Rubio, ‘From Sumer to Babylonia,’ 2007, p. 5-18, 26-31.

11 Keetman, ‘Enmerkar und Sulge,’ 2010, insists on interpreting these passages as proof that Sumerian must have been Šulgi’s Muttersprache. This is repeated by Sallaberger, ‘Sumerian Language Use in Garšana,’ 2011, p. 361 fn. 39. What Keetman, Vacín, Sallaberger, and Durand fail to explain is why hymns B (206-219) and C (119-124) would make Šulgi boast of speaking Sumerian but not Akkadian. Whereas one could argue, as Keetman does, that the other languages mentioned in these compositions were linked to ‘faraway lands’ (Elamite, Amorite, Hurrian), Sumerian was most certainly not at all exotic in Ur III Sumer.

236 Gonzalo Rubio

Damiqtum, while Šhulgi’s was plausibly SI.A-tum, Amar-Sin’s Tarām-Uram, Šu-Sîn’s Abī-simtī, and Ibbi-Sîn’s probably Kubātum.12 This is not to imply that the future monarchs were always closely reared by their mothers, whose language the boys would have necessarily adopted. Nevertheless, it is overly clear that they were raised in an environment in which many, if not most, women – from whom one gets one’s mother tongue – bore Semitic names and were unlikely native speakers of Sumerian.

3. SUMERIAN LANGUAGE AND ETHNICITY?

The very term ethnicity is fraught with difficulties. As Steve Fenton has pointed out, ‘there is not a single unitary phenomenon ‘ethnicity’ but rather an array of private and public identities which coalesce around ideas of descent and culture’.13 Moreover, the variables that define this everchanging and varied social construct are often more contextual than essential: ‘the significance or salience of ethnic identities is, in many if not most instances, influenced by external coordinates of the ethnic action rather than by internal characteristics of the ethnic identity itself’.14 Bearing all this in mind, one can still ask whether Sumerian was the language of the Sumerians, and, therefore, an ethnic marker or identity device of some sort. The Sumerian term that served to denote the language of Sumer was eme-gi(7), which consists of eme ‘tongue’ and gi7 (= gir15 = ŠE3) meaning ‘native,’ ‘local,’ though the latter can be written phonetically with gi (normally the word for ‘reed’). Thus, emegi(r) seems to mean ‘the local language (of the South).’ The Sumerian name of the land of Sumer itself is more complicated to

12 Weierhäuser, Die königlichen Frauen der III. Dynastie von Ur, 2008, p. 25, 27, 29,

106, 157. 13 Fenton, Ethnicity, 2010, p. 187. 14 Fenton, Ethnicity, 2010, p. 188. There are three main approaches to ethnicity in

anthropological and social theory: primordialism (or essentialism), instrumentalism, and constructivism. The primordialist or essentialist approach argues that ethnic identity is predicated on an objective (cultural or even biological) reality. Instrumentalism regards ethnicity as the creation of cultural elites in order to manufacture social consent and hold on to power. The constructivist understanding of ethnicity focuses on its contextual aspects ‘as a form of social organization maintained by inter-group boundary mechanisms, based not on possession of a cultural inventory but on manipulation of identities and their situational character,’ cf. Sokolovskii and Tishkov, ‘Ethnicity,’ 2010, p. 242; and also Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, 1969, p. 13-16. It is the constructivist approach that has emerged in recent decades as the catalyst for a self-aware synthesis of all prior theoretical frameworks, cf. e.g. Hornborg and Hill, ‘Introduction: Ethnicity in Ancient Amazonia,’ 2011.

The Inventions of Sumerian 237

understand: ki-en-gi, perhaps meaning ‘native land.’15 There was, however, no native ethnic label corresponding to this toponym and this glossonym. The latter, emegi(r), did have some derivative usages stemming from its cultural and geographical connotations, as in the breed of sheep known as ‘Sumerian sheep’ (udu eme-gi), which is unlikely to refer to a Sumerian-speaking sheep, but rather to a native, southern breed of sheep. By contrast, the native Semitic term Akkadian (akkadû) designated both the language and the people who spoke it.

in Sumerian in Akkadian

(land of) Sumer

ki-en-gi šumeru ‘Sumer’

māt šumeri ‘land of Sumer’

Sumerian (language)

eme-gi7 / eme-gi lišān šumeri ‘language of Sumer’

šumerû ‘in Sumerian’

(land of) Akkad

ki-uri akkad

Akkadian (language)

(eme uri, in later lexical texts [MSL SS 1: 10, 12, 24])

akkadû ‘Akkadian (language or person)’

Fig. 2. List of terms for territory and languages in Sumerian and Akkadian.

As noted above, in the entire 3rd millennium, there is only one text, from the Sargonic period, that mentions ‘men of Sumerian language,’ as opposed to ‘men of Akkadian stock.’ All other uses of ‘Sumerian’ as a possible ethnic label or a marker of identity occur in Old Babylonian manuscripts of literary compositions pertaining to earlier kings from the Ur III period. This means that the term ‘Sumerian’ did not acquire any sort of ethnic connotation until a couple of centuries after the Sumerian language had died out as a spoken language. In the light of the distribution of this native terminology, as long as Sumerian was still a living language, one can talk about the land of Sumer and the Sumerian language, but hardly about Sumerians as an ethnic group. It is only in the first half of the second millennium, during the Old Babylonian period, that Sumerian is used as an apparent ethnonym, as in the aforementioned passage concerning ‘Sumerian ancestry’ or ‘Sumerian seed’ in the Old Babylonian manuscripts of the literary letter from Ibbi-Sîn to Išbi-Erra. In this regard, any reference to the Sumerians, whether

15 See Steinkeller, ‘Early Political Development in Mesopotamia,’ 1993, p. 112-13 fn. 9; Steinkeller, ‘The Priestess égi-zi and Related Matters,’ 2005, p. 305-310; Cooper, ‘Sumer. A. Sumer, Sumerisch,’ 2012, p. 294. Cooper’s suggestion concerning the meaning ‘noble, princely’ of gi7/gir15 seems semantically secondary.

238 Gonzalo Rubio

by a Babylonian scribe four thousand years ago, or by Samuel Noah Kramer half a century ago, is an intellectual construct. As will be seen below, this construct was part of a nostalgic political and cultural discourse grounded in the perception of prestige associated with a myth of cultural origins.

If one cannot properly talk about ‘Sumerians’ but only about the land of Sumer and the Sumerian language, it is not immediately obvious what role the substantial corpus of Sumerian literature might have ever played in defining identities of one kind or another. It may be revealing to compare two specific periods during which Sumerian literary compositions were transmitted in markedly different contexts: the Early Dynastic and the Old Babylonian periods. In the first instance, Sumerian was most certainly a widely spoken language in Southern Mesopotamia. In the second one, the Old Babylonian period, Sumerian had already ceased to be anyone’s mother tongue.

4. SUMERIAN IN THE EARLY DYNASTIC PERIOD

The Early Dynastic III period marks the beginning of Sumerian (as well as Semitic or Akkadian) literature in Mesopotamia. Aside from a few isolated finds, the two main sources of literary texts in Early Dynastic Sumer are Fāra (ancient Šuruppak) and Abū Ṣalābīḫ (whose ancient name remains unknown). In the Fāra corpus, there are a few proverbs, a composition devoted to the patroness of Šuruppak (the goddess Sud, SF 36), and at least one other narrative composition (SF 40). The Abū Ṣalābīḫ literary corpus is a bit more diverse. It includes some compositions not attested in other periods, such as a tale concerning the legendary king Lugalbanda and the goddess Ninsun (IAS 327) along with a few other narratives (IAS 282, 283, etc.). Among the literary texts from Abū Ṣalābīḫ, some are earlier versions of compositions well-attested in later periods, such as the Keš Temple Hymn and the Instructions of Šuruppak; of the latter there is another Early Dynastic manuscript from Adab (modern Bismāya). Other works are essentially unique, although they belong to well-known genres, such as the Self-Praise of Inanna and the myth about Ama’ušumgal (i.e., Dumuzi) and Inanna (the latter also attested in Ebla, Syria; IAS 278 // ARET 5: 20, 21). Moreover, there are a few Sumerian literary texts found at Lagaš (modern al-Hibā) and Adab.16

During this same period and outside Mesopotamia, three Syrian sites – Ebla (modern Tell Mardīḫ), Nabada (Tell Beydar), and Mari (Tell

16 For a more detailed overview of early Sumerian literature, with references, see Rubio, ‘Sumerian Literature,’ 2009, p. 34-37.

The Inventions of Sumerian 239

Ḥarīrī) – provide us with a handful of Sumerian literary texts as well. Ebla is of particular importance in discussing Early Dynastic literature. Although the local language (Eblaite) was Semitic and very close to Akkadian, the texts from Ebla (lexical lists included) belong to a cultural and scribal continuum that stretched from Southern Mesopotamia (Fāra, Abū Ṣalābīḫ) to northern Syria, including places such as Mari (on the border between Syria and Iraq) and Tell Beydar (in the Upper Ḫabūr). Ebla texts mention scribes coming from both Kish (near Babylon) and Mari (see below). In fact, Gelb coined the term ‘Kish Civilization’ to refer to an Early Dynastic cultural realm characterized by the use of Akkadian,17 a set of scribal conventions, a calendar with Semitic names, a specific system of measurements, and so forth.18 Ironically, Kish itself has yielded only a tiny handful of texts dating to this period (cf. Oriental Institute Publications 104 no. 16). In any event, the nature of this continuum is far more complicated and cannot be labeled as merely Semitic in cultural and linguistic terms. In Syria, Tell Beydar has a corpus of administrative texts that resembles quite closely that from Ebla (with syllabically spelled Semitic words), but has also yielded a Sumerian composition about the god Enki.19 In Southern Mesopotamia, the names of scribes who produced Sumerian texts at Fāra and Abū Ṣalābīḫ are often Semitic.20

Ebla itself constitutes the best example of the complicated nature of this Early Dynastic cultural continuum. Most Ebla tablets come from a room in the Early-Bronze Palace G (L. 2769), whose original arrangement of shelves and tablets has been reconstructed.21 Alongside administrative documents, letters, decrees, and lexical texts, there is an important literary corpus, ranging from a hymn to Nidaba, patroness of scribes (ARET 5: 7);22 to a long narrative (ARET 13: 13) about a usurper king in the town of Ibʿal (ib-al6). Some of these compositions have duplicates found in Mesopotamia, such as the aforementioned Sumerian

17 Gelb, ‘Ebla and the Kish Civilization,’ 1981; Gelb, ‘Mari and the Kish Civilization,’

1992. 18 On the Early Dynastic cultural continuum, see also Michalowski, ‘Third

Millennium Contacts,’ 1985; and Rubio, ‘Eblaite, Akkadian, and East Semitic,’ 2006. 19 Sallaberger, ‘The Sumerian Literary Text from Tell Beydar, a Myth of Enki?,’ 2004. 20 There is an often complicated relation between names and ethnicity, however the

latter is construed. On Semitic names in ED III, see the references given in Rubio, ‘The Linguistic Landscape of Early Mesopotamia,’ 2005, p. 331-32 fn. 85.

21 Archi, ‘Archival Record-Keeping at Ebla 2400-2350 BC,’ 2003, p. 32-24. 22 Krebernik, ‘Mesopotamian Myths at Ebla,’ 1992.

240 Gonzalo Rubio

myth about Ama’ušumgal and Inanna and a Semitic hymn to the Sun-god (see below), both of which are also attested at Abū Ṣalābīḫ.

As in the case of the compositions edited by Fronzaroli in ARET 13, Ebla has yielded several long literary narratives. At least one composition, which one can call ‘The Blessings of the King of Mari,’ is probably an Ebla copy of a Mari original (ARET 13: 1). In it, a nameless king of Mari needs to have a dream interpreted by a priestess before he can start a journey. The king’s adviser is Enna-Dagan (Ḥenna-Dagan), whom we know as a historical king of Mari:23

obv. iv 2 [k]a2 The door i-ba-ti-’a3-an was opened. mu-du They went into e2 the house ┌a┐-bí of the priest (lit. ‘the father [dingir-dingir]-dingir of the gods’). si-ni For the dream oracle ama of the priestess (lit. ‘the mother dingir-dingir-dingir of the gods’), al6 in front of gišna2

giš┌ildag4┐ kim3 the bed of willow,

v tuš which is by giššudun4 the seat (?) [x]-tu of […], 2 du the two of them went.

The door was opened. They went into the house of the priest. Both of them went in for the dream oracle of the priestess, in front of the bed of willow, which is by the seat? of [...], the two of them went.

Although clearly intended to be read in Semitic, these texts are written with Sumerograms alongside a large number of syllabically spelled

23 Both a word-by-word and more natural translation are given here. Aside from Fronzaroli’s edition and commentary in ARET 13, see Foster, ‘Review of P. Fronzaroli,’ 2006. Concerning the readings and translation, note the following points:

* i-ba-ti-’a3-an /yippatiḥ-an/, N stem from *ptḥ (Akk. petû) with energic ending. * si-ni /šini/, construct of /šinum/ (*wšn); Akk. šittu (< *šintu) ‘sleep,’ šuttu ‘dream.’ * ildag4 = GEŠTIN+KUR (cp. ARET 11: 2 obv. ix 18', xii 17). In Ebla, gišildag4-kim3

means ‘willow’ (Fronzaroli, ARET 11 p. 150). * šudun4 (also ‘uštin’) = ‘UR-gunû-šeššig’ (‘DUN4’) is a variant of UR-šeššig. In the

Ebla Sign List 73 (Archi, ‘The “Sign-List” from Ebla,’ 1987, p. 107 [A rev. ii 3, 10; 109, B rev. ii 11]), one finds šudun written as a single sign; but in ARET 13 (obv. v 2), the beginning of the sign looks like a separate GIŠ, so the rest can be read šudun4. Fronzaroli’s reading ušdin is based on the syllabic equivalent in Ebla Sign List B (uš-ti-num2). Normally, giššudun means ‘yoke of the plow,’ vs. gišerin2 ‘yoke in wagons and chariots’; see Civil, ‘Išme-Dagan and Enlil’s Chariot,’ 1968, p. 9-10; Fronzaroli, ‘Le signe 73 de la “Sign List” d’Ébla,’ 1992.

The Inventions of Sumerian 241

Semitic words (in italics). When there is more than one version of the same composition, one can compare different scribal conventions regarding the encoding of Semitic texts with a writing system originally devised for a radically different language: Sumerian. In the case of the hymn to the Sun-god attested at Ebla (ARET 5: 6) and Abū Ṣalābīḫ (IAS 326+), the contrast between both versions is clear: the Ebla text has far more syllabically spelled Semitic words, whereas the Southern Mesopotamian manuscript has considerably less.24 Still, the Abū Ṣalābīḫ text was also, without a doubt, read in Semitic:

Ebla (ARET 5: 6) Abū-Ṣalābīḫ (IAS: 326+)

vi 5 dutu iv 10 SU[.GABA?]

kur-kur kur-kur u9-za ┌šu┐-du

vi 6 na-mu-ra-tum iv 11 nig2-kas7 dutu al6-gal2 gaba (VERTICAL) a[l-gal2] SU:GABA hur-sag hur-sag i-gú-ul iv 12 ì-ku-[u]l?

vii 1 am-am am-sù X dutu iv 13 ERIN2+X dutu u5

!(MA2.HU) u5(HU.SI) a-bar-rí-iš iv 14 ambar

vii 2 ti-’à-ma-dím ab-┌a┐-[x?]

The Sun-god placed the burning light upon the lands. The Sun-god was there; he consumed the wild bulls in front of the mountain. On the X, the Sun-god rode to the other side of the sea.25

The contrast between different orthographic strategies can be found in Ebla itself. The Royal Marriage Ritual from Ebla provides good examples of this (ARET 11). This ritual is preserved in three versions. The first two correspond to the last two kings of Ebla before the city’s destruction in the late 24th century (Irkab-Damu and Išar-Damu). These two versions were written at least 19 years apart, and the second one (Išar-Damu’s) was written about 22 years before the destruction of

24 Krebernik, ‘Mesopotamian Myths at Ebla,’ 1992. 25 On the sign ERIN2+X and this passage, see Steinkeller, ‘Early Political Develop-

ment in Mesopotamia,’ 1992, p. 257-63; Mittermayer, Die Entwicklung der Tierkopf-zeichen, 2005, p. 82-85. For a different interpretation, see Foster, Before the Muses, 2005, p. 51.

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Ebla.26 Version 3 has a shorter text and probably represents the basic template for the ritual. If one compares the same passage in versions 1 and 2, the different scribal strategies to write Eblaite become clear:

ARET 11: 1 rev. v 2ff. ARET 11: 2 rev. iv 14ff. dutu dutu-ma e3 e3 ba-lu-um KA.DI i-ba-la-al6 KA.DI na-ti-lu balag-di [bal]ag-┌di┐ ti-na-da-ú balag-di sa-ti ša-ti dTU dTU ti-’à-ba-nu sur-ak

When the Sun rises, the invocation priest invokes (and) the lamentation priests lament – (a lament) by which the goddess Nintu is moved.

In version 1, most of the passage is spelled syllabically, and should be read in Semitic: pālilum yipallal nāṭilū tinaṭṭalū ðāti Nintu tiḥabbanu. The spellings ba-lu-um /pālilum/ and ti-na-da-ú /tinaṭṭalū/ exhibit the Ebla scribal tendency to omit /l/ in some contexts.27 Establishing the meanings of these terms requires contextual comparisons with cognates in other Semitic languages: *pll, as in Hebrew hitpallel ‘he prayed’ and Old South Arabian tfl (< *tpll) ‘to implore’; the root *nṭl ‘to lift; to make heavy, overbearing,’ as in Hebrew and Aramaic (but not so in Akkadian naṭālu ‘to look’); and Arabic ḥabana ‘he got angry.’ These meanings are in consonance with the Sumerograms in version 2 (KA.DI, balag-di, sur-ak). Even version 2, written mostly with Sumerograms, exhibits clear Semitic elements: the suffix -ma (‘and then’) and the relative ša-ti (‘which’). It is interesting to note that the earlier version spells more Semitic words syllabically, whereas the later one uses more Sumerograms instead. It would seem, perhaps, as if an earlier period of scribal experimentation and nativization had been eventually followed by a more formalistic attachment to the traditions imported from Southern Mesopotamia – or at least, to the local Eblaitic understanding of such traditions.

26 Archi, ‘Eblaite in its Geographical and Historical Context,’ 2006, p. 102, 104-106. 27 Rubio, ‘Eblaite, Akkadian, and East Semitic,’ 2006, p. 117.

The Inventions of Sumerian 243

Together with these Semitic compositions, the Ebla literary corpus includes several Sumerian works, such as a hymnic litany (ARET 5: 24-26)28 and the myth about Ama-ušumgal and Inanna, which is attested in two manuscripts from Ebla (ARET 5: 20/21) and one from Abū Şalābīḫ (IAS 278).29 The distribution of manuscripts of these compositions poses an obvious question: why were these purely Sumerian compositions copied and transmitted in exclusively Semitic-speaking sites, such as Ebla, far from Sumer? One simple answer is to point out that they might have been part of a scribal curriculum that spread hand in hand with the use of Mesopotamian cuneiform, a writing system first conceived to write down Sumerian and eventually utilized for Akkadian (Semitic) as well. In fact, the Ebla corpus includes manuscripts of several monolingual Sumerian lexical texts attested also in Southern Mesopotamia, alongside a bilingual lexical list (the Vocabulary of Ebla), which provides Eblaitic translations for Sumerian words and verbal forms. This textual circulation was also a consequence of scribal mobility, as noted in colophons of tablets from Ebla:

in u4 dumu-nita-dumu-nita dub-sar e11 áš-du ma-ríki, ‘when the junior scribes arrived from Mari’ (MEE 3: 47; ARET 5: 20+ rev. xvi 1-6).30

dub-sar kiški iš-má-ni, ‘Yišma‘ni, scribe of Kish’ (MEE 3: 73).31

It is in this Early Dynastic cultural continuum that one should search for a more profound rationale behind the presence and transmission of Sumerian compositions in Semitic-speaking areas. In fact, the very hybridity of the writing interface, as seen above in the case of Ebla, mirrors the literary interconnections that inhabit this continuum. These are nicely embodied in an oneiromantic fragment from Mari.32 It contains an incantation formula attested also at the end of the aforementioned Sumerian Ama’ušumgal myth from Ebla and Abū Ṣalābīḫ:33

28 Krebernik, ‘Zur Interpretation von ARET 5, 24-26,’ 1997. 29 Krebernik, ‘Drachenmutter und Himmelsrebe,’ 2003. 30 Archi, ‘Transmission of the Mesopotamian Lexical and Literary Texts from Ebla,’

1992, p. 28 31 Archi, ‘Un testo matematico d’età protosiriana,’ 1980, p. 63-64; Friberg, ‘The Early

Roots of Babylonian Mathematics, III,’ 1986, p. 8-15. 32 Bonechi and Durand, ‘Oniromancie et magie à Mari à l’époque d’Ébla,’ 1992. 33 See Krebernik, Die Beschwörungen aus Fara und Ebla, 1984, p. 204;

‘Drachenmutter und Himmelsrebe,’ 2003, p. 166, 177; Bonechi and Durand, Oniromancie et magie à Mari à l’époque d’Ébla,’ 1992. For a collated copy of the reverse of ARET 5, p. 20, see Archi, ‘Transmission of the Mesopotamian Lexical and Literary Texts from Ebla,’ 1992, p. 36.

244 Gonzalo Rubio

Abū Ṣalābīḫ Ebla (text A) Ebla (text B) Mari

(IAS 278 vi' 12'-15') (ARET 5.20 xiii 8'-xiv 2) (ARET 5.21 xiv 6-8) (TH 80.111 iii 4'-5')

EN2.E2 E2.AN E2.AN E2.AN-┌nu-ru┐ dinanna dinanna GAR SAG GI[N2] eš2-bar-kin5 eš2-bar-kin5 eš2-bar-kin ┌hul┐-hul he2-m[a]-gal2 he-dab6-NI he-dab6-NI [h]e2-[ ]

Incantation: May Inanna, by her own decision, chase away all evils.

This oneiromantic fragment from Mari is reminiscent of the scene described in the Ebla composition discussed above (ARET 13: 1 obv. iv 2ff.); for instance:

ii 4' igi-duh ┌sag┐ The seer, at the head munus na2-a al6-tuš of the sleeping woman, sits down.

This passage resembles other oracular dream scenes, as in Gudea’s Cylinder A (xx 7-8): gu3-de2-a sag-še3-na2 mu-na2 inim mu-na-ta-e3 ‘Gudea lay down for a dream oracle and words came to him.’ The Mari fragment implies familiarity with the Sumerian term for dream oracle, sag-še3-na2.

34 Moreover, the final lines of this Mari text testify to the cultural hybridity of this tradition:

iv 3' gi-zi ka-ni Reed is her mouth: dur10 al6-tag-tag An axe will cut it.

34 This could be analyzed as ‘lying down (na2) beside the head (sag-še3)’ of either the

divine image causing the oracular dream (at a temple) or, perhaps, the person who had the enigmatic dream, cf. Oppenheim,’ ‘The Interpretation of Dreams in the Ancient Near East,’ 1956, p. 223-24; and Zgoll, Traum und Welterleben im antiken Mesopotamien, 2006, p. 335-338. Concerning the element sag-še3 (lit. ‘at the head’), it is normally the source of the oracular dream (a deity) who stands at the head of the supine person. In Eannatum’s Stela of the Vultures (vi 25-32) and in Gudea’s Cylinder A (ix 5-6), Ningirsu stands at the ruler’s head while the latter has a dream. The noun lu2-sag-še3-na2-a is translated as mupaššir šunātim ‘interpreter of dreams’ in Akkadian (CAD M/2, p. 210). Perhaps sag-še3-na2 might be a frozen construction meaning ‘(the rite performed) at the sleeper’s head,’ and lu2-sag-še3-na2-a ‘the one at the sleeper’s head.’ However, an Early Dynastic cylinder seal kept at the Oriental Institute in Chicago may provide a slightly different setting for an oneiromantic ritual (cf. Asher-Greve, ‘The Oldest Female Oneiromancer,’ 1987, p. 27-32). This seal seems to show a deity, or a high-ranking individual, kneeling at the feet of a person (possibly an oneiromanceress) who appears to be talking, maybe in a trance. There are also two figures standing at her head, perhaps a priest and a priestess. Rather than trying to reconcile the textual and the iconographic evidence, one may simply refer to their status as incongruent corpora, as Cooper, ‘Incongruent Corpora: Writing and Art in Ancient Iraq,’ 2008 has argued in a more general context. On an oneiromanceress in Ur III Girsu (Nin-sal-la), see Waetzoldt, ‘Die Göttin Nanše und die Traumdeutung,’ 1998; Heimpel, ‘A Female Dream Interpreter,’ 1998.

The Inventions of Sumerian 245

ka-ni sipa mar-tu Her mouth is an Amorite shepherd– dinanna ù dutu gu-ra-dum Inanna and Utu, the warrior, ù dnin-gir2-su3 and Ningirsu...

With its mixture of Sumerian and Semitic words (gu-ra-dum, ù), the mention of the Southern Mesopotamian god Ningirsu (‘the Lord of Girsu’), and an Amorite reference, this is not a mere instance of written code-switching, but rather the concentrated expression of the cultural and linguistic tapestry within which the earliest Semitic literature became textualized with Sumerian as its scribal catalyst.

Beyond the practical matter of scribal training, Sumerian compositions thus provided templates and repertoires of literary devices for Semitic-speaking scribes in Abū Ṣalābīḫ, Mari, and Ebla to articulate their own written literary tradition. Some Semitic compositions might have stemmed from a preexisting oral tradition, but the majority can only be explained within a scribal setting: a hymn devoted to the patroness of scribes, Nidaba; historical narratives focused on court matters; rituals of kingship and official cult. In this regard, whereas a few Early Dynastic Sumerian compositions survived into later periods (the Instructions of Šuruppak, the Keš Temple Hymn), this earliest Semitic literature seems to have found no direct continuation. With a couple of exceptions from the Sargonic and Ur III periods, we know of no Semitic literature in Syria and Mesopotamia until the first half of the second millennium, with works such as the Babylonian Gilgameš and Atrahasis.35 Moreover, the genre of narratives based on historical characters, as in the case of the Ebla compositions in ARET 13, finds true parallels only in later Akkadian works, such as The Epic of Tukulti-Ninurta I and the legends of the third-millennium kings Sargon and Narām-Sîn.

Whereas Sumerian literature and its scribal traditions provided templates and devices to write down and articulate a native Semitic literature, both in Syria and in Mesopotamia, the intersection between Sumerian and Semitic produced a hybrid scribal culture in which ethnic identity seems to have been secondary, when not rather accidental. Sumerian literature was easily divorced from any sort of identity since there was no such thing as Sumerian ethnicity in third-millennium Mesopotamia, when Sumerian was still a spoken language. After the

35 On Sargonic literary texts, see references in Foster, Before the Muses, 2005, p. 54-

70; Rubio, ‘Eblaite, Akkadian, and East Semitic,’ 2006, p. 111 fn. 8. For an Ur III Akkadian incantation from Nippur (6N-T105), see Hilgert, Akkadisch in der Ur III-Zeit, 2002, p. 47 et passim.

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death of Sumerian, this lack of strictly ethnic connotations would have been, if anything, even clearer to everyone. Nevertheless, it is after the death of Sumerian in the late third millennium that Sumerian literature underwent a de-facto process of canonization within the realm of Old Babylonian schools and scriptoria in the first half of the second millennium.36

5. THE OLD BABYLONIAN PERIOD AND THE INVENTION OF SUMERIAN

The Old Babylonian period is commonly regarded as the ‘classical’ era of Sumerian literature, a sort of post mortem golden age. This view reflects an ancient phenomenon of textual canonization, which took place at the Old Babylonian cultural and social institution known as edubba (e2-dub-ba-a: ‘school’ or ‘tablet house’).37 Tablets containing literary, religious, and scholarly compositions are often found in private houses, and there is no evidence of temple or palace libraries in southern Mesopotamia during the Old Babylonian period. A few excavated houses could be identified as edubbas − i.e., as places of schooling or studying of one kind or another − at this period: House F in Nippur;38 the house of the kalamāḫu-priest Ur-Utu at Sippar-Amnānum, modern Tell ed-Dēr;39 House 7 on Quiet Street and house 1 on Broad Street at

36 This is a specific variety of canonization, frequently accompanied by simultaneous

textualization, which was driven by identity-forming and generic criteria. Otherwise, most canons are usually linked to the variable of authorship and often get built around compilations of artists’ and authors’ lives, as in Vasari, Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori, 1568, which established the canon of Renaissance art, and Johnson, Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, 1779-81.

37 In theory, the Old Babylonian spelling e2-dub-ba-a could be understood as ‘the house that distributes/assigns tablets’ (e2 dub ba-a) or ‘the house where tablets are distributed or assigned’ (Cavigneaux, Die sumerisch-akkadischen Zeichenliste, 1976, p. 81; Volk, ‘Edubba’a und Edubba’a-Literatur,’ 2000, p. 2-5). Nevertheless, Landsberger (apud Sjöberg, ‘The Old Babylonian eduba,’ 1975, p. 159 fn. 1) suggested that the spelling e2-dub-ba-a was used to keep it apart from the word for ‘storehouse,’ e2-DUB-ba or e2-kišib3-ba (‘sealed house’). The Akkadian translation of e2-dub-ba-a as bīt ṭuppi can hardly be regarded as a folk etymology, and it supports both Landsberger’s idea and the traditional interpretation of the Sumerian sequence as ‘house of tablets’ or ‘tablet house.’ Unless one assumes that ‘tablet houses’ did not exist before the Old Babylonian period, it seems likely that some of the Ur III occurrences of e2-DUB-ba may refer to e2-dub-ba in the same sense of Old Babylonian e2-dub-ba-a. Thus, the original pre-Old Babylonian form would simply be e2-dub-ba (/e2 dub-ak/) ‘house of tablets.’ In the Old Babylonian period, the confusion involved in the spelling e3-dub-ba would have been solved by distinguishing between two semantically driven variant spellings: e2-dub-ba-a for ‘school’ and e2-DUB-ba (e2-kišib3-ba) for ‘storehouse.’

38 Robson, ‘The Tablet House,’ 2001; and Delnero, present volume. 39 Tanret, Per aspera ad astra, 2002; ‘The Works and the Days,’ 2004.

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Ur;40 and a house at Mê-Turran or Meturan, modern Tell Ḥaddād, near the border between Iraq and Iran.41

Note that most of these houses were the dwellings of priests or located near temples. For instance, House F in Nippur is located in area TA, very close to the Inanna Temple.42 Likewise, House 7 on Quiet Street is part of the EM site, which was inhabited mostly by priests linked to the Nanna Temple at Ur.43 The situation, however, becomes more complicated when confronted with cases such as house 1 on Broad Street in the AH site at Ur.44 House 1 on Broad Street contains a large number of Sumerian texts, particularly literary compositions, alongside a completely different and heterogenous group of documents, whose placement within a school setting is difficult to explain.

It is no accident that most of these possible edubbas or tablet houses were the dwellings of priests and located near temples. Sumerian was a liturgical language throughout Mesopotamian history. Even in the first millennium, the majority of Sumerian literary compositions, still attested into the Seleucid period, were ritual lamentations, liturgical songs, and prayers. Thus, somehow Mesopotamian priests fulfilled a role similar to that played by the Medieval Church in preserving the use of Latin.45

40 Charpin, ‘Le clergé d’Ur au siècle d’Hammurabi,’ 1986; and Delnero, present

volume. 41 Cavigneaux, ‘A Scholar’s library in Meturan?,’ 1999. On the general setting of the

scribal production of Old Babylonian Sumerian literature, see Tinney, ‘Tablets of Schools and Scholars,’ 2011; and Michalowski, ‘Literacy, Schooling and the Transmission of Knowledge,’ 2012.

42 Stone, Nippur Neighborhoods, 1987, p. 56-59; Robson, ‘The Tablet House,’ 2001, p. 41.

43 Woolley, Ur Excavations 7: The Old Babylonian Period, 1976, p. 110-113; van de Mieroop, Society and Enterprise in Old Babylonian Ur, 1992, p. 9-10, 42-43; Ludwig, Literarische Texte aus Ur, 2009, p. 4-8.

44 Charpin, ‘Le clergé d’Ur au siècle d’Hammurabi,’ 1986, p. 434-486; Mieroop, ‘Society and Enterprise in Old Babylonian Ur,’ 1992, p. 158-59; Ludwig ‘Literarische Texte aus Ur,’ 2009, p. 6-7; Delnero, ‘Variation in Sumerian Literary Compositions,’ 2012, p. 64-66, and present volume.

45 As Witt, The Two Latin Cultures, 2012, has shown, the transition from Medieval to Humanistic Latin culture hinges upon the contrast between the ‘book culture’ of the Church, especially Charlemagne’s monks, and the ‘document culture’ of northern Italian notaries (mostly laymen by the end of the 10th century). It is the latter, with its revival of Roman law, that allowed the study of Latin to gain increasing independence from the Church and eventually, by the mid 13th century, it gave birth to early Humanism in northern and central Italy. The study of rhetoric, essential for legal practice, contributed to the spread of the Roman classics in a secular realm. In ancient Mesopotamia, the absence of public speaking as a social institution − as opposed to 5th-century Athens or 13th-century Republican Florence − precluded the development of rhetoric and, therefore, of self-reflecting (theoretical) discourses, such a poetics. Instead of rhetoric,

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Moreover, the use of a dead language added a layer of mystery and distance to the rituals and, particularly in the case of Mesopotamia, it kept the ability to perform such rituals as the private territory of a very small elite. That the genre of lamentations, particularly the canonical laments, happens to be so widely attested in the second and first millennia can also be regarded as a fitting reflection of the ideology that permeated so much of the Mesopotamian scribal culture.46 One of the most common kinds of cultic lamentations, the balag (named after a musical instrument, either a drum or a harp), is especially concerned with the destruction and abandonment of temples and deities. Another closely related type of lament, the eršemma (‘the wail of the šem-drum’), normally opens with lists of cities, buildings, and epithets, and so draws an elegiac topography of melancholy and nostalgia. It is only fitting that such laments over lost glories had to be written and performed in Sumerian, the dead language of a dead past.

The long life of this genre of laments and liturgies was symptomatic of the nostalgic yearning and scribal antiquarianism which presided over the culture of the literate elite in Mesopotamia.47 However, when we think of Sumerian literature now, we tend to focus on the mythological compositions, the royal hymns, the city laments, the dialogues and disputations, the wisdom literature, and the narrative cycles about mythical kings such as Gilgameš, Lugalbanda, and Enmerkar. These major literary compositions are known to us mainly in Old Babylonian manuscripts, most of which come from Nippur. This may well be a matter of serendipity, but the very location of Nippur may provide other explanations.

The Old Babylonian Nippur texts we have now most likely correspond to the exercises and copies of the last two or three generations of scribes and pupils before Nippur was mostly abandoned. As part of the devastation resulting from the fight that followed the rebellion started by a certain Rīm-Anum at Uruk during the eighth year of the reign of Samsu-ilūna (1742 BCE), the population of Nippur fled north.48 This rebellion against the so-called Amorite dynasty of Babylon Mesopotamian scribes focused on lexicography as a means to maintain access to a literary, scholarly, and legal stream of tradition, generation after generation.

46 A detailed study of the genre of Sumerian laments, dirges, and wails can be found in Shehata, Musiker und ihr vokales Repertoire, 2009. On the balag subgenre, see Löhnert, Wie die Sonne tritt heraus!, 2009. For an overview of all these kinds of songs, see Rubio, ‘Sumerian Literature,’ 2009, p. 62-70.

47 Rubio, ‘Scribal Secrets and Antiquarian Nostalgia,’ 2009. 48 Rositani, Rīm-Anum Texts in the British Museum, 2003, p. 15-26; Charpin, ‘Histoire

politique du Proche-Orient Amorrite,’ 2004, p. 337-38; Seri, The House of Prisoners, 2013, p. 27-54.

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was continued by Rīm-Sîn II.49 This Rīm-Sîn was probably the king of Larsa and son of Warad-Sîn, but seems to have regarded Keš as the center of his power.50 Either as a consequence of Samsu-ilūna’s actions against the rebels, or as an exile triggered by the Elamite intervention, or even as a result of the actions of the kings of the ‘Sea Land’ − or for all these reasons − the fact is that, during the second half of the eighteenth century, most inhabitants of Uruk took refuge in Kish, the people of Larsa sought shelter in Babylon, and most Southerners seem to have abandoned their cities: first Ur, Uruk, and Larsa, and eventually Nippur and Isin as well.51 Most of these southern sites remained scarcely populated for the most part for several centuries.52

In many respects, Nippur could be regarded as lying on the northern border of Sumer, the northernmost city of the southernmost region. The traditional cultural core of Sumer is associated with places such as Ur, Eridu, Uruk, Lagaš, Larsa, and even Fāra, but Nippur can be seen as

49 As Michalowski, The Correspondence of the Kings of Ur, 2011, p. 82-121, has

shown, the label ‘Amorite’ is not precisely monolithic, as it was loaded with different connotations and nuances throughout the Ur III and the Old Babylonian periods. For a more traditional approach to this issue, see Durand, ‘Réflexions sur un fantôme linguistique,’ 2012. It may be perhaps no accident that some scholars who were born into rather ethnically homogeneous nation states seem to have difficulties fully grasping the fluidity, and often vagueness, with which ethnic labels and identities were construed, misconstrued, invented, and reinvented in ancient Mesopotamia.

50 Cf. Charpin, ‘Histoire politique du Proche-Orient Amorrite,’ 2004, p. 338-340; Seri, ‘The House of Prisoners,’ 2013, p. 34, 239, for a letter from Rīm-Sîn II to Amurrum-tillatī (AbB 13/2 53, p. 7-9): ilū rabûtum ina keš āl bānītīya išdī kussīya ukinnū ‘the great gods established the foundations of my throne in Keš, the city of my creatrix (sc. Ninmah).’ In this regard, it is worth noting how well attested the Keš Temple Hymn is in the Old Babylonian period, with at least 61 manuscripts and fragments from Nippur, six from Ur, three from Isin, and another three from Babylon, Kish and Susa respectively, as well as ten of unknown provenance (Delnero, Variation in Sumerian Literary Compositions, 2006, p. 1323-1433, 2173-2181). Moreover, the Keš Temple Hymn is one of the few major Early Dynastic compositions (alongside the Instructions of Šuruppak) that survived into the Old Babylonian period (Delnero, op. cit., p. 1392-94; The Textual Criticism of Sumerian Literature, 2012, p. 12 fn. 11; Rubio ‘Sumerian Literature,’ 2009, p. 35, 41). Regardless, the actual location of Keš remains elusive − it might have been Abū Ṣalābīḫ, precisely the site at which the Early Dynastic manuscript of the Keš Temple Hymn was found, cf. Charpin, op. cit., p. 339 fn. 1763. Note also that Rīm-Sîn is called ‘king of Sumer’ by Samsu-ilūna in an unpublished inscription, see Cooper, ‘Incongruent Corpora,’ 2012, p. 291.

51 Charpin, ‘Histoire politique du Proche-Orient Amorrite,’ 2004, p. 342-346. 52 This does not mean that these southern cities were completely deserted, as Richter,

‘Untersuchungen zu den lokalen Panthea,’ 2004, p. 280, and Dalley, ‘Babylonian Texts from the First Sealand Dynasty,’ 2009, p. 8-9 have pointed out. However, the aftermath of the rebellion against Samsu-ilūna did cause a dramatic change in these cities’ standing, both quantitatively and qualitatively, cf. Michalowski, ‘Literacy, Schooling and the Transmission of Knowledge,’ 2012, p. 50.

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rather peripheral, in spite of being Enlil’s city. In the Old Babylonian period, any Southern identity became eventually defined in contrast to the Babylonian domination that had started with Hammurabi. The widespread revolt against Samsu-ilūna was most likely preceded by a Southern attempt to construct a distinctive identity in opposition to the Babylonian Dynasty. There was an atmosphere of dissent and political opposition in which these scribal literary endeavors can be placed. For instance, at Ur, the purification priest (abriqqu) Enamtisud was living in House 7 on Quiet Street when the revolt against Samsu-ilūna started, and all copies of poetic works praising the earlier king of the very Southern city of Larsa, Rīm-Sîn I, were found precisely in that house.53 The texts were originally compiled (or perhaps composed) by Enamtisud’s father, Ku-Ningal, also an abriqqu-priest.54 In the presence of these compositions one can see an act of defiance on the part of the local cultural elites to which Enamtisud belonged: Hammurabi, Samsu-ilūna’s father, had defeated Rīm-Sîn of Larsa a couple of decades earlier − as Rīm-Sîn I was defeated by Hammurabi, so did Rīm-Sîn II rise against Samsu-ilūna. The compositions devoted to Rīm-Sîn I would have taken on a new meaning during the revolt against Samsu-ilūna, and their being copied (or at least preserved) at Ur would have been part of an atmosphere of dissent and political opposition.55 There was, thus, an ideological project to reclaim a Southern polity that preceded the powerful Dynasty of Hammurabi and Samsu-ilūna in Babylon.

The core versus periphery dynamic often causes the latter to suffer from a heightened anxiety to tie itself to the former’s traditions. In dealing with the same composition, it is an interesting exercise to compare Nippur manuscripts to Ur ones. Ur scribes tend to exhibit a looser approach to orthography and seem freer to use defective, abbreviated, and phonetic spellings, instead of the expected logograms and syllabic morphological markers.56 By contrast, Nippur scribes usually adhere to a set of orthographic conventions that show a deep concern with the traditional spelling of logograms and grammatical

53 On abriqqu (abrig) as a kind of purification priest, see Charpin, ‘Le clergé d’Ur au

siècle d’Hammurabi,’ 1986, p. 392-393. 54 Enamtisud’s older brother, Ešuluhuru, used to live in the same house, but he might

have passed away by the time of the rebellion against Samsu-ilūna. On this family of priests, see Charpin, Le clergé d’Ur au siècle d’Hammurabi, 1986, p. 51-52, 75-79; van de Mieroop, Society and Enterprise in Old Babylonian Ur, 1992, p. 124-26, 171. Regarding the possibility that Ku-Ningal himself composed some hymns in honor of Rīm-Sîn, see Charpin op. cit., p. 280-302, 432-34. On these Rīm-Sîn hymns, see Brisch, Tradition and the Poetics of Innovation, 2007, p. 53-69.

55 Rubio, ‘Review of N. Brisch,’ 2008, p. 122. 56 Delnero, The Textual Criticism of Sumerian Literature, 2012, p. 71-73.

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markers (suffixes, prefixes). For instance, the verbal pronominal suffix for the 1st and 2nd singular persons, /-en/, is consistently written as -e in Ur − the latter being normally the suffix marking the agent in transitive constructions with the imperfective (marû) verbal form − but it is fully spelled as -en in Nippur manuscripts of the same compositions. As one would expect, the Sumerian core (Ur) appears more innovative than the periphery (Nippur). On the other hand, the actual understanding of Sumerian grammar at Old Babylonian Nippur seems sometimes less satisfactory. For instance, Nippur manuscripts can contain seemingly agrammatical verbal forms, whereas Ur manuscripts of the same compositions tend to show more awareness of these problems and try to solve them by rephrasing or lexical substitution.57

Nippur cultural and social elites must have felt compelled to reassert their Sumerianness precisely after the Sumerian language had died out and the center of power had shifted from the south to Babylon in the early second millennium. In order to insert themselves into a Sumerian cultural and literary tradition, the priests, scribes, and scholars at Nippur had to first create such a tradition, not simply as a cultural product but particularly as an ideological device. When Sumerian and any possible Sumerianness ceased to have any currency and could not be properly understood anymore, they were turned into an ideology framing an identity, whose main artifacts of (re)invention became precisely the various genres of Sumerian literary compositions attested in the Old Babylonian period.58 The third millennium is not exactly rich in literary works, as administration lay then at the center of all scribal endeavors. The corpus of Early Dynastic literature in Sumerian is rather small, and not much bigger than the Semitic literary corpus, if one also counts

57 For instance, in Nippur sources one can find the verbal modal prefix /na-/ with

imperfective (marû) forms in contexts that are clearly epistemic –/na-/ is normally deontic (prohibitive) with imperfective and epistemic (introducing reported speech) with perfective (ḫamṭu) forms. At least in a few instances, Ur manuscripts seemingly try to regularize these apparently agrammatical or idiosyncratic constructions (Rubio, ‘Review of N. Brisch,’ 2008, p. 122). Nevertheless, Akkadian grammatical interference can already be detected in Isin and Larsa (i.e., early Old Babylonian) Sumerian texts (Wilcke, ‘Zu Gilgameš und Akka,’ 1998; Brisch, Tradition and the Poetics of Innovation, 2007, p. 98); on the issue of relying on possible Akkadianisms as criteria for dating texts and compositions, see Delnero, The Textual Criticism of Sumerian Literature, 2012, p. 87-91.

58 When an original tradition − in its immediate reality or through the later perception of it − is otherwise unavailable, or has lost its explanatory context, it is often recreated as an ideology that reinterprets and reinvents such a tradition. For instance, as Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 1941, p. 23 noted, ‘to the mystics and philosophers of a later stage of religious development Judaism itself has become problematical, [and so] they tend to produce an ideology of Judaism, an ideology moreover which comes to the rescue of tradition by giving it a new interpretation.’

252 Gonzalo Rubio

Ebla. The geographically liminal predicament of Nippur is likely to have played a role in the effort to create a canon of Sumerian literature, to invent a Sumerian literary tradition, on which to construct the ideology of an identity. This may not be merely a sudden Old Babylonian phenomenon, as Nippur itself is essentially the sole source of Sumerian literature in the preceding period, Ur III.59

Even before nostalgia was ever possible, the literature written in Sumerian was endowed with connotations of cultural prestige grounded in the use of the Mesopotamian cuneiform system. As early as the mid third millennium, Semitic-speaking scribes at Ebla adopted this writing system and, with it, they received a few literary compositions that provided them not only with elements upon which to build a corpus, but also a repertoire of devices with which to textualize their own local literary traditions and creations. Later on and in Mesopotamia itself, the scribes at Nippur embarked on a process of canonization of a Sumerian literary corpus, in which compositions were cultural artifacts that created the very notion of Sumerianness and inserted that almost peripheral city into the imaginary core of such an invention. The actual glory of Sumer had been rather ephemeral and limited to a few centuries during the third millennium. The memory of Sumer and the reinvention of its cultural tradition lasted as long as the Ancient Mesopotamian civilization. This contradiction is unwittingly encapsulated in the verses of Maḥmoud Darwish, who wrote of ‘Sumer the eternal’ and ‘Sumer the ephemeral’ (šūmara l-’abadiyya... šūmara z-zā’ila):

ات ذ اإللھ رة لنبي دي ج ي معب ق ف م تب ولة ومر الزائل ي س ة ف ومر األبدي ي س ف

And there is no jar left in my temple for the wine of the goddesses, In Sumer the eternal, in Sumer the ephemeral.

ABBREVIATIONS

AbB = Altbabylonische Briefe. Leiden, 1964 ff. ARET = Archivi reali di Ebla: Testi. Rome, 1985 ff. IAS = R.D. Biggs. Inscriptions from Tell Abū Ṣalābīḫ. (Oriental Institute

Publications 99.) Chicago, 1974. MAD = I.J. Gelb. Materials for the Assyrian Dictionary, 1-5. Chicago, 1952-1970. MEE = Materiali epigrafici di Ebla. Naples, 1980ff. SF = A. Deimel. Schultexte aus Fara. (WVDOG 43.) Leipzig, 1923.

59 Rubio, ‘Sumerian Literature,’ 2009, p. 37-39.

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