How To Do Things With Tears: Ritual Lamenting in Ancient Mesopotamia 9781501512650, 9781501519468

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Paul Delnero How To Do Things With Tears

Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records

General Editor Gonzalo Rubio

Editors

Nicole Brisch, Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum, Petra Goedegebuure, Amélie Kuhrt, Peter Machinist, Piotr Michalowski, Cécile Michel, Beate Pongratz-Leisten, D. T. Potts, and Kim Ryholt

Volume 26

Paul Delnero

How To Do Things With Tears Ritual Lamenting in Ancient Mesopotamia

ISBN 978-1-5015-1946-8 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-5015-1265-0 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-1294-0 ISSN 2161-4415 Library of Congress Control Number: 2020935906 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2020 Walter de Gruyter, Inc., Boston/Berlin Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

How to Do Things with Tears: Ritual Lamenting in Ancient Mesopotamia

Contents Chapter 1 Doing Things with Tears   1 1.1 Approaches to Mesopotamian Religion and Ritual   8 1.1.1 The Phenomenological Approach to Mesopotamian Religion  1.1.2 The Descriptive Approach to Mesopotamian Religion   13 1.1.3 The Literary Approach to Mesopotamian Religion   20 1.2 Lamenting in Ancient Mesopotamia   31 1.3 Structure and Goals of the Book   38

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Chapter 2 Lamenting in the Early Second Millennium   41 2.1 The Classification of Old Babylonian Sumerian Laments   44 2.2 The Content and Main Features of Sumerian Laments   51 2.2.1 Laments to Inana   59 2.2.2 Laments to Ninisina-Gula   65 2.2.3 Laments to other Goddesses   75 2.2.4 Laments to Enlil   78 2.2.5 Laments to other Male Deities   84 2.3 The Geographic Distribution of Sumerian Laments and Local Traditions   90 Chapter 3 Writing and the Performance of Sumerian Laments   106 3.1 Balags and Ershemmas in Performance   115 3.2 Writing and Oral Performance   123 3.3 The Readability of Sumerian Laments   134 3.4 Variability in the Content of Sumerian Laments   137 3.5 Other Features of Oral Performance in Sumerian Laments  3.6 Conclusion: Writing and the Performance of Sumerian Laments   172 Chapter 4 Emotion and Sumerian Laments   174 4.1 The Structure of Sumerian Laments   177 4.2 The Themes of Sumerian Laments   195 4.3 Affect and the Performance of Sumerian Laments 

 214

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VIII 

 Contents

Chapter 5 Sound and Meaning in Sumerian Laments   225 5.1 The Corpus of Phonetically Written Sources   227 5.1.1 The Geographic Distribution of Phonetically Written Sources   229 5.1.2 Phonetic Sources for the Laments and Compositions of Other Types   242 5.2 Phonetic Writings and the Performance of Sumerian Laments   245 5.2.1 Phonetic Writings and Unskilled Scribes   246 5.2.2 Phonetic Writings as an Alternative Regional Orthography   259 5.2.3 Phonetic Writings and Scribal Training   273 5.2.4 Phonetic Writings as Pronunciation Aids   278 5.3 The Interface of Sound and Meaning in Sumerian Laments   287 Chapter 6 Conclusion – the Cultural Function of Mesopotamian Lamenting  Appendix 1 Edition of uru2-am3-ma-i-ra-bi (Kirugus 1–5) 

 295

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Appendix 2 Catalogue and List of Old Babylonian Sources for Sumerian Laments by Type   379 Appendix 3 Lists of Phonetic Writings in Phonetically Written Lament Sources   521 Bibliography  Index 

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Chapter 1 Doing Things with Tears Shortly after 9 am, on the morning of December 14th, 2012, the 20-year old Adam Lanza, who had just shot and killed his mother, broke into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, armed with a military-grade semiautomatic rifle and a handgun. In less than 15 minutes, he shot and killed 20 children between the ages of 6 and 7 years old, and six adult staff members who had attempted to conceal them from the shooter by hiding them in closets and under desks, or lying on top of them. Although it was not the first school shooting in America, and there have been many more since, the number and age of the children, and the manner in which they were senselessly and violently killed, sent shock waves throughout the nation and the world, and shattered the small and quiet community in which the tragedy occurred, and the lives of the families of the victims and the many others who were close to them. While it is unlikely that anyone who heard or saw the reports will ever forget what happened in Newtown that day, what is perhaps less well known is how the town itself responded in the months and years that followed. A year after the shooting the community voted to raze the entire school to the ground and build a new school on the exact same spot, leaving the flagpole as the only physical remainder of the grounds where the meaningless killing occurred. The referendum for the razing and rebuilding of the school, which was to cost over $50 million, and has since been completed, passed by a measure of 4504 people in favor, and only 558 against. To ensure that every trace of the old building was eliminated, every stone of the building was pulverized and ground to dust, and all of the metal melted down, and all of the construction workers had to swear an oath and sign a contract that they would not remove and keep any debris, or take any photographs of the remains of the building that could be circulated through social media. In addition, critical, and otherwise unprecedented amendments were made to the American Freedom of Information Act, prohibiting the release and public circulation of any images of the victims or of the school on the day of the shooting. Furthermore, the township of Newtown acquired ownership of the home of the shooter and his mother, which nobody wanted to purchase or inhabit, and after another vote, had it torn down and the land on which it stood turned into a wildlife preserve. In place of a commemorative event on the anniversary of the shooting, a “communal day of kindness” was declared. Although the destruction and rebuilding of Sandy Hook Elementary School was not intended as an act of ritual magic and nobody involved in it, or effected by it, would ever characterize it as one, when viewed from the perspective of how https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501512650-001

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magic and ritual are typically conceived, it possesses all of the essential features of both. First, if magic is understood as a convenient term for any actions that involve the principles of sympathy, contact, or some combination of the two, to produce an effect that is of direct benefit to those on whose behalf they are performed, then the decision to destroy and rebuild the school, and how it was carried out, was unquestionably a magical act. Every brick of the building in which the children had been killed needed to be completely destroyed so that not a single physical trace or even an image would remain that could taint the new building with the memory of the unspeakable violence that had occurred there. Second, if ritual is understood to refer, in a very general sense, to any sequence of prescribed actions that are carried out for a specific purpose in the absence of a direct and empirical causal relation (assumed or otherwise) between the performance of the acts and the result they are intended to achieve, then the manner in which the school was destroyed and rebuilt on the same spot was also unquestionably a ritual. Before the school could be rebuilt, precise procedures were established for how the old structure was to be cleared, and these procedures were carried out to the last detail to ensure that a similarly horrific event would not occur there again in the future. The purpose of describing the response to the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School is not to argue that magic and ritual are still alive and well in the 21st century, but instead to show how ritualistic responses to devastating catastrophes are first and foremost highly emotional, affectively-laden experiences that become incomprehensible when viewed solely in terms of whether they are rational, or are motivated by superstitious beliefs that are the product of a fallacious, or misguided “worldview”. When viewed as an emotional response to an irreversible and traumatic catastrophe that defies all comprehension, the act of destroying and rebuilding the school seems completely natural, and nobody that has been emotionally effected by the event would ever accuse the community that carried it out of being irrational, or incapable of understanding the physical laws of cause and effect. Furthermore, the actions that can be identified as magical, such as the full removal of all material traces and images of the old building, are meaningless in and of themselves, and only become meaningful when they are understood in relation to the events that provoked them and all of the other actions that were carried out in relation to them, including the symbolic retaining of the flagpole, the lawsuit against the company that manufactured the weapon used by the assailant, the public expressions of grief and communal bonding, and the proclamation of a communal day of kindness, all of which were intended to strengthen the community and to show the world that they are stronger than the violence that was visited upon them. Lastly, the destruction and rebuilding of the school did not require any form of legitimation because it responded directly

Chapter 1 Doing Things with Tears 

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to the emotional needs and desires of an entire community stricken with grief and pain resulting from an irreversible and unfathomable loss, the overwhelming majority of which voted in favor of having it done. More importantly, however, even if the reaction to the catastrophe at Sandy Hook is not reducible to an act of ritual magic, in conceiving magic and ritual as superstitious practices performed only when no more effective means of achieving a desired result are known, it is not possible to understand fundamental aspects of grief or the ritualized expressions of it. While the rebuilding of Sandy Hook Elementary School is one of many examples of a ritual that is carried out as a response to grief, rituals can also be performed to generate grief by evoking or enacting real or imagined catastrophes that were not experienced directly by any of the participants. Every year at Easter, Christians of all denominations mourn and celebrate the crucifixion of Jesus by listening to readings from the Gospels that describe in vivid detail the pain and suffering Jesus had to endure by being nailed and left to hang on a cross. Similarly, the victims of past wars are remembered on national holidays, like Memorial Day, when flowers are laid on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to commemorate those who gave their lives fighting for their country, even by people who have never known anyone who has died in combat. However, when rituals such as these are performed effectively, the grief they are capable of generating can be no less real and powerful than the grief that is felt by those who have experienced tragedy and loss more immediately and directly. Another particularly vivid example of the power of ritual to generate dramatic expressions of grief is the Shiite commemoration of the martyrdom of Husayn. The purpose of the ritual is to lament the violent death of the third Shiite Imam Husayn, who was massacred in 680 AD on the plains of Karbala on the way to reclaim the throne, which had been occupied by Yazid, the son of the Umayyad caliphate Muawiya. During the battle that ensued between Yazid’s army, which had been sent to stop Husayn from arriving in Kufa to assume power, Husayn and his companions, who were greatly outnumbered, were defeated, and Husayn was beheaded, along with his companions and members of his family, including his infant son, who were also put to the sword. The commemoration of the Martyrdom of Husayn, which is carried out during the first ten days of the month of Muharram, has both a large-scale public and a small-scale private dimension. Publically, throughout the ten-day period, different types of processions parade through the streets, lamenting and mourning the death of Husayn, culminating on the tenth day, Ashura, when the Battle of Karbala, and the gruesome death of Husayn and his entourage, are reenacted in vivid detail. During this time, smaller and more private gatherings called majalis (‘sittings’) and krayas (‘recitations’), in which the events that led to the death of Husayn are narrated and lamented,

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are also held in smaller settings, including the houses of members of the community. One of the main effects of the public and private rites that are held during the first ten days of Muharram is to generate intense grief over the death of one of the most sacred figures in Shiite Islam. The primary means of accomplishing this is through evocative verbal and visceral physical reenactments of Husayn’s death, in which everyone participates directly in the expression of pain and sorrow to experience the full emotional impact of the devastating loss. Although the way the Martyrdom of Husayn is commemorated has changed and developed over time, and is carried out differently by different groups in different places, in a description of the rites of Muharram in Iraq during the 1970s, the scholar Ibrahim al-Haidari noted the occurrence of four different types of public processions.1 These processions comprise the processions of chest-beaters (Brustschläger), chain-flagellants (Kettengeißler), sword-cutters (Säbelgeißler), and the main processions in which the Battle of Karbala and the death of Husayn are publically enacted. While in the first of the two types of processions, large groups of men parade through the streets striking their chests, or whipping their backs with barbed iron chains, in a slow, steady rhythm, to the accompaniment of songs of lament about the tragic events at Karbala, the emotional intensity of the lamenting is heightened even further in the procession of the sword-cutters. At five in the morning at the beginning of Ashura, the tenth, and final day of the ritual, a large group of men carrying sharp swords and daggers, and dressed in the white garments used to clothe the dead, walk through the streets in oval-shaped groups, with a preacher and assistants in the middle of each group to wipe the blood from the eyes and faces of the men as they strike their heads with their swords. As their garments and white banners, and the street below their feet, become soaked with blood, warlike music is played on drums, trumpets, and flutes by musicians accompanying the men, as they inflict wounds upon themselves, sometimes to the point of falling unconscious, or in extreme instances, dying during the procession. This aspect of the ritual has been described by Yitzhak Nakash, who observed: The procession of the tenth of Muharram included another, more violent, form of flagellation. A group of self-mutilators dressed in white robes would stroke their clean-shaven heads with swords and daggers. The gashing of the heads took place amidst loud exclamations and the stimulating shouts of their leader. The extreme excitement of the selfmutilators was assisted by drummers and cymbalists who ran up and down between the rows of self-mutilators, creating a deafening din with their instruments.2 1 Al-Haidari 1975: 41–51. For a detailed treatment of the historical development of the Shiite commemoration of the Martyrdom of Husayn, see Nakash 1993 and Nakash 2003: 141–62. 2 Nakash 1993: 178.

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In tandem with the processions, and the large-scale public rituals of mourning, which reach their emotional climax with a powerful dramatic reenactment of the Battle of Karbala, the lamenting of Husayn is also carried out on a smaller and more intimate scale in the majalis and krayas that are held on each of the ten days of Muharram. During the “sittings” and “recitations”, which take place in the courtyards of mosques and in the houses of families who host them, a preacher or religious leader (mullah) leads groups of men or women, who participate separately in these events, through narrations centered around the death of Husayn that are intended to induce tears and expressions of grief. While living in a Shiite village in southeastern Iraq in the 1950s, the American anthropologist Elizabeth Fernea participated in a kraya held for women in a house in the village, which she described as follows: The mullah sat down and the two young girls stood to lead the congregation in a long, involved song with many responses. Gradually the women began to beat their breasts rhythmically, nodding their heads and beating in time to the pulse of the song, and occasionally joining in the choruses, or supplying spontaneous responses such as “A-hoo-ha!” or a longdrawn-out “Ooooooh!” This phase lasted perhaps ten minutes, the girls sank down into their places, and the mullah arose to deliver a short sermon. She began retelling the story of the killing and betrayal of the martyr Hussein, which is told every night during Ramadan and is the beginning of the important part of the kraya. At first two or three sobs could be heard, then perhaps twenty women had covered their heads with their abayahs and were weeping; in a few minutes the whole crowd was crying and sobbing loudly. When the mullah reached the most tragic parts of the story, she would stop and lead the congregation in a group chant, which started low and increased in volume until it reached the pitch of a full-fledged wail. Then she would stop dead again, and the result would be, by this time, a sincere sobbing and weeping as the women broke down after the tension of the wail.3

As the kraya progressed, the emotional intensity of the lamenting continued to heighten, culminating in a moment of silent supplication, followed by the abrupt end of the ritual: ... The mullah increased the tempo again, the cries mounted in volume and intensity, the old women in the center bobbed in time to the beat, there was a loud slap against the Koran, a high long-drawn-out chant from the mullah, and everyone stopped in her tracks. The three old ladies who had bared their chests readjusted their veils, and many of the women stood silently for a moment, their eyes raised, their open hands held upward in an attitude of prayer and supplication. But the mullah was already conferring with her novices. The kraya was over.4

3 Fernea 1965: 110. 4 Fernea 1965: 111–112.

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After the kraya had ended, Fernea was struck by how quickly the mood of the participants returned to normal immediately following the emotionally intense display of grief only moments before: The women began to stream out, smiling and chattering, drawing their veils over their faces and bidding each other good night. Sherifa was laughing with one of the novices. Fadhila led me over to our hostess, where we sat down for a final chat and cigarette before departing. It was hard to believe that these decorous and dignified ladies were the same women who, five minutes ago, had thrown themselves into a ritual of sorrow for the martyr. I was quite overcome by the episode and found it difficult to respond easily to the conversational overtures being made by my hostess.5

The response to the catastrophe at Sandy Hook and the lamenting that takes place during the first ten days of Muharram provide two very different examples of the close relationship between ritual and grief. The highly ritualized rebuilding of Sandy Elementary School was carried out as a response to the grief caused by an unspeakable tragedy. By contrast, in the commemoration of the martyrdom of Husayn, ritual is not merely the effect of grief, but also a means of eliciting or generating it. In both cases, however, emotion plays an essential role in the experience and function of the ritual. Overwhelmed by grief in the wake of devastating and irreconcilable loss, the destruction and rebuilding of the school becomes a form of healing, but also a way of expelling the violence from the community so that it will never happen again. Similarly, by lamenting the loss of a foundational sacred figure, the grief felt and expressed every year during the first ten days of Muharram are both a form of worship, and a powerful means of forging a communal identity that is grounded in the shared experience of pain and sorrow. There is a third form of ritual lament in which the experience and expression of emotion is an essential aspect, and this is the type of lamenting that was practiced in Ancient Mesopotamia: lamenting that is performed neither as a cause of grief, nor as a means of generating it, but instead to prevent catastrophes from occurring. In many predominantly Christian or secular countries, where the ritual expression of grief has been almost completely forgotten, lamenting is frequently associated with mourning the dead, but is rarely recognized as a vital component of other widely practiced rituals. However, as illustrated by the response to the tragedy at Sandy Hook, and the Shiite commemoration of the Martyrdom of Husayn, lamenting can be carried out in many different forms for many different reasons, and not only as a personal reaction to grief and loss. In contrast to lamenting that is either a cause and or an effect of certain types of rituals,

5 Fernea 1965: 112.

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Mesopotamian cultic laments had an apotropaic function, and were performed to prevent catastrophes, and not only in response to them. Unlike many rituals from the ancient world that are known only from secondary descriptions that were compiled long after the rituals ceased to be performed, Mesopotamian cultic lamenting is documented in a broad range of primary textual sources. In addition to hymns and mythological narratives in which lamenting is described, and the numerous references to when, why, or how laments were performed in administrative texts, colophons, and ritual descriptions, one of the richest sources of evidence is the written copies of the laments themselves. Beginning in the early 2nd millennium BCE, the cultic laments that were performed in rituals were put in writing, and the practice of copying laments continued until at least as late as the 1st century BCE, when the last known copies of laments are attested. While a complete catalogue of the written sources containing laments has yet to be compiled for the first millennium, there are over 500 copies of Mesopotamian laments from the early second millennium that are currently known, and probably at least two to three times as many from later periods.6 In spite of the wealth of evidence pertaining to the apotropaic function of the laments, and their central importance in rituals for preventing catastrophes, cultic lamenting in ancient Mesopotamia has been largely ignored by all but a small group of specialists. Although the cultic function of lamenting has been the subject of both recent and older studies that have documented and shown beyond any reasonable doubt why Mesopotamian laments were performed, lamenting is almost never included in treatments of Mesopotamian religion, or any other aspect of Mesopotamian history, culture, and society. Furthermore, as invaluable as these studies are for understanding cultic lamenting in ancient Mesopotamia, the focus has been on the essential task of reconstructing the textual corpus of Mesopotamian laments, and the discussions of how, when, and why they were performed are largely descriptive. Since the role of emotion in the performance of the laments has yet to be examined, the main purpose of this book is to provide an overview of lamenting in Mesopotamia that connects the content of the laments with different aspects of how they were performed and experienced in performance, in order to shed light on how the emotion generated by performing the laments was an essential aspect of their cultic function.

6 For a catalogue of the Old Babylonian sources for Sumerian laments see Appendix 2. The number and geographic distribution of these sources are discussed in more extensive detail in Chapter 2.

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1.1 Approaches to Mesopotamian Religion and Ritual There is arguably no subject of humanistic inquiry that has generated more controversy, and such a vast array of widely diverging views, than the question of differing worldviews and mentalities. Do people see the world in fundamentally different ways depending on when and where they were born? Is the experience of all aspects of life, or what we call “reality”, shaped and conditioned entirely by environmental, social, and cultural factors beyond our control? Or is there something innately and distinctly “human” we all share that reduces our apparent differences to superficial surface phenomena that ultimately derive from a common source, the fundamental sameness that makes humanity what it is, and distinguishes us from every other form of life on the planet? Is it possible to understand a culture other than our own, or is there a great, unbridgeable divide, between “us” and “them”, whoever “we” are and “they” might be? As archaic and quaint as these questions may seem, they have proven nearly impossible to avoid when studying ancient Mesopotamia, and there is probably not a single study, from the beginning of the discipline in the mid–19th century until the present, that does not presuppose a position, one way or another, on the issue of whether, and to what extent, other worldviews are fundamentally different than our own. While the question of cultural difference has informed, and continues to inform nearly every treatment of the economic, cultural, and political history of ancient Mesopotamia, there is no subject where it has been more pervasive and problematic than in the study of Mesopotamian religion and ritual. Although many different approaches have been applied to examine various aspects of Mesopotamian religion, and not all of these approaches are reducible to a single type, there are, on the whole, three main methodologies that have been applied to the topic. The first, and probably the oldest of these methods is the phenomenological approach, in which Mesopotamian religion is studied from the point of view of how it was experienced by the people who practiced it. The second approach, which is largely a reaction against the first approach, is predominantly descriptive, and emphasizes the philological study of the primary textual sources pertaining to Mesopotamian religion over studying religious conceptions that it is assumed can never be understood. The third and most recent approach, is either to ignore it entirely, or to study Mesopotamian religious and mythological compositions as works of “literature” that were known only to a small group of elites, and which otherwise reveal very little about how religion was practiced and conceived in ancient Mesopotamia.

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1.1.1 The Phenomenological Approach to Mesopotamian Religion Of the three main approaches to Mesopotamian religion, and to religion more generally, the phenomenological approach assumes the greatest difference between religious experience and the usual modes of thought that are used to understand it. Religion, in most of the phenomenological definitions that have been proposed, involves the out of the ordinary; an ideal or presence that is always there, but just out of reach, that transcends the mundane regularities of everyday existence, and points to something bigger and more powerful, to something fundamentally different, and beyond the realm of human comprehension. The view of religion as an encounter that is irreducible to the terms used to describe normal experience, is perhaps best exemplified by the German theologian, Rudolph Otto, in his enormously influential book, Das Heilige: Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein Verhältnis zum Rationalen, first published in 1917. In this book Otto coined the term “numinous” to identify what he calls the “mysterium tremendum et fascinans” experienced when encountering “das ‘Ganz Andere’”, or “Wholly Other”. Otto also described the “holy” as a category that “hat als solche ein völlig artbesonderes Moment in sich, das sich dem Rationalen ... entzieht und das ein arrēton, ein ineffabile ist sofern es begrifflicher Erfassung völlig unzugänglich ist.” Understood in this way, religion becomes by implication that which can never be fully understood, as if, paradoxically, a religion ceases to be meaningful for what it is as soon as it is possible to explain and comprehend it. As one of the primary modes of practicing religion, the same conceptions of unfathomability and difference apply equally to the phenomenological approach to religious ritual. If religious experience is that which is fundamentally incomprehensible, then how much more so ritual, which is performed to bring about an experience of the divine or a change in the world by means of a procedure that is completely irreducible to the empirical laws of cause and effect? To illustrate one of the many different ways in which the study of Mesopotamian religion has been influenced by phenomenological theories of ritual, consider the following account of the so-called “Arabian Camel Sacrifice” by William Robertson Smith, from Lecture 9 of his Religion of the Semites, first published in 1889: Now in the oldest known form of Arabian sacrifice, as described by Nilus, the camel chosen as the victim is bound upon a rude altar of stones piled together, and when the leader of the band has thrice led the worshippers round the altar in a solemn procession accompanied with chants, he inflicts the first wound, while the last words of the hymn are still upon the lips of the congregation, and in all haste drinks of the blood that gushes forth. Forthwith the whole company fall on the victim with their swords, hacking off pieces of the quivering flesh and devouring them raw with such wild haste that, in the short interval between the rise of the day star, which marked the hour for the service to begin, and the disappearance

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of its rays before the rising sun, the entire camel, body and bones, skin, blood and entrails, is wholly devoured. The plain meaning of this is that the victim was devoured before its life had left the still warm blood and flesh – raw flesh is called ‘living’ flesh in Hebrew and Syriac – and that thus in the most literal way all those who shared in the ceremony absorbed part of the victim’s life into themselves. One sees how much more forcibly than any ordinary meal such a rite expresses the establishment or confirmation of a bond of common life between the worshippers, and also, since the blood is shed upon the altar itself, between the worshippers and their god.7

Aside from the repulsive marks of late 19th-century colonialist reasoning, evident in the voyeuristic fetishizing of the savage, flesh-eating Arab, who in a spell of bloody-thirsty zeal cannot be contained from devouring a living camel until not even the bones remain, and the Protestant lens through which the entire account is filtered, complete with “altars”, “worshippers”, “solemn processions”, “chants”, “hymns”, “congregations”, and “services”, there can also be found all of the contours of a theory that has had a profound influence on the way ritual sacrifice has been, and to some extent, continues to be conceptualized. Later in the same lecture, Robertson Smith develops a three stage-evolutionary framework to explain the practice of animal sacrifice over time. While frameworks with a similar structure can already be found in the work of Edward Tylor, and can even be traced as far back as Auguste Comte, a half century earlier, Robertson Smith was the first to apply a framework of this type to a specific aspect of human culture. The Arabian camel sacrifice just described belongs to the first, and according to Robertson Smith, the most primitive stage in the evolution of human society, in which the members of a community directly absorb the complete living sacrifice into their bodies to forge bonds between themselves and with their god. In the second stage, the sacrifice is less immediate and direct, and the blood alone begins to represent the life of the sacrificial animal and to serve as the agent for establishing the bond between the worshipers and their god. In the third and final stage, the sacrifice becomes almost entirely symbolic, and the living animal is replaced with a form of agricultural produce, like grain, which is no longer offered to create a communal bond, but instead as a gesture of submission, either to obtain favor, or out of fear, to pacify the anger of a god. In spite of the many overtly problematic aspects of Smith’s three-stage model of sacrifice, including the assumption that societies evolve over time, in a linear and progressive manner, from primitive to more complex, and the implicit notion that earlier and less advanced societies lacked the ability to distinguish between appearance and reality, there are many aspects of this model that have been pro7 Robertson Smith 1894: 338–39.

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foundly influential. One of these aspects is the idea that societies pass through three stages, beginning with a stage in which reality is experienced immediately and directly, without the mediation of any form of representation; followed by a stage in which signs and symbols are developed to represent what is being experienced; and ending with a third stage in which after passing from immediate experience to symbolic representation, it finally becomes possible for people to think and conceptualize abstractly. To give only one example of how this model has been adapted and applied to other forms of religious behavior than sacrifice, Jane Harrison, in her book Ancient Art and Ritual, first published in 1913, argued that ritual developed initially out of a purely automatic response to a basic biological emotion, like the fear of starvation, which expressed itself through the spontaneous movement of the body in the form of dance. According to Harrison, this stage of immediate bodily response was followed by a second stage, when, after responding in the same way to the same situation repeatedly over time, an increasingly more patterned and standardized representation of the original movements developed to become a ritual, or a conventionalized sequence of actions that could be repeated consciously and deliberately to counter the same fear that had originally inspired the dance. The transformation from spontaneous dance to ritual culminated in a final stage, in which the ritual, after becoming more and more abstract and detached from the needs of the people performing it developed into art, or a purely abstract form of representation, in which the work of art is completely detached from the object it represents in every way except aesthetically. Similar models, in which a form of human cognition is argued to develop in a sequence of three phases, from immediate, to representational, to abstract, have also been applied to language and writing systems. The philosopher Ernst Cassirer, in his books Language and Myth and Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, argued that language began with a stage in which words were unified and inseparable from the objects in the sensible world they expressed; followed by an intermediate stage when, through a combination of metonymy and metaphor, words both embodied and represented the things to which they corresponded; and ending with the present form of language in which words are only abstractly related to what they signify. The same elements can also be found in the theory of semiotics developed by Charles Peirce, in his tripartite model of language comprising icons, which stand in a direct relation to that which they express; indexes, in which a part of an object is used to refer to the whole; and symbols, which relate only arbitrarily to the things they represent. Lastly, even now, it is not difficult to identify an almost identical structure in the dominant theory of the origin of writing, in which it is argued that writing systems developed from pictograms, which directly resemble that which they represent; to ideograms, in which an

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aspect of a concept is used to refer indexically to an entire range of meanings associated with the concept; to the final stage when writing is used phonetically, and the signs in the writing system are only symbolically related to the sounds in the language they represent. In Assyriology, the same three-stage framework is most strikingly evident in the work of Thorkild Jacobsen, a scholar whose influential work on Mesopotamian religion probably best epitomizes the phenomenological approach to the subject. In his book, The Treasures of Darkness, which remains one of the only complete theories of Mesopotamian religion that has ever been proposed, Jacobsen, drawing heavily from Rudolph Otto’s theory of the “numinous”, put forward an historical model for the development of Mesopotamian religious conceptions. According to Jacobsen, in the fourth millennium deities were directly experienced as embodiments of natural phenomena; then, in the third millennium, with the emergence of kingship, gods became anthropomorphic and idealized representations of human rulers and began to act directly on humanity and the world, often in a bellicose and warlike manner; until lastly, in the second millennium, with the rise of individualism, personal gods, who protected and watched over the individuals they served, became increasingly more prominent. In all three stages of Jacobsen’s historical reconstruction of Mesopotamian religious conceptions, each stage is characterized by a particular “mentality” or worldview that governs how the divine is experienced and conceptualized in that period that distinguishes it from the modes by which religion is apprehended in the preceding or subsequent stages. The main component of all three stages is the experience of Otto’s conception of the “numinous”, or the “Wholly Other”, which is not reducible to, or comprehensible within the categories and confines of rational thought. Although historical in the sense that it recognizes changes in the way the numinous was experienced over time that are directly connected with social and political developments, such as the emergence of kingship in the Early Dynastic Period and a reconfiguration of the notion of the divine in more nationalist terms with the appearance of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires in the first millennium, Jacobsen’s treatment of Mesopotamian religious conceptions is nonetheless fundamentally phenomenological. In all of Jacobsen’s numerous studies of Mesopotamian religion, religion is first and foremost an experience that transcends cognitive categories, and belongs to a fundamentally different worldview, which can only be understood by abandoning our own categories and conceptions, and trying to recreate how the divine would have been experienced in ancient Mesopotamia on its own terms.

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1.1.2 The Descriptive Approach to Mesopotamian Religion The second main approach to Mesopotamian religion is descriptive and philological. In sharp contrast to Jacobsen’s phenomenological approach, the core components of religious experience, such as those that Jacobsen claims to have identified, are argued to be inaccessible, not because they belong to a fundamentally different worldview (though this is often implicitly assumed), but instead due to the nature of the textual evidence pertaining to Mesopotamian religion. Although Mesopotamian religious practices are abundantly documented in thousands of textual sources from different periods and places, including hymns and mythological narratives, administrative documents relating to cultic practices, and ritual descriptions, these texts often describe specific practices or rituals, but do not explicate how they were experienced or conceptualized by their practitioners. In the absence of any direct textual evidence for Mesopotamian religious conceptions and experience, all that can be studied is the content of the texts themselves, and if the texts are descriptive, then the only reliable means of studying Mesopotamian religion is to study their linguistic content. To understand Mesopotamian religion, it is first necessary to describe what is written in the existing sources about it, and in order to do this accurately, the content of these texts has to be translated utilizing all of the lexicographic, grammatical, and philological resources available for reading the languages in which they were written. In this view, any attempt to reconstruct Mesopotamian religious conceptions that is not grounded in the philological study of the surviving textual sources is considered to be an imaginative flight of fantasy that reveals more about the scholars who indulge in them than it does about the realities of religion as it was practiced in ancient Mesopotamia. Since philological analysis is unquestionably the fundamental basis for studying Mesopotamian texts of any type, the descriptive approach to Mesopotamian religion can justifiably be considered to produce less speculative results than the phenomenological approach adopted by Jacobsen and others. However, description and explanation are not the same, and in emphasizing the former over the latter, adherents of the descriptive approach to Mesopotamian religion often confuse philology, which is a step in the interpretative process, with interpretation itself. Furthermore, Assyriological studies of religion of any type, including the descriptive approach, have always been informed, to greater or lesser extents, by analytic frameworks for interpreting religious behavior that are not entirely descriptive. These frameworks, which are almost never directly acknowledged in the descriptions of Mesopotamian religion and ritual they inform, are often either borrowed (usually without awareness) from anthropological studies of religion, or are based on cultural assumptions that are incorrectly assumed to be universal.

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The difficulty of interpreting a Mesopotamian ritual by describing it without using an interpretive framework can be illustrated with an example. It is quite easy to be shocked and appalled by accounts like Robertson Smith’s description of the Arabian camel sacrifice. But how are rituals like the following, which is not drawn from an apocryphal 19th century ethnographic account, but instead from a primary ancient source, to be interpreted using a purely descriptive approach? (The high priest) will call for the slaughterer and he will cut off the head of the sheep and the exorcist will purify the temple with the carcass of the sheep. He will recite incantations (of the type): ‘The house is conjured’. He will consecrate the whole cella to its full extent, and clear away the censer. The exorcist will lift up the carcass of that sheep and go to the river. He will place his face towards the West. He will throw the carcass of that sheep into the river. He will go out to the open country. The slaughterer with the head of the sheep ditto. The exorcist and the slaughterer will go out to the open country; as long as Nabû is in Babylon, they will not (re)enter Babylon. From the fifth day until the twelfth day they will stay in the open country. The high priest of Etuša will not observe the consecration of the temple. If he observes (it) he is not pure.8

This passage, which is from the 23rd tablet of a series describing the sequence of ritual actions to be performed during the Akītu festival, at the beginning of the New Year, in Hellenistic Babylon, contains a description of how the shrine of the god Nabû was to be purified on the fifth day of the festival, in anticipation of the god’s arrival from his city Borsippa. There is probably no ritual from ancient Mesopotamia that is more widely known and that has generated more commentary than the first of the two Akītu festivals, which, on the basis of the description of the ritual dating to the first century BCE, is thought to have been celebrated in Babylon, during the first to the twelfth days of the month of Nisannu, the first month of the year in the Babylonian calendar. But while some of the events that occurred during this festival, such as the recitation of the Babylonian Creation Myth, Enuma Elish, on the 4th day of the festival, the ritual slapping and debasement of the king before the statue of Marduk on the 5th day, and the procession to the Akītu house, have received substantial attention, the purification of Nabû’s shrine has received almost none. Part of the reason for this may be that because animal sacrifice was an extremely common practice in Mesopotamia and throughout the ancient Near East, the ritual killing of an animal is easily overshadowed by the seemingly more noteworthy events that occurred at other points during the festival. When the passage is considered more closely, however, there are many aspects of the ritual that are significant, and nearly every line in the description

8 The translation of this passage (lines 353–65 of RAcc. 127–54, one of the main sources for the description of the Babylonian New Years Ritual) is that of Linssen 2004: 230.

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raises questions that require more detailed examination. Why was the carcass of a sheep thought to be an effective agent for purifying the temple? Why was the sheep beheaded first? How was the sheep carcass used to purify the shrine? Why were incantations recited at the end of the purification? Why was the carcass thrown into the river after the procedure and why did the exorcist have to face to the west when disposing of it? Why were the same actions performed by the slaughterer with the head of the sheep? Why did the exorcist and the slaughterer have to remain in the steppe until the end of the festival? And why was the high priest not allowed to observe the consecration of the temple? Or more broadly, what does purification mean in a context like this, and how similar or different were Mesopotamian conceptions of purity from those of other cultures? All of these are anthropological questions, and even when all of the textual evidence for purification and similar ritual practices in ancient Mesopotamia has been meticulously collected, it is impossible to understand the significance of these actions completely, without implicitly or explicitly adopting a framework that has been inherited from the study of cultures other than our own. Even though Robertson Smith did not write specifically about the purification of Nabû’s shrine, it is not difficult to imagine how he might have interpreted it. Although the blood of the sacrificial animal is not consumed during the purification of the temple, Robertson Smith implies in his account of the camel sacrifice that the animal was consumed at the very instant blood started gushing from its still living body because the closer an animal is to being alive, the more potent the body of the animal would have been as a vital source of life and power. Since, according to this view, the blood and viscera would have been the most powerful and effective agents for cleansing the shrine of demonic impurities in the moments immediately following the slaughtering of the sheep, Robertson Smith might have argued that this was the reason a freshly slaughtered sheep was used for the purification of the shrine. Without going into extensive detail, there are also many other anthropological theories of animal sacrifice that can be used to answer the questions raised above about the ritual. Citing only a few of the most influential theories from the decades after the work of Robertson Smith, the application of these theories to the purification of Nabû’s shrine might provide explanations like the following. Using Robertson Smith’s camel sacrifice as a model, Sigmund Freud argued, in his book Totem und Tabu, that the practice of sacrifice emerged out of an original act of patricide, when the members of a clan collectively killed and consumed their leader out of envy. During the time following the murder, the act was repeated over and over again to renew the bonds of the clan, but this time with an animal as a substitute. At first the sacrificial killing was motivated by hatred, but over time this feeling gave way to guilt over the murder, which in turn led to the desire

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to venerate the clan leader in the form of a male god who possessed all of his attributes. In response to the new need to worship the murdered leader instead of hate him, sacrifice acquired an ethical dimension, and the sacrificial animal was no longer killed as a substitute, but instead as an offering to honor and placate the god who had become the totemic father of the clan. If Freud were to interpret the purification of Nabû’s shrine, he might argue then that the use of a freshly killed animal to purify the shrine was a secondary effect of a deeper, collective need to atone for murdering the leader of the people, who was now worshiped in a different form, as their god. Pursuing this genealogy even further, and jumping ahead to much later in the 20th century, the anthropologist Walter Burkert proposed a new theory of sacrifice in his book Homo Necans, published in 1972. Again adopting the three-stage evolutionary model used by Robertson Smith, and adding Freud’s theories about the psychological effects of aggression and sexuality into the mix, Burkert argued that animal sacrifice originally developed from the hunting of wild animals to eat, when after a long period of repeating the hunt, the killing of animals became ritualized in the practice of sacrifice. What distinguishes Burkert’s theory from that of Freud and Robertson Smith is the view that the act of killing itself is the basis for religious experience and the communal bonds that develop out of it. According to Burkert, divinity is experienced the most profoundly when a bloody act of sacrificial killing is performed. Proceeding from the Freudian assumption that the most basic human instincts are aggression and sexual desire, in Burkert’s view hunting can serve both as a conduit for channeling aggressive urges, and as a mechanism for forging communal bonds through the emotional stimulation the act of killing generates. But because killing an animal is best able to achieve these positive effects when the animal is perceived to resemble as closely as possible a human being, it also causes guilt, so that the shedding of blood acquires a paradoxical character. The more gruesome the act of killing, the more it strengthens the bonds of the community and brings its members closer to experiencing their god. But, at the same time, the more guilt and anxiety the sacrificial killing produces, the more it inspires the need for restitution and makes the community aware of the inherent sacredness of life. So if Burkert were to interpret the purification of Nabû’s shrine, he might argue that the significance of the use of a sacrificial animal in the ritual lies in the feelings of sacrality and the respect for life the killing of the animal for the purification awakens, as well as the communal bonds that the act of killing creates. Lastly, around the same time as Burkert, René Girard, the literary critic turned anthropologist, advanced a different theory of sacrifice, which emerged from the same tradition. In his book, La violence et le sacré, Girard argues that killing generates a contagious violence that can destroy the community if it is not stopped

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from spreading. According to Girard the only way to stop the destructive contagion is to perform a sacrifice, in which a victim is chosen to break the cycle of violence. Originally, the victim was selected from within the community, and killed unanimously and collectively to restore order to the community. In later periods, however, the original victim was replaced with a surrogate selected from outside the community, until eventually the human victim was replaced with an animal. Since for Girard, sacrificial killing is a way of abolishing violence, he might have argued that the purpose of using a sacrificial sheep to purify the temple during the Akītu festival was to provide a ritual outlet for a scapegoat sacrifice that would purge and prevent the contagious spread of violence from destroying the community. There are of course also innumerable other anthropological theories about the function and significance of blood sacrifice, or “sacred killing”, that do not assume, like Robertson Smith, Freud, Burkert, and Girard, that the practice of animal sacrifice derives its efficacy from its affinity to shedding the blood of another living being.9 The most important of these would undoubtedly be the sociological theory of sacrifice proposed by Marcel Mauss and Henri Hubert in their pioneering book, Essai sur la nature et la fonction du sacrifice, in which they argue that sacrifice is primarily a method of consecrating a profane object to make it sacred for the benefit of the individual or a group for whom the sacrifice is performed. In their view, sacrifice accomplishes the consecration and the benefits that are accrued through it by means of a schema in which an intermediary object is placed between the sacrifier (defined as the person or thing that acquires the benefits of the sacrifice, in contrast to the sacrificer, who is the one who carries out the act of sacrifice itself) and the divinity to whom the sacrifice is made. Through the act of destroying the object, the consecrated object passes into the religious domain, but at the same time, the part of the object that remains serves as a conduit for the blessing, or the sacred power bestowed on the object by the divinity to whom the sacrifice has been made to be transferred to the sacrifier, either by being consuming or applied to it. Since blood is very often the intermediary that remains to transfer the blessing or power acquired after the rest of the sacrificial animal has passed into the sacred realm, and since, according to Mauss and Hubert, the power of the sacrifice is in direct proportion to the degree of solemnity with which it is performed, the explanation they might have 9 For recent archaeological perspectives on sacrifice in the Ancient Near East, see the contributions to the volume, Sacred Killing: The Archaeology of Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East (Porter and Schwartz 2012). The distinction between sacrifice and “sacred killing” is discussed in the introduction to the volume (Schwartz 2012). See also Schwartz 2017 for an overview of anthropological and archaeological theories of sacrifice.

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provided for the sacrifice in Nabû’s shrine is relatively easy to surmise. The sheep was sacrificed so that its carcass, in accordance with the degree of solemnity with which the sacrifice was performed, would be bestowed with the highest power to purify, so that it could be spread over the walls of the shrine to cleanse it of impurity in preparation for the arrival of the god Nabû. But returning to the original question: what does this highly selective overview of anthropological theories of sacrifice contribute to answering the questions posed above about the purification of Nabû’s shrine? Regardless of which theory of sacrifice is adopted, the answer of adherents of the descriptive approach to Mesopotamian religion would probably be not very much. But to illustrate how much further we have come without these theories, as well as how much these theories are equally implicit in the Assyriological descriptions of the ritual that have been proposed: here are three examples from more recent treatments of the Akītu festival, by Assyriologists, about the passage in question: Jeremy Black, in his article, “The New Year Ceremonies in Ancient Babylon: ‘Taking Bel by the Hand’ and a Cultic Picnic,” from 1981, writes: This (the shrine of Nabû) the sorcerer cleanses in the same way. It is clearly stated that he must go into the sanctuary of this shrine and clean that as well. The sanctuary is vacant as the statue of Nabû has not yet arrived. The sorcerer calls in a slaughterer who decapitates a sheep, with the corpse of which he will purify the temple. (The word used here is ukappar, literally ‘wipe clean’, but often used in the sense of ‘make cultically pure’.) He recites spells to cleanse the temple, and then taking the corpse he throws it away into the river Euphrates which flows past the temple. The slaughterer does the same with the sheep’s head. Since the sorcerer is clearly described as purifying the whole sanctuary with the sheep’s carcass, and since he was not allowed into Bel’s sanctuary, it is evident, and crucial, that the business with the dead sheep concerned the shrine of Nabû, and not that of the deity usually thought of as central to the rites, Bel-Marduk. The sorcerer and the slaughterer are now unclean and must leave Babylon for the country. The may not return until the 12th, when Nabû has left Babylon.10

Similarly, Mark Cohen, in his overview of the events of the Akītu festival in his book, The Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East, from 1993, writes the following about the purification of Nabû’s shrine: Morning prayers to Bēl and Bēltiya in the Esagil; exorcist purifies the Esagil and the Ezida; ritual slaughterer slaughters a sheep for the exorcism; exorcist and the ritual slaughterer leave Babylon until Nabû departs ... 11

10 Black 1981: 43. 11 Cohen 1993: 438.

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And somewhat less laconically, Marc Linssen writes in his description of the sacrificial cleansing in his book, The Cults of Uruk and Babylon, from 2004: On day 5 prayers for Bēl and Bēltiya are recited. Then the king enters Babylon with Nabû, but before he goes into Esagila the text describes extensively how Esagila, including the cella of Bēl and the cella of Nabû (Ezida), are prepared for this visit by the high priest. During these preparations the high priest goes out to the open country, leaving an exorcist and a slaughterer to purify the temple with the carcass of a sheep. Afterwards the carcass is thrown into the river and they leave for the open country themselves, not to return as long as Nabû is in Babylon, that is, as long as the New Year festival lasts, until day 12. Clearly their presence would disturb the ceremony since they might endanger the purification process.12

When these sets of remarks are compared to the original account of the ritual in the source from the Seleucid Period, it becomes clear that all three treatments of “the business with the dead sheep” are really only paraphrases, and in some instances, even word-for-word repetitions, of the ancient description of the purification, without any interpretation of the ritual at all. But it is also equally apparent from these descriptions, the extent to which the translations upon which they are based utilize the language for understanding sacrifice that has been developed in anthropological studies like those summarized above, without explicitly acknowledging where the concepts originated, or questioning their applicability to rituals like the purification if Nabû’s shrine. To cite only a few examples, the words “consecrate”, “cleanse”, and the various forms of the verb “to purify”, which are used frequently in translations and descriptions of the passages are only approximations of the semantic fields of the words to which they correspond in the text. The verb kapāru, translated by Black as “wipe clean”, in the sense of “make cultically pure”, means quite simply “to wipe”, with no explicit connotation of cleansing, let alone, of making cultically pure. Similarly, the different words in Akkadian and Sumerian that are often translated as to purify, like the Sumerian word ku3 or its Akkadian equivalent ellu, are extraordinarily complex, and are often associated first and foremost with the brightness and luminescence of divinities, celestial bodies, and metals, but rarely exclusively and simply with a concept like purity. The purpose of citing these treatments is not to criticize Black, Cohen, Linssen, and the many other Assyriologists who have produced excellent, and in many instances, brilliant reconstructions of Mesopotamian rituals, but simply to call attention to the tendency to describe instead of interpret that dominates the study of religion and ritual in the field. Since describing without interpreting is an effective way of avoiding interpretative questions entirely, it is essential to remember that even when it is easy to identify the inadequacies of 12 Linssen 2004: 81–82.

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earlier anthropological theories of sacrifice, like those of Robertson Smith, Freud, Burkert, and Girard, we have not really come any closer to understanding these rituals, and that in fact, we will never make any progress, if we continue to avoid interpretation completely.

1.1.3 The Literary Approach to Mesopotamian Religion The third common approach to Mesopotamian religion, which is more recent, is to argue that there is not sufficient evidence for reconstructing Mesopotamian religious conceptions, and that therefore the pursuit should be abandoned entirely in favor of topics that are presumed to be less speculative. As a result of this view, it has become increasingly more common during the past twenty to thirty years to study Mesopotamian mythological and cultic texts as works of literature that were known only to small groups of elites, and whose content had no relation to religion as it was experienced and practiced in everyday life. Certainly one of the most influential, if not the first, statements to this effect can be found in A. Leo Oppenheim’s famous essay: “Why a ‘Mesopotamian Religion’ should not be Written”, first published in 1964, where he writes: The second group of texts to be examined contains myths and mythologically embellished literary works. To state at the outset my objection to the direct and indiscriminate utilization of such texts, I submit that their contents have already unduly encroached upon our concept of Mesopotamian religion. All these stories about the gods and their doings, about this world and ours and how it came into being, these moralizing as well as entertaining stories geared to emotional responses represent the most obvious and cherished topics for the literary creativeness of a civilization such as that of Mesopotamia. They form something like a fantastic screen, enticing as they are in their immediate appeal, seductive in their far-reaching likeness to stories told all over the ancient Near East and around the Mediterranean, but still a screen which one must penetrate to reach the hard core of evidence that bears directly on the forms of religious experience of Mesopotamian man.13

For those familiar with the history of the field, it is not hard to recognize in this passage a strong critique of Oppenheim’s colleague Thorkild Jacobsen, whose highly influential treatments of Mesopotamian religion were based on the exact opposite assessment of “mythologically embellished literary works” as evidence for reconstructing Mesopotamian religious practices. Be that as it may, Oppenheim’s remarks in this passage have since reached a much wider audience, to become, in many ways, the consensus view of the relevance of Mesopotamian

13 Oppenheim 1977: 177.

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mythological or cultic texts to understanding religion in ancient Mesopotamia. While this is not the place to trace the legacy of Oppenheim’s criticism into the present, it has been quite common for scholars in the field of Assyriology, as well as related disciplines and sub-disciplines, to have lost interest in Mesopotamian religion (and all of the research that is published about it) entirely, on the grounds that the textual sources pertaining to it are thought to have nothing of importance to contribute to our knowledge of Mesopotamian society. Since Oppenheim’s characterization of Mesopotamian religious texts as “mythologically embellished literary works” has contributed substantially to the view that these texts reveal little about Mesopotamia religion, it might be worth taking a few steps back to consider how the conception of these texts as works of literature has influenced the way they are studied. Although texts written in both Akkadian and Sumerian exist for nearly all periods of Mesopotamian history and texts in both languages are invaluable source of evidence for reconstructing the economic, cultural, and political history of all of these periods, the study of “literary texts”, and in particular Sumerian literary texts, has become, and to a certain extent has always been, a separate subfield of Assyriology. Almost every Assyriologist ends up learning a little Sumerian at some point in their training, but only a few of those who have studied it retain an interest in it, and even fewer continue to keep up with the research that is published on Sumerian texts, and incorporate the findings of this research into their own work. Although this somewhat hyperbolic observation does not apply equally to Sumerian texts of all types, and in particular to Sumerian Ur III administrative texts, which have been an invaluable source for reconstructing social and economic history, it does reflect, at least to a certain extent, a common perception of Sumerian literature. A large part of the problem is the category of Sumerian literature itself. Treating the study of Sumerian literary works as if it were a separate subfield of Assyriology carries with it the implication that the compositions we classify as literary works were also set apart from everything else in ancient Mesopotamia as well. Even though literature, in the sense in which the term is now understood (i.e. as a high form of verbal art that includes novels, poems, and written stories of just about any type) is a relatively recent invention, and texts that are literary in exactly the same sense did not exist in Ancient Mesopotamia, there were undeniably stories and narratives that possess some of the same characteristic features of literature today.14 These features include the use of a poetic 14 For another critique of the concept of “literature” and its applicability to Sumerian hymns and narrative texts, see Charpin 2008: 150, who cites Florence Dupont’s book, L’invention de la littérature. De l’ivresse grecque au texte latin (Dupont 1994) for a detailed treatment of why the concept is inapplicable to texts from the Classical World.

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register of language; modes of narration that differ from those employed in everyday speech; and content that is not a faithful description of reality, and that, for lack of a better term, can be described as fictional. But as with the categories constructed for any typology, possession of similar features does not necessitate belonging to the same category as everything else with the same set of features. Mesopotamian incantations, for example, are written in a different linguistic register, are narrated in a different mode than everyday speech, and have content that can be characterized as “fictional”, but nobody would conclude on the basis of this, that these texts belong to the same category as Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Which raises the questions: how universal is the category of literature, and how much does our implicit understanding of what a literary narrative is influence what we think the form and function of the Mesopotamian compositions that we classify as literary would have been? In keeping with most definitions of literature, it is typically assumed that Sumerian literary compositions are similar to literary works from other periods and places in form, function, and social reception. Sumerian compositions like “Gilgamesh and Huwawa”, “Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave”, “Inana’s Descent to the Netherworld”, and many others have narratives with plots in which a protagonist undergoes a series of developments or changes in fortune, just like more modern works of literature. From a functional perspective, these narratives, like stories, were intended to entertain, to instruct, or reveal a deeper truth about the human condition. Furthermore, although this is never stated directly, the conception of Sumerian literary works as texts that were known only to a small group of elites suggests that these compositions would have been read or heard by a passive audience of one, or at the most two or three, knowledgeable scribes, reading the text, out loud or silently, from the cuneiform tablet on which it is written. While this understanding of the form, function, and reception of literature is unproblematic when applied to modern literature, the question of whether it applies with equal validity to Sumerian literary works, or the applicability of the term “literary” at all to these texts, has never really been seriously considered. A case can certainly be made that Sumerian literary texts possess the same formal features of literary works of other types. Many of these compositions, including the series of narratives about the legendary rulers of Uruk, Gilgamesh and Enmerkar, have narratives with clear beginnings and ends, involving protagonists that undergo a series of changes in fortune; are narrated in an elevated register of the language; and employ stylistic features, like repeated formulae and poetic descriptions, to develop suspense. But when the evidence for the function of Sumerian literature and for how it was experienced is considered, the applicability of the common conception of literature to these compositions begins to break down.

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If a Sumerian literary composition is defined in the broadest sense as any Sumerian text written in a higher register of the language that is not scholarly, magical, legal, or administrative, there are approximately 900 Sumerian texts that can be classified as literary. Over 500 of these texts are laments, and an additional 300 are hymns with performative rubrics and subscripts indicating the manner in which they were performed or the instruments that were played in accompaniment to them. The remaining texts comprise hymns to gods, rulers, and temples without rubrics or subscripts; dialogues and debates; texts like the Instructions of Shuruppak that can be classified broadly as wisdom literature; and a relatively small number of narratives involving rulers, divinities, or both. In contrast to the laments and hymns with rubrics and subscripts, the compositions in this group are known to have been copied by apprentice scribes as part of their training to read and write Sumerian, and were probably not actively performed at the time they were being copied as exercises. Since, however, many of the texts that were copied as school exercises are hymns that are similar in form and content to the hymns with performative rubrics and subscripts, it is very likely that they would have also been performed before they entered the scribal curriculum. In other words, with only a few exceptions, nearly all of the texts that can be classified as Sumerian literary compositions were either actively performed, or would have been performed at some point in the time before they became scribal exercises. As texts that belonged to a performative tradition, they would have been sung or recited in cultic contexts, and would not have been read or heard by a passive audience in the same manner as a modern story or work of literature would be. Moreover, as compositions with a social and religious function that extended well beyond the texts themselves, they would not have been set apart from other aspects of Mesopotamian culture the way literature is now. What then of the few remaining texts that contain narratives, which do not seem to have been performed or to have had a cultic function? Can these texts be considered literary texts in the same sense as stories and other works of literature? The Sumerian literary compositions which are predominantly narrative in structure and form include the series of texts about Gilgamesh, Enmerkar, and Lugalbanda, as well as compositions like “Enlil and Ninlil”, “Enlil and Sud”, “Inana and Ebih”, “Inana’s Descent to the Netherworld”, “Enki and the World Order”, and “The Deeds and Exploits of Ninurta”, many of which contain narratives embedded within a hymnic framework. While there are many different types of texts in this group, one critical feature that they all share, is that unlike modern stories, they are all densely populated with gods. Moreover, many of the deities in these texts are the same deities that are celebrated with the greatest frequency in Sumerian hymns and liturgical texts, the larger group of Sumerian literary compositions that had a clear cultic function. The deities Inana, Enlil,

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and Enki, which were among the most prominent gods in the Mesopotamian pantheon of the time, are either the main subjects of these narratives, or play a critical role in the events depicted in the narrative. Even in the texts about Gilgamesh and Lugalbanda, the gods are essential to the stories being told in these compositions. Gilgamesh insults the goddess Inana in “Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven”, angers Enlil in “Gilgamesh and Huwawa”, and prays to Utu in “Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherword”; and in the two Lugalbanda narratives, Lugalbanda prays to the deities Utu, Inana, and Nanna for his recovery. Leaving aside the difficult question of what a myth is and whether the term can be applied uncritically to Sumerian literary works, all of these narratives have content that is more mythological than fictional, in so far as they all concern, on one level or another, the relationship between humanity and the gods. If Sumerian literary narratives differ from other forms of literature in content, function, and the manner in which they were experienced, to what extent is it useful or appropriate to classify them as literary? If the concept of what constitutes literature is far from universal, can Sumerian narratives with mythological content, or, in Oppenheim’s words, “mythologically embellished literary works”, even be considered works of literature? That we should exercise caution before classifying Mesopotamian narratives as literary, can be illustrated with two conceptions of narrative, one ancient and one modern, that differ substantially from our own understanding of what a narrative is. In what is arguably one of the first and oldest theories of narrative, Aristotle in Poetics argues that the pleasure people derive from literature comes from the universal pleasure of experiencing realistic representations of people or things in the real world, when he writes: Indeed, this marks off humans from other animals: man is prone to representation beyond all others, and learns his earliest lessons through representation. A common phenomenon is evidence of this: even when things are painful to look upon – corpses, for instance, or the shapes of the most revolting animals – we take pleasure in viewing highly realistic images of them. (Poetics, Chapter 4: 5–13)15

Although Aristotle also emphasizes the centrality of plot, and proposes that reversals of fortune heighten the emotional impact of a narrative on its audience, he never wavers from the view that the purpose of literature is to offer the reader a realistic representation of the world it describes. Aristotle’s concern with representation is a direct response to Plato, who was deeply critical of Greek poetry and tragedy, precisely because he felt their power to produce believable

15 The translation of this passage from Aristotole’s Poetics is that of Kenny 2013: 20.

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representations that could be mistaken for reality was dangerous and amoral, because it turned people’s attention away from God’s eternal Forms and the physical instantiations of these forms manufactured by human craftsman, by replacing them with pernicious second order representations. Aside from the ontological and metaphysical implications of Aristotle and Plato’s respective views of the role of mimesis or representation in poetry, in assuming that the purpose of literature was to present highly realistic representations of the world, both philosophers present an understanding of narrative that is fundamentally different than our own. The other, much more recent, example of a very different conception of narrative pertains directly to the study of the ancient world. In November 2017, the Museum of the Bible opened a mere two blocks from the National Mall in Washington, D.C. In contrast to many other museums in the U.S. with an educational mission, the museum is entirely private, and is being financed by David Green, the billionaire owner of the national retail chain Hobby Lobby. The museum, which is eight stories tall and covers over 430,000 square feet, houses over 40,000 objects and antiquities relating to the Bible, including thousands of cuneiform tablets, most of which were acquired by Green in the years immediately preceding the museum’s opening. In an article entitled, “Can Hobby Lobby Buy the Bible?”, published in the January-February 2016 edition of the American magazine, The Atlantic, less than a year before the museum opened, David Green’s son Steve, who, like is his father, is a neo-Conservative, born-again Christian, claimed, in explaining their mission for the museum, “We aren’t collectors, we’re storytellers”.16 In his words, the story the Greens would like to tell is “to bring to life the living word of God, to tell its compelling story of preservation, and to inspire confidence in the absolute authority and reliability of the Bible”. The purpose of the storytelling that the Greens have in mind with their museum is thus not only to educate and entertain, but to establish a single, definitive narrative of the Bible and its authority that aims to replace all competing stories about the Bible, both secular and religious. In this instance, as well as in many others, storytelling is ideologically motivated through and through, and utilizes narrative as a means of elevating and naturalizing one view of the world, over all other differing and potentially contradictory narratives and worldviews. To quote Joel Baden and Candida Moss, the Biblical scholars who wrote the article: The thousands of artifacts (the Greens) have so rapidly acquired could become merely the pictures that accompany the story, which, put simply, is this: The text of the Bible has essentially never changed, and its authority is timeless. There’s nothing inherently wrong with

16 Baden and Moss 2016.

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this message. From a faith perspective, it’s no better or worse than any other. What’s striking, though, is that the Greens have potentially figured out a way to make one story of the Bible seem like the story of the Bible.

If the social function and effect of narratives on audience is far from universal, it follows that our intuitions about what a story is and does are not sufficient for establishing what narratives in Mesopotamia were considered to be and what effects they were intended to have on their audiences. While there is certainly no reason to doubt that Sumerian narratives, like the compositions about Gilgamesh and Lugalbanda, utilize narrative devices that are also found in stories from other times and places, it cannot be inferred, on the basis of these alone, that the purpose of these stories was to entertain or instruct, or that they were experienced in the same way as stories are now. Realism, emotional or otherwise, may have indeed contributed to the effect Mesopotamian texts with narratives had on their audiences, but the presence of realism alone is not a sufficient basis for assuming that these texts were composed, in Oppenheim’s words, as “moralizing as well as entertaining stories geared to emotional responses” that “represent the most obvious and cherished topics for the literary creativeness of a civilization such as that of Mesopotamia”. And even if these stories had been intended to entertain or instruct, this does not exclude that they may also have been ideologically motivated, attempting to make one view of the world seem more natural and compelling than any competing or alternative views. Reducing a narrative to its formal features and modes of narration, universal or otherwise, leaves the aims and motivations of its composers uncertain and makes it impossible to determine the effect of the text on its audience. This is not of course to claim that there is no value in analyzing narrative devices and considering the emotional trajectory of Mesopotamian literary narratives, but instead to call attention to how narratives are a product of both how they are constructed and how they are experienced by their audiences, and that neither of these two aspects of narration is universal, or inferable from our own conceptions and experiences of stories. It is a basic principle of Mesopotamian divinatory texts that human destiny was in the hands of the gods, who revealed their will to humans through ominous signs. It is also well known from other textual sources, such as the laments and apotropaic rituals like Namburbis, that the anger of the gods could be placated through prayers, sacrifices, and rituals of appeasement, and that a punishment intended for a specific person could be redirected to a substitute with apotropaic rituals. When viewed from the perspective of what is known about the relationship between humanity and the gods, the stories about Gilgamesh and Lugalbanda can also be read as stories that illustrate two very different sides of this relationship. Gilgamesh, in continually defying the will of the gods, whether by

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killing Huwawa or insulting the goddess Inana, is punished for his defiance in the later version of the epic with the loss of his friend Enkidu and losing the plant of rejuvenation that would have restored his youth. Lugalbanda, by contrast, is saved from certain death, when, from the cave in the middle of the mountains where he has been left for dead by his companions, he offers prayers of praise to appease Utu, Nanna, and Inana, who heal him with their healing light. Regardless of what else these compositions might have meant, they bear witness to a fundamental aspect of the Mesopotamian conception of the cosmos: that destiny is never entirely in human hands, and the course of human narratives resides ultimately in the hands of the gods. While we may never know how Sumerian literary narratives were experienced by their audiences, it is nevertheless essential to put these texts back in their world, instead of separating them from it, the way we often do with contemporary and modern literature. Reconstructing the past and putting the texts we study in a historical and culture context through a meticulous analysis of their content is after all what philologists do, and there is no reason why Sumerian literature should be studied any differently. Another consequence of Oppenheim’s characterization of Mesopotamian religious texts as “mythologically embellished literary works” is the development of the more recent view that these texts were known only to a small group of elites and thus do not reflect the realities of religion as it was practiced in everyday life. Literature today is frequently associated with high culture; with books and works that are read mainly by people who are highly educated, and also in possession of a sufficient amount of disposable income and leisure time to devote to reading the “classics”, as well as more recent works that were written to appeal to a similar readership. Literature, or “belles lettres”, in other words, is intended for a relatively small group of educated readers; in contrast to other forms of entertainment, like popular movies and sporting events, which are consumed by the “masses”, and known to nearly everyone. As a form of art that is set apart from other forms of cultural production, works of literature therefore reveal little about the culture in which they were produced, except in so far as they express the values and ideals of the privileged elite of the time. While characterizations of literature as an elite art form that is written for and read by other elites may apply to modern and contemporary works, the same conception has also been applied to Mesopotamian mythological texts, which, as argued above, are not really works of literature in any, but the broadest sense of the term. The most influential, and probably also the first proponent of the view that Sumerian literary texts were known only to a small group of elites is Piotr Michalowski. One of the most direct formulations of this view appears in an overview of Sumerian literature written for the four-volume edited series, Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, published in 1995:

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The creative process involved only a small number of people, and their labors were read only by a privileged few. The average man and woman probably knew nothing of the poems and stories that were recovered from the ground of Mesopotamia, and therefore we should not identify the sentiments and values of the literature with the ideals of all members of ancient societies.17

Though it is not difficult to recognize in this statement echoes of Oppenheim’s characterization of Mesopotamian mythological texts as a “fantastic screen”, “seductive in their far-reaching likeness to stories told all over the ancient Near East and around the Mediterranean” that “one must penetrate to reach the hard core of evidence that bears directly on the forms of religious experience of Mesopotamian man”, what is perhaps even more striking is how closely it mirrors how literature is perceived today. Moreover, while Oppenheim allowed that the Mesopotamian texts that have been classified as “literary” were at the very least “entertaining stories”, in Michalowski’s view, and the many that adhere to it, these texts were not even intended to elicit a positive aesthetic response, but instead to serve as vehicles for indoctrinating scribes to become privileged members of the intellectual and scholarly elite. This interpretation of the function of Mesopotamian literature was first proposed in article from 1991 about the creation of bureaucratic systems during the Ur III Period, at the end of the third millennium BCE. Arguing that the learning of Sumerian literary works was a critical aspect of the formation of loyal scribal bureaucrats during this period, Michalowski wrote: What, then, was the purpose of drilling native speakers of various Semitic languages and dialects in the intricacies of the Sumerian language and literature? The answer, I think, is quite clear. The school was an ideological molder of minds, the place where future members of the bureaucracy were socialized, where they received a common stock of ideas and attitudes which bound them together as a class and in many ways separated them from their original backgrounds. Seen in this light, the literary texts acquire their proper ideological significance. The royal hymns celebrated the magnificence of the ruler and the myths perpetuated certain concepts of eternal cosmic order. I shall return to these specific ideas below; for the time being, however, I think it will suffice to say that the content of the texts is in many ways irrelevant to the main point of my argument. It does not really matter what they learned as long as they learned it and it made them different. The conceptual dimensions of literacy literally made them different human beings; they knew of matters that others only imagined existed, they even knew what year it was. In such a context the perpetuation of a dead literary language – Sumerian – has a definite function which helped to define membership in an exclusive club – the world of bureaucracy.18

17 Michalowski 1995: 2280. 18 Michalowski 1991: 52.

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Seen in this way, Mesopotamian mythological narratives, or the texts that have been classified as “Sumerian literary texts” are thus little more than texts written by the elites, for the elites, for the purpose of forming elites. As a means of ideologically molding minds and socializing bureaucrats, the content of the texts becomes, in Michalowski’s words, “in many ways irrelevant”. Aside from the question of relevance, however, statements to this effect are, in many ways, the logical continuation of Oppenheim’s view that mythological texts are a “fantastic screen” that we need to “penetrate”, in the sense of ignore, in order to begin to understand Mesopotamian religious practices. They have also contributed greatly to the conception that Sumerian literary texts (or the texts that have been classified this way) should be considered apart from other types of texts when studying Mesopotamian culture and society, to the extent that they should even be considered worthy of study at all. The conception of Sumerian literary texts as ideological tools for creating elite scribal identities has since become the dominant Assyriological approach to studying Mesopotamian mythological or religious texts. The most substantial contribution of this view to the study of Sumerian literature, however, has been in the development of the notion that Sumerian literary texts are school texts copied by apprentice scribes not only to learn Sumerian, but also as a means of elite scribal identity formation. The fullest and most influential application of this idea to the Sumerian literary corpus has been in the work of Niek Veldhuis. In a pioneering dissertation about Sumerian lists of wooden objects, Veldhuis developed and proposed a two-stage model of the Old Babylonian scribal curriculum that began in the elementary stage, with sign and word lists, intended to teach scribes the essentials of the cuneiform writing system and the Sumerian lexicon, before continuing, in the second, advanced stage, with the learning of Sumerian literary compositions. This model, which quickly became the primary framework for studying Sumerian mythological narratives, was later expanded by Veldhuis to explicate the ideological function of learning texts of this type. In a book about the Sumerian literary composition “Nanshe and the Birds”, Veldhuis proposed that one of the main purposes of the Old Babylonian scribal curriculum was to indoctrinate apprentice scribes to believe they shared a common cultural and national identity.19 According to Veldhuis, this identity was predicated on the notion that there was “one Sumerian language, one Sumerian history, and one Sumerian heritage”.20 The sense of belonging to a tradition unified by language, history, and heritage was conferred through the copying and memorization of

19 Veldhuis 2004. 20 Veldhuis 2004: 76.

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Sumerian literary compositions that convey the historical and cultural glory of Babylonia through hymns to deities of the distant past, narratives about legendary historical figures, praise poems in honor of recent rulers, and didactic texts that teach wisdom for a “timeless present”.21 Veldhuis argues that the continuity between the “invented tradition” of a unified, glorious past depicted in these compositions and the present was revealed, paradoxically, through the “local background” of the individual texts in the corpus.22 Every major urban center in Mesopotamia had its own patron deity or deities and a unique set of traditions that established a direct link between each of these deities and their city. Compositions about Enki, the patron deity of the city Eridu, reflect the traditions of Eridu; compositions about Inana, the city goddess of Uruk, reflect Urukean traditions; and the same holds true for other deities in the Sumerian pantheon and their cities. By learning hymns to these divinities, apprentice scribes were also taught that the histories of all of these cities formed one history: the common history they were inheriting through the mastery of the compositions in the curriculum. Although Sumerian mythological texts were unquestionably copied as school exercises, and there is no reason to doubt Michalowski and Veldhuis’ contention that the copying of these texts played a critical role in elite scribal identity formation, focusing entirely on the ideological aspect of these texts can conceal that they might have had other functions as well. Even if it is now generally acknowledged that not all Sumerian compositions that have been classified as literary were copied as school exercises, and that there was also a relatively large group of royal and divine hymns that were actively performed, the use of the term “literary” in connection with both “curricular texts” and “liturgical texts” has resulted in the perception that the latter group of texts, which includes the Sumerian laments, are equally unrepresentative of Mesopotamian religious conceptions.23 What this view does not take into account, however, is that both groups of texts, and in particular the texts that were performed could, in fact, have been known to a much larger group of people than just the elite scribes who could read and 21 Veldhuis 2004: 69. 22 Veldhuis 2004: 77–79. 23 For the distinction between Sumerian liturgical compositions, including the Sumerian laments, on the one hand, and the other types of Sumerian literary compositions, or “core curricular texts”, on the other, see Delnero 2015: 89–92, and the earlier treatment of the same topic by Tinney 2011, in which a similar distinction between “curricular” and “liturgical” literary composition is made and supported on the basis of the number, content, distribution, and nature of the sources for the compositions in each group. For a more comprehensive treatment of Old Babylonian Sumerian curricular literary compositions and their use in training apprentice scribes see Delnero 2012, with references to the extensive previous literature on the subject.

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copy them. When texts are sung or recited, they are heard by anyone who experiences or participates in their performance, regardless of whether they can read or write, and even if the texts are composed in a language that is no longer spoken or widely understood, the meaning of the texts can still be known by other means, including through cultural and religious authorities, verbal communication in all its forms, iconography, and simply by actively living and participating in a culture in which the ideas and conceptions in the texts are of essential and fundamental importance.

1.2 Lamenting in Ancient Mesopotamia Lamenting the dead is one of the primary means by which collective memories are formed and sustained in most, if not all societies. In performing a ritual, which provides an outlet for those with emotional ties to the deceased to channel their grief, the act of lamenting also keeps an essential element of the grieving community’s past alive in the present. Moreover, when mourning the dead, a fundamental link is established between the person who has passed and the members of the group who grieve, whose identity is shaped, and in some instances even constituted, through the memories of the dead that are brought to life and continually reaffirmed through lamenting. As noted by Jan Assmann, in his study of collective memory: The rupture between yesterday and today, in which the choice to obliterate or preserve must be considered, is experienced in its most basic and, in a sense, primal form in death. Life only assumes the form of the past on which a memory culture can be built through its end, through its irremediable discontinuity. One might even call it the primal scene in memory culture.24

In early Mesopotamia, mourning the dead was no less important than in other societies. The practice of lamenting, however, also had a cultural significance that extended well beyond families and communities grieving the loss of individuals. As noted above in this introduction, in ancient Mesopotamia lamenting belonged to a set of cultural practices which were used to prevent or remove individual and collective misfortune. In some cultures, mourning is essentially a private response to the loss of somebody close, and lamenting is only performed collectively and publically when there has been a substantial local, national, or international tragedy that is perceived to have a devastating impact on the

24 Assmann 2011:15

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community. Lamenting in Mesopotamia, however, was not limited to grieving private or collective loss, but also had a proactive function, and was frequently performed to prevent foreseeable catastrophes. Situations that were considered to be potentially catastrophic included not only “real” dangers and threats, such as spreading epidemics, invading armies, and immanent social upheaval, but also cosmological catastrophes, including actions that could arouse the anger of the gods, such as failing to perform offerings at the proper time or in the proper manner, removing statues of deities (which were considered to be endowed with the presence of the divinity they “represent”) from their shrines during processions or temple renovations, the installation of a new ruler or cultic official who might not find the favor of the gods, and a dizzying number of other ritually prescribed occasions in the cultic calendar when the cosmic world order was thought to be threatened and needed to be rectified and restored. In all of the situations in which lamenting was ritually performed to prevent a catastrophe, its intended function was to appease the hearts of deities who were, or could easily become angry, so that they would become (or stay) calm, and spare the people from any catastrophe that their anger might provoke them to cause. A strong case could be made that lamenting was considered to be one of the most essential cultic activities throughout much of Mesopotamian history, and was at the core of the way the relationship between the gods and humanity was configured. Since humanity was conceived to be completely dependent on the unknowable will of deities who could at any time turn against the people, actions like lamenting that were thought to prevent the gods from becoming angry had to be performed persistently and regularly to prevent or avert catastrophes. While the occurrence of private lamenting is not well documented in the surviving written sources, it is certain that by the first millennium BCE at the latest, state-sponsored ritual lamenting was being performed constantly, on a daily, if not hourly basis, to support and maintain the official (state-sanctioned) cult. In addition to the extensive textual and archaeological evidence for funerary practices from nearly all periods of Mesopotamian history, there is ample documentation in administrative texts, mythological narratives, hymns, and many other types of textual sources that attests to the importance of lamenting not only for individuals and small communities, but also in the context of state rituals and for local cults. On the basis of administrative texts pertaining to cultic activities during the Ur III period examined by Walther Sallaberger (1993) in his magisterial work, Der kultische Kalender der Ur-III Zeit, occasions when ritual laments were performed included, but were not limited to: – When statues of deities were removed from their shrines or repairing the temple – When statues of deities returned from processions

1.2 Lamenting in Ancient Mesopotamia 

– – – –

 33

On the last day of the month, before the appearance of the New Moon Throughout the Tummal and Akītu cultic festivals During cultic circumambulations around the city When offerings were made to the balaĝ-instrument, one of the main instruments played during the performance of ritual laments

In an overview of lamenting in Ancient Mesopotamia, Anne Löhnert summarized the cultic functions of laments at the end of the third millennium BCE as follows: Contexts for the performance of lamentations include instances of the gods’ leaving their temples during agricultural ceremonies and royal visits, the gods’ bathing rites, mourning rituals on the occasion of the death of rulers, priests, priestesses, and other respected individuals, and ceremonies at the time of the new moon. All these occasions bore an inherent risk that the gods would leave and not return – for instance, because a divine statue might become lost or damaged during a procession or the sun or moon might not become visible again after an eclipse – and thereby endanger or upset the existing world order.25

The logical conclusion that can be deduced from this list of uses – namely that laments were performed to appease deities to ensure that the cosmic order was kept in balance – has been stated explicitly by Krecher, Cohen, and others.26 Although, as these and other authors have noted, the function of Mesopotamian laments was undoubtedly complex, as well as subject to change over time, and by no means limited to divine appeasement, the unambiguous references to the usage of laments, in many, if not all instances, in contexts directly associated with grieving or threats to the cosmic order, together with the frequent appeals to deities in laments to turn back their anger, leave little doubt that at least one of the functions of these texts was divine appeasement. Additional evidence that the primary cultic function of lamenting was to appease the hearts of gods to turn back misfortune has been collected by Uri Gabbay in his recent book, Pacifying the Hearts of the Gods: Sumerian Emesal Prayers of the First Millennium BCE, and includes: 1) A colophon on tablets containing laments copied for Assurbanipal which contain two lines (l.11–12) that read: “The wisdom of Ea, belonging to the corpus of cultic laments (kalûtu), secret of an apkallu sage, which is appropriate for the appeasement of the hearts (nūh libbi) of the great gods” (Akkadian:

25 Löhnert 2011: 413–14. 26 See, for example, Krecher 1966: 40–41 and Cohen 1974: 15 and 1988: 21.

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11: NAM.KU3.ZU de2-a NAM.GALA ni-ṣir-ti NUN.ME // 12: ša2 a-na nu-uh lib3-bi DINGIR.MEŠ GAL.MEŠ šu-lu-ku).27 2) The meaning of the term, er2-ša3-hun-ĝa2, the name of a frequently performed class of cultic laments in the first millennium, which means: “lament for appeasing the heart”.28 3) The frequent occurrence in cultic laments of the phrases “ša3–hun” and “bar–sud”, which mean ‘to appease the heart’ and ‘to pacify the mind’.29 4) The presence in all the main genres of laments in the first millennium of what Gabbay calls “heart pacification units”.30 In these “units”, which occur at the conclusion of laments, the angry deity, whose anger is responsible for the catastrophe being lamented throughout the lament, is addressed directly, and an appeal is made to this deity to be appeased, so that the land and the people can be spared from complete and irreversible destruction the anger of the god will cause if it is not calmed. Lamenting was no less common during the second and first millennia BCE, when it was performed not only for such reasons as are known from the end of the third millennium but also on the following occasions: – When temples were built and canals were repaired – Throughout the Ishtar ritual at Mari – Before sunrise and at different points during the Babylonian New Year Ritual – During mouth-washing ceremonies – During eclipses and other ominous periods – In the ritual for covering the kettledrum after the bull was slaughtered and its hide was prepared to cover the drum Laments, moreover, were also regularly performed as part of the daily cult. As observed by Gabbay, the daily cultic performance of lamenting is most directly indicated by colophons found on texts from the lamenter’s corpus (kalûtu-texts) copied for the Neo-Assyrian ruler Assurbanipal, which state that the laments

27 Gabbay 2014: 15. For a translation of the entire colophon, see Gabbay 2014: 278–79, which includes a full list of all of the known sources with this colophon, and a transliteration of the colophon as it occurs in all of these sources. 28 Gabbay 2014: 15. 29 Gabbay 2014: 15. 30 Gabbay 2014: 15; 33–34. For heart pacification units and their function in Sumerian laments, see Chapter 4, Secton 1.

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contained on these tablets were to be performed every day.31 The lines of the colophon that specify the daily performance of laments read as follows32: 17: ša PNAN.ŠAR2-DU3-A re-e-šu pa-lih DINGIR-ti-ka u4-me-šam ina ša2-kan tak-rib-ti 18: TI.LA-su qi2-bi lut-ta-id DINGIR-ut-ka GAL-ti 17: As for Assurbanipal, the servant and one who reveres your divinity, daily at the performance of the prayer (i.e. the lament on the tablet with the colophon), 18: Proclaim his life! Let me praise your great divinity.

By the Neo-Assyrian Period, and likely already much earlier, laments were also being performed regularly as an integral part of nearly every cultic ritual that is known from that time.33 Although lamenting was probably performed in many different ways, in many different types of rituals, one particularly well attested form of ritual lamenting involved the singing or recitation of Sumerian cultic laments known as Balags and Ershemmas.34 Many of these compositions concern the destruction of cities and the abandonment of temples, in the wake of destructive gods like Enlil, Inana, Ishkur, and others turning in rage against them, but there are also numerous laments which pertain to the separation of Inana from her lover Dumuzi, when he is carried away by demons to the netherworld, or a similar deity, Damu, who also disappears and is mourned by his family.35 31 Gabbay 2014: 159. 32 For the full text of this colophon, known as “Assurbanipal Colophon Type o” (following Hunger 1968: 102), see Gabbay 2014: 276–79. 33 For examples of some of the many rituals in which laments were performed, see in particular the list of “ritual attestations” compiled for each of the individual Ershemma-laments edited in Gabbay 2015, as well as the reference to the performance of laments in connection with many of the calendrical rituals discussed in Cohen 2015. 34 For a detailed and comprehensive description and discussion of the content, cultic function, and cultural significance of the corpus of Sumerian laments as a whole, and of Balags and Ershemmas, more specifically, see, most recently, Gabbay 2014 and Löhnert 2009, as well as the older, but pioneering, and no less valuable overview of the Sumerian laments in Krecher 1966. In addition to the primary editions of many of the known Balags in Cohen 1988 and Ershemmas in Cohen 1981, many of the Ershemmas have been published in more up-to-date editions by Gabbay 2015, which also includes a presentation of the evidence for when and in what cultic contexts individual Ershemmas were performed during the first millennium BCE. Individual Balags have been edited by Krecher 1966, Kutscher 1975, Black 1985, Volk 1989 and Löhnert 2009, and many others, including the innumerable editions of specific laments by Kramer (see, among many others, Kramer 1977, 1980a, 1981, 1982b, 1985, and 1987). 35 For the Dumuzi and Damu laments, specifically, see Fritz 2003, with references to previous literature.

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Balags and Ershemmas, which were performed regularly until the Seleucid Period at the end of the first millennium BCE, are attested for the first time in writing at the beginning of the second millennium, during the Old Babylonian Period. Previous studies of the Sumerian laments have focused primarily on lamenting in the first millennium, frequently considering sources from the Old Babylonian Period only to the extent that they can be used to reconstruct broken or missing passages in the first millennium versions of individual laments. One example of this tendency is Mark Cohen’s two-volume work, The Canonical Lamentations of Ancient Mesopotamian, which contains editions of 39 Balags reconstructed largely on the basis of first millennium sources assigned (often tentatively) to specific laments, but which utilizes Old Babylonian sources to fill in lacunae in these sources. The utilization of Old Babylonian sources alongside first millennium sources to reconstruct laments known primarily from the latter period is also equally observable in nearly every edition of the laments, including most recently in Anne Loehnert’s editions of the Enlil Balags, dutu-gin7 e3-ta and zi-bu-u3 zi-bu-u3,36 and Uri Gabbay’s editions of the corpus of first millennium Ershemmas,37 as well as in earlier studies such as Konrad Volk’s edition of the tablets 19–21 of the Balag Uruamairabi,38 Jeremy Black’s edition of the Balag a-še-er ĝi6-ta,39 Mark Cohen’s editions of the Ershemmas,40 and Raphael Kutscher’s edition of the Balag a-ab-ba hu-luh-ha (‘Oh Angry Sea’).41 Apart from Kutscher’s edition of a-ab-ba hu-luh-ha, in which sources from the Old Babylonian Period and first millennium are used together without differentiation, a distinction between sources from both periods is made, to varying extents, in all of these studies, and different modes of presentation are employed to distinguish Old Babylonian from first millennium sources. However, even when Old Babylonian sources are clearly distinguished from later sources, the emphasis is nearly always, and often explicitly, on the sources from the first millennium, which are typically more numerous and more completely preserved. One significant exception is Krecher’s Sumerische Kultlyrik,42 which contains a groundbreaking edition of a Ninisina Balag that is based entirely on an Old Babylonian source (VAT 609+ = VS 2, 25), but which nonetheless relies extensively on 1st millennium sources with similar or duplicate passages to reconstruct many of the numerous

36 Löhnert 2009. 37 Gabbay 2015. 38 Volk 1989. 39 Black 1985. 40 Cohen 1981. 41 Kutscher 1975. 42 Krecher 1966.

1.2 Lamenting in Ancient Mesopotamia 

 37

lacunae in the text. Anne Löhnert’s book, ‘Wie die Sonne tritt heraus’, eine Klage zum Auszug Enlils mit einer Untersuchung zu Komposition und Tradition sumerischer Klagelieder in altbabylonischer Zeit,43 also contains a valuable overview of lamenting in the early second millennium, with a discussion of many aspects of the Old Babylonian Sumerian laments, including the cultic context for lamenting in the period, the geographic distribution of the sources for the laments, and the liturgical notes and colophons that occur in the sources, but most of the book is dedicated to philological text editions of two related Enlil Balags – dutu-gin7 e3-ta and zi-bu-u3 zi-bu-u3 – which also include both Old Babylonian and first millennium sources. Another important contribution to the study of lamenting in the Old Babylonian Period is Dahlia Shehata’s book, Musiker und ihr vokales Repertoire, but as the title indicates, the focus is on the musicians and cultic officials who performed the laments, and the laments themselves are treated only to the extent that they shed light on this topic. While the use of both Old Babylonian and first millennium sources in editions of Sumerian laments is to a large extent unavoidable due to the poor state of preservation of these compositions, it can produce the impression that lamenting in the two periods formed a single, seamless continuum, and that there are more similarities than differences between the earlier and later versions of the laments. Although there were almost certainly continuities in the content of the laments over the long period of time in which they were copied, performed, and transmitted, as evidenced, for example, by the common occurrence of duplicate passages in Old Babylonian and first millennium sources, and the existence of laments in both periods that share the same incipit and content, textual and cultic traditions are always anchored in specific temporal and cultural contexts and can develop and change as they are adapted for different purposes across time and place. To determine the relationship between lamenting in the Old Babylonian Period and the first millennium, it is first necessary to establish a basis for comparison by examining what can be known about lamenting in each period. But because similarities and continuities are often implicitly assumed to supersede any differences in content and function that might exist between the laments from the two periods, lamenting in the Old Babylonian Period has yet to be considered independently from lamenting in the first millennium. Since lamenting in the first millennium has been studied systematically and comprehensively – in particular by Uri Gabbay in his recent book, Pacifying the Hearts of the Gods: Sumerian Emesal Prayers of the First Millennium BC,44 and its accom-

43 Löhnert 2009. 44 Gabbay 2014.

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 Chapter 1 Doing Things with Tears

panying volume of text editions –45 the focus of this book will be on lamenting in the Old Babylonian Period.

1.3 Structure and Goals of the Book In a recent study of the function of ritual, Ronald Grimes argued that rituals have a function in both senses of the term function.46 On the one hand, many rituals are intended as a means to accomplishing a specific objective, whether it is to generate social solidarity, to heal a sick person, placate or honor a deity or ruler, or any other of an endless range of possible functions.47 The other sense of function of ritual that is often overlooked, however, is that it often has a specific effect or effects on the people who participate in the performance of it.48 These effects, which are very frequently emotional, and can include feelings of elation, grief, anger, hope, pride, optimism, and fatalism, do not always relate directly, or even indirectly to the intended function of the ritual, but are no less real or important than whether the ritual achieves what it is supposed to accomplish. Ritual lamenting has been, and continues to be practiced for a wide variety of reasons in a very large number of societies, past and present. While the intended function of lamenting differs from place to place, and instance to instance, the immediate emotional effect of lament, which is to generate and encourage outward expressions of extreme grief, is remarkably consistent. Regardless of whether the expressed grief is actually felt inwardly, or felt the same way in all cases, the collective display of grief creates an emotional mood or atmosphere that can be mobilized for many different purposes. In the two examples cited above, the extreme forms of lamenting that are expressed for the martyred Imam Husayn during the Shiite Muharram festival can arouse extreme anger against the enemies of the Shia, but it is also a form of devotion and a religious obligation to lament and shed tears for the martyr. Similarly, the ritualized rebuilding of Sandy Hook Elementary School was motivated by intense grief, but it was also a form of healing that was intended to erase the memory of the tragedy and to prevent a similar tragedy from occurring on the same spot in the future.

45 Gabbay 2015. 46 Grimes 2014a: 297–302. 47 Grimes 2014a: 297–98. 48 Grimes 2014a: 301.

1.3 Structure and Goals of the Book 

 39

It is equally likely that lamenting in Mesopotamia had functions, in both senses of the term as defined by Grimes. As the evidence summarized above suggests,49 it can be assumed that Sumerian laments were actively performed in cultic rituals for over two, and possibly three millennia in Ancient Mesopotamia, and that the practice was by no means marginal, and known only to a small group of elites in a limited number of periods and places. While one of the main intended theological functions of lamenting was to prevent catastrophe by appeasing deities whose anger could cause it, one of the effects of lamenting was undoubtedly to generate a strong emotional response in the people who performed it. Although it can be assumed that lamenting was widespread in ancient Mesopotamia and that Sumerian laments were actively and regularly performed over a very long period of time, very little evidence exists outside the laments for how they were performed and how they were experienced in performance, particularly during the Old Babylonian Period (ca. 2000–1595 BCE), but also in later periods as well. To avoid speculation in the absence of external evidence, the question of how emotion was generated and experienced through the performance of Sumerian laments will be addressed by focusing instead on aspects of the emotional experience of lamenting that can be identified and reconstructed on the basis on the internal features of the laments themselves. The main contention of this study is that in contrast to the common view of Sumerian laments as lifeless, repetitive, and dull texts devoid of literary and poetic merit, it is not possible to understand the significance of these compositions without taking into account the emotional response they were intended to generate in and through performance. The aspects of the laments that will be considered in this book comprise: the main types of laments and their geographic distribution (Chapter 2); the relationship between writing and the performance of Sumerian laments (Chapter 3); the emotional valence of the structure and content of the laments (Chapter 4); and the interaction of sound and meaning when the laments were performed (Chapter 5). The book will conclude with a synthesis of the main results of each of the preceding chapters as they pertain to the question of the emotional experience of Mesopotamian lamenting (Chapter 6). The concluding chapter will be followed by an Appendix (Appendix 1) with an edition of the Old Babylonian version of the first five sections of Uruamairabi, one of the few laments for which there is corroborating external evidence for its performance during the early second

49 For a more extensive presentation of the evidence for the performance of Sumerian laments, see Chapter 3, Section 1.

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 Chapter 1 Doing Things with Tears

millennium. In addition, a complete descriptive catalogue of all of the known Old Babylonian sources containing laments will be presented together with a list in which these sources are classified according to the types of laments they contain (Appendix 2). Lastly, a complete list of all of the phonetic writings that occur in the phonetically written sources for the laments, discussed in Chapter 5, will be provided (Appendix 3). While the primary method employed throughout the book is descriptive and philological, interpretative questions will be addressed by examining features of the Sumerian laments that have not been considered in previous studies. When relevant, observations from anthropological and theoretical studies of ritual and emotion will be included to supplement what can be learned about how the laments were experienced by studying their content and form. By emphasizing interpretation over description, and focusing on the emotional experience of lamenting, as opposed to its theological and cultic significance, it is hoped to provide insight into an essential aspect of Mesopotamian religion that has been frequently overlooked, and to establish a basis and an analytic framework for future studies of the laments.

Chapter 2 Lamenting in the Early Second Millennium In a recent book, Pacifying the Hearts of the Gods: Sumerian Emesal Prayers of the First Millennium BCE, Uri Gabbay provided an extensive, comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the practice of Mesopotamian lamenting, primarily on the basis of first millennium sources. The main conclusions from Gabbay’s study that are the most directly pertinent to the questions and topics addressed in this book can be summarized as follows: 1) The main purpose of the Mesopotamian laments was to appease the hearts of angry deities so that the catastrophic destruction that could be caused by divine anger would not occur.1 2) “Emesal prayers” are defined as all genres of prayers belonging to the repertoire of the cultic official, the kalû, or in Sumerian, gala.2 In the first millennium these genres comprised Balags, Ershemmas, Ershahungas, and Shuillas, the last of which (Shuillas) is only attested in the first millennium, and the third of which (Ershagungas) is attested in much smaller numbers in the Old Babylonian Period than it is in the first millennium.3 By contrast, there are at least two additional genres of Emesal prayers – Shirnamshubs and Shirnamgalas – that were performed by gala-officials in the Old Babylonian Period that are not attested in the first millennium.4 In both periods, however, the two main genres of laments were the Balags and Ershemmas. 3) The laments are not commemorative – they do not refer to a destructive event that has already occurred, but instead to a destructive event that could occur.5 Even when laments about destroyed temples were performed in the same temples that were lamented as being destroyed, this was not seen as a paradox, but instead underscores how the laments were intended to ward off potential catastrophes, and not catastrophes that had already taken place.6

1 Gabbay 2014: 1. 2 Gabbay 2014: 5. 3 For the laments known as Ershahungas, see Maul 1988. An Old Babylonian Ershahunga was published, along with a discussion of the genre in the Old Babylonian Period, by Michalowski 1987. 4 For a discussion of Shirnamshubs and Shirnamgalas, and their association with the repertoire of the gala-official, see Shehata 2009: 74 and 268–72. The Old Babylonian Shirnamshubs have also been discussed and edited by Cohen 1975. 5 Gabbay 2014: 15. 6 Gabbay 2014: 15–16. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501512650-002

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 Chapter 2 Lamenting in the Early Second Millennium

4) The role of the gala-official in performing the laments was to act as an intermediary between the supplicants (typically the people on whose behalf the lament is performed) and the god who is to be appeased through the lament.7 The gala-official is able to achieve this function in part by being a figure associated in various ways with liminality and border crossing. In particular, the gala, while male or belonging to a “third gender”,8 sings and recites laments that are composed in Emesal, a dialect that is associated with women and female deities.9 5) The laments were performed to the accompaniment of musical instruments.10 In the second and first millennia, the laments known as Balags were performed with the lilissu-kettledrum,11 while the laments known as Ershemmas, were performed to the sem-instrument, which Gabbay argues is either a small framedrum, tambourine, or cymbals.12 However, in the third millennium, before the lilissu-kettledrum became the main instrument that accompanied Balags, laments were performed with the balaĝ-instrument, from which the name of this type of lament was derived.13 6) Emesal laments were performed in both calendrical and non-calendrical rituals.14 The calendrical rituals in which laments were performed included the performance of laments as part of the daily cult;15 rituals in which laments were performed on the same day of each month16; and annual cultic festivals.17 During these rituals, it is likely that the laments were performed each morning before dawn,18 often in the cella in front of the statue of the deity,

7 Gabbay 2014: 63–79. See the introduction to Chapter 3 for a more detailed discussion of galaofficials and their role in the performance of Sumerian laments. 8 For the gala belonging to a “third gender”, see Gabbay 2008. 9 The definitive and most comprehensive study of Emesal and its association with women’s speech is, and remains, Schretter 1990. For a more detailed discussion of Emesal and its function in the performance of Sumerian laments, see Chapter 5. 10 Gabbay 2014: 81–154. 11 Gabbay 2014: 98–102 and 118–39. 12 Gabbay 2014: 143–50. 13 Gabbay 2014: 92–98. Although Gabbay argues that the balaĝ-instrument was a stringed instrument, similar in form and function to a lyre, or possibly a harp, it has also been argued that it was a drum. For a discussion of the identification of this instrument and its use in the performance of laments with references to previous literature, see Chapter 3. 14 Gabbay 2014: 158–59. 15 Gabbay 2014: 159–60. 16 Gabbay 2014: 160. 17 Gabbay 2014: 161. 18 Gabbay 2014: 161–62.

Chapter 2 Lamenting in the Early Second Millennium 

 43

but also occasionally in the temple courtyard, or other parts of the temple.19 By contrast, non-calendrical events involving the performance of laments included rites of passage rituals, initiation rites, and apotropaic rituals that were not performed on a fixed calendrical basis.20 However, in both the calendrical and non-calendrical rituals involving the performance of laments, laments were often performed outside the temple, often in the context of processions.21 Although many of Gabbay’s conclusions about lamenting in the first millennium undoubtedly also apply to the Old Babylonian Period, and there was almost certainly continuity in how and why lamenting was practiced in earlier and later periods, it is equally likely that like all ritual traditions, the practice changed and evolved over time. In order to determine the extent to which lamenting in the Old Babylonian Period was similar to lamenting in the first millennium, and in what respects it might have differed, it is first necessary to examine the evidence for lamenting in Old Babylonian sources, without assuming that the practice was static, and remained the same in both periods. The purpose of this chapter and the next is to provide an overview of different aspects of lamenting in the Old Babylonian Period, citing evidence from the first millennium only when it sheds light on how the practice was similar or different in the two periods. In the first and following section of this chapter, the different types of laments that are preserved in Old Babylonian sources will be presented to provide an overview of what types of laments were copied and performed throughout Mesopotamia during the early second millennium. In the next section, the main features of the laments addressed to different deities will be identified and illustrated with examples from laments of each type. Lastly, in the third and final section of the chapter, the geographic distribution of the sources for the laments will be summarized, and the main features of the different types of laments examined in the preceding section will serve as a basis for comparing the content of laments from specific cities to address the question of whether and to what extent there were different local lament traditions during the period. In the chapter that follows, the overview of lamenting during the early second millennium will conclude by considering the relationship between writing and oral performance, specifically with respect to what role writing might have played in the performing of Sumerian laments in the Old Babylonian Period.

19 Gabbay 2014: 162–64. 20 Gabbay 2014: 164. 21 Gabbay 2014: 164, 166, and 170–71.

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2.1 The Classification of Old Babylonian Sumerian Laments Although cultic lamenting was practiced throughout ancient Mesopotamia for much of its 3000-year history, written sources for Sumerian laments are first attested in the Old Babylonian Period. At present, there are approximately 500 Old Babylonian copies of Sumerian laments that are known.22 Since many Old Babylonian copies of laments are from Kish and other cities in northern Mesopotamia, it is generally assumed that the written transmission of laments began in the north and only later spread to the south, when Babylon had replaced Nippur as the main religious center in the land. But the existence of over 100 copies of laments from Nippur that date to the same period, and additional groups of sources from other southern Mesopotamian cities like Girsu and Larsa, is a clear indication that laments were also copied throughout Mesopotamia at this time.23 There were at least two main types of Sumerian laments that were copied and performed during the Old Babylonian Period: Balags and Ershemmas. Both terms – balaĝ and er2-sem5-ma – occur in the subscripts of sources for individual laments, identifying the laments in the sources in which they appear as texts of one of the two types. The same classification is also maintained in incipit lists, in which specific laments, identified by the first line or words that occur in them, are labelled as Balags or Ershemmas, but never both. As with Sumerian literary compositions of other types, Balags and Ershemmas were identified in Mesopotamia by their first line or incipit. Along with the Mari Ishtar Ritual, which refers to the Balag Uruamairabi and the individual sections or Kirugus of the text by their incipits,24 the incipits of Balags and Ershemma also occur in catalogues or inventories listing compositions of the two types. At present, there are at least seven sources from the Old Babylonian Period containing lists of Sumerian laments identified by their first line or incipit, and five additional lists that list mostly compositions of other types, but which also include the incipits of one or more laments or sections of laments: 1) BM 23771 (E1): OB Ershemma List 1.25 2) BM 23701 (E2): OB Ershemma List 2.26

22 For a complete list and description of these sources, see Appendix 2. 23 For a more detailed discussion of the geographic distribution of the sources for Sumerian laments, see Section 3 of this chapter. 24 For the Mari Ishtar Ritual and its significance for determining how and in what contexts Sumerian laments were performed, see the introduction to Chapter 3. 25 Kramer 1975: 141–152. 26 Kramer 1975: 152–157.

2.1 The Classification of Old Babylonian Sumerian Laments 

3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) 10) 11) 12)

 45

BM 23612 (B1): OB Balag List 1.27 BM 23249 (B2): OB Balag List 2.28 BM 85564 (B3): OB Balag List 3.29 Museum Haaretz 143860 (B4): OB Balag List 4.30 CUNES 50–07–13 (B5): OB Balag List 5.31 VAT 6481 (VS 10: 216) (M1).32 BM 85563 (Shaffer 1993: 209–10) (M2).33 CBS 8086 (Michalowski 1980) (M3).34 CBS 14077 (= STVC 41) + N 3637 + Ni 9925 (= ISET 1: 145) (M4).35 UET 6/1, 123 (M5).36

In the lists E1 and E2, only laments explicitly identified as Ershemmas in both sources are listed. In E1, 83 incipits, 15 of which are identical, are listed and classified in a subscript at the end of the tablet that reads er2-sem5-ma dingir-re-e-ne,

27 Kramer 1982a: 206–207, 212–213 = Shaffer 2000: 430. 28 Kramer 1982a: 208–209, 212–213 = Shaffer 2000: 430–31. 29 Kramer 1982a: 207–208, 212–213 = Shaffer 2000: 429–30. 30 Shaffer 2000: 431–32. 31 Gadotti and Kleinerman 2011. 32 Bernhardt and Kramer 1956–57: 394 n. 5. See also Hallo 1963: 163; Krecher 1966: 33; and ETCSL no. 0.2.07, which contains a transliteration of the list with identifications of some of the compositions listed. In addition to groups of compositions identified in subtotals with the subscript šir3nam-šub, this list also contains groups of compositions identified as Balags and Ershemmas of different deities, including Suen, Ninurta, and Dingirmah. For a more recent transliteration and discussion of this list and the laments that are listed in it, see Löhnert 2009: 15–16 with n. 74–78. 33 For this list, which contains an inventory of extracts from eight laments, six of which are identified by Akkadian incipits, and two of which are identified by Sumerian incipits, and which contains a subtotal with the subscript 2 dub 37 im2-gid2-da ama-er2-ra-ku-tim ša DINGIR.MAH, see Löhnert 2009: 13 with n. 55–56. 34 For the possibility that this source, which lists compositions and sections of compositions of different types, including a section from a hymn to Shu-Suen, a section of the Kesh Temple Hymn, and a šir3-nam-šub of Ninurta, also lists two or more Sumerian laments, see Löhnert 2009: 14 with n. 64–65. 35 Hallo 1975: 78–79. See also ETCSL no. 0.2.08 for a transliteration of this list with identifications of some of the compositions listed. For the possibility that this source, which lists compositions of different types, including the Debate between Summer and Winter, Urnamma Hymn D, a Nergal hymn, and a bal-bal-e of Suen, also lists four laments, including an Ershemma and a Balag, see Löhnert 2009: 14–15 with n. 66–71. 36 ETCSL no. 0.2.04. For this list, see Kramer 1961; Hallo 1966: 90–91; Krecher 1976–1980: 484; Charpin 1986: 455–459; Vanstiphout 2003: 25–26; and Robson 2003. Although this source lists primarily “curricular” literary compositions, as noted by Löhnert 2009: 15 with n. 72, it is possible that two of the entries list Sumerian laments.

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‘Ershemmas of the gods’.37 The Ershemmas listed in this source are divided into nine groups, each of which is followed by a subtotal with the accompanying phrase ša3–1-dub, ‘the content of a single tablet’, indicating, perhaps, that the Ershemmas in each group were written on a single collective tablet.38 In E2, the other catalogue that lists only Ershemmas, 83 Ershemmas are listed, but 19 of these entries are completely destroyed, and 23 duplicate entries in E1.39 In contrast to E1, the incipits in E2 are divided into two groups. The first of these two groups comprises 76 incipits, which are identified in a subtotal following the group with the subscript er2sem5-ma dinana, and the second group comprises 7 incipits which are identified with the subscript er2-sem5-ma dnin-šubur.40 While it is possible, if not likely, that some of the incipits listed in E1 and E2 refer to compositions that are preserved in sources whose first line or incipit is broken, only 18 of the 109 incipits listed in the two catalogues occur in sources with the same or a similar incipit, and the incipit of an additional Ershemma, which may be listed in the catalogue M4, is also attested in an Old Babylonian source: 1) a-še-er gig-ga-ke4 (N 3390 = E2: 61) 2) an-ne2 anusan-e (PRAK C 54 = E1: 1; E2: 28, 65) 3) dilmun niĝin-u3 (BM 29623; BM 8520441 = E2: 17) 4) e-en gig-ga-bi (RA 8: 161–69, VAT 617 o. i 1– iii 20 = E1: 39)

37 Kramer 1975: 142. 38 Another possibility would be that the expression ša3–1-dub refers to each of the Ershemmas being written on a single tablet, which would accord better, perhaps, with the preserved sources for the Ershemmas, which, with five exceptions (BM 15793, BM 96927, VAT 608+, VAT 617, and CBS 15089), are all written on a single tablet, in contrast to Balags, which are written on a series of tablets. However, this explanation would leave unexplained why this entry is repeated after different groups of entries, instead of only once at the beginning or end of the tablet. Since entries in other Old Babylonian literary “catalogues” are sometimes also separated by dividing lines that may indicate that the compositions that preceded them were stored in a single tablet basket, as is explicitly noted in at least one of the catalogues with dividing lines (UET 5: 86), yet another possibility is that ša3–1-dub is a short-hand notation for ša3–1-pisan-dub ‘contents of one tablet basket’. In partial support of this last possibility, if the expression refers to the number of laments in a basket, this might better explain why some of the incipits in the lists are preceded by a number higher than one. Since Ershemmas do not have more than one section during this period, and there would presumably have been little reason to copy the same lament more than once on a tablet, the number before the incipit could have indicated the number of copies of that same lament that were stored in the basket or container. For the function of dividing lines in the Old Babylonian literary catalogues, and UET 5: 86 specifically, see Delnero 2010: 45–46 and 47–48. 39 Kramer 1975: 142. 40 Kramer 1975: 142. 41 This incipit occurs in a catch-line at the end of the source.

2.1 The Classification of Old Babylonian Sumerian Laments 

 47

5) e2 gul-la ki-bi (CBS 475 = E1: 50; E2: 58) 6) e2-ĝu10 uru2-ĝu10 (PRAK B 18442 = E1: 24; E2: 39) 7) er2 na-mu-un-ma-al (BM 100111, PRAK C 47+ = E1: 23; E2: 50) 8) ĝuruš dab5-ba (BM 15795, VAT 6085 = E1: 29, 66) 9) i-bi2 ku3 a-lu-lu (BM 96639 = E1: 4, 20; E2: 3) 10) im kur-ra šeĝ3-ĝa2 (LCM 56.5.1 = E1: 52) 11) ma-ra e2 zi-ĝu10 (VAT 1548 = E1: 51) 12) ma2-gur8 ku3 an-na (BM 13930 = E1: 81) 13) mušen du3-e (CBS 2218+43 = E2: 39) 14) na-aĝ2-dam-a-na (Ni 2273; AO 7697 = E1: 6, 15) 15) su8-ba-de3 ta an-AK (CBS 11389+44, 2 N-T 22645 = E1: 2; E2: 2) 16) ša3-zu a-gin7 du3 (BM 23696 = E1: 2) 17) tumušen a-še-er (L.1501, O.17 = E1: 37, 44, 70; E2: 48) 18) ul-e pa-pa-al-ta (BM 23584 = E1: 10, 19; E2: 51) 19) dutu e3-ma-ra (VAT 1314, Babyloniaca 3: 75–78 = M4 o. 13') Similar to E1 and E2, which list only Ershemmas, the lists B1-B5 list only the incipits of Balags. Four of the five lists (B1-B4) are written on small, barrel-shaped cylinders that were probably hung from or attached to containers in which tablets with the listed laments were stored. Each of the four lists contains between 5–17 entries, which are preceded by the notation: dub-balaĝ-me-eš, ‘the following are tablets with Balags’, and followed by a subscript identifying the laments listed as either balaĝ dinana, ‘Balags of Inana’ (B1 and B2), or balaĝ dingir-re-e-ne, ‘Balags of the gods’ (B3 and B4). By contrast, the fifth source (B5) lists the incipits of seven laments, followed by the notation, written in Akkadian: an-nu-tim BALAG.MEŠ i-šu ša la-a i-šu-u2 BALAG.MEŠ šu-bi-lam, ‘these Balags (referring to the listed incipits) I have, those which I do not have, send to me (those) Balags’, and seems to be a letter-order requesting that specific Balag-laments be sent to the sender of the order.46 The lists B1-B5 contain a total of 53 incipits, six of which are duplicated in two or more of the lists (the incipits e-lum gu4 sun2 and am-e amaš-a-na occur in B3 and B5; the incipit u4-dam ki am3-us2 occurs in B3, B4, and B5; the incipit

42 This incipit occurs in a colophon or catch-line at the end of the source. 43 This incipit occurs as the first line of a section of the lament in the source. 44 This incipit occurs in a catch-line in the source. 45 This incipit occurs as the first line of a section of the lament in the source. 46 For this reading and interpretation of the colophon, see Charpin 2012: n.30, who argues convincingly that the wedges, read as the number 21 by Gadotti and Kleinerman 2011, belong to the sign LAM, which was erroneously written and then erased before being written again correctly with šu-bi-lam at the end of the next line in the colophon.

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utu-gin7 e3-im-ta occurs in B3 and B4; the incipit mes buluĝ3 ma-ra-ta occurs in B1 and B5;47 and the incipit e2 da-ru-ru occurs in B2 and B4). Of the 46 different incipits listed in the lists B1-B5, nine occur in sources containing laments with the same incipit, and an additional two incipits that occur as incipits in copies of Old Babylonian laments occur in the incipit lists M2 and M3, which also list other types of compositions: 1) a u3-li-li (BM 78983 = M2: 2') 2) a uru2-ĝu10 im-me (PRAK B 188 = B1: 5; 4 R2 53 o. 48) 3) am-e bara2 an-na-ra (PRAK B 465 = B4: 4; 4 R2 53+ o. 14) 4) e-lum gu4 sun2 (NBC 1315, YBC 465948 = B3: 1; B5: 1; 4 R2 53+ o. 13) 5) e2 da-ru12-ru12 (BM 96681 = B2: 8'; B4: 14) 6) edin lil2-la2 ša3-ĝu10 (RA 17: 50 = B2: 4) 7) egi2-re a-še-er-re (BM 5482349 = B1: 1; 4 R2 53+ o. 50) 8) el-lu ama mu-gi-ib2 (VAT 3416 = M3: r. 7) 9) ša3-zu ta am3-ir (BM 29616 = B4: 9) 10) dutu-gin7 e3-ta (CBS 11359 = B3: 5; B4: 7; 4 R2 53+ o. 5) 11) zi-bu-u3 zi-bu-u3 (YBC 9838, VAT 1465+ = B3: 2; 4 R2 53+ o. 17) d

The most detailed source of evidence for the classification of individual Balags and Ershemmas, and the basis for just about every study of the laments in the first millennium is 4 R2 53+, a Neo-Assyrian catalogue from Nineveh, which, like the lists from the Old Babylonian Period, lists individual Balags and Ershemmas by their incipits.50 In this text, Balags are listed in two groups of 39 and 18 texts, the first of which are classified as “Balags of Enlil” and the second as “Balags of Inana”, suggesting that in partial similarity to the Old Babylonian lists, where some of the groups of incipits are classified (in E2) as “Balags of Inana” and “Balags of Ninsubur”, a distinction was made between laments to male and laments to female deities, with the subscript “Balags of Enlil” being a general designation for laments to all male deities, including, but not only Enlil, and “Balags of Inana” designating laments to goddesses, including, but not only Inana.51 However, in contrast to the incipit lists from the Old Babylonian Period,

47 For this corrected reading of the incipit in B1, which was read as dub-hal ma-ra-ta by Shaffer 2000: 430, see Gabbay 2015: 15. 48 This incipit occurs as the first line of the sections labelled Kirugus 5, 7, and 9 on the tablet. 49 This incipit occurs in the colophon of the source, which reads: dub–2-kam egi2-re a-še-er-re. 50 For this list and a recent discussion of the classification of the laments listed in it, see Gabbay 2014: 195–208, and the transliteration and handcopy of the list in Gabbay 2015: 15–20 and Plates 29–30. 51 For a similar interpretation of the two subscripts, see Gabbay 2014: 195–96.

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where Balags and Ershemmas are listed separately, the incipits of the laments identified as “Balags of Enlil” and “Balags of Inana” in the first half of the list (on the obverse of the tablet) are listed together with the incipits of Ershemmas, with which the individual Balags listed in the adjacent column were paired, and with which they were presumably performed.52 Since the catalogue dates to over a millennium after the laments from the Old Babylonian Period were copied, and was compiled in Assyria, and not in Babylonia, the region with which the laments were traditionally associated, it is not possible to assess how representative the classification and sequencing of the laments in the list is of earlier times and other places. But Balags and Ershemmas with many of the same incipits are already attested in Old Babylonian sources and incipit lists, suggesting that there was at least some continuity between the earlier and later lament traditions. Of the 57 Balags listed in the 1st millennium list, 4 R2 53+, six have the same incipits as Balags that are listed in Old Babylonian lists and occur as incipits in Old Babylonian lament sources; an additional seven occur in Old Babylonian sources with the same incipits, but are not listed in the Old Babylonian lists; and eight of the same incipits that occur in 4 R2 53 also occur in Old Babylonian lists, but not in any of the preserved sources from the same period: Balag Incipits that occur in 4 R2 53 and Old Babylonian Lists and Sources 1) a uru2-ĝu10 im-me (PRAK B 188 = B1: 5; 4 R2 53 o. 48) 2) am-e bara2 an-na-ra (PRAK B 465 = B4: 4; 4 R2 53+ o. 14) 3) e-lum gu4 sun2 (NBC 1315, YBC 465953 = B3: 1; B5: 1; 4 R2 53+ o. 13) 4) egi2-re a-še-er-re (BM 5482354 = B1: 1; 4 R2 53+ o. 50) 5) dutu-gin7 e3-ta (CBS 11359 = B3: 5; B4: 7; 4 R2 53+ o. 5) 6) zi-bu-u3 zi-bu-u3 (YBC 9838, VAT 1465+ = B3: 2; 4 R2 53+ o. 17) Balag Incipits that occur in 4 R2 53 and Old Babylonian Sources but not Lists 1) a ama-gan a dumu-ni (BM 29633 = 4 R2 53+ o. 33) 2) a-še-er ĝi6-ta (PRAK C 74 = 4 R2 53+ o. 52) 3) ab2-gin7 gu3 de2-de2 (CBS 6890 = 4 R2 53+ o. 43) 4) dingir pa e3-a (BM 96568 = 4 R2 53+ o. 41)

52 For a discussion of the pairing of Balags and Ershemmas in this list see Gabbay 2015: 3–13, who argues that in contrast to the “ritual” (kidudê) Ershemmas listed separately in the second part of the list, the Ershemmas listed together with Balags in the first part of the list refer to the Ershemmas that served as the last unit of the Balags with which they are paired in the list. The relationship between Balags and Ershemmas is discussed in more detail in Section 3.1 of the next chapter. 53 This incipit occurs as the first line of the sections labelled Kirugus 5, 7, and 9 on the tablet. 54 This incipit occurs in the colophon of the source, which reads: dub–2-kam egi2-re a-še-er-re.

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5) e-ne-eĝ3-ĝa2-ni i-lu i-lu (YBC 16392, BM 8751855 = 4 R2 53+ o. 9) 6) uru2 am3-ma-i-ra-bi (NCBT 688, PRAK B 396+, PRAK C 52+ = 4 R2 53+ o. 45) 7) uru2 hul-a-ke4 (VAT 459656 = 4 R2 53+ o. 12) Balag Incipits that occur in 4 R2 53 and Old Babylonian Lists but not Sources 1) a-ab-ba hu-luh-ha = B3: 7 and 4 R2 53 o. 18 2) ab2-gin7 tur3-ĝu10-a = B1: 6 and 4 R2 53 o. 5857 3) am-e amaš-a-na = B3: 10; B5: 2; and 4 R2 53 o. 7 and 37 4) e2 tur3-gin7 niĝin-na-ni = B4: 12 and 4 R2 53 o. 4 and 34 5) e2-gi4-a e2 nam-ta-e3: M4: 14' and 4 R2 53 o. 44 6) hul-ĝal2-la mu-un-du = B4: 8 and 4 R2 53 o. 58 7) mes buluĝ3 ma-ra-ta = B1: 4; B5: 6; and 4 R2 53 o. 48 8) u4-dam ki am3-us2 = B3: 6; B4: 6; B5: 5; and 4 R2 53 o. 6 and 36 Similarly, of the 78 Ershemmas listed in 4 R2 53+, three have the same incipits as Ershemmas that are listed in Old Babylonian lists and occur as incipits in Old Babylonian copies of laments; an additional five occur in Old Babylonian sources with the same incipits, but are not listed in the Old Babylonian lists; and three of the same incipits that occur in 4 R2 53 also occur in Old Babylonian lists, but not in any of the preserved sources from the same period: Ershemma Incipits that occur in 4 R2 53 and Old Babylonian Lists and Sources 1) dilmun niĝin-u3 (BM 29623; BM 8520458 = E2: 17 ; 4 R2 53+ o. ii 23) 2) im kur-ra šeĝ3-ĝa2 (LCM 56.5.1 = E1: 52; 4 R2 53+ o. ii 36) 3) dutu e3-ma-ra (VAT 1314, Babyloniaca 3: 75–78 = M4 o. 13'; 4 R2 53+ o. ii 26) Ershemma Incipits that occur in 4 R2 53 and Old Babylonian Sources but not Lists 1) am mur-ra nu-un-til3 (BM 15821 = 4 R2 53+ r. iii 31) 2) en-zu sa2 mar-mar (BM 29644, VAT 617 iii 23- iv 8 = 4 R2 53+ o. ii 4) 3) gu4 mah pa e3-a (BM 29631, BM 96927, VAT 3430 = 4 R2 53+ o. ii 27) 4) i-in-di i-in-di (VAT 1541 = 4 R2 53+ r. i 5) 5) in-di tu-ra (VAT 7760 = 4 R2 53+ r. iii 38)

55 This incipit occurs as the first line of the second section of the lament. 56 This incipit occurs in the colophon of the source. 57 For the restoration of this incipit in 4 R2 53 and its occurrence in an Old Babylonian letter from Mari see Gabbay 2015: 15, with references to previous literature. 58 This incipit occurs in a catch-line at the end of the source.

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Ershemma Incipits that occur in 4 R2 53 and Old Babylonian Lists but not Sources 1) a e2-an-na a ĝi6-par3 ku3 = E1: 35 and 4 R2 53 o. ii 43 2) i-lu-ke4 i-lu-ke4: E2: 6 and 4 R2 53 r. iii 30 and 35 3) uru2 a-še-er-ra en-še3 = E1: 57 and 4 R2 53 r. iii 2 It is evident from the occurrence of incipits in Old Babylonian catalogues that do not occur in any of the existing sources, and from the absence of the incipits in the preserved catalogues that are attested in Old Babylonian sources and which belong to laments that are also known to have been copied in the first millennium, that the full number of laments that were copied and performed in the Old Babylonian Period remains unknown. But even after the possibility that some, if not many, of the sources whose incipits are not preserved contain laments that are listed in the catalogues from either or both the Old Babylonian Period and first millennium is taken into account, the overall picture that emerges from the comparison of incipits in the catalogues and sources from the two periods is that there were just as many differences as they were similarities in the laments that were known and copied in each period. The occurrence of the same incipits that occur in the first millennium catalogue 4 R2 53 is a clear indication that Balags and Ershemmas known from Old Babylonian lists and sources were copied and transmitted into the first millennium. There are also, however, numerous incipits of Balags and Ershemmas in lists and sources from the Old Babylonian Period that do not occur in 4 R2 53, as well as many incipits of laments that occur in 4 R2 53 that do not occur in any of the preserved lists and sources from the Old Babylonian Period, suggesting that not every lament that was copied and performed in the Old Babylonian Period was still being copied and performed in the first millennium, and that new laments were composed in later periods that were not known in the early second millennium. Furthermore, since the content of the few preserved sources for the same laments from the second and first millennium is never duplicated without substantial variation, it is not unlikely that the content of many of the laments that have the same incipits in both periods changed during the course of their transmission.59

2.2 The Content and Main Features of Sumerian Laments Structurally, the laments identified as Balags and Ershemmas can be easily distinguished. Balags have multiple sections that are sometimes numbered and

59 For a detailed discussion of variation between second and first millennium laments, see Chapter 3, Section 4.

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identified in rubrics with the term ki-ru-gu2, while Old Babylonian Ershemmas always consist of only a single section, which is never identified with the term ki-ru-gu2, or any other classificatory or performative rubric. Ershemmas are also rarely longer than 50–60 lines, in contrast to Balags, which can have as many as at least 65 Kirugus, and extend over 500–600 lines. In addition, Ershemmas, which are shorter and have only one section, have a more fixed structure than Balags, in which the focus is entirely on the deity to whom the lament is addressed, who, when the lament is addressed to a goddess, is often either lamenting the catastrophe that is the subject of the lament in the first person, or, when the lament is addressed to a male deity, who is the addressee of a hymn of praise. By contrast, the structure of Balags is more complex and variable, and the perspective from which the catastrophe that is the subject of the lament is lamented often shifts from section to section, and sometimes even multiple times within a single section, from a third person invocation of the catastrophe, to a goddess lamenting the catastrophe in the first person, to a deity being addressed in the second person to take pity and stop the catastrophe. Although Balags and Ershemmas are structurally distinct, determining the difference between their content and cultic function is more difficult. Both types of laments can be qualified in subscripts and incipit lists as Balags and Ershemmas of specific deities. With only two exceptions, in which an Ershemma is identified in a subscript as an Ershemma of Inana and Dumuzi (RA 8: 161–69) in one instance and in another as an Ershemma of Dumuzi and Durtur (BM 15795), individual Balags and Ershemmas are attributed in subscripts to only a single deity (e.g. as a Balag or Ershemma of Inana, a Balag or Ershemma of Enlil, a Balag or Ershemma of Ninisina, etc.). The deities to which Balags and Ershemmas are most commonly attributed in subscripts (in both Old Babylonian copies of laments and the incipit lists that list them) are Inana, Dumuzi, and Enlil, but other deities also include Ninisina, Dingirmah, Ishkur, Suen, and Nergal. Additionally, groups of laments in incipit lists and collective tablets containing more than one lament can also be designated as balaĝ dingir-re-e-ne and er2-sem5-ma dingir-re-e-ne, ‘Balags’ and ‘Ershemmas’ ‘of the gods’. The most substantial difficulty in determining to which deity individual Old Babylonian copies of specific laments were attributed is the relatively poor state of preservation of many of the existing sources. With a few notable exceptions, very few of the known sources for the laments from the period are completely preserved, and a far greater number are fragmentary, and are missing the beginning, middle, end, and one or more entire sections. Subscripts identifying laments as Balags or Ershemmas of a particular deity are the most certain indicator of lament type. But when the end of the source is not preserved, or the scribe did not

2.2 The Content and Main Features of Sumerian Laments 

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include a colophon with a subscript, the first line of the lament can be another reliable indication, if the same incipit occurs in a list or catalogue where it is labelled as a lament of a specific type. However, when the beginning and end of the source are not preserved, as is often the case, the only basis for determining the lament’s type is the content of the source. When a source’s content has substantial parallels with a lament that is identified in another source with a subscript or an incipit that occurs in a catalogue, it is likely to contain a lament of the same type. Frequently, though, the parallels are only partial, or are with laments in sources whose type is also unidentified. In these instances, the occurrence of short passages, or themes and motifs that are associated with laments addressed to specific deities is the only remaining indication of a lament’s type. But in contrast to the versions of the laments from later periods, which had assumed a more or less fixed written form, Old Babylonian copies of laments are never identical in content, and individual sources frequently contain entire lines and sections that are omitted in other sources with the same incipit, or vary substantially in how they are rendered.60 Since the same motifs and short passages can occur in laments of different types, they are the least reliable evidence for classifying laments, and in the absence of dividing lines marking section divisions, it is not possible to determine, with full certainty, on the basis of their occurrence alone, whether the source contains a Balag or Ershemma, or the deity to whom the lament is addressed. Taking into account that the sources for Old Babylonian laments can only be classified with variable degrees of probability, the likelihood that a source contains a lament of a specific type can be assessed on the basis of the following criteria, from the most to the least certain: 1: = The deity and lament type are completely certain: the subscript on the tablet identifies the lament type and name of the deity. 2: = The source has an incipit that occurs in a catalogue where text type and/ or deity of the composition is identified, or the source has two or more of the same sequential sections as a lament in another source whose text type is identified in a subscript and/or catalogues. 3: = The source has substantial parallel passages (more than 2–5 lines) that occur in one or more texts whose text type is identified in subscripts and/or

60 For variation in the content of Old Babylonian sources for Sumerian laments, see Chapter 3, Section 4.

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catalogues, or two or more sources whose text type can be inferred on the basis of their content and parallels with other sources with a reasonable amount of certainty. 4: = The identification of the lament in the source is based on content and, in some instances, less substantial parallels (typically 2–5 lines) with other sources whose text type can be reasonably inferred. 5: = The least certain category: there are only minimal indications from content, such as the occurrence of motifs or the name of the primary deity associated with the text type, and in the absence of dividing lines, the likelihood that the tablet is a multi-column tablet with multiple sections is the only criterion for determining whether the source contains a Balag or an Ershemma. When the Old Babylonian sources with laments are classified according to these five criteria, the following distribution of lament types is obtained61: Total Number of Laments: 50662 – Balags: 319 ( ) – Ershemmas: 149 ( ) – Text Type Uncertain: 38 () Total Number of Laments to Goddesses: 303 – Balags: 204 ( ) – Ershemmas: 85 ( )

61 For a list of all of the known Old Babylonian sources for the laments classified according to these criteria, and a complete and more detailed summary of all the numerical data presented in this section see Appendix 2. 62 The individual Ershemmas that are preserved on the collective tablets BM 15793 (2 Ershemmas), BM 96927 (4 Ershemmas), VAT 608+ (3 Ershemmas), VAT 617 (3 Ershemmas), and CBS 15089 (3 Ershemmas) are counted as separate laments, even though they are written on a single tablet. However, only the Ershemmas that are preserved on the tablet were counted, even when it is known that there were originally more Ershemmas on the tablet. One example of this is with BM 96927, in which it is noted in a subtotal at the end of the tablet that the source contains three Ershemmas to Ishkur, two to Enlil, four to Ninurta, and three to Enki. Since only the Ershemma to Enlil and the three Ershemmas to Ishkur are preserved on the tablet, and the other Ershemmas listed in the subtotal are no longer preserved, only these four Ershemmas were counted in the totals cited in this chapter and in the complete list in Appendix 2.

2.2 The Content and Main Features of Sumerian Laments 

– –

 55

Text Type Uncertain: 14 () Inana-Dumuzi/Damu: 241 (Balags: 167; Ershemmas: 64; Uncertain: 10) – Ninisina-Gula: 33 (Balags: 21; Ershemmas: 9; Uncertain: 3) – Aruru-Dingirmah: 14 (Balags: 9; Ershemmas: 5) – Bau: 7 (Balags: 4; Ershemmas: 3) – Ninhursag: 3 (Balags: 0; Ershemmas: 2; Uncertain: 1) – Lisin: 1 (Balags: 0; Ershemmas: 1) – Ninlil: 1 (Balags: 0; Ershemmas: 1) – Nin-nigingara: 1 (Balags: 1; Ershemmas: 0) – Nintu: 1 (Balags: 1; Ershemmas: 0) – Sud: 1 (Balags: 1; Ershemmas: 0)

Total Number of Laments to Gods: 144 – Balags: 81 ( ) – Ershemmas: 54 ( ) – Text Type Uncertain: 9 () – Enlil: 94 (Balags: 62; Ershemmas: 23; Uncertain: 9) – Utu: 16 (Balags: 5; Ershemmas: 11) – Ishkur: 8 (Balags: 1; Ershemmas: 7) – Martu: 6 (Balags: 2; Ershemmas: 4) – Enki: 6 (Balags: 5; Ershemmas: 1) – Nanna-Suen: 6 (Balags: 2; Ershemmas: 4) – Shulpae: 3 (Balags: 1; Ershemmas: 2) – Nergal: 3 (Balags: 2; Ershemmas: 1) – Ninurta: 2 (Balags: 1; Ershemmas: 1) Total Number of Laments to Multiple Deities: 1 – Balags: 1 () – Ershemmas: 0 Total Number of Laments to Unidentified Deities: 58 – Balags: 33 () – Ershemmas: 10 () – Text Type Uncertain: 15 () While many of the preserved sources for the laments can be classified with varying degrees of certainty, only approximately 19 percent of the sources have colophons that explicitly identify the type of lament the source contains, or

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incipits that occur in catalogues in which the incipit is identified in a subscript as the incipit of a Balag or Ershemma of a particular deity. However, a much larger number of sources can only be classified indirectly, on the basis of parallel passages and motifs that are shared by laments of a specific type. The distribution of text types for individual deities and the degree to which the identification of the lament types is certain on the basis of the five criteria outlined and described above is as follows: Total Number of Laments by Deity Inana-Dumuzi: 241 ( ) – Balags: 167 ( ) – Ershemmas: 64 ( ) – Text Type Uncertain: 10 () Enlil: 94 ( ) – Balags: 62 ( ) – Ershemmas: 23 ( ) – Text Type Uncertain: 9 () Other Goddesses –

Ninisina-Gula: 33 ( ) – Balags: 21 ( ) – Ershemmas: 9 ( ) – Uncertain Text Type: 3 ( 15': ki ud5-de3 maš2 ba-an-ze2-eĝ3-ĝa2-še3? 16': ki-ba dim3-me-er-bi mu-lu bad-ra2- 17': -e ama-ĝu10 sa2 hu-mu-e ba-ni-in-du11-ga-še3 18': ša3-ĝu10 gi er2-ra edin-na na-mu >   NBC 1313 o. 11b: ša3-ĝu10 er2-ra edin-na na-mu-ma-al 3': Lamenting flute, my heart is a lamenting flute, playing in the Steppe. 4': I, the destroyer of lands, lady of the Eanna. 5': I, the mother of the lord, Ninsun. 6': ... the young man, of heaven, I, Geshtinanna. 7': My heart is a lamenting flute, playing in the Steppe. 8': At the place where the young man was present, at the place of Dumuzi,

30 For a brief synopsis of this composition, with references to previous literature and editions of the composition, see Fritz 2003: 117–18.

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9': In Arali, the ruin hill of the shepherd, 10': In Arali, the hill of suba-stones, my heart is a lamenting flute playing in the Steppe. 11': At the place where the hands of the young man are bound, 12': At the place where the arms of Dumuzi are bound, 13': At the place where the ewe surrenders its lamb, 14': My heart is a lamenting flute, in the Steppe. 15': At the place where the goat surrenders its kid, 16': There where its god is, but there is nobody around, 17': Where the young man said ‘May my mother come to me!’, 18': My heart is a lamenting flute playing in the Steppe. Inana’s heart-rending lament, in which the goddess likens the pain of losing her lover to the desperate and primal grief felt by ewes and goats forced to abandon their young to a violent fate, recurs in similar language and form in numerous other texts, including the passage from the second section of Uruamairabi, cited above, in which Inana uses the image of the same animals being separated from their offspring to evoke the pain of being separated from the inhabitants of her plundered and destroyed city. Another of many instances in which a goddess expresses the unbearable grief she feels through a first person lament with vivid, and sorrow inducing images of being separated from a loved one, is the following passage from “A Lament for Damu,” preserved in AO 5374 (TCL 15: 8) o. col. ii 20–31, and duplicated in BM 23658 (CT 15: pl. 26–27) o. 1–13,31 in which Ninisina, the mother of Damu, cries out: “A Lament for Damu” – AO 5374 (TCL 15: 8) o. ii 20–31 (duplicated in BM 23658 = CT 15: pl. 26–27 o. 1–13): 20 (o. col. ii): ki-bi-da-ke4 i-lu nam-mir-ra BM 23658 o. 1: ki bad-ra2-ke4 i-lu na-aĝ2-ir-ra 21: du3-su3-su3 ki-bi-da-ke4 i-lu nam-mir-ra 22: du3-mu-un-mu-zi-da!(KALAM) ki-bi-da-ke4 i-lu nam-mir-ra 23: dda-mu-ĝu10 ki-bi-da-ke4 i-lu nam-mir-ra BM 23658 o. 3: dda-mu-ĝu10 ki BAD-ra2-ke4 24: dištaran-na ki-bi-da-ke4 i-lu nam-mir-ra 25: digi-suba(ZA.MUŠ2) ki-bi-da-ke4 i-lu nam-mir-ra 31 For a brief synopsis of this composition, with references to previous literature and editions of the composition, see Fritz 2003: 183–86. This passage is also cited and discussed as an example of one of the main features of laments to the goddess Ninisina in Chapter 2, Section 2.1.

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 BM 23658 o. 4: gudu4-ĝu10 ki BAD-ra2-ke4 26: eri(-)ku3 ki -ma -u4-da-ra i-lu nam-mir-ra  BM 23658 o. 5: ĝišeren ku3 ki ama-ni-tu-da-ta 27: a-a-an!-na an-na-ŠI-ki-eš2-ta i-lu nam-mir-ra  BM 23658 o. 6: e2-an-na an-? ki-še3? ta i-lu na-aĝ2-ir-ra 28: i-lu-bi i-lu-gu2 na-nam ab2-zi-ni na-u3-tu  BM 23658 o. 10: i-lu-bi i-lu gu na-nam ab-sin2 na-u3-tu 29: i-lu-bi i-lu na-nam šar2-šar2-re na-u3-tu 30: i-lu-bi a-eštubku6 na-nam kar-ze2-be5(KU) ni2 im-ĝal2  BM 23658 o. 13: i-lu-bi i7 mah-e na-nam a-eštub na-u3-tu 31: dam til3-la til3 na-nam niĝ-saĝ-e na-u3-tu BM 23658 o. 12: dam til-la dumu til-la na-nam me saĝ-e na-u3-tu 20: For him in the far-away land, I wail! 21: For Ususu in the far-away land, I wail! 22: For Umunmuzida in the far-away land, I wail! 23: For my Damu in the far-away land, I wail! 24: For Ishtaran in the far-away land, I wail! 25: For Igi-suba in the far-away land, I wail! 26: On account of the pure cedar tree, at the place of the mother who bore me, I wail! 27: To the Eanna, toward the heaven and earth, I wail! 28: This wailing, is it not wailing for the flax which did not grow in the furrow? 29: This wailing, is it not wailing for the barley which did not sprout abundantly? 30: This wailing, is it not for the majestic river which did not yield a great carp flood? 31: Is it not for the dead wife and the dead son who did not produce first-rate things?” The third theme that recurs with great frequency in the Sumerian laments is the visceral evocation of the personal pain the event being lamented has caused those who are lamenting it to feel, and the devastating effects the loss has had on the most fundamental aspects of their existence, including their emotional wellbeing, and their material and social standing. This theme is an essential component of the first person laments just described, in which Inana or another goddess laments the loss of Dumuzi or a loved one, but it is also equally present in passages in which the destruction of the city is being lamented, and in many instances, the loss of the deceased deity and the destruction of the city are evoked together as the cause of the pain and misfortune felt by the lamenter. One example of a goddess evoking the pain and sudden and drastic reversal of fortune

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caused by the loss of her city and lover during a first person lament, is the following passage from the lament to Inana in BM 23117 (CT 15: pl. 24–25), o. 1'–12', a passage which is duplicated in the Ninisina lament in VAT 609 + (VS 2: 25), and other laments from both the Old Babylonian Period and the first millennium, including BM 29615 (CT 15: pl. 7), VAT 1423 (VS 2: 19), and K. 2881 + 2786, a first millennium source for the Inana lament, a-še-er ĝi6-ta:32 Inana Lament – BM 23117 (CT 15: pl. 24–25) o. 1'–12': 1' (o.): [e2?-a nu-mu-un-til3-en ĝa2-la nu]--[un-til3-le-en] 2': [dam-ĝu10 nu-mu-un-til3-en] ? nu-mu-[un-til3-en] 3': [i3-niĝin-de3-en] -šu2-šu2-[de3-en] 4': [gud3 gig-ga-bi] u4 šu2-a [men3] 5': [šilam amar-bi] ni10-ni10- [men3] 6': [ga-ša-an me-en mu-lu im2-ma] uru2-a ku4-[ra men3] 7': ki - ma2 su-a [men3] 8': -ku6 ambar-ra ma2 niĝin2-na [men3] 9': -ĝa2 ur-re men3 sila-ĝa2 KAS4 [men3] 10': -ulutim2(SIG7.ALAN) e2 ama ugu-ĝa2-ka e2-ur5-ra-[bi] 11': lipiš i3-ma-al a2 nu-ma-al men3 12': egi2 men3 ama5-ĝa2 lipiš nu-ma-al-la men3 1': I live without a house, I live without property. 2': I do not live with my spouse, I do not live with a son. 3': I roam about, I sink down. 4': I am one whose nest is bitter at the darkening of the day. 5': I am a wild cow who wanders around (lost) with its calf. 6': I, the lady, I am a runner who enters the city. 7': I am (a merchant from) Dilmun whose boat is sunk in the marsh. 8': I am a fisherman whose boat circles around the marsh. 9': I am an enemy in my city, I am a stranger in my street, 10': In my birthplace, in the house of the mother who bore me, I am a debtor.

32 Other translations of this passage include Falkenstein 1953: 183–85, and the commentary to the parallel passage in VAT 609 + in Krecher 1966: 214–219, which includes a more detailed list of other sources in which the same or similar passages occur, as well as the transliteration and translation in Black 1985: 72–73, who cites this source as a parallel source for lines 231–268 of his edition of a-še-er ĝi6-ta, which includes further references to Old Babylonian and first millennium sources in which passages similar or identical to this passage occur. The restoration of the broken parts of the passage presented here are based on the parallel passage in VAT 609 + r. viii 42–51.

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11': I am one who has courage, but does not have strength. 12': I, the princess, I am who does not have courage in my own private chamber. In this passage, Inana has lost everything of value to her, including her temple, her possessions, and her lover Dumuzi, whose death has deprived her of a family with children of her own, equating the pain that she feels to that of a cow that is roaming around desperately in search of its lost calf, a merchant whose boat has sunk, and to a person who is treated like an enemy and stranger in her own city, along with other powerfully evocative images of alienation and desperation in the face of loss. These and related images that occur in similar first person laments, evoke the pain resulting from a devastating loss with direct, personal experiences associated with extreme despair and hopelessness, and would not have failed to move anyone experiencing or participating in the lament to empathize with the goddess, causing them to feel the way they would if they had experienced the same losses and dramatic reversals of fortune themselves. In addition to depicting the emotional experience of loss, the theme of personal pain resulting from the consequences of the event or events lamented is also conveyed through descriptions of those most affected by the misfortune engaging in bodily actions associated with extreme mourning and grief. The prototypical acts that were performed when grieving can be inferred from descriptions of mourning in mythological narratives, and include the tearing out of hair, self-laceration, and the wearing of worn and dirty garments associated with poverty, while roaming around, wailing, and beating a drum or playing a shrill flute that mimics the sound of cries of grief. One example of a passage in a Sumerian literary composition in which all of these actions are described in the context of mourning is the following passage from Inana’s Descent to the Netherworld, in which Inana’s vizier, Ninshubur, is depicted performing the same acts in response to Inana being trapped and left for dead in the netherworld: Inana’s Descent to the Netherworld l.176–182:33 176: er2 du6-du6-dam mu-un-na-ĝa2-ĝa2 177: [sem3] gu2-en-na mu-un-du12-a 178: e2 dingir-re-e-ne-ke4 mu-un-na-ni10-ni10 179: igi-ni mu-un-na-HUR kiri4-ni mu-un-na-HUR 180: ki lu2-da nu-u6-di haš4-gal-a-ni mu-un-na-HUR

33 The line numbering and transliteration of the passage from Inana’s Descent to the Netherworld cited here follow the edition of this composition in Sladek 1976.

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181: mu-lu nu-tuku-gin7 tug2 dili-a im-ma-an-mu4 182: [e2-kur] e2 den-lil2-la2-še3 ĝir3-ni dili mu-un-gub 176: She (Ninshubur), on a heap of ruins, began lamenting. 177: The one who beat the drum for her (Inana) in her shrines, 178: Circumambulated around the temples of the gods for her. 179: She scratched her eyes for her, she scratched her nose for her. 180: In a place where there were no people, she scratched her thighs. 181: Like someone with nothing, she clothed herself in a single garment (and), 182: She set her feet toward the Ekur, the temple of Enlil. Similarly, many of the same acts are described being performed by Dumuzi’s sister, Geshtinanna, when she learns of her brother’s death, in the Sumerian literary composition “Dumuzi’s Dream”: Dumuzi’s Dream l.240–244:34 240: dĝeštin-an-na-ke4 gu3 an-še3 ba-te gu3 ki-še3 ba-te 241: gu3 šu niĝin2-bi an-ur2-ra tug2-gin7 i-im-dul gada-gin7 i-im-bur2 242: igi mu-un-na-HUR kiri4 mu-un-na-HUR 243: ĝeštug2 ki u6-di mu-un-na-HUR 244: ki lu2-da nu-di haš4-gal mu-un-[na-HUR] 240: Geshtinanna cried toward the heavens, she cried toward the earth. 241: The cries covered the horizon entirely like a cloth, spread out like linen. 242: She scratched her eyes for her, she scratched her nose for her. 243: In a public place, she scratched her ears. 244: In a place where there were no people, she scratched her thighs. In the Sumerian laments, the same actions – tearing out hair, wailing, roaming around aimlessly in mourning – are also described being performed by goddesses like Inana, Ninisina, and the sisters of Dumuzi and Damu in response to learning that their lover, son, or brother has died. In the following passage from “The Death of Dumuzi”, Geshtinanna tears out her hair as if it were weeds when discovering that her brother Dumuzi has been captured and carried off to the Netherworld:

34 The line numbering and transliteration of Dumuzi’s Dream cited here follow the edition of this composition in Alster 1972.

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“The Death of Dumuzi” – BM 100046 (CT 58: 42) o. 14–19: 14: nin9-e-zu dmu-tin-an-na-ke4 15: ka2 u3-mu-un ban3-da-ke4 16: sila da-ma-al-la ga-ša-an-sun2-na-ke4 17: sa-ni bur-ra-ni im-sur-re siki-ni im-ze2-e 18: sa-ni bu-ra-ni im-bu-re siki-ni im-ze2-e 19: siki-ni u2šu-mu-bur2-gin7 šu mu-un-dub2-dub2-be2 14 (o.): Your noble sister, Geshtinanna, 15: At the gate of the young lord (Lugalbanda), 16: In the broad street of Ninsun, 17: She tears at her torn sinews, she rips out her hair. 18: She pulls out her torn sinews, she rips out her hair. 19: She plucks out her hair as if it were alfafa-grass. Similarly, Egime, the sister of Lulil, the son of Ninhursag, who like Dumuzi and Damu, is another young male deity who dies an untimely death, is described lacerating herself, while her mother mourns, in response to Lulil’s death, in the following passage from the lament Egime and Lulil, preserved in AO 3023 r. 4–835: Egime and Lulil – AO 3023 r. 4–8: 4 (r.): ĝuruš-e ama-zu er2-ra na-aĝ2-bi2-ib2-tuš-en 5: ama-zu ga-ša-an-hur-saĝ-ĝa2-ke4 še ša4-še3 na-aĝ2-bi2-ib2-tuš-en 6: munusegi-me na-aĝ2-HUR-ra-zu na-aĝ2-bi2-ib2-tuš-en 7: u3-a na-aĝ2-bi2-ib-AK-en ki-nu2-zu zi-ga 8: mu-lu-lil u3-a na-aĝ2-bi2-ib-AK-en ki-nu2-zu zi-ga 4 (r.): “Young man, you should not make your mother sit in tears!” 5: “You should not make your mother, Ninhursag, sit moaning!” 6: “You should not make Egime, the one who lacerates herself (in mourning) for you, sit (lamenting)!” 7: “You should not cause wailing – rise up from your bed!” 8: “You should not make Lulil wail – rise up from your bed!”

35 The lament, Egime and Lulil, was first published in handcopy and edited by Thureau-Dangin 1922, in RA 19 (1922): 175–185 as “La Passion du Dieu Lillu”. A passage from the same lament has also been translated by Katz 2003: 101 and 205–207, with references to other partial translations of the composition. See also Black 2005: 55 for additional literature.

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Lastly, in the following passage from BM 96680, o. ii 47–60, a composition which is identified in a subscript on the tablet as a Balag of Inana, Inana is described wandering around aimlessly in mourning and growing weary from lamenting after learning that her city has been destroyed and her lover Dumuzi has been taken to the Netherworld:36 Balag of Inana – BM 96680 o. ii 47–60: 47 (o. ii): -ĝu10 am3-ši-ma-al dim3-ma kur-ra-ke4 48: e3-a u4-? i3-di-di-di- 49: me-e --an-an-na men3 i3-di-di-di- 50: -ša-an e2-an- men3 i3-di-di-di- 51: ga-ša-an ki - i3-di--di- 52: ga-ša-an ki zabalamki men3 i3-di-di-di- 53: ga-ša-an dingir igi zi bar- men3 i3-di-di-di- 54: ga-ša-an dingir ir9 mah-a men3 i3-di-di-di- 55: ga-ša-an men3 a-še-er-re mu-kuš2-u3 56: ir2-re a-še-er-re mu-kuš2-u3 57: a-še-er e2--ke4 mu-kuš2-u3 58: a-še-er uru2--ke4 mu-kuš2-u3 59: a-še-er dam-ĝa2-ke4 mu-kuš2-u3 60: a-še-er du5-mu-ĝa2-ke4 mu-kuš2-u3 47: “My eyes I set toward them – the weak ones of the netherworld.” 48: “Oh and woe, I keep wandering about.” 49: “I, being Inana, I keep wandering about.” 50: “I, the lady of the Eanna, I keep wandering about.” 51: “I, the lady of Uruk, I keep wandering about.” 52: “I, the lady of Zabalam, I keep wandering about.” 53: “I, the lady, goddess who looks truly upon, I keep wandering about.” 54: “I, queen, mighty and exalted goddess, I keep wandering about.” 55: “I, the queen, grow weary from lamenting.” 56: “I grow weary from crying and lamenting.” 57: “I grow weary from lamenting my house.” 58: “I grow weary from lamenting my city.” 36 BM 96680 was published by Kramer 1987, which includes an edition and handcopy of the lament. Lines 47–53 of the passage are duplicated in BM 96933 (CT 36: pl. 35–38) r. col. iii 13'–20', a source with a composition with numerous passages that are similar or nearly identical in content to passages and sections of BM 96680, and which is also identified in a subscript on the tablet as a Balag of Inana.

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59: “I grow weary from lamenting my spouse.” 60: “I grow weary from lamenting my son.” In depicting goddesses, like Inana, who are the embodiments of power, strength, and abundance, in states of abject destitution, having lost everything of value to them, including their homes, possessions, and families, passages such as these would have intensified the mood of despair established by the two other main themes of the laments – the destruction of cities and the death of Dumuzi and deities like him – by portraying in vivid detail the profoundly devastating effects of the losses lamented on the very deities upon whom the people participating and experiencing the lament depend for their existence. The extremity of the effects of the catastrophe on these deities would have been accentuated even further through descriptions of the same deities engaging in acts of mourning that involve self-laceration, uncontrollable wailing, and other extreme forms of self-abasement, heightening the sorrow and despair felt by those participating in the lament to an even greater extent. In presenting the participants with a continuous and uninterrupted sequence of repeated images of destruction, loss, and grieving, the three main themes of the laments would have thus served as a highly effective complement to the structure of the laments by ensuring that the constant mood of grief was sustained and elevated to the highest level through imagery conceived to induce the greatest amounts of empathy, pity, and sorrow.

4.3 Affect and the Performance of Sumerian Laments For much of the short history of Assyriology as a discipline, the semantic and philological content of texts has been privileged over their non-representational features, including, but not limited to their materiality, aesthetic properties, and the bodies of specialized skills required to produce them, all of which contribute substantially to what texts do in the social contexts they help create and through which they circulate. Besides reducing texts to a semiotic system of representation intended to communicate ideas and information through signs and symbols, one of the many shortcomings of treating texts entirely as static carriers of meaning, is that it also neglects how the non-representational aspects of texts are just as essential to understanding their cultural function and significance as their semantic content. One of the many essential non-representational features of texts that has been almost entirely overlooked, particularly by philologists who work primarily with written sources, is the affective responses that texts generate both through and beyond their representational content. As is evident from the emotional valence of the structure and themes of the Sumerian laments

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presented in the preceding sections, the cultural meaning and function of these texts is very likely to have been strongly motivated by the highly affective nature of their content. Since the emotional response generated by the laments is critical to understanding their significance, but is almost never taken into consideration when examining their content, the remainder of the chapter will be devoted to considering the role of representation in generating and spreading affective contagion through the performance of these texts. Books 3 and 10 of The Republic contain an extended meditation on what Plato perceived to be the dangers inherent in lamenting and grieving, which provides direct evidence that in the ancient world mourning was a widespread practice imbued with substantial cultural meaning, and was perceived to be significantly more than a natural response to the loss of a valued person. The focus of Plato’s critique is on the dramatic enacting and theatrical representation of mourning in Greek tragedy. Since the essence of Plato’s criticism is concerned specifically with the performative dimension of lamenting, his critique is directly relevant for determining why laments were performed and how they were able to produce the effects they had on those who participated in performing them.37 Plato’s critique of lamenting includes the following objections to the practice: 37 It should be stated at the outset of this section that the purpose of citing and discussing Plato’s observations about the contagious effects of mourning in The Republic here is not to make the argument that because enactments of grieving were common in Greek tragedies, and representations of mourning in performances of Greek tragedies were considered to have a contagious effect during Plato’s time, mourning must therefore have also had a similar public function and similar effects in ancient Mesopotamia. Plato’s critique is directed at representations of mourning in Greek tragedy (though it is, in fact, by no means limited to Greek tragedy: in describing why representations of lamenting should be banned from Greek tragedies at the beginning of his critique of lamenting in Book 3 of The Republic, for example, Plato states that any private or public display of grief in response to loss or catastrophe is directly opposed to the strength of character he wishes his Guardians to possess), and ritual lamenting in Mesopotamia is clearly not the same kind of activity as Greek tragedy. Instead, what I would like to argue, is that Plato’s observations about the affective effects of mourning can be applied more broadly to create an analogical framework (as opposed to a historical argument based on a comparative analogy for what is perceived to be a similar practice) for theorizing how and why any enactment and witnessing of a display of grief (be it intentional or unintentional, private or public, performed in the theater or in a cultic ritual, etc.) generates affective contagion, and thus can be a powerful means of creating groups that are constituted by and through a shared emotion that spreads contagiously through the group. Plato’s theory and critique of mimesis, which runs throughout Books 3 and 10 of The Republic, and in some of his other works, is also immensely complex, and is by no means limited to representation alone, which is one of the words that is often used to translate the term, in some, but not all of the contexts in which it occurs, and can also mean “to imitate” or to act in such a way that inspires, or is inspired by identification with the source of imitation. Moreover, Plato’s critique of mimesis has a strong ontological component, and is very directly implicated in

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Enacting grief involves representation (mimesis), and representations are always inferior to that which they represent: “So, imitation is an inferior thing that consorts with another inferior thing to produce inferior offspring”.38 Grieving and mourning are associated with weakness and inferior instincts that are contrary to the strength, courage, and self-control that are essential for a Guardian in Plato’s ideal State: “Since then we claim to care about men (Lee: “Guardians”), then, and men who must become good, we won’t allow them to imitate a woman, young or old, as she abuses her husband, quarrels with the gods, brags because she thinks herself happy, or suffers misfortune and is possessed by sorrows and lamentations (Lee: “or mourning or lamenting in misfortune”) – and still less a woman who is ill, passionately in love, or in labor”.39 The act of habitually enacting or dramatically representing lesser emotions like grief can transfer these emotions to the person who repeatedly performs them so that over time the actor becomes the type of person he is representing: “On the other hand, they (the Guardians) must not be clever at doing or imitating illiberal or shameful actions, so that they won’t acquire a taste for the real thing from imitating it. Or haven’t you noticed that imitations, if they are practiced much past youth, get established in the habits and nature of body, tones of voice, and mind?”40

Lastly, lamenting and mourning have effects that extend beyond the person performing them that can spread contagiously to infect even those who merely witness the performance. Plato’s criticism of the contagious nature of lamenting is stated most forcefully in Book 10 of The Republic, and since it provides a critical framework for understanding how the performative function of lamenting might

his theory of the Forms, and the essential role they play in shaping everything from perception to the very essence of the cosmos (in the cosmology he presents in Timaeus, for example). At the heart of Plato’s conception of mimesis, and mimetic representation, however, is the generation and sharing of an affect which spreads from the source of imitation to the people enacting and/ or witnessing it, and it is this aspect of mimesis which is pertinent to the framework for conceptualizing lamenting that is being developed in this section. For a more detailed discussion of this and other aspects of mimesis in Plato, and the vast body of literature it has generated, see, in particular, the valuable treatment of the topic by Lawtoo 2013. 38 Plato, The Republic, Book 10: 603, b3–4. Unless otherwise indicated, the translations from The Republic are those of Reeve 2004. In instances in which the translation is more forceful, but essentially the same in meaning, the translation of Lee 1987 is adopted. For this passage, for example, Lee translates: “So representative art is an inferior child born of inferior parents”. 39 Plato, The Republic, Book 3: 395, d5-e2. 40 Plato, The Republic, Book 3: 395, c5-d2.

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have been achieved through the performance of laments, the passage is worth citing in full: If you consider that the poet gratifies and indulges the instinctive desires of a part of us, which we forcibly restrain in our private misfortunes, with its hunger for tears and for an uninhibited indulgence in grief. Our better nature, being without adequate intellectual and moral training, relaxes its control over these feelings, on the grounds that it is someone else’s suffering it is watching and that there’s nothing to be ashamed of in praising and pitying another man with some claim to goodness who shows excessive grief; besides, it reckons the pleasure it gets as sheer gain, and would certainly not consent to be deprived of it by condemning the whole poem. For very few people are capable of realizing that what we feel for other people must infect what we feel for ourselves, and that if we let our pity for the misfortunes of others grow too strong it will be difficult to restrain our feelings in our own.41

In summary, Plato singles out three aspects of lamenting, which he argues make it unsuitable for his ideal Republic: it involves representation, it weakens the people who perform it, and it has a contagious quality that can spread to those who witness it and are powerless to resist succumbing to it. As Plato’s critique of the emotional contagion provoked by dramatic representations of grieving suggests, the presence of other people participating in the same ritual, experiencing the same emotions inspired by the performance of the laments, would have greatly enhanced any affective response the representational content of laments might have inspired on their own, causing the public outpouring of grief the laments provoked and intensified to spread contagiously through the crowd of ritual participants. How then is lamenting able to achieve this effect? For Plato, the answer lies in part in the modes of representation utilized in performing it. These modes include the use of the first person, or direct speech, by the person acting out the lament, which conveys the deceitful impression that the actor is the person he is representing; the use of dialogue, which is equally misleading, because in omitting the words of the narrator between the speeches, the exchange is portrayed as if it were really taking place. And finally, but no less critically, through the poetic power of the words in the lament, which cast a spell over the audience and make it fall victim to the baser instincts the words evoke. Since the same three modes of representation are equally present in Mesopotamian laments, it is no less probable that these compositions elicited a similar response when they were performed. 41 Plato, The Republic, Book 10: 606, a3-b8 (translation follows Lee 1987; Reeve translates the critical lines at the end of the passage: “You see, I think only a few people are able to calculate that the enjoyment of other people’s sufferings is inevitably transferred to one’s own, since, when pity is nourished or strengthened by the former, it is not easily suppressed in the case of one’s own sufferings”).

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In the passages cited from The Republic, one of the reasons Plato gives for mourning and grieving being corrupting and undesirable is that it tends to infect the people who perform it and to spread contagiously to the people who observe it. Although the acoustic experience of hearing the laments, the musical instruments which accompanied the performance, and the tonal qualities of the language of the texts would have undoubtedly heightened the affective experience of ritual lamenting, and contributed to its contagious effect, the content of laments and the poetic form in which it is expressed must have also resonated at a deeply emotional level. In his critique of the dramatic representation of grieving, Plato identified the use of dialogue and first-person narration, along with the power of the poet to move the audience with poetic language as three of the main causes of the pernicious effects of lamenting. Since all three modes of representation are also present in Sumerian laments, it is not unlikely that they were intended to have a similar effect. Although the observation that crowds of people behave differently than individuals and are more susceptible to emotional contagion can already be found as early as the 4th century BCE in Plato’s critique of public mourning, one of the first fully developed theories of the phenomenon was proposed in the late 19th century (CE), by Gustave Le Bon, in his highly influential book, La Psychologie des Foules (1895), which was published a year later in English as The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. Le Bon argued that in contrast to individuals, crowds of people gathered together in the same place under the right conditions, develop a “collective mind” that makes them behave less rationally than the individuals making up the crowd would when alone, and especially prone to act impulsively, violently, and less intelligently, and to become more likely to obey blindly, as if under hypnosis, the will of a leader imposing on them how to act. According to Le Bon, one of the main reasons for the hypnotic suggestibility of crowds is that they are particularly susceptible to simple and exaggerated emotions, which, once they have taken hold, spread quickly and contagiously through the group: Ideas, sentiments, emotions, and beliefs possess in crowds a contagious power as intense as that of microbes. This phenomenon is very natural, since it is observed even in animals when they are together in number. Should a horse in a stable take to biting his manger the other horses in the stable will imitate him. A panic that has seized on a few sheep will soon extend to the whole flock. In the case of men collected in a crowd all emotions are very rapidly contagious, which explains the suddenness of panics.42

The overall effect of this emotional contagion, Le Bon argues, is to take over the crowd’s ability to think rationally and in so doing, to cause its members to elevate

42 Le Bon 1968 [1895]: 122–23.

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appearance over reality, and to become unable to distinguish what is real from what is not.43 Although many aspects of Le Bon’s theory of emotional contagion in crowds, and in particular its strong conservative, anti-democratic undercurrent, have been heavily criticized, his fundamental observation that crowds begin to think and behave less rationally when they are overcome with emotion has had a profound influence on the study of mass psychology. Perhaps most famously, Le Bon’s theory was developed by Freud in Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse (1921), where Freud adopted Le Bon’s observation that crowds of people behave as if under hypnosis when they are put under the spell of a powerful and charismatic leader, but argued that it was Libido or desire, motivated by identification with the father-figure leader, that causes members of a crowd to lose their inhibitions and give full vent to their repressed destructive and libidinous impulses. However, one of the fullest and most profound developments of Le Bon’s theory of crowd contagion was put forward by Elias Canetti in Masse und Macht (1960). Assuming, with Le Bon, that masses are characterized by a feeling of collective unity that is caused by the spreading of a powerful, shared emotion, Canetti also observed that there are many different types of masses, including smaller assemblages of people he identified as “packs” (Meuten), all of which have distinct causes, characteristics, and tendencies. Among the many types of crowds and bands Canetti analyzed are “lamenting packs” (Klage-Meuten), which he defines as groups that are formed in response to the death of a member of their group, or in “lamenting religions”, where “lamenting packs” form to commemorate, through rituals of lamenting, a deity, or a heavily mythologized figure from the group’s past, who has died unjustly.44 According to Canetti, one of the primary attributes of a lamenting pack is its tendency to heighten emotional excitement to intense extremes, as a way of identifying with the deceased divinity or past member of their group by showing how serious their grief is, sometimes even to the point of inflicting wounds on themselves to come as close to death as possible, without actually killing themselves.45 Of primary importance to the lamenting pack, Canetti argues, is the emotion produced by the lamenting itself, which is engendered most effectively through the full, immersive participation in the dramatic depiction and reenactment of the tragic death of the figure being mourned. Describing the Shiite Muharram Festival, in which the death of Mohammed’s grandson, Husayn, is mourned, Canetti writes:

43 Le Bon 1968 [1895]: 54–55. 44 Canetti 1960: 112 and 169–72. 45 Canetti 1960: 124–25.

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Was immer geschehen wird, ist den Zuschauern ohnehin bekannt, es geht nicht um dramatische Spannung in unserem Sinne, es geht um vollkommene Teilnahme (full immersion). Alle Leiden Hussains, die Qualen seines Durstes, da man ihm den Zugang zum Wasser abgeschnitten hat, und die Episoden während der Schlacht und seines Todes werden stark realistisch ausgemalt ... Dann brechen sie während ihrer bösen Worte selbst in Tränen aus. Es gibt keinen Applaus, man weint, stöhnt oder schlägt sich auf den Kopf. Die Aufregung der Zuschauer erreicht eine solche Höhe, dass sie nicht selten die schurkischen Figuren, die Mörder Hussains, zu lynchen versuchen.46

In this description of the dramatic, ritual reenactment of Husayn’s death, it is not only the vivid and detailed representation of the death that releases and heightens the emotions of the participants in the ritual, but the fully immersive emotional participation in the enactment itself that intensifies the affective valency of the participants, spreading the emotional contagion that transforms them into a “lamenting pack”. It is not difficult to imagine that the lamenting induced by the vivid, emotionally evocative descriptions of the separation of Dumuzi from Inana, or Damu from his family, like those in the passages cited above, might have had a similar effect on the participants in the rituals in which the laments were performed. It is evident from Le Bon’s, Freud’s, Canetti’s, and many other treatments of mass psychology and emotional contagion that it is not possible to fully understand what the content of Sumerian laments meant, without also moving beyond the representational aspects of their content to determine what effect the laments might have had on the audiences that participated in their performance, and how their content contributed to this effect. With the so-called “affective turn” in the humanities and the social sciences, there has been increasing attention to the importance of emotion in human decision making and behavior, and a corresponding move away from giving complete efficacy to reason and logical causality as the determinant factor in explaining social, political, and cultural phenomena. While the observations about lamenting presented here are consistent with much of this work, there has also been a tendency in studies of affect to either ignore representation, or to conceptualize it as being antithetical to affect, and argue that it either needs to be eliminated from consideration entirely, or at least subordinated to affect, before we can begin to understand why people think, act, and behave the way they do. Although arguably the shift from representation to affect can already be found in the work of the sociologist Gabriel Tarde, who was writing about crowd psychology around the same time as Le Bon – most notably in his book, L’opinion et la foule (1901), where Tarde argues that it is not thoughts, but sentiments that 46 Canetti 1960: 179–80.

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are experienced subconsciously, as if under hypnosis, that spread contagiously to form crowds and publics – the strongest case against the sufficiency of representation can be found in the work of Gilles Deleuze, and the work of many others whose theories about affect have been influenced strongly by it. Throughout his work, but particularly in Différence et Répétition (1968), Deleuze made a forceful case against what he identified as the representational bias that runs through much of Western philosophy. According to Deleuze, modes of inquiry which privilege representation are frequently predicated on the principle of identity, which subordinates Difference to a fundamental Sameness that is thought to ground all meaning and truth, and reduces differences (between phenomena, for example) to being merely that which is not similar, analogous, or in opposition to something else. These orientations fail to conceive Difference as a positive, intensive, and productive force of its own that forms the very ground from which experience, the phenomenal world, and representation emerge: Difference is not diversity. Diversity is given, but difference is that by which the given is given, that by which the given is given as diverse. Difference is not phenomenon but the noumenon closest to the phenomenon. ... Every phenomenon refers to an inequality by which it is conditioned. Every diversity and every change refers to a difference which is its sufficient reason. Everything which happens and everything which appears is correlated with orders of difference: differences of level, temperature, pressure, tension, potential, difference of intensity.47

In Deleuze’s view, in failing to recognize Difference as more fundamental than Sameness as the basis for representation, and instead conceiving difference to be a secondary and subordinate effect of the representational principles of similarity, analogy, and opposition, the critical function of difference as a vital and generative source of meaning and the processes by which these meanings emerge is overlooked. Deleuze’s critique of representation and his emphasis instead on the importance of affect and desire, unconstrained or contaminated by the representational principles that block or redirect their vital flow, has been adopted in nearly every development and application of affect theory since it has emerged as a dominant paradigm in the past two decades. Brian Massumi, one of the most influential proponents of affect theory, makes a similar point about the significance of movements and flows of affect and sensation in stimulating action before meaning is constituted and perceived through principles of representation.48 And more recently, Tony Sampson has applied affect theory to explain emotional contagion, 47 Deleuze 1994 [1968]: 222. 48 Massumi 2002.

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combining Tarde’s and Deleuze’s non-representational theories of imitative rays (Tarde) and affect (Deleuze) to argue that emotional contagion operates in an in-between non-conscious state, similar to that of Tarde’s state of hypnosis or somnambulism, which is charged with affect, and which can be manipulated – by marketers and political leaders, in this case – to capture people’s attention, and to redirect it and couple it with something else.49 As essential as it to recognize affect, and non-representational factors, in perception and the construction of meaning, is it also necessary to assume that affect and representation are in direct opposition to one another? Is there really a dichotomy between affect, on the one hand, and representation, on the other? Or is it not equally probable that affect and representation work together in certain situations, so that each feeds into and transfigures the other, in conjunction with a whole range of other factors, such as rhythm, sound, and repetition, that cannot be reduced to either affect or representation? With respect to mimetic representation, for example, the anthropologist Michael Taussig has argued convincingly that the power of a copy is derived not only from what is similar between the copy and the model, but also from what is notably different between the two.50 If this is the case, difference and the principles of representational identity are not mutually exclusive, but inseparable, and constitutive parts of the powerful and magical effects of mimesis. A similar argument could also be made for the relationship between representation and affect in Sumerian laments, which utilize mimetic principles of representation to generate and heighten the emotional response that emerges from participating in the ritual in which these compositions were recited and performed, but whose overall effect cannot be reduced to, or explained entirely by, the representational aspects of the laments themselves. Returning to the question of the relationship between representational and non-representational aspects of texts suggested at the beginning of this section: is it really necessary to assume that the content of texts is entirely representational, on the one hand, and that the non-semantic aspects of texts, such as their materiality, aesthetics, and emotional valence, are primarily, if not exclusively, nonrepresentational, or “meaningless” on the other? If the argument presented here about the role of affect and representation in Sumerian ritual laments is persuasive, then more would be lost than gained by assuming that the content of these texts and the affective responses they generated perform mutually exclusive functions. To purge all that is non-representational from the study of texts without taking into account how they might have been experienced in performance obscures and

49 Sampson 2012. 50 Taussig 1993.

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even effaces not only the interplay between the content of texts and the affective responses their representational and non-representational aspects generate, but also all of the other factors that contribute to their combined and distinct effects. As the content and structure of the passages cited throughout this chapter reveal, Sumerian laments, through the use of emotionally evocative first person litanies, dialogues, and passages which render the full heart-wrenching horror of loss in vivid poetic imagery, provided a highly effective ritual means of communicating and spreading grief and mourning. With the goal of averting impending misfortune, laments, whose primary purpose was to appease angry deities to prevent them from bringing about the feared catastrophe, fulfilled this aim by mimetically evoking the suffering the depicted misfortune would inflict on the lamenters were it to occur. Laments used poetic mimesis, and dramatic first person and dialogic ritual enactments of mourning to appeal to the pity and compassion of the gods by conjuring in vivid and horrendous detail a vision of what would be lost were Dumuzi or Damu to be abandoned to the netherworld forever. That similar practices were still being targeted for criticism in ancient Greece centuries after they were developed in Mesopotamia, attests to the success the content and performance of Sumerian laments had in generating the contagious pity they were intended to evoke. Sumerian ritual laments provide a particularly striking example of why it is not sufficient to focus entirely on the representational content of these compositions, without also considering their non-representational aspects, when interpreting their cultural meaning and significance. First, and perhaps most significantly, Sumerian laments, while preserved in writing, are not, or at least not primarily, texts in the conventional sense of texts as self-contained carriers of verbal messages that outlive the moment of their composition by existing, or being reproducible, in a form that allows their content to be repeated or experienced in a form that is identical, or nearly identically, to how it was originally conceived. The written versions of these compositions, and their physical instantiations, existed together with, and actively contributed to the performance of the same laments in cultic rituals, and were probably never intended to be read (or recited) outside a performative context.51 In other words, the representational content of the laments would not have been experienced without the highly emotionally-charged atmosphere engendered by the ritual in which they were performed, and heightened by the performance of the emotionally-charged

51 For a more detailed argument for the written copies of Sumerian laments being used primarily, if not exclusively, as aids to the oral performance of these compositions, see Delnero 2015 and Chapter 5, Section 4.

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content of the laments themselves. Lastly, and of almost equal significance, however, is that even if the representational content of the laments – with their evocative descriptions of terrifying demons violently handing Dumuzi or Damu over to the inexorable hand of fate, and the expressions of horrific grief caused by their untimely loss – contributed to the emotional impact of these compositions, the emotional effect would not have been experienced in isolation. As Plato’s critique of the emotional contagion provoked by dramatic representations of grieving suggests, the presence of other people participating in the same ritual, experiencing the same emotions inspired by the performance of the laments, would have greatly enhanced any affective response the representational content of laments might have inspired on their own, causing the public outpouring of grief the laments provoked and intensified to spread contagiously through the crowd of ritual participants.

Chapter 5 Sound and Meaning in Sumerian Laments Although ritual itself has been the subject of innumerable studies, ritual language has received substantially less attention, and the interaction of sound and meaning in ritual performance has received almost none at all. One of the few scholars to address the function of ritual language specifically has been the anthropologist Stanley Tambiah. In his study, “The Magical Power of Words”, Tambiah distinguished three different ways in which language can be used in rituals:1 – When language is broadcast to be heard, but not necessarily understood. – When language is both broadcast and understood. – And when language is secret, and is not meant to be heard or understood. Noting that none of these uses of language are mutually exclusive and that all three uses can be operative at different points in the same ritual, Tambiah analyzed how language is able to achieve its intended function when it is used in each of these three ways. Arguing against the theory proposed by Frazer that magical language works by applying the laws of sympathy to transfer a property of a word to an object with analogous qualities, Tambiah proposes instead that magical language uses metaphor to heighten the effect of the ritual procedure and to give the metaphorical transfer it aims to produce “an air of operational reality”.2 Be this as it may, the primary function of ritual language in all but one of these three uses is not to communicate meaning, but instead to use the words and their associated sounds and meanings to produce a tangible effect on the object or problem toward which they are directed. Sumerian laments fall clearly into the first category of ritual language use noted by Tambiah. Sumerian laments are written in a special register of the Sumerian language known as Emesal, a linguistic register which is clearly derived from standard Sumerian, and shares common words and grammar, but differs substantially from it in pronunciation and also in its use of a relatively limited set of alternate lexical items, like u3-mu-un for en ‘lord’ and ga-ša-an for nin ‘lady’, which are specific to Emesal and do not occur in the main dialect of the language. Emesal is also both orthographically and phonologically distinct from the normal dialect of Sumerian, and is characterized by shifts such as the pronunciation of

1 Tambiah 1968: 179. 2 Tambiah 1968: 194. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501512650-005

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/ĝ/ as /m/ and /g/ as /b/.3 Although Emesal is used in some Sumerian literary compositions (such as Inana’s Descent to the Netherworld) to record the speech of female deities like Inana, it is most commonly attested in Sumerian laments, presumably because this was the register of language in which the gala-officials, who performed laments, sung the texts.4 While Sumerian laments were probably performed over the course of most, if not all of the three thousand years of Mesopotamian history, written sources for the laments are only known from the second and first millennia. Since Sumerian was no longer spoken during the periods in which written copies of the laments are attested, however, it is improbable that many of the people who participated in, or experienced the performance of Sumerian laments understood the meaning of their linguistic content, even if they might have known, through other channels of transmission, what their content would have meant. It is therefore very likely that the laments were intended to be broadcast, but not understood. Moreover, while it is certainly possible that laments could have also been recited in secret in certain instances, it is difficult to determine with certainty what these contexts might have been, and even then, the minimal presence of a cultic official to recite or perform the text would have ensured that there would have always been at least one participant who heard, and probably also understood it. When viewed from the perspective of the cultic function of the texts, the purpose of magical language in Sumerian laments in the senses identified by Tambiah is evident. Laments, which were intended to appease the gods by moving them to pity to stop or reverse a catastrophe, were directed to the gods, who needed to hear and understand them in order to be appeased and moved. What is not explained by Tambiah’s functions of ritual language, however, is what effect understanding or not understanding the content of the laments would have had on those who performed, or participated in the performance of them. Since Sumerian laments were sometimes, if not nearly always, performed in rituals involving a collective group of participants, both the sound and meaning of the texts would have been perceived and apprehended by everyone present, even when it was heard but not understood. If the intended effect of the recitation or performance of the laments was to generate an intense feeling of shared grief, what role did the interaction of sound and meaning play in the process of generating these feelings and convictions, particularly when the texts that were performed and recited could not be under3 For a detailed discussion of the nature of Emesal and the phonetic and orthographic shifts it involves see Schretter 1990. 4 For a discussion of gala-officials and their role in the performance of Sumerian laments, with references to previous literature, see the introduction to Chapter 3.

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stood? Although there are countless religious traditions that utilize texts written in languages which many adherents do not understand, but are nonetheless aware of the content of the texts through other means, the question can also be considered from the perspective of how the meaning of ritual texts is often secondary to the other sensory modes by which they are experienced in ritual contexts, including hearing and sound. In this chapter, the interface of sound and meaning in the performance of Sumerian ritual laments will be considered in more depth, by examining the types of writings that occur in a large group of sources for the laments that are written phonetically, to argue that these sources provide at least one clear instance of when meaning might have been considered less important than how the compositions were heard and experienced in the rituals in which they were performed.

5.1 The Corpus of Phonetically Written Sources A substantial number of the Old Babylonian copies of laments that are currently known are written in a highly phonetic orthography, instead of in the conventional orthography for Emesal. In contrast to sources written in standard Emesal orthography (examples of standard Emesal forms include the writings dmu-ul-lil2 to write the name of the god Enlil; e-ne-eĝ3 to write the word meaning ‘word’, which is written with as inim in normal Sumerian orthography; and ma-al to render the verb ĝal2 ‘to be’ or ‘make exist’), in which the same writings occur consistently across the corpus as a whole, sources written in a phonetic orthography contain many writings that differ significantly from the conventional spellings, because the specific words and forms in the text are rendered instead with different signs that indicate more closely how they were to be pronounced.5 To illustrate how the content of Sumerian laments is rendered in the phonetically written sources for the laments, and how the writings in these sources differ from the manner in which the content of the laments is rendered in sources that are written in normal Emesal orthography, in the following example, the writings in the phonetically written source BM 78175 (CT 44: 12), which contains a lament with parallels to the Balag ab-zu pe-el-la2-am3, can be compared with the renderings of the same lines in a parallel passage in VAT 425 (SBH 57), a source dating

5 For earlier treatments of phonetic writings in Sumerian literary sources, particularly in the laments discussed in this chapter, see Bergmann 1964, Krecher 1967a, 1967b, and 1968, and Kutscher 1975: 32–43.

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to the Seleucid Period with sections from the Balag ab-zu pe-el-la2-am3 that is written in normal Emesal orthography:6 Balag – ab-zu pe-el-la2-am3 – l.76–78, 80: 76: UN tur-tur-zu UN gal-gal-zu BM 78175 o. 7: ? tu-tu-ur-zu u3-gal-gal-zu VAT 425 o. 12: UN tur-tur-zu UN gal-gal-zu Akk. ni-šu-ka ṣe-eh-ru-tu ni-šu-ka ra-bu-ti [. . .] 77: tur-tur-e šu-ta du11-ga-zu BM 78175 o. 8: tu-tu-re šu-ta du-ka-zu VAT 425 o. 13: tur-tur :: ṣe-eh-hi-ru-tu-ka :: ešu-ta du11-ga 78: gal-gal me-ri-ta lah4-a-zu BM 78175 o. 9: gal-gal me-ri-ta la-ha-zu VAT 425 o. 14: gal-gal :: ra-bu-ka-ma eme-ri-ta lah4-a :: ša2 har-ra-an [. . .] 80: maš2-ĝu10 sum4-la2-sum4-la2-zu BM 78175 o. 11: maš(-)MU(-)TI-en su-um-la-su-la-zu VAT 425 o. 16: [maš2-ĝu10 :: da]-aš2-šu-ki :: sum4-la2-sum4-la2 :: x x :: [u2-ri]-ṣu-ka ša2 zi-iq-ni za-aq-nu 76: Your young ones, your older ones. 77: Your young ones who have been seized by the hand. 78: Your older ones who have been carried away by the feet. 80: Your kids of mine, whose beards hang (toward the ground). As illustrated in the passage cited here, nearly all of the words and forms that are rendered in standard Emesal orthography in VAT 425 are written phonetically in BM 78175. One of the phonetic writings from this passage is the rendering of the reduplicated substantive tur-tur ‘young ones’ as tu-tu-ur in l.76, and again as tu-tu-re for tur-tur-e in l.77. In both instances, /r/ is omitted in the writing of the first tur and the second tur is written as two separate signs as tu-ur and as -tu-re, instead of with the sign single TUR, as in VAT 425, where the forms are rendered in their standard orthographies as tur-tur and tur-tur-e. Similarly, in the

6 For an edition of the Balag abzu pe-el-la2-am3 see Cohen 1988: 47–64. For the lines cited here, which correspond to lines 76–78 and 80 in Cohen’s edition of the laments, and transliterations of the two sources with this passage, the phonetically written source BM 78175 (= Cohen, Source A) and VAT 425 (= Cohen, Source G), see also Cohen 1988: 53–54. The line numbering follows Cohen’s edition.

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reduplicated form at the end of l.80, which is written in its standard orthographic form as sum4-la2-sum4-la2 in VAT 425, but as su-um-la-su-la in BM 78175, /m/ is omitted with the second sum4 and the first sum4 is written with two separate signs, su and um, instead of with a single sign. The second common type of phonetic writing that occurs in this passage is the rendering of the words du11 ‘to speak’, la2 ‘hang’, and maš2 ‘kid’, with the signs du, la, and maš, which were read or pronounced similarly to du11, la2, and maš2, the standard signs used to write these words, but which were normally used in conventional orthography to write other words and elements (such as du for the verb ‘to go’, la- as a verbal prefix of negation, and maš in the form maš-maš, the word for ‘sorcerer’). The other phonetic writings are the sandhi writing u3-gal-gal for UN gal-gal ‘great people’; the rendering of the verb lah4 ‘to carry (away)’ as la-ha, instead of as DU over DU, which was read lah4 when used to write this verb, but which also had the readings re7 and su8 when used to write different forms of the verbs ‘to go’ and ‘to stand’; and the rendering of the standard Auslaut /g/ of du11 as /k/. In all three of these forms, an aspect of the pronunciation of the words and forms that is either not expressed or is less clear in their standard orthography is expressed or made more explicit in their phonetic rendering in BM 78175. In the sandhi writing u3-gal-gal the final nasal /n/ (or /ĝ/) of the word UN is omitted, probably because in pronunciation it assimilated to /g/ at the beginning of the following adjective gal ‘great’. The writing la-ha instead of as lah4 indicates explicitly which of the different verbs (and readings) of the sign DU over DU was intended. And the rendering of the Auslaut of du11 as /k/ instead /g/ may reflect an attempt to express more accurately how the Auslaut of du11, conventionally written as /g/ in standard orthography, would have been pronounced. These and the other types of phonetic writings that occur in BM 78175 in this passage occur very frequently in the phonetically written sources for the laments, and are representative of how the writings in these sources differ from standard Emesal orthography.

5.1.1 The Geographic Distribution of Phonetically Written Sources In the corpus of 496 Old Babylonian sources containing cultic laments, there are 180 sources which are written in a highly phonetic orthography, and another 24 with isolated phonetic writings.7 Of the 180 sources written in a highly phonetic

7 Krecher 1967a: 25–30 contains a list of approximately 175 of these sources, which includes sources with isolated phonetic writings (indicated with a “*”). The numbers cited here and throughout this section include additional phonetically written sources that have been identified

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orthography, 55 are from Kish, 14 are from Girsu, two are from Shaduppum (Tell Harmal), one is from Uruk, and one is from Nippur. The provenience of the remaining 107 sources is unknown, but many of these sources, most of which are in the collections of the British Museum, the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin, and the Louvre, are presumed to come from Sippar, and in some cases, Larsa, and approximately half of these sources seem to belong to one of three distinct subgroups. 5.1.1.1 Phonetic Sources from Kish The largest group of phonetically written sources from a known provenience is the group of 55 phonetic sources from Kish.8 The phonetically written sources from Kish, like the other known sources for the laments from Kish that date to the Old Babylonian Period, form a diverse group, and are unlikely to have all been written at the same time and place by the same scribe, or group of scribes. This is most evident in the wide range of phonetic writings that occur inconsistently and with frequent variability across the entire group of sources from the site. One example of a writing that occurs variably and inconsistently in the phonetic sources from Kish are the words ga-ša-an, the Emesal word for ‘lady’ or ‘queen’, and ga-ša-an-an-na, the Emesal word for the goddess Inana, which are rendered in some of the phonetic sources from Kish in writings that begin with /g/ in K1, K11, K29, K32, K50 as ga-ša-ne2, ga-ša-nu, ga-ša-an-na-na, ga-ša-an-na, and ga-šana-an, but in K3 and K34 in writings that begin with /k/, as ka-ša-an and ka-šana-na. While phonetic writings of ga-ša-an or ga-ša-an-an-na with /k/ also occur in phonetic sources from other sites, and are not unique to Kish, forms with both /g/ and /k/ never occur within the same source or group of sources, suggesting that /k/ only occurs in sources written by the same scribe or groups of scribes. If this is the case, then the occurrence of sources with /k/ and other sources with /g/ is an indication that at least some of the phonetic sources from Kish were written by different scribes with different tendencies, independently of the other phonetic sources from the site. Moreover, although many of the phonetic sources from Kish are fragmentary and it is not always possible to identify the deity or deities to whom the laments are addressed, in the sources whose content can be sufficiently reconstructed to allow for identifications, Inana, Dumuzi, Enlil, Aruru, and many of the other deities who are typically the subject of laments throughout Mesopotamia during this period, are equally well represented in the

since the publication of Krecher’s article. For a complete list of these sources and the phonetic writings that occur in them, see Appendix 3. 8 For a complete list of these sources, see Appendix 3.

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phonetic sources from this site. Since many of the phonetic sources from Kish also contain lines and passages that occur in phonetic and non-phonetic sources from other cities, it is unlikely that they belong to a completely separate local tradition. At least six of the phonetically written sources from Kish (K1, K28, K35, K36, K45, and K52) either duplicate or have lines that are parallel to lines and passages in Uruamairabi. One of these sources (K1), contains four of the first five sections of Uruamairabi,9 and is very close in content, structure, and line sequence to NCBT 688, the main source for the beginning sections of the Old Babylonian version of this lament. In contrast to many of the other phonetic sources from Kish, many of which are fragmentary, K1 is also substantially better preserved and contains a proportionately large number of phonetic writings, all of which are representative of the types of phonetic writings that occur across the corpus of phonetically written sources for the laments as a whole. The phonetic writings that occur in this source comprise: Phonetic Writings in Source K1 (= PRAK C 52 + PRAK C 121 (+) PRAK B 442): -a: -ya (K1 o. ii 4') -a-: (gi-)ya(-bi) (K1 o. i 14); (e-)ya(-nu) (K1 o. i 30') a-gin7: e-gi-en (K1 o. ii 13'); a-nin (K1 r. iii 9) -a-ni: -(m)a-an-ni (K1 r. iii 7) a-ša3: ša3 (K1 r. iv 4) a-še-er: a-še-ra (K1 r. iv 4"–5") a2: a (K1 o. ii 12') ad6: a-ta (K1 o. i 32'); at(-ti) (K1 o. i 33') am3-: a-am- (K1 o. i 1); a-mi (K1 r. iii 5) ama-gan: e-mi-ga (K1 o. ii 3") amaš: ama-sa (K1 o. i 5) ambar: ap-pa-ar (K1 o. ii 9") an: a-na (K1 o. i 2, r. iii 2) arattaki: a-ra-ta (K1 r. iii 12) bi2-: bi- (K1 o. i 11–12) buru5mušen: bu-ru (K1 o. ii 8") -da: -ta (K1 r. iii 8) -de3: -te (K1 o. i 9–12) 9 The omission of the third section, which seems to have been intentional, is marked by a double dividing line between the second and fourth sections of the lament to indicate that the section was omitted.

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di4-di4-la2: de3 [. . .] (K1 o. i 1); de3-de3-la (K1 o. i 6), de3-el-le (K1 o. i 7) dib: di-pa (K1 o. i 36'–38') du7: du3 (K1 o. i 30'), du (K1 o. i 31') du8: du (K1 r. iii 5–6) du11: du (K1 o. i 7, 11–12, 14–15, r. iii 6') dub2: tu-pa (K1 o. i 4, o. ii 7') duru5: du-ra (K1 o. i 29') -e(vb.): (im-)mi-e (K1 o. ii 9'–10') -e-ne: (si-s)a-ni (K1 r. iv 5) e2: e (K1 o. i 30', o. ii 9', r. iv 5); ya(-na) (K1 r. iii 3) e4(A): e (K1 o. i 14–15); e2 (K1 o. i 39') egir: gi-re (K1 o. i 35') erim2: i-ri-ma (K1 r. iv 6) ga(vb.): qa (K1 o. i 34'–35') -ga: -qa (K1 o. i 11–12, 14–15, r. iii 6') ga-ša-an-an-na: ga-ša-an-na-na (K1 o. i 2); ga-ša-an-na (K1 r. iii 2) gi: qa (K1 o. i 29') ĝis gigir: gi-qa-ir (K1 o. i 37') gi4: gi (K1 o. i 14) gi16-le-eĝ3: gi-le-de2 (K1 o. i 13) -gin7: -gi-en (K1 o. ii 12') gigurum: gi-gu-ru-ma (K1 r. iii 7); gi-ru (K1 r. iv 2) gu3: gu2 (K1 r. iii 1) gub: gi-be2 (K1 o. ii 11') gul: (gul)-UL (K1 o. i 3, o. ii 6') ĝar: ĝa2-ra (K1 o. ii 14'–15') ĝin: ĝa2-na (K1 o. ii 4") ĝir3: ĝa2-ri (K1 o. i 8); gir2 (K1 r. iv 2) ĝuruš: mu-ru (K1 o. i 26’) har-ra-an-na: ha-ra-na (K1 o. i 37') hul: hu-hu (K1 o. i 9–10) i-bi2: i-bi (K1 r. iii 5) i7: id (K1 o. i 36'); i (K1 o. ii 1") il2: il2-lil2 (K1 o. ii 6") in-ga-: i-ga- (K1 r. iii 6) ir2: ir (K1 r. iii 13) izi: zi-a (K1 o. i 16) -ke4: -ke (K1 r. iii 5–6) ki-sikil: ki-iš-ke-el (K1 o. i 25') ku2: gu2 (K1 o. i 33')

5.1 The Corpus of Phonetically Written Sources 

ku3: ku (K1 r. iii 8) ku3-ĝal2: ku-ĝa2-le (K1 r. iv 3) lah4: la-ha (K1 o. i 8) lil2-la2: e2-lil2 (K1 o. i 5); e2-lil2-na (K1 o. ii 8') lu2: lu (K1 o. ii 7") ĝiš ma2: ma (K1 o. i 36') me: mi (K1 r. iii 1) me3: mi (K1 o. i 27'–28') mu-gi17-ib: nu-gi (K1 o. i 2, r. iii 2) d mu-ul-lil2: dmu-lil2 (K1 o. i 18–19) mu-un-gar3: mu-ga-re (K1 r. iv 4) na-aĝ2: na(-bi) (K1 o. i 17) na-nam: na-na-a (K1 r. iii 1, 3–4); na-na (K1 r. iii 4) nu2: nu-um (K1 o. i 32') peš10: bi-iš (K1 o. i 40'); bi-ša (K1 o. i 40'); bi-še (K1 o. ii 2") saĝ: sa-ĝa2 (K1 o. i 28', 34', r. iii 11) sig3: si-ge (K1 r. iii 8) ša3: ša (K1 r. iii 6) -še3: -še (K1 o. ii 4"–5") šen: še-na (K1 r. iii 10) šeš: si-sa (K1 r. iv 5) tar: ta-re (K1 o. i 17) tug2: tu9 (K1 r. iv 1) tuku: tu-ku (K1 o. i 31') tur: tu-tu (K1 o. ii 8") u2: u4 (K1 r. iv 2) ud5: u2 (K1 o. ii 2") ugamušen: u4-ga (K1 o. i 33') ur-šu-AK-a: u4-šu-a-qa (K1 o. ii 7") Sandhi Writings: a-ta for ad6-a (K1 o. i 32') at-ti-im- for ad6 im- (K1 o. i 33') ama-gi-re for ama egir (K1 o. i 35') ba-bi-ra for ba-ab-i-ra (K1 o. i 9–10) e-ya-nu-du3 for e2-a-na nu-du7 (K1 o. i 30') dam-ma for dam-na (K1 r. iii 4) -du-u4 for -du8-e 9 (K1 r. iii 6) gu2-ru-na for gu3 uru2-na (K1 r. iii 1)

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id-da-pa for i7-da dib-ba (K1 o. i 36') il-lil2 for il2-il2 (K1 o. ii 6") ki-iš-ke-el for ki-sikil (K1 o. i 25') lu2-gi-re for lu2 egir (K1 o. i 35') na-na-a-ya-na for na-nam e2-na (K1 r. iii 3) u4-lu for u4 hul (K1 o. i 38') u4-šu-a-qa for ur-šu-AK-a (K1 o. ii 7") Omission of Determinative: a-ra-ta for arattaki (K1 r. iii 12) bu-ru for buru5mušen (K1 o. ii 8") gi-qa-ir for ĝišgigir (K1 o. i 37') ma for ĝišma2 (K1 o. i 36') u4-ga for ugamušen (K1 o. i 33') Other Unusual Writings: uru2ru-a-na for uru2-na (K1 r. iii 3) 5.1.1.2 Phonetic Sources from Girsu The phonetic sources from Girsu are particularly significant, since they come from southern Mesopotamia, and it is clear from the ductus of many of these sources that they were compiled at least two to three centuries earlier than all of the other known sources for the laments, including the phonetically written sources. This group of sources, which was published by Thureau-Dangin in Cros (1910), comprises 18 tablets, written in a highly phonetic orthography, in many of which Bau, the patron goddess of Girsu, figures prominently.10 Although Thureau-Dangin dated these tablets to the first dynasty of Isin, he made the mistake of comparing them to literary sources from Nippur that had been published by Hilprecht and Radau earlier in the century, which are now known to date to later in the Old Babylonian Period.11 Fourteen of the 18 sources contain laments, and are written in a highly phonetic orthography.12 All but three of the phonetic sources from Girsu (G2, G13 and G14) have a similar format in which the lines are written in cases instead of ruled in single lines, and a ductus that is significantly closer in every respect to the ductus of Ur III sources 10 Cros 1910: 198–212. 11 Cros 1910: 198. 12 For a complete list of these sources, see Appendix 3.

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than it is to the ductus of later Old Babylonian literary sources, most of which date to the latter half of the Old Babylonian Period, and in particular, the reign of Samsuiluna.13 One of the sources from this group, AO 4327 (Source G1), contains lines that are directly parallel to lines from a passage in Uruamairabi. While the content of the obverse cannot be attributed to a known lament, the content of columns v and vi of the reverse is directly parallel to lines 62–63, 67–76, 83–85, and 88 in the second Kirugu of Uruamairabi. AO 4327, like the other Girsu sources with the same format and ductus, is arranged in cases instead of in individual lines. Moreover, all of the signs on the tablet are written in a much fuller and elaborate form with substantially more wedges than the same signs are written in Old Babylonian texts. The sign “LI”, for example, is rendered with careful, finely written rows of 6–8 diagonal wedges at the beginning of the sign, and the sign “ZU” is written with a row of four small, but carefully rendered verticals, in contrast to the typical Old Babylonian writings of “LI” with only 2–3 diagonal wedges at the beginning of the sign, and only a single vertical wedge crossing the horizontal wedge inside “ZU”. Moreover, the absence of any distinctly Old Babylonian sign forms, or mistakes in the rendering of the older signs that might reveal that they are artificial imaginings of how the signs would have been written in earlier periods, make it unlikely that the signs in this and the other sources are deliberately archaizing. The ductus of this source, and the other phonetically written sources from Girsu in this group, and the consistency with which the sign forms accurately resemble older, Ur III sign forms, together with the format and layout of the tablets, are strong indications that these sources were almost certainly compiled much earlier than the other phonetically written sources for the laments. Although an Ur III date for these sources has been suggested,14 and should probably not be ruled out completely, some of the signs, like “RA”, “GA”, and “TUR”, which are slightly more linear and schematic than their Ur III equivalents, utilizing fewer wedges that are not in direct horizontal or vertical alignment with the other wedges in the sign, may indicate that the ductus dates to an intermediate stage between the Ur III and the later Old Babylonian Period uses of the script, with the early second millennium being a likely possibility.

13 See also Krecher 1966: 14, who also identifies this group of sources as dating to the “frühaltbabylonische Zeit”, and Krecher 1967b: 88–95, for a description and discussion of the phonetic writings that occur in these and the other phonetic sources from Girsu. 14 For this possibility see Tinney 2011: 580: “A handful of texts known from Lagaš are typically considered to be Old Babylonian lamentations though the paleography of some suggests that an Ur III date should be considered”.

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5.1.1.3 Phonetic Sources from Shaduppum, Nippur, and Uruk In addition to the phonetically written sources from Kish and Girsu, the only other phonetic sources that are from certain proveniences are the much smaller groups of sources from Tell Harmal (Shaduppum), Nippur, and Uruk. These sources comprise: Phonetic Sources from Tell Harmal (Shaduppum): Ha1 = IM 51253 (Sumer 13: pl. 7 = TIM 9, 31), Dumuzi-Inana lament Ha2 = IM 54345 (Sumer 13: pl. 8 = TIM 9, 30), Utu lament Phonetic Source from Nippur: N1 = CBS 11326 (BE 30/1: 5), Dumuzi-Inana lament Phonetic Source from Uruk: W 17259m (AUWE 23: 67–68, no. 127), Enlil lament The phonetic sources from the three cities are similar in every critical respect to the other known phonetically written sources for the laments from this period, and the presence of sources of this type at cities in both southern Mesopotamia (Nippur and Uruk) and northern Mesopotamia (Shaduppum) is a clear indication that phonetic sources were compiled throughout Mesopotamia during the Old Babylonian Period, and that the compilation of phonetic sources was not limited to a single city or region. One of the two sources from Shaduppum, Ha1, contains a multi-section lament to Inana, and one of the preserved passages lists the standard epithets of Inana, rendering the word ga-ša-an as ka-ša-an, a writing that also occurs in the ka-ša-an-Group of sources, discussed below, as well as in at least two sources from Kish (K3 and K34), two sources from unknown proveniences (X51 and X52), and the phonetically written source from Nippur (N1). Like Ha1, the other sources from these three sites also have common types of phonetic writings and direct parallels to known laments. The second source from Shaduppum, Ha2, begins with a passage that occurs in the Ershemma dutu e3-ma-ra as preserved in L.1486 (ISET I: p. 219), VAT 1314 (VS 2: 70), and other sources, including the phonetic source VAT 1509 + (VS 2: 69), from the HPSC group, discussed below. In addition to the occurrence of the phonetic writing ka-ša-an for ga-ša-an, which also occurs in Ha1, the phonetic source from Nippur contains a Dumuzi-Inana lament, with a passage (r. v 3–13), which is closely parallel to similar passages in BM 15821 (CT 15: pl. 18), BM 109167 (CT 58: 11), VAT 3536 (VS 10: 128), and other sources containing Dumuzi-Inana laments in which the epithets of Dumuzi that

5.1 The Corpus of Phonetically Written Sources 

 237

occur in this passage are listed. Similarly, the source from Uruk (W 17259m), contains a short, four-line extract from an Enlil lament, which is directly parallel to the beginning of VAT 3514 (VS 10: 154), another phonetically written source containing an Enlil lament with a similar passage. 5.1.1.4 Distinct Subgroups of Phonetically Written Sources Among the 107 highly phonetic sources whose provenience is unknown or uncertain, there are at least three distinct subgroups, each of which seems to have been copied by the same scribe or group of scribes. The largest of the three groups, which will be referred to as “Highly Phonetic Single Column Tablets” (henceforth HPSC sources), comprises 26 sources that share at least four distinguishing features:15 1) All sources are written on single column tablets (as opposed to tablets with two or more columns per side) which are irregularly shaped and have very thin left edges. 2) Many sources contain lines in which all of the signs are written closely together and little or no space is left between individual words and forms to indicate word or phrase divisions. 3) The ductus of every source is similar and distinct, and comprises numerous idiosyncratic sign forms that occur in these, but not other sources from the same corpus or period. 4) Sources contain dividing lines between sections which have 10-marks (which are written with a single Winkelhaken) in the middle of each dividing line. One example of a source from the HPSC group is VAT 1555 (VS 10: 176), which contains an Inana lament with a passage on the obverse that is duplicated in CBS 10885 (HAV 3), an Old Babylonian source from Nippur, which also contains a lament to Inana with an extended passage that duplicates a section from the Balag a-še-er ĝi6-ta.16 This passage reads as follows:

15 For the HSPC sources discussed in this section, see also Delnero 2015: 110–15. For a complete list of the sources in this group, see Appendix 3. 16 For a transliteration of the duplicate passage in these two sources (VAT 1555 o. 1'–8' = CBS 10885 o. 1, 6–12) see Black 1985: 73–74. The lines in this passage correspond to l.344–355 in Black’s edition of a-še-er ĝi6-ta. For a transliteration and translation of these lines see Black 1985: 29 and 39, and Cohen 1988: 717 and 724), which contains a slightly later edition of the same lament, where the corresponding passage is numbered b+251-b+262, and CBS 10885 is transliterated as “Parallel Source T”. Some of the lines in this passage can be reconstructed and restored on the basis of the Seleucid era source, VAT 227+ (SBH 54) = Black Source K, which contains a bilingual version of the fourth section of the lament.

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VAT 1555 (VS 10: 176) – HPSC Group: 1': dmu-ul-lil2-le gaba e2 ma-an-du3 / gab-gaz kur-kur-ra men3 (= Black l.344 = Cohen b+251) VAT 1555 o. 1': [. . .] ?-? [. . .] ? ? [. . .] CBS 10885 o. 1: dmu-ul-lil2-le gaba e ma-an-du3!17 / gab-gaz kur-kur-ra 2': sig-ta di sig-ta mu-gi4-gi4 gab-gaz kur-kur-ra men3 (l.349 = b+256)18 VAT 1555 o. 2': [. . .] sig-ta -gi4-gi4 gab- [. . .] CBS 10885 o. 6: sig-ta di sig-ta mu-gi-gi gab-gaz kur-kur-ra men3 3': nim-ta di nim-ta mu-gi4-gi4 gab-gaz kur-kur-ra men3 (l.350 = b+257) VAT 1555 o. 3': [. . .] di nim-ta mu-gi4-gi4 gab-gaz kur!(U)-ra men3 [. . .] CBS 10885 o. 7: nim-ta di nim-ta mu-gi-gi har-ra-an kur-kur-ra men3 4': i-bi2 ma-al-la ab-bi ba-gul-gul tumušen-bi ba-dal-dal (l.351 = b+258) VAT 1555 o. 4': [. . .] ? ? ?-?-e ab-bi ba-gul-gul tu-bi ba-dal-dal CBS 10885 o. 8: i-bi2 ma-al-la ab-bi ba--gul tumušen-bi ba-dal-dal Phonetic Writings (PW): tu (for tumušen) 5': tumušen ab-ba-ke4 ab-lal3 in-šub ma-a-a ba-ir-ra-bi (l.352 = b+259) VAT 1555 o. 5': [. . .] ab-la-al in-šu ma-ya ba-ra-bi- CBS 10885 o. 9: tumušen ab-ba- ab-lal3 ?-? ma-a-a ba-ir-ra-bi PW: ab-la-al (for ab-lal3), šu (for šub), ma-ya (for ma-a-a), -ra-bi (for ir-ra-bi) 6': mušen-bi gud3 us2-sa in-šub ma-a-a ba-dal-la-bi (l.353 = b+260) VAT 1555 o. 6': [. . .] in-šu ma-ya ba-da--bi CBS 10885 o. 10: mušen-bi gud3(U2.KI.SI3.GA) us2-sa ?-? ma-a-a ba-dal-la-bi PW: šu, ma-ya, and da-la (for dal-la) 1': Enlil built a house for me at the edge (of the water?) – I (am) the crusher of lands. 2': The one traveling in the south is killed in the south19 – I (am) the crusher of lands.

17 The sign read as du3 was written incorrectly by the scribe with a sign that preserved the same outer frame as “NI”, but which has a small horizontal wedge in the middle of the sign, which makes the sign resemble “LU2” or even “KIN”. 18 CBS 10885 o. 2–5, which duplicated a-še-er ĝi6-ta l.345–348 (= b+252-b+255), are omitted in VAT 1555. 19 The translation of mu-gi4-gi4 in the first half of this line and the following line is based on the Akkadian translation in VAT 227+ (see Black 1985: 29) where the Sumerian version of the line

5.1 The Corpus of Phonetically Written Sources 

 239

3': The one traveling in the north is killed in the north – I (am) the crusher of lands. 4': The window where I gaze has been destroyed, its birds have fled. 5': The window pigeons have abandoned their ledge – where have they fled? 6': Its birds have abandoned their nests – where have they flown? Another group of at least seven, but as many as 16 sources,20 thought to come from Abu Habbah (one of the two main mounds of ancient Sippar), can be identified as belonging to the same group because they have a distinct ductus and contain a large number of characteristic writings that occur in these, but not in other sources. An example of a source from the Abu Habbah group is BM 78193, a phonetically written source containing a lament to Dumuzi and Inana with two lines that are duplicated in MAH 16014, a text with a lament about Dumuzi and the “lamenting reed”,21 and another passage with lines that are duplicated in HS 1494 (TUM 3: 26), BM 61892 (CT 58: 2), and PRAK C 118, all of which also contain a lament to Dumuzi, identified as an Ershemma of Dumuzi in HS 1494.22 The two passages from BM 78193, which are duplicated in sources written in standard Emesal orthography, read as follows:23 BM 78193 (CT 44: 13) – Abu Habbah Group: 14': ir2 nu-zu-a ir2 i3-še8-še8 BM 78193 o. 14': ir nu-zu-a ir i-ši-ši-e MAH 16014 r. 3: ir2 nu-zu-a ir2 i3-še8-še8 Phonetic Writings (PW): ir, ir, ši, ši-e (for še8) and w.u. i (for i3) is rendered sig-ta ĝin sig-ta mu-gi4-gi4 and translated in Akkadian as ša2 šap-liš il-la-ku šap-liš i-duk-ka-an [. . .] ‘the one who travels below is killed below’. 20 For a complete list of the sources in this group, see Appendix 3. There are also nine additional sources that share features with sources from the Abu-Habbah, but since many of these sources also possess features that are uncharacteristic of the other sources in this group, including atypical phonetic writings, or a different format or ductus, it is uncertain, but possible that they belong to this group. These sources are: BM 16901 (CT 42: 38), BM 78175 (CT 44: 12), AO 3925 (TCL 15: 4), AO 7697 (TCL 16: 78), VAT 1356 (VS 2: 15), VAT 1384 (VS 2: 77), VAT 3416 (VS 10: 117), VAT 3529 (VS 10: 170), and CBS 35 (PBS 10/2: 13). 21 For an edition of MAH 16014 see Bruschweiler 1990. The lament in this source is also summarized and discussed by Fritz 2003: 119–220. 22 For a summary and discussion of the lament in these three sources, with previous bibliography, see Fritz 2003: 125–26. 23 BM 78193 is summarized with commentary to individual lines and references to previous literature in Fritz 2003: 129. For BM 78193 r. 3–10 see also Krecher 1965: 18–19.

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15': a-še-er nu-zu-a a-še-er i3-ĝa2-ĝa2-an BM 78193 o. 15': a-ši-ir nu-zu-a a-ši-ir i-ma-ma MAH 16014 r. 4: a-še-er nu-zu-a a-še-er i3-ĝa2-ĝa2-an PW: a-ši-ir, a-ši-ir, and w.u. i... 24': a lu-lim lu-lim ama-a-ni ama-ni BM 78193 r. 6: a lu-li-im lu-li-im ama-ni5 ama-ni5 HS 1494 (TUM 3, 26) o. 13': a lu-lim lu-lim ama-a-ni ama-ni BM 61892 o. 6': [. . .] ni ama-ni PW: lu-li-im, lu-li-im and w.u. -ni5 and -ni5 25': ama-a-ni ama ir2 mu-un-kuš2-u3-a-ni BM 78193 r. 7: ama-ni5 ama i-re al-ku-šu-a-ri HS 1494 o. 14': ama-a-ni ama(-)ar mu-un-kuš2-u3-a-ni PRAK C 118 r. v 18': ama-a-ni ama ir2 šu/še3? mu-un-kuš2-u3-ni BM 61892 o. 7': [. . .] kuš2-u3-a-ni PW: i-re (for ir2-re), ku-šu (for kuš2-u3) and w.u. -ni5 26': ir2 a-še-er-re mu-un-kuš2-u3-a-ni BM 78193 r. 8: i-re a-ši-re al-ku-šu-a-ri HS 1494 o. 15': a-ar a-še-er-re mu-un-kuš2-u3-a-ni PRAK C 118 r. v 19': ir2-e a-še-er mu-un-kuš2-u3-ni BM 61892 o. 8': [. . .] kuš2-u3-a-ĝu10 PW: i-re (for ir2-re), ku-šu, and a-ši-re (for a-še-er-re) 14': He who doesn’t know lamenting, laments bitterly. 15': He who doesn’t know wailing, wails bitterly. ... 24': Woe, oh, ah, his mother! his mother! 25': His mother, his mother who is overcome with mourning. 26': When she mourns and laments unceasingly. Lastly, there is another group of seven sources, which have a distinct ductus and that all contain the writing “ka-ša-an” instead of “ga-ša-an”, the Emesal word for nin ‘lady’, a writing which also occurs in sources outside this group, but not with the same consistency, and never in combination with the same characteristic ductus. Furthermore, with only one exception (AO 7685), all of the sources in the ka-ša-an-Group are multi-column tablets, containing either a lament with multiple sections, or, in the case of VAT 608 + and VAT 613 +, collective tablets, with laments of different types, and a hymn to Nanna. By contrast, all of the sources in the HPSC group are single column tablets, and the four sources in the

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 241

Abu Habbah Group which are multi-column tablets (BM 113236, VAT 3417, VAT 3422, and VAT 3426), contain no occurrences of ka-ša-an for ga-ša-an.24 One example of a source from this group is VAT 604 + VAT 614 (+) VAT 1370 (VS 2: 3), a multi-column tablet containing a lament to Inana with multiple sections. As in all of the sources in this group, the writing ka-ša-an is written in place of ga-ša-an consistently throughout the source (including in o. ii 15'–18' and o. ii 21'–23'). Three sections of the lament in this source (o. i 3'–8', o. ii 7'–10', and r. iii 18'–23') duplicate sections of the Inana lament in BM 78983 (o. i 6–11, o. ii 8–11, and r. iii 3'–8'), another ka-ša-an-Group source. These sections, and some of the other sections of the lament also contain lines that occur in other sources containing Inana laments, including the following passage, which is duplicated in BM 54323 + BM 59692 (CT 58: 36), BM 54315 + BM 54698 + BM 72969 (unpublished), N 3392 + N 3361 (+) CBS 11371 (Alster 1992: 45–46),25 PRAK C 124 (Cavigneaux 1987: 58), and VAT 3416, another phonetically written source, which, as noted above, possibly belongs to the Abu Habbah group. This passage reads as follows: VAT 604+ (VS 2: 3) – ka-ša-an Group: 19': ki-sikil dinana e2-na mu-un-ri VAT 604+ o. i 19': [. . .] ki-sikil dinana egi2-ri-a VAT 3416 o. 3: ki-sikil dinana di-li [. . .] BM 54323+ o. 3: ki-sikil dinana [. . .] BM 54315+ o. i 20: ki-sikil dinana e2-na mu-un-ri N 3392+ r. iii 8': ki-sikil dinana [. . .] PRAK C 124 o. 2: ki-sikil [. . .] ?-? Phonetic Writings (PW): egi2-ri-a (for e2-na mu-un-ri?) 20': unu2-la2 suba la2 e2-na mu-un-ri VAT 604+ o. i 20': [d]? u3-nu la zu-bi2 la egi2-ri-a VAT 3416 o. 4: dinana u3-nu la zu- [. . .] BM 54323+ o. 4: unu2-la2 suba(ZA.MUŠ3) [. . .] BM 54315+ o. i 21: unu2 la2 suba(ZA.MUŠ3) la2 e2-na mu-un-ri

24 For a complete list of the sources in this group, see Appendix 3. 25 This source was published in copy and transliteration by Alster 1992 as source C1 for the Inana lament, the “Manchester Tammuz”. Since Alster’s publication, it has been confirmed that N 3392 + N 3361 belongs to the same tablet as CBS 11374 + CBS 11419 (Alster, Source C2), and three new pieces (N 6471a, N 7668, and N 7716) have been joined to the tablet by Jeremiah Peterson. For another summary and description of the “Manchester Tammuz”, with references to previous literature, see Fritz 2003: 71–72.

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N 3392+ r. iii 9': unu2(TE.UNUG)-la2 suba(ZA.MUŠ3)-la2 [. . .] PRAK C 124 o. 3: unu2 [. . .] [. . .] ? PW: u3-nu for unu2, la for la2, zu-bi2 for suba(ZA.MUŠ3), and egi2-ri-a 21': nin9 AŠ dutu-am3 e2-na mu-un-ri VAT 604+ o. i 21': NE AŠ dutu egi2-ri-a VAT 3416: omits BM 54323+ o. 5: nin9 AŠ dutu-am3 [. . .] BM 54315+ o. i 22: nin9 AŠ dutu-am3 e2-na mu-un-ri N 3392+ r. iii 10': ? utu-am3 niĝ2 [. . .] PRAK C 124 o. 4: nin9 AŠ dutu ? ? PW: egi2-ri-a 22': dingir saĝ-e lugal-la e2-na mu-un-ri VAT 604+ i 22': dingir sa2 lu2-ga-la egi2-ri-a VAT 3416 o. 5: dingir sa2-el-lu2-ga [. . .] BM 54323+ o. 6: dingir saĝ-e lugal-la [. . .] PW: sa2 (for saĝ), lu2-ga-la (for lugal-la), and egi2-ri-a 19': Maiden, Inana ... in her house. 20': One who is adorned with jewelry of suba-stones ... in her house. 21': Being the sole sister of Utu ... in her house. 22': Head god of the king ... in her house. 5.1.1.5 Phonetic Sources from Unknown Proveniences The provenience of the remaining 58 phonetic sources, which do not seem to belong to distinct subgroups, is unknown.26

5.1.2 Phonetic Sources for the Laments and Compositions of Other Types Although phonetically written sources are also attested for other Sumerian literary compositions, including the numerous hymns, mythological narratives, and the many other types of texts that were copied as scribal exercises throughout Mesopotamia during the Old Babylonian Period, they are much fewer in number and are almost always confined to specific sites in the Mesopotamian periphery, suggesting that the phonetic writings in these sources are not associated with performance, but instead reflect local orthographies, or in many instances, probably

26 For a complete list of these sources, see Appendix 3.

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scribal errors. By contrast, the number of phonetically written sources for laments is substantially larger and the geographic distribution of these sources is broader. There are probably less than 100 phonetic sources among the 3400 curricular literary sources that are currently known, and these, with only a few exceptions are from Susa, Meturan, and Shaduppum. However, in addition to the numerous sources with isolated phonetic writings, nearly half of the currently known sources containing laments are written in a highly phonetic orthography. Moreover, the phonetic sources for laments are from a wider range of sites, including Nippur, Kish, Sippar, Girsu, Uruk, and probably also Larsa, which are much closer to the southern Mesopotamian heartland than the few phonetic sources for other types of Sumerian literary compositions. Another substantial difference between the phonetic sources for the laments and the sources for the other types of Sumerian literary compositions with phonetic writings is the large number of phonetic writings and the high percentage of phonetic to non-phonetic writings that occur in these sources. The phonetically written sources for the laments are characterized by a much higher percentage of phonetic writings than the sources for other types of Sumerian literary compositions that contain phonetic writings. As shown in the following tables, when words are counted separately from single-sign grammatical elements, or “word units” (henceforth w.u.), and all of the phonetically written words and word-units in the sources in the three main sub-groups of phonetic sources for the laments (the HPSC-group, the AH-group, and the ka-ša-an-Group) are counted, 52 percent of the combined total of all the words in the HPSC group are written phonetically, whereas in both the Abu Habbah and the “ka-ša-an”-group sources, over 63 percent of the words are phonetic: Table 1: Phonetic Writings in HPSC Sources. Phonetic Words/Word Units (w.u.)

NonPhonetic Words/w.u.

Total Words/w.u.

Percentage of Phonetic Word/w.u.

VAT 1414+

57/7

41/71

98/78

58%/9%

VAT 1416

19/1

41/34

60/35

32%/3% 13%/33%

VAT 1417

5/3

11/6

16/9

VAT 1420

32/1

37/38

69/39

46%/3%

VAT 1472

35/7

18/16

53/23

66%/30%

VAT 1509+

41/1

52/26

93/27

44%/4%

VAT 1533

12/0

5/18

17/18

71%/0%

VAT 1541

3/0

21/13

24/13

13%/0%

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Table 1 (continued)

VAT 1542

Phonetic Words/Word Units (w.u.)

NonPhonetic Words/w.u.

Total Words/w.u.

Percentage of Phonetic Word/w.u.

19/4

13/14

32/18

59%/22%

VAT 1543

20/0

0/0

20/0

100%/0%

VAT 1546

22/14

8/8

30/22

73%/64%

VAT 1548

4/0

15/11

19/11

21%/0%

VAT 1555

13/0

21/19

34/19

38%/0%

VAT 1556

8/1

6/7

14/8

57%/13%

VAT 1558

6/1

14/2

20/3

30%/33%

VAT 1576

3/0

6/2

9/2

33%/0%

VAT 3526+

12/1

7/5

19/6

63%/17%

VAT 3530

8/0

5/0

13/0

62%/0%

VAT 3531

18/0

8/21

26/21

69%/0%

VAT 3544

10/1

7/6

17/7

59%/14%

VAT 3547

20/2

5/1

25/3

80%/67%

VAT 3548

6/0

0/4

6/4

100%/0%

VAT 3552+

12/3

15/9

27/12

44%/25%

VAT 3558

11/5

10/9

21/14

52%/36%

VAT 3576

4/0

6/0

10/0

40%/0%

VAT 3580

12/0

6/11

18/11

67%/0%

412/52

378/351

790/403

52%/13%

TOTALS

Table 2: Phonetic Writings in AH Group Sources. Phonetic Words/w.u.

Non-Phonetic Words/w.u.

Total Words/w.u.

Percentage of Phonetic Word/w.u.

BM 78193

78/16

42/62

120/78

65%/21%

BM 78198

69/15

34/78

103/93

67%/16%

BM 113236

61/14

45/63

106/77

58%/18%

VAT 1344

37/12

36/55

73/67

51%/18%

VAT 3417

12/0

1/3

13/3

92%/0%

VAT 3422

7/0

1/2

8/2

88%/0%

VAT 3426 TOTALS

11/0

0/10

11/10

100%/0%

275/57

159/273

434/330

63%/17%

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Table 3: Phonetic Writings in “ka-ša-an”-Group Sources. Phonetic Words/w.u. BM 78983

Non-Phonetic Words/w.u.

Total Words/w.u.

Percentage of Phonetic Word/w.u.

84/2

47/42

131/44

64%/5%

VAT 604+

182/38

117/88

299/126

61%/30%

VAT 608+

215/67

109/151

324/218

66%/31%

VAT 613+

207/39

116/117

323/156

64%/25%

VAT 615+

152/43

91/89

243/132

63%/33%

37/5

13/40

50/45

74%/11%

VAT 1365+ AO 7685 TOTALS

40/6

18/6

58/12

69%/50%

917/200

511/533

1428/733

64%/27%

A similarly high percentage of phonetic to non-phonetic writings of words and word-units can also be observed in K1, one of the best preserved phonetic sources from Kish, and a main source for the Old Babylonian version of Uruamairabi: Table 4: Phonetic Writings in K1 (from Kish).

K1

Phonetic Words/w.u.

Non-Phonetic Words/w.u.

Total Words/w.u.

Percentage of Phonetic Word/w.u.

136/40

77/103

213/143

64%/28%

The high percentage of phonetic to non-phonetic writings that occur in this source, and in the HPSC, Abu-Habbah, and ka-ša-an- Groups, can also be observed throughout the entire corpus of phonetically written sources for the laments, which contain an equally high percentage of phonetic to non-phonetic writings. By contrast, the occurrence of phonetic writings is significantly less frequent and consistent in the sources for other types of Sumerian literary compositions, suggesting that the phonetic writings in these sources are more likely to have resulted from errors, or to reflect regional orthographies, or specific scribal idiosyncrasies than the writings in the phonetically written sources for laments.

5.2 Phonetic Writings and the Performance of Sumerian Laments What do the phonetic writings in the phonetically written sources indicate about the relationship between sound and meaning in the performance of Sumerian

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laments? The answer depends to a large extent on what the intended function of the phonetically written sources was, and what role, if any, these sources might have played in the performance of the laments. There are at least three possible explanations that could account for why the phonetic sources were compiled: 1) The phonetically written sources for the laments were compiled by scribes who were either unskilled and did not know how to write Sumerian properly, or had not been trained to write Sumerian using the conventional orthography. 2) The phonetic writings in the phonetically written sources for the laments reflect an alternate orthography of Sumerian that was developed at a particular place and time (for example, northern Mesopotamia during the late Old Babylonian Period), possibly to preserve how Sumerian laments were to be pronounced, knowledge that was possibly in danger of being lost. 3) The phonetic writings in the phonetically written sources were intended to aid in the pronunciation of Sumerian laments when these compositions were sung or recited in performance.

5.2.1 Phonetic Writings and Unskilled Scribes It has been argued by Civil and others that the existence of literary sources written in a highly phonetic orthography reflects a general decline in the understanding of Sumerian as it was replaced by Akkadian as the main spoken language of the period. Commenting specifically on the writings in CNMA 10051, an Old Babylonian phonetic source for the Balag am-e bara2-na-ra, Civil writes:27 Comparison of the rest of the tablet with the standard version of the series makes inescapable the conclusion that the Copenhagen tablet (CNMA 10051) represents the work of some scribe unfamiliar with the rules of Sumerian orthography, who knew by heart, and not very well at that, the series am-e bara2-na-ra.

A similar assessment of the phonetically written sources has also been proposed more recently by Mark Cohen. In his introduction to a short volume of previously unpublished “treasures of Sumerian literature”, which includes two sources written in a phonetic, or partially phonetic orthography, Cohen concluded: Based on internal evidence, I suggest that these two texts were written by novice scribes who, up to this point, had learned the basic signs – mainly, the most common signs of the forms vC- or Cv- – but only a handful of the more advanced signs. I believe these two texts

27 Reiner and Civil 1967: 209.

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to be the result of an exercise to test the novice scribe’s mastery of those basic signs, as well as to train him to write from dictation and to hone his ‘penmanship’. In this early stage of his scribal education, the young student was expected to use the basic signs he had just learned to phonetically represent as-yet unlearned, less common signs when writing down a dictated Sumerian composition.28

It is certainly possible, if not likely, that a few of the phonetic sources for the Sumerian literary compositions that were copied by apprentice scribes as part of their training were compiled by less advanced scribes who had either not yet learned or mastered the more advanced signs in the cuneiform sign inventory, particularly since many of the phonetic sources for these types of texts come from places, where, unlike scribal centers such as Nippur and Ur, training in Sumerian was less extensive. However, this is less likely to be the case for the phonetically written sources for laments. For many reasons, including the proportionally large number of phonetically written sources, their broad geographic distribution, and the absence of any other indications in these sources of an inability to write Sumerian correctly, such as poorly written signs, the careless alignment of signs, semantic or grammatical errors, or numerous erasures, it is improbable that the phonetically written sources for the laments were compiled by scribes who did not know how to write Sumerian correctly. In the two phonetic sources discussed by Cohen, the signs on the tablets are without exception clearly and correctly written, and there are not any indications that the scribe who produced them was unskilled in copying Sumerian texts. Furthermore, Cohen’s assessment of the three forms he cites as writings that “only a novice scribe” would have written – the use of the sign “YA” in the form lugalan-ki-ya-ka, the phonetic rendering of nun3 ‘battle’ as nu-un after writing nun the word for ‘prince’ correctly with the “NUN” sign earlier in the same line, and the rendering of ki-ur3 as “ki-ur2” –29 is not supported by the occurrences of similar writings throughout the entire corpus of phonetically written sources for Sumerian laments. As shown below, the sign “YA”, for instance, is used very frequently in phonetically written sources to render the phoneme /y/, which cannot otherwise be expressed using the conventional Sumerian syllabary, and far from being a sign that “only a novice scribe” would write, its usage is more likely to reflect an advanced knowledge of the Sumerian writing system, as evidenced by the creative use of the writing system to express sounds the conventional use of the writing system is otherwise unable to express. Furthermore, the use of a homophonous sign, like the use of the sign “UR2” to write “ur3” in the word

28 Cohen 2017: viii. 29 Cohen 2017: ix.

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ki-ur3, is another very common type of phonetic writing, and is by no means “hardly a mistake expected of an accomplished scribe”.30 In light of the very frequent occurrence of similar writings in phonetic sources that otherwise contain few or no clear examples of scribal errors, it is unlikely to be a mistake at all, if not for any other reason than that if the scribe did not know the sign “UR3”, the sign “UR2” is no more common or less advanced than the sign “UR3”, and “UR”, which is a basic (and less complex) cuneiform sign learned early in scribal training, would have been a much more likely choice to replace “ur3” for a scribe with a limited sign repertoire. Moreover, since the rendering of bi- or poly-syllabic words with multiple signs representing each syllable is another common type of phonetic writing, and nearly all of the multi-syllabic words in the source discussed by Cohen are written this way, the rendering of the more advanced signs piriĝ ‘lion’ and umbin ‘toe’ with the signs used to write these words (instead of with multiple signs representing each syllable) is only a further indication that the scribe was not an inexperienced novice who was unskilled in writing cuneiform. Even if the scribe had learned these signs because they were “part of a commonly occurring phrase” that “perhaps our novice scribe had come across before”,31 since the types of compositions in which phrases in which these words would occur would not have been learned until later in scribal training, the scribe would no longer have been a novice at the time he or she had encountered them, rendering the entire assumption on which Cohen’s observation is based improbable. The strongest indication that the phonetic writings in laments served a practical purpose, and are not the result of a deficient understanding of Sumerian orthography, however, is the manner in which these writings are rendered in the duplicates containing them. There are five main types of phonetic writings that occur in the phonetically written sources, and these are attested with equal frequency in all of the groups of sources for laments with phonetic writings: 1) Phonetic writings in which the standard writing of a word is substituted with a homophonous (phonetically identical) sign. 2) Phonetic writings in which polysyllabic words normally written with a single sign are written with two or more signs to render individual syllables. 3) Phonetic writings in which consonant reduplication is avoided. 4) Sandhi writings. 5) Writings in which determinatives are omitted. 30 Cohen 2017: ix. 31 See Cohen 2017: ix: “Interestingly two more advanced signs he [the scribe who copied one of the two phonetically written sources discussed in this section] uses, piriĝ and umbin, occur in the same verse. This is part of a commonly occurring phrase and perhaps our novice scribe had come across it before, which might explain his writing these non-syllabic signs”.

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Examples of writings of each of these types include the following:32 * = HPSC group ++ = A.H. group; ++possibly A.H. group ^ = “ka-ša-an”-group 1) Homophonous Signs: – a-ša3: a-ša (*VAT 1420 o. 5' – note, this form is written correctly as a-ša3 in o. 7' of the same source; ^VAT 613+ o. i 29') – am3-: am- (*VAT 1417 o. 3'; *VAT 1558 o. 6'; ++BM 78175 o. 21; ^VAT 608+ r. iii 24'–27'; ^VAT 613+ r. v' 17, 21; G1 o. iv' 6'–7'; G4 r. vii’ 3'; N1 o. ii 7'–9') – bi2-: bi- (*VAT 1414 (+) 1442 r. 1–3; VAT 1417 r. 5'–6'; *VAT 1472 o. 10'–12'; *VAT 1546 o. 2'–5'; ++BM 78193 r. 10; ++BM 78175 o. 22–23; ++AO 3925 o. 11', r. 8; ++VAT 1356 o.? 8'; ^VAT 613+ o. i 25'); mi- (VAT 604+ r. iii 35'–40'; K1 o. i 11–12; K27B o. ii 5'–6', and 11'; K40 o. 8'–9'; G1 r. vi' 1'–2'; G5 o. i 5'; G8 r. iii 8; X2 o. 18–19, r. 13'–14'; X3 o. 14; X7 o. ii 7'–10'; X38 r. 2'; X50 o. i 4–5; X51 r. iii 4–7) – du7: du (*VAT 1417 o. 3'; BM 113236 r. 1; ^VAT 604+ r. iii 32'–34'; ^VAT 613+ r. v' 26; ^VAT 615+ r. iii 6, 10; K1 o. i 31'; K43 r. 11; X46 o. 11'); du3 (K1 o. i 30') – e2: e (*VAT 1420 o. 4', 6'; *VAT 1414 (+) 1442 r. 24'; *VAT 1548 o. 1–2 – note the use of e2 later in the same line and throughout the rest of the source; *VAT 3552+ r. 6'; ++BM 78193 r. 5; ++BM 78198 o. 12', 14', 18'–19'; ^BM 78983 r. iv 6'–7', 9'; ^VAT 604+ o. ii 23'–24' r. iii 24'; ^VAT 608+ o. i 4 iii 4'–5', 12'–13'; ^VAT 613+ r. v' 4; K1 o. i 30' – note the writing e2 in the same line; K1 o. ii 9', r. iv 5; K13 r. 4'; K43 r. 4, 12; G1 o. iv' 5'–6', r. vi' 1, 3–4, 10; G2 r. 12'; G8 o. i 1'–2', r. iv 5; N1 o. ii 4'; X1 side ii 8; X2 o. 11–16; X9 o. ii' 4'–6'; X17 o. 18, 20, 31; X20 o. 5', 8', 19'; X37 o. 1–2; X41 o. ii 9'; X43 r. 8; X46 o. 12'; X47 r. 5', 9'; X52 o. i 11, 15, r. iii 9', r. iv 6'); e5(A) (X53 o. 17–18) – gu2: gu (++VAT 3417 r. iii' 3; ++BM 78175 r. 8', 17'–19'; ++AO 3925 r. 14; ^VAT 608+ r. iv 11'; ^VAT 613+ r. v' 31, 34; ^VAT 1365 + o. ii 18'; X15 o. i 5; X16 o. 4'; X17 r. 7; X50 32 All of the identifiable phonetic writings in the phonetically written sources for the laments are listed in Appendix 3, which also contains a catalogue and list of all of the known phonetically written sources. Throughout this chapter, and in the list of phonetic writings in Appendix 3, sources from the HPSC, A.H. and ka-ša-an subgroups are cited with the notation listed here (* for HPSC group sources, ++ for A.H. group sources, etc.), while sources belonging to all of the other groups (Kish, Girsu, Nippur, Tell Harmal, and sources from unknown proveniences) are cited with the sigla K, G, N, Ha, and X, respectively. For a list of all of the sources with phonetic writings and their corresponding sigla, see the lists of the sources from each of these groups in Appendix 3.

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o. ii 5–6); gu4 (++BM 78175 o. 12 – but note later in the same line the same form is written gu2; K27B o. i 26') – la2: la (++BM 78175 o. 11; ++AO 3925 r. 5; ^VAT 604+ o. i 20', ii 9', 11'; ^VAT 608+ r. iv 10'–11'; ^VAT 615+ o. i 14'; ++VAT 3416 o. 4; K40 r. 5'–8'; K41 r. 3', 5'; Ha2 o. 3; X52 o. i 31) – ni2: ni (*VAT 1472 o. 10'–12'; *VAT 3547 o. 4'; ^VAT 608+ o. i 2, 5, iii 5'; K22 o.? ii'? 2' and 4'; X44 r. 10–11) – su8-ba: su-ba (^VAT 615+ r. iv 6; K25 o.? 5'; N1 r. v 8; X27 o. 1, 4, r. 3') – u2: u3 (*VAT 1417 o. 5'; ++BM 78175 o. 26; ++AO 3925 o. 8'; ++AO 7679 o. i 4–5; ^VAT 604+ o. ii 12'; ^VAT 613+ o. i 29'; ^VAT 615+ o. ii 24', 27', 29', 31'–32', 34'; X40 o. 2; X48 r. 4'); u4 (K1 r. iv 2) 2) Polysyllabic Word Written with Multiple Signs: – ama: a-ma (^VAT 608+ o. iii 20'; ^VAT 615+ r. iii 4; ++VAT 1384 r. 6'; ++CBS 35 r. 10' – but note the writing ama in the same source in the next line; K21 o. ii' 5'; N1 r. v 12; X20 r. 25; X46 o. 2'; X51 r. iii 13; r. iv 1–2, 13) – balaĝ: ba-la-aĝ2 (++VAT 1356 o.? 7'; K4 l.e. i 1; X16 o. 9'); ba-la-ĝa2 (X43 r. 10; X45 r. 7') – dam: da-am (K25 o.? 3'; Ha1 o. 9; X17 o. 28); da-ma (K25 o.? 4'; X17 r. 9; X52 r. vi 29) – diri: di-ri (*VAT 1420 r. 11; ^VAT 608+ o. ii 3; ^AO 7685 o. 2'; K49 b.e. 1–2; X4 o. i 10'; X51 r. iii 8–11, iv 3; X52 o. i 25–26, 28 r. v 26', 28', vi 29) – egi2: e-gi (^VAT 613+ o. i 32'–33', ii 21'; ++CBS 35 o. 3; K38 o. ii' 17'; K50 o. 2, r. 3; N1 r. v 5; Ha1 o. 1; X52 o. iii 28'); e2-gi (N1 r. v 2) – kisal: ki-sa-la (^BM 78983 r. iv 6', 9', 14'; ^VAT 604+ r. iii 1–2); ki-sa2-al (^VAT 613+ r. v' 27, 29a) – lugal: lu2-gal (*VAT 1414 (+) 1442 o. 14'; ++BM 113236 o. 5'–6', 8', r. 1, 5; ++BM 16901 o. 13; ++AO 3925 o. 5'–7'; ^VAT 608+ o. i 16, 19; ^VAT 613+ r. v' 22, vi' 6; ^VAT 615+ r. iv 1; ++VAT 3416 o. 5; X11 o. 5'; X52 o. i 11, 15, iii 9'–10'); lu2-ga-la (^VAT 604+ o. i 22'; ^VAT 615+ o. i 16') – nibruki: ni-ib-ru (K50 r. 5; X50 r. iii 2'; X51 o. ii 15', r. iii 5, 9) – silim: si-li-im (++BM 78198 r. 12); si-li-ma (^VAT 613+ o. ii 18') – til3: ti-il (*VAT 1546 o. 2'; K9 o. 3'–5'; G8 r. iv 4–7; N1 r. v 3, 6–9; X23 r. 3'–4'; X31 r. 3')

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3) Consonant Reduplication Avoided: – an: a-ne (++BM 113236 o. 8'–9'); a-na (^VAT 608+ o. i 1, 4, 17, 20; ^VAT 613+ r. v' 26, vi' 9; ^VAT 615+ o. i 11') – dim3-me-er: di-me-er (X13 r. iii 3) – gi-gun4-na: gi-gu-na (K15 o.? 4'); gi4-ku-na (G8 r. iii 7); gi-gu2-na (X21 o. 7') – gul: gu-la (^VAT 1365+ o. ii' 10'); gu-lu (^VAT 613+ o. i 4',6'; X4 o. i 11'; X51 r. iii 4, iv 7); ku-la (*VAT 1414 (+) 1442 o. 16'; ^VAT 604+ o. ii 21'–22') – har-ra-an-na: ha-ra-na (*VAT 1472 o. 6'; ^VAT 608+ o. ii 9–11; K1 o. i 37') – il2: i-la (++BM 16901 r. 4'; ^VAT 604+ r. iii 4, 7 – note that the same word is written il2-la- at the beginning of l.4; K32 b.e. 1, 3; K49 b.e. 3; G9 r. iv' 2'; X52 r. iv 17'–19') – im-ma-al: i-ma-al (X51 r. iii 12) – ir2: i-ra (++BM 78193 o. 12'; K33 r. 2'–4', 6’; K34 r. 1–5; K43 r. 7–13; G5 o. i 5'–6'; G9 r. v' 1'–2'; X43 r. 6; X50 o. i 9–10); i3-ra (G1 r. v' 2) – dmu-ul-lil2: dmu-lil2 (K1 o. i 18–19; K18 o. 11'; K43 r. 15); mu-lil2-la (K38 o. ii' 15'); mu-li-la (X1 side i 2, 5, 10; X50 o. ii 8); mu-le-el (X1 side i 15; X50 o. i 1, ii 2, 10, 12); mu-li-le (X50 r. iii 6', 10'); mu-li-lu (X16 r. 11'); mu-lu-lu (X51 r. iv 3) – saĝ: sa-ĝa2 (K1 o. i 28', 34', r. iii 11; X34 o. 1–2'; X45 o. 11') 4) Sandhi Writings: – a-a-bi-igi-na-ma-še for a-ab-ba igi-nim-ma-še3 (G6 o. iii 7) – al-lu2-gal for an lugal (++AO 3925 o. 6') – dam-mu-ga-na for dam ug5-ga-na (++AO 7697 o. i 7) – du-bu-ra-na for dubur an-na (*VAT 1509 (+) 1557 o. 12'; K17 o. 10') – e-ya-nu-du3 for e2-a-na nu-du7 (K1 o. i 30') – ga-ša-nu-me-a for ga-ša-an nu-me-a (*VAT 1509 (+) 1557 o. 20') – ki-in-da-gu-e-ni-ši for ki ninda ku2-a e3-a-ni-še3 (X52 r. iv 8') – mi-li-gur-u3 for me-lam2 gur3-ru (^VAT 613+ r. v' 7) – mu-lu-ru-ba-ra for mu-lu uru2 bar-ra (K32 r. 1) – sipa-ma-sa-ne for sipa amaš-a-na (G6 r. v' 3'–4')

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5) Determinative Omitted: – a-ra-ta for arattaki (K1 r. iii 12) – bu-ru for buru5mušen (K1 o. ii, 8"; X17 r. 25') – en-ki for den-ki (++BM 113236 r. 12) – gu-za for ĝišgu-za (++BM 113236 o. 12'; ++AO 3925 r. 5; ^BM 78983 o. ii 7) – ma-gu-ur5 for ĝišma2-gur8 (K45 r. 7') – nu-dim2-mud/mu-da for dnu-dim2-mud(-da) (*VAT 1541 o. 4; K36 o. 4') – nu-mu2-un for u2numun2 (G9 r. iv' 2'–3') – tu for tumušen (*VAT 1555 o. 4') – uru2-ze2-eb-ba for uru2-ze2-ebki-ba (*VAT 1416 o. 5') – za-ba-la for zabalamki (^VAT 604+ o. ii 22'–23'; K26 r. 1'; Ha1 o. 5; X21 o. 7') These five types of phonetic writings reveal a consistent tendency to make clearer the pronunciation of the words in the lament, by using signs to write each syllable in a polysyllabic word or sandhi writings to indicate the pronunciation of a sequence of forms, and by using homophonous signs or omitting determinatives and reduplicated consonants to eliminate any ambiguities in pronunciation introduced by the orthographic complexity of the script. Moreover, as is clear from the types of writings and the consistency with which they occur across each group of sources, the scribe(s) who compiled the sources knew the content of the compositions well and did not write the forms in the text phonetically because they were incompetent, but instead did so intentionally to indicate how the forms were supposed to be pronounced. In the case of many of the words that are written with homophonous signs, the words are common and would not have been difficult to write in standard Sumerian orthography by scribes with even rudimentary knowledge of the language and the writing system. Additionally, breaking down polysyllabic words like sukud, daĝal, and lugal into their constituent syllables and then writing each of these syllables with different signs would have required more knowledge of the language and the writing system, in most instances, than would have been required to write the words correctly with the conventional signs. With words like sukud and daĝal (which is written syllabically as da-ĝa2-lu for daĝal-e in VAT 1420 r. 6), for example, the scribe would not only have had to know how the word was pronounced, but would have also had to been able to write three equally complex signs correctly, instead of just one, to render the word phonetically in this form. Furthermore, it is very difficult

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to imagine that any scribe who was able to produce copies of texts as complex as these would not have known how to write a word as common as lugal (the word for ‘king’, which is probably the most frequently occurring word in the extant Sumerian literary corpus), which in its standard form is already a ligature of the signs “LU2” and “GAL” and would have been much easier to write in its conventional simplified form than by writing each of the two signs separately in their full form. The knowledge of the writing system the phonetic writings in these sources presuppose is also especially evident in the many instances in which “E2”, a very common sign used to write the word ‘house’ which would have been known to any scribe, is replaced with the sign “E”, which would have been just as difficult to write, but was presumably chosen because it less ambiguously indicated the pronunciation of the word. Similarly, most of the forms in which consonant reduction is avoided or which are rendered as sandhi writings would have required not only a detailed knowledge of the writing system, but also the ability to go beyond this basic competence to use cuneiform creatively to avoid reduplicating consonants or to bridge the syllabic boundaries between separate words. Lastly and most decisively, however, the more or less systematic omission of determinatives, which were not part of the pronunciation of the word, but instead indexical markers of the class to which the word belongs, provides direct evidence for the purpose of the phonetic writings in these sources. If the scribes were able to write the complex names of deities like dnu-dim2-mud and cities like uru2-ze2-eb (the Emesal form for Eridu, written “NUNki” in standard Sumerian orthography) correctly, then it is very unlikely that the determinatives were omitted because the scribes were not aware that they were supposed to write them. Instead it is much more probable that they were omitted intentionally because they do not contribute any information about the pronunciation of the forms. All of these are strong indications that the phonetic writings in each of the groups of sources were not errors resulting from scribal incompetence, but instead deliberate attempts to indicate how the words in the text were to be pronounced when the compositions were performed. Further evidence that the phonetic writings in these sources were intended to facilitate or record how the texts were to be pronounced can be found in the other common types of writings that occur in them. These writings include the use of the signs “QA” and “YA”, which are otherwise only attested in Akkadian texts, to express “g” and “k”, and in the case of “YA”, the semi-vowel “y”, which was normally rendered with “a” followed by another “a”, in words like a-a ‘father’, and ma-a-a, the interrogative pronoun ‘where’, but not with the sign “YA”, the sign used to express /y/ in Akkadian words and forms. Examples include:

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Phonemes from the Akkadian Syllabary: /q/ – du11(-ga): du-qa (K39 t.e. 2; K43 r. 17) – ga- (cohortative prefix): qa- (K22 o.? ii'? 2'–4') – unugki: u3-nu-qa (Ha1 o. 4) – ur-šu-AK-a: u4-šu-a-qa (K1 o. ii 7") – zi: zi-qa (K43 r. 1) /y/ – a-a: ya (K36 o. 2'–3'; K44 o. 7'); a-ya (*VAT 1509 (+) 1557 r. 8', 10'; *VAT 1548 o. 5–6; ++VAT 1344 o. 13; ++CBS 35 r. 11'; K43 r. 15–19; X1 side ii 1; X9 o. ii' 2'; possibly X10 o. 1'; X17 o. 23–24, r. 31'; X51 r. iv 3–4) – e2: ya(-na) (K1 r. iii 3) – e2-an-na: e2-ya-na (X20 r. 12'; X21 o. 6'; X48 o. 11'–12') – ma-a-a: ma-ya (*VAT 1555 o. 5'–6') – na4: i-ya (X16 o. 5'–7') Other common types of phonetic writings include the following: Phonetic Rendering of Reduplicated Forms: – bar: ba-ba-ar (++BM 78918 r. 5) – bur2: bu-ur-bu-re (X17 r. 13) – dar: da-ar-da-ra (*VAT 1555 r. 1') – di4-di4-la2: de3-de3-la (K1 o. i 6); de3-el-le (K1 o. i 7); de-de-le (X16 o. 5'); de-de-el (X16 o. 7') – gal: gal-ga-al-le (X16 o. 6'); ga-al-ga-le (X16 o. 6'); ga-al-ga (X16 o. 7'); ga-al-la (X46 o. 6'); gal-ga-al (X51 r. iv 11) – gub: gu-ub-gub (X17 r. 14); gu-gu-ub (X41 r. iv 21) – hul: hul-lu-hul-le (*VAT 1414 (+) 1442 o. 14'); hu-hu (K1 o. i 9–10); hu-ul-hu-ul (X6 o. 14') – sar: sa-sa-re (X17 r. 25'); sa-ar-sa-re (X23 o. 9)

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– tur: tu-tu-ur (++BM 78175 o. 7); tu-tu (K1 o. ii 8’’); tu-tu-re (++BM 78175 o. 8) – zal: za-al-za-al-la (G6 r. v' 5') Final Consonant Added: – dam: dam-ma (++AO 7697 o. i 1–3) – i7: id (K1 o. i 36') Proto Ea 49: i (9 sources), e (1 source); Proto Aa 39: 1 : i33 – keš3ki: ke-eš-ša (++BM 78175 r. 15') – nu2: nu-um (K1 o. i 32') – su3: su-ud (K23 o. 2) Disambiguation of Vowels: – gi-in: gi-eĝ3 (X52 r. v 4') – -gin7: gi-en (++AO 3925 r. 9–10, 12 – but note the same source has -gin7 in r. 11; ^VAT 608+ o. i 2, 5; K1 o. ii 12'); mi-en (^VAT 613+ o. ii 19'–21') Proto Ea (Nip) 530: gi-in (1 source), gi-im (1 source), gi-en (1 source) – (-)me-en: -mi-en (*VAT 1414 (+) 1442 r. 20'; ++BM 78198 r. 2–3; ^VAT 613+ o. ii 12'; ^AO 7685 o. 9', 11'–14', r. 6'–8' – but note that the scribe writes me-en in o. 10' and men3 in r. 5'; K11 o. 1'–3'; K14 o. 5' and 7'; K32 o. 7' and r. 3'; K33 r. 4'–5'; N1 r. v 5; X17 o. 24; X52 o. ii 29, r. v 22'–24', 26', 28', vi 25–26 – note also in r. v 24' the writing and erasure of men3 before mi-en) – me-teš2: mi-te-iš-e (++VAT 1344 o. 9–11) – peš: pi-eš (X41 o. i 7'–9')

33 The forms from the lists Proto Ea, Proto Aa, and Proto Diri cited throughout this chapter and in the complete list of phonetic writings in Appendix 3 follow the line numbering and composite editions of these lists in MSL 14 (Proto Ea and Proto Aa) and MSL 15 (Proto Diri). When the number of sources with each form is listed, these numbers are derived from the number of sources listed for each form in the variant apparatus for the entry to that form in MSL 14. Forms from Proto Ea “Secondary Branches” (PESB) are listed according to the source in which they occur, and unless otherwise indicated, also follow the editions of these sources in MSL 14. For a discussion of the relationship between the phonetic glosses in these lists and the phonetically written sources for the laments, see below.

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Voicing of Consonants: /g/ > /k/ or /q/ – abgal: ab-ka-le (*VAT 1416 r. 11) – bulug: bu-lu-ka (X21 o. 10') Proto Ea (Nip) 803: bu-lu-ug (3 sources); bu!(MU)-lu-ug (BM 29625 o. 78 – PESB) – du11(-ga): du-ka (++BM 78175 o. 8; X50 o. i 4–5); du-qa (K39 t.e. 2; K43 r. 17) – ga-: ka- (*VAT 1546 o. 6'–10'); qa- (K22 o.? ii'? 2'–4') – gi: qa (K1 o. i 29'); ki (K17 r. 5') /b/ > /p/ – ambar: ab-pa-re (^VAT 604+ o. i 4'); ap-pa-ar (K1 o. ii 9"); a-pa-ar (X17 r. 25') Proto Ea (Nip) 42: ab-ba-ar (3 sources), ab-bar (4 sources), a-ba-ar (1 source), a-bar (1 source); Proto Aa 42:1: ab-bar – ba-: (ha-)pa- (^VAT 613+ r. v' 26, 29b; X41 o. i 5'–6'); (ha-)pa3- (^VAT 613+ r. v' 28 – note the same source also writes pa instead of pa3) – babbar: ba-pa-? (K17 o. 4'); pa-pa-ar (K44 r. 5) Proto Ea (Nip) 157: ba-ab-ba-ar (2 sources), ba-ba-ar (1 source) – ĝišbansur: pa3-an-su-ra (++AO 3925 r. 7); pa-an-su-ur2 (^VAT 608+ o. i 17, 20) Proto Ea (Nip) 550: ba-an-šur (1 source); pa-an-šu?- (Diri Nippur 210) – dab5: da-pa (++AO 7697 o. i 6, 8) Proto Ea (Nip) 19: da-ab (8 sources); da-ab (YBC 7158 o. 31 – PESB) /t/ > /d/ – addir: ad-te-ra (G8 r. iii 5) – aš-te: eš-de (X53 o. 7) – nam-tag: nam-da-ga (++VAT 1384 o. 9') – til3: di-la (++BM 78198 o. 10'); di-le (++VAT 3426 r.? iii' 2') – tu9: du (X50 o. ii 5) Proto Ea (Nip) 67: tu-u2 (5 sources), tu-u4 (3 sources), tu (2 sources); Proto Aa 67:1: tu-u4

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/n/ > /m/ or /ĝ/ – ab-sin2: ab-si-im-ma (X46 r. 13) Proto Ea (Nip) 521: ab-si-in (4 sources) – an: aĝ2 (VAT 1544 o. 7') – ĝišerin: e-ri-im (*VAT 1509 (+) 1557 r. 3') Proto Ea (Nip) 516b: e-re-en (3 sources) – ka2: ka-aĝ2-ka-an (X52 o. i 21) Proto Ea (Nip) 238: ka-an-ka-an (1 source) – unken: um-ki-ni (^VAT 604+ r. iii 3); um-mi-na (^VAT 613+ r. v' 29, 29c) Proto Ea (Nip) 548: un-ke-en (2 sources) Like the use of the signs “QA” and “YA”, from the Akkadian syllabary, to express aspects of the pronunciation of words and syllables that cannot be expressed using conventional Sumerian orthography, the other common types of phonetic writings – the phonetic rendering of reduplicated forms, the reduplication of consonants not normally expressed in Sumerian orthography, and the disambiguation and voicing of vowels and consonants – often accentuate or reveal specific aspects of the pronunciation of individual words and forms that are otherwise less evident or concealed in their standard orthographic renderings. As with the five main types of phonetic writings, these writings would have thus also served to make clearer how the laments should be read or sung. Alongside the frequent occurrence of phonetic writings that elucidate the pronunciation of words and forms, there are also writings that reflect the seemingly opposite tendency to omit vowels and consonants that are normally expressed in conventional Emesal orthography. Among the omissions that occur in the phonetically written sources there are numerous instances in which consonants in medial and final position, and vowels in initial and medial position are omitted. In addition, there are also isolated occurrences of forms in which more than one vowel and consonant are omitted. Examples of both types of omissions include: Omission of Consonant: Medial Position – a-eštub: e-a-tu-ub (++BM 113236 o. 13'); e2-a-tu-ub (^VAT 613+ o. i 29') – anše: a-ši (++AO 3925 o. 5') – ensi2: e-si (^VAT 608+ o. i 3, 6, 10, 14)

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– hur-saĝ: hu-saĝ (*VAT 3558 o. 5') – šeg9-bar: ši-bar (^VAT 604+ o. i 9') Final Position – ĝin: ĝi6 (X17 r. 23') – mušen: mu-še3 (X17 r. 25') Proto Ea (Nip) 127: mu-še-en (4 sources), mu-še-eĝ3 (1 source) – na-aĝ2: na (X52 o. ii 2, 4, 10) – šub: šu (*VAT 1555 o. 5'–6'; G1 r. vii' 1'–2') – za-gin3: za-gi (Ha2 o. 3) za-gi-in (Diri Sippar 4:11) Omission of Vowel: Initial Position – a-ab-ba: ab-ba (^VAT 608+ o. i 2, 5) – amaš: ma-sa2 (^VAT 1365+ o. ii' 6'); maš2-sa (K38 o. ii' 13') Proto Ea (Nip) 826: a-ma-aš2 (1 source) – a-ša3: ša3 (K1 r. iv, 4; X17 r. 22') – e-lum: lum (G7 r. vii' 1) – egir: gi-re (K1 o. i 35') Proto Ea (Nip) 637: e-gi-ir (3 sources); Proto Aa 637:1: e-gi-ir – ĝišerin: ri-ni (X1 side i 17) Proto Ea (Nip) 516b: e-re-en (3 sources) – izi: zi-a (K1 o. i 16) Medial Position – ki-sikil: ki-iš-ke-el (K1 o. i 25'); ki-iš-ki-il2 (K43 r. 2); ki-iš-ki-il (X51 r. iv 14 ) – nu-siki: nu-uš-ki (*VAT 1509 (+) 1557 r. 9') – du4-sahar2-ra: us2-ha-ra (K48 r. 2')

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Omission of More than One Vowel and Consonant: – bad3-tibiraki: bad-bi-ra (^VAT 608+ r. iii 12') – gigurum: gi-ru (K1 r. iv 2) – ki-sikil: sikil (^VAT 615+ o. i 13') – su-lim-ma: si-ma (++VAT 1384 r. 4') – ušumgal: u3-gal (^VAT 608+ o. i 12) In many of these writings, the omissions probably reflect assimilations or elisions that occurred regularly when the words were spoken, as is almost certainly the case with forms like mu-ga-re for mu-un-gar ‘farmer’ and ni5-ba for niĝ2-ba ‘gift’, in which the omitted nasal is followed by another consonant, making assimilation likely, if not obligatory. Similarly, although the accentuation rules for Sumerian are not known, or poorly understood, it is not improbable that the frequent omission of the final consonant in words like sahar ‘dust’ and za-gin3 ‘lapis’, or of the initial vowel in words like amaš ‘sheepfold’ and e-lum ‘lord’, reflect a tendency to omit consonants and vowels in these positions when the accent was placed on another syllable in the word. Furthermore, the omission of the medial vowel in forms like ki-sikil ‘young woman’, which is written without an /i/ between /s/ and /k/ in four of the five instances in which it occurs phonetically in these sources, probably reflect the proper pronunciation of the word, since it was not possible to express consonant clusters in initial syllable position in standard cuneiform orthography. The omission of two or more vowels or consonants in the middle of words, as with the writings si-ma for su-lim-ma ‘health’ and u3-gal for ušumgal ‘dragon’, on the other hand, seem more to approximate how the words might have sounded when read quickly, or with less emphasis or accentuation than the other words that accompanied them in the same line or clause, than to express how the words were supposed to be pronounced.

5.2.2 Phonetic Writings as an Alternative Regional Orthography While the main types of phonetic writings provide clear evidence that these writings were intended to elucidate more clearly how the words and forms in the Sumerian laments were to be pronounced, and were not the result of a declining understanding of how to write Sumerian, it has also been argued that the widespread use of phonetic writings was developed in northern Mesopotamia as

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an alternative orthography for writing Sumerian laments. This explanation for why the phonetically written sources for the laments were compiled is based on the assumption that these sources (as well as many of the phonetically written sources for hymns and incantations) come from northern Mesopotamia, an assumption which presupposes that in addition to the 50+ sources from Kish, the 100+ sources in the British Museum, Vorderasiastisches Museum, and the Louvre, whose provenience is not known with certainty, come from Sippar. To cite only one of many statements of this view, Maurizio Viano, in a discussion of the transmission of phonetic or “unorthographic” writings into the Western Periphery during the late second millennium, writes: On the contrary, unorthographic writings were largely adopted in Northern Babylonia and the Diyala region in cities such as Sippar, Tell Hadad-Meturan, Kiš, and Tell HarmalŠaduppum. Northern Babylonian sources, approximately dated to the Late Old Babylonian period, have provided us with the largest corpus of literary texts exclusively or largely written in phonetic orthography.34

On the basis of a similar observation about the assumed northern provenience of many of the known phonetically written sources, Michalowski proposed a possible reason for the development of phonetic writing in the north, suggesting that it resulted when political upheaval in southern Mesopotamia forced the cultic practitioners who performed laments to relocate to northern Mesopotamian cities, and to write down the laments, which had previously circulated orally, so that their content would not be lost: Two characteristics stand out from among the northern materials: syllabic spellings and the use of a literary dialect of Sumerian known as EME.SAL. Of necessity, EME.SAL texts often used the syllabic orthography, so the two phenomena are related. Syllabic spellings were used to indicate more exactly the pronunciation of words. ... The differences in the literatures of the two regions [northern and southern Mesopotamia] may be explained in a variety of ways. One may posit that the preponderance of liturgical texts in the north was a result of the abandonment of the south; as priests migrated upstream, they may have been forced to commit to clay the liturgy that had hitherto been transmitted from generation to generation mainly by oral means. The disruption of the normal workings of apprenticeship and the passing down of tradition from generation to generation may have pressured them to write texts down and to assure proper pronunciation by more extensive use of syllabic writings.35

The possibility that phonetic writing in the sources for the laments was developed in northern Mesopotamia to preserve the pronunciation of Sumerian laments

34 Viano 2016: 141. 35 Michalowski 1995: 2287–88.

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when it was in danger of becoming lost, as proposed by Michalowski and others, is supported by the large group of phonetic sources from Kish, and the assumption that a substantial number of the phonetically written sources whose provenience is uncertain come from northern Mesopotamia. However, the early date of the phonetically written sources from Girsu, discussed in the previous section, and the close relation between the types of phonetic writings that occur in them and the other phonetically written sources for the laments indicate that phonetic writing was not limited to the north, and that writings of this type were already being used to record laments at least two to three centuries earlier than the phonetically written sources from northern Mesopotamia were compiled. The clearest indication that the phonetic writings in the sources for the laments were not developed as an alternative, regional orthography, though, is the inconsistency in how specific words and forms are written phonetically in these sources. Across the entire group of phonetically written sources, and even within individual sources, there are an exceedingly large number of inconsistencies in how the same consonants, vowels, and even entire words and phrases are written. Inconsistencies are particularly common with pairs and sets of consonants such as /g/ and /k/, the labials /b/ and /p/, the dentals /d/ and /t/, and the nasals /ĝ/, /m/, and /n/: Consonant Inconsistency: /g/ and /k/ – du11(-ga): du-ga (++BM 78193 r. 10; ++BM 16901 r. 8'; ++BM 78175 o. 13; ++VAT 1384 r. 5'); du-ka (++BM 78175 o. 8; X50 o. i 4–5) – ga-ša-an: ga-ša (*VAT 1414 (+) 1442 r. 1; *VAT 1558 o. 13'; *VAT 3544 o. 4', 7'); ga-ša-bi (*VAT 1556 o. 6'); ga-ša-nu (*VAT 1509 (+) 1557 o. 20'; K32 b.e. 2); ga-ša-ĝu10 (*VAT 3544 r. 2'); ga-ša-na (++BM 78175 r. 13'); ga-ša-ne2 (K11 o. 4'; K50 r. 5); ka-ša-an (^BM 78983 o. i 2; ^VAT 604+ o. ii 21'–22'; ^VAT 608+ o. ii 24; ^VAT 613+ o. i 32', 34', ii 3', 21'; ^VAT 1365+ o. ii' 4', 6'; ^AO 7685 o. 7'–8', r. 5'–7'; K3 r. iii' 3'; K34 o. 3–6; N1 r. v 1–2; Ha1 o. 3–7; X51 r. iii 4–7; X52 o. ii 12, iii 15'–18', 20', l.e. 1); ka-ša-ne (^VAT 613+ o. i 28', 30'); ka-ša (kur) (^VAT 613+ o. i 33'); ka-ša (mah-di) (^VAT 604+ o. ii 15'–16') – gig: gi-ga (X5 r. 8'; X52 r. v 20'); gi4-ga (X52 r. v 20'); ki-ga (X17 r. 26') – gul: gu-ul (++BM 78198 o. 6'; ^VAT 1365+ o. ii' 4'; ++CBS 35 o. 1–2; N1 o. ii 4'; X25 o. 2'); gu-le (++BM 78193 o. 11'; ++BM 78175 r. 9'–11'; ^VAT 615+ o. ii 2'; G6 o. ii' 3–5; X51 r. iii 5–7, iv 1–2); gu-la (^VAT 1365+ o. ii' 10'; X4 o. i 11'; X51 r. iii 4, iv 7); gu-lu (^VAT 613+ o. i 4', 6'); gu-ul-gu-ul (N1 o. ii 4'); ku-ul (G3 r. vii' 1'); ku-la (*VAT 1414

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(+) 1442 o. 16'; ^VAT 604+ o. ii 21'–22'); ku-le (*VAT 3531 r. 6'; ^VAT 613+ r. v' 4; K46 r. 9'; G5 o. i 5'; N1 r. v 1–2; X50 o. i 6); ku-ul-ku-ul (G2 o. 4) Proto Ea (Nip) 586: gu-ul (3 sources) – ku2: ku (*VAT 1546 r. 2'; X17 r. 21'–22'); gu (++AO 3925 o. 8'; ^AO 7685 r. 4'; X52 r. iv 8'); gu2 (K1 o. i 33'; X48 r. 4') Proto Ea (Nip) 311: gu2-u2 (1 source), gu2 (2 sources), gu-u2 (1 source), gu (1 source) /b/ and /p/ – babbar: ba-ba-ar (X52 o. ii 9); ba-ba-ra (^VAT 613+ r. v' 10; Ha2 o. 2); ba-pa? (K17 o. 4'); pa-pa-ar (K44 r. 5) Proto Ea (Nip) 157: ba-ab-ba-ar (2 sources), ba-ba-ar (1 source) – ĝišbansur: ba-an-su-ur (X46 r. 3); pa3-an-su-ra (++AO 3925 r. 7); pa-an-su-ur2 (^VAT 608+ o. i 17, 20) Proto Ea (Nip) 550: ba-an-šur (1 source); pa-an-šu?- (Diri Nippur 210) – bara2: ba-ra (G6 r. iv' 4); pa-ra (^BM 78983 r. iv 12'; K23 o. 1); pa-ra-ga (^VAT 608+ o. i 16, 19; X52 r. v 14') – bulug: bu-lu-ug (X46 o. 6'); bu-lu-ka (X21 o. 10') Proto Ea (Nip) 803: bu-lu-ug (3 sources); bu!(MU)-lu-ug (BM 29625 o. 78  –  PESB) – dab5: da-ba (^VAT 1365+ o. ii' 8'); da-be2 (^VAT 615+ o. ii 30'–31', 33'–34'); ta-ba (++BM 78193 r. 11–12); da-pa (++AO 7697 o. i 6, 8) Proto Ea (Nip) 19: da-ab (8 sources); da-ab (YBC 7158 o. 31 – PESB) /d/ and /t/ – ban3-da: ba-an-da (X52 r. v 5'); ban3-ta (K27B o. ii 2') – dumu: du-mu (X46 r. 10); tu-mu (*VAT 3547 r. 1; X51 r. iv 13) Proto Ea (Nip) 469: du-mu (3 sources) – sukud: su-ku-da (X5 r. 11'); su-ku-ta (X2 o. 11) – til3: ti-il (*VAT 1546 o. 2'); til (*VAT 3531 o. 5', 7', 9', 11'); te-la (++BM 78198 r. 2–3, 9); te-le (++BM 78198 o. 3', 8'–9'); di-la (++BM 78198 o. 10'); di-le (++VAT 3426 r.? iii' 2') – tug2: tu (K1 r. iv 1); du (X50 o. ii 5) Proto Ea (Nip) 67: tu-u2 (5 sources), tu-u4 (3 sources), tu (2 sources); Proto Aa 67:1: tu-u4 /m/, /n/ and /ĝ/

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– ĝišerin: e-ri-in (++VAT 1344 o. 18–19); e-ri-ne (*VAT 3526+ o. 6); e-ri-im (*VAT 1509 (+) 1557 r. 3') Proto Ea (Nip) 516b: e-re-en (3 sources) – me-lam2: mi-li (gur3) (^VAT 613+ r. v' 7); mi-li-im (^VAT 613+ r. v' 20); ne-la2-am (^VAT 608+ o. i 21, 24) – tumu: tu-mi (X48 r. 8'); tu-ni (X48 r. 9') Proto Ea (Nip) 669: tu-u2 (2 sources) – gi16-le-eĝ3: gi-le-? (X22 o. i 5'); gi-le-ĝa2 (X15 r. viii' 15'; X37 t.e. 1); gi-le-ĝi6 (X42 o. 2', r. 8'); gi-le-em (X17 r. 20'); gi-le-men3 (++BM 16901 o. 1); gi-le-ne (^AO 7685 r. 2') – saĝ: sa-ĝa2 (X34 o. 1–2'; X45 o. 11'); sa-an (X50 o. ii 5, 9) Proto Ea (Nip) 292: sa-aĝ2 (4 sources), sa (1 source) The same words that are transliterated conventionally with “b”, “g”, and “d” are frequently written inconsistently with signs that have the primary values “p”, “k”, and “t” in some instances, but in other instances with signs that have the values “b”, “g”, and “d”. Note, for example, that /g/ and /k/ vary with nearly equal frequency in the rendering of the words bulug ‘needle’, gul ‘destroy’, and ku2 ‘eat’, which are written just as often as /buluk/, /kul/ and /gu/, as they are as /bulug/, /gul/, and /ku/; and /b/ and /p/ are just as frequently interchanged in words like babbar ‘white’, ĝišbansur ‘banquet table’ and dab5 ‘to seize’, which are also phonetically rendered as both /babbar/, /bansur/, and /dab/ and as /bappar/, /pansur/, and / dap/. Similarly, the same tendencies can also be observed with /d/ and /t/, and the nasals /ĝ/, /m/, and /n/ in the words dub ‘to pile up’, dumu ‘son’, and sukud ‘tall’ and in the words daĝal ‘broad’, ka-na-aĝ ‘land’, and e-ne-eĝ3 ‘word’. The variability in how specific words and forms are rendered phonetically is even more striking in the case of the vowels /i/ and /e/, each of which is rendered with nearly equal frequency as both /i/ and /e/ in the same words and elements: Variable Vowels – /e/ and /i/: – ensi2: e-si (^VAT 608+ o. i 3, 6, 10, 14); in-si (^VAT 604+ r. iii 6, 9; X46 r. 11) – erim3: e-ri-im (X25 r. 7'–8'); i-ri-ma (G4 r. viii' 3'; G5 r. v' 1) Proto Ea (Nip) 542: i-ri-im-ma (4 sources); i-ri-im-ma (BM 29625 o. 26 – PESB) – il2: i-la (++BM 16901 r. 4'; ^VAT 604+ r. iii 4, 7); -el-la (++VAT 1384 r. 2'–3', 9') – ki-sikil: ki-iš-ki-il (X51 r. iv 14; ki-iš-ki-il2 (K43 r. 2); ki-si-ki (X52 o. i 12, 14, 26); ki-iš-ke-el (K1 o. i 25')

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– me-e: me (X52 o. i 20, 22, r. vi 24–25); mi (X52 o. ii 11–12, 15, 19); mi-i (X52 r. v 22') – immir: tu-nimi-ri (X48 r. 9'); tu-mume-er (G6 o. iii' 6) Proto Ea (Nip) 591: mi-ir (1 source) – mušen: mu-še3 (X17 r. 25'); mu-ši-in (^VAT 608+ r. iv 10'; G9 r. iv' 2'–3') Proto Ea (Nip) 127: mu-še-en (4 sources), mu-še-eĝ3 (1 source) – ni2: ni (X44 r. 10–11); ne (X52 o. iii 6') – ni10-ni10: ni-ni (X21 o. 14'); ne-ne (X52 r. vi 11 – note the correct writing ni10-ni10 in r. vi 17) – šir3: še3-er (++VAT 1384 r. 9'); si-ir (X52 o. iii 13'); si-ra (K10 o.? 1') Proto Ea (Nip) 757: si-ir (2 sources) – tir: ti-ra (*VAT 3526+ o. 4–5); te-er (*VAT 3580 o.? 5'–6'); te-te-er (++BM 78175 r. 7') Proto Ea (Nip) 457: te-er (4 sources); te-er (Diri Nippur 196) Although the interchange of /e/ and /i/ can be observed in the rendering of many words, including in the writing of ensi2 ‘governor’, erim3 ‘treasure house’, mušen ‘bird’, šir3 ‘song’, and numerous other words, the interchange of these two vowels is especially common with the words and forms that are written phonetically with the signs “ŠE” and “ŠI”: Variable Vowels – /e/ and /i/ with the Signs “ŠE” and “ŠI”: – a-še-er: a-še-re (*VAT 1546 r. 2'–3'; X51 r. iii 5); a-še-ra (K1 r. iv 4"–5"; K27B o. ii 24'; K33 r. 5'; G1 r. v' 3; X40 o. 10; X51 o. ii 14', r. iii 1–4); a-ši-ir (++BM 78193 o. 13', 15', r. 9; ++BM 78198 o. 11'; X18 o. 1; X50 o. i 6; X53 o. 1–2); a-ši-ra (++BM 78193 o. 13’); a-ši-re (++BM 78193 r. 8) – še: ši (++BM 113236 o. 14'; ^VAT 613+ o. i 29'; G9 r. iv' 2'; Ha2 r. 1; X11 o. 4'; X52 r. iv 11') – -še3: -še (*VAT 1414 (+) 1442 o. 16'; *VAT 1416 r. 12; *VAT 1420 o. 5'; *VAT 1509 (+) 1557 o. 21'; *VAT 1546 o. 2'–5'; *VAT 1556 o. 7'; *VAT 3544 r. 2'; *VAT 3547 o. 1', r. 2; ^VAT 604+ r. iii 4, 7; ^VAT 615+ o. i 10'; K1 o. ii 4''–5''; K7 r. 2; K9 o. 6'; K26 o. 3', 5', r. 2' and 4'; K27B r. iii 3–4; K44 b.e. 1; K45 r. 8'; G1 o. iv' 4'–7'; G3 r. vii' 6'; G4 r. viii' 3'; G6 o. iii' 3–7 r. iv' 3; G8 r. iv 1; G9 r. iv' 1'; G11 r. iv' 1'; N1 o. ii 8'; Ha1 r. 5–8; X26 r. 6'; X37 t.e. 2; VAT 1544 o. 7'); -eš (++BM 78751 r. 5'–7); -ši (*VAT 3526+ o. 4; ++BM 78198 o. 12',

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r. 5; ++BM 113236 r. 6; ++BM 78175 o. 26; ++AO 7697 o. i 8–9; ^VAT 608+ r. iii 11', 13'; ^VAT 613+ o. ii 27'; ^VAT 615+ o. i 9', ii 30', 33'; ++VAT 1384 o. 6'; X9 o. ii' 9'; X16 o. 3'; X41 r. v 7–8; X50 o. i 1, ii 1–4; X52 o. ii 6–8, r. iv 4'–8', vi 3–4 – note, however, the correct writing -še3 in vi 4) – še-eb: ši-bi (X51 o. ii 16', r. iii 2, 6, 10) – še8-še8: še-še (X2 o. 11; X45 o. 15'); ši-ši (++BM 78193 o. 10', 14'); ši-še (X50 o. i 7–8, 11) The terminative element -še3 is written in over 30 instances sources with “ŠE” and in over 20 instances with “ŠI”, sometimes even within the same source. Moreover, the variable use of the signs “ŠE” and “ŠI” can also be observed in many other words including in the words še ‘grain’, še8-še8 ‘to weep’, mušen ‘bird’, and a-še-er ‘lament’. In addition to the interchange of /e/ and /i/, many of the other vowels that occur in Sumerian also vary frequently when the same words and forms with these vowels are written phonetically: Variable Vowels: /a/ and /i/ – amaš: a-ma-sa (G13 o. 6'); i-ma-ša (G9 r. v' 1'); Proto Ea (Nip) 826: a-ma-aš2 (1 source) – me-lam2: ne-la2-am (^VAT 608+ o. i 21, 24); me-li-im (X10 o. 4'); mi-li-im (^VAT 613+ r. v' 20); mi-li (gur3) (^VAT 613+ r. v' 7) – sig3: si-ge (X1 side i 7–8, 12; X50 o. i 9–10); sa2-ge (X49 o. ii' 9', 11'); sa2-sa2-ge (X49 o. ii' 10', 12') UET 7, 163 i 9: sa-ag (PESB) /a/ and /e/ – a-gin7: e-gi (X53 r. 8') – eriduki: a-ri-duki (^VAT 608+ r. iii 28') – dhendur-saĝ-ĝa2: ha-an-du-ur-sa-ĝa2 (X46 o. 5') he-en-du-ur-saĝ (Diri Nippur 10:10) /u/ and /i/ – nu-uš-: ni-iš- (X50 o. i 6; X51 r. iii 4–7)

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– šu: ši (X53 o. 10) – šul: si-il (Ha2 o. 8–9) Others – eš3: uš (K48 r. 5') – mu: me (++AO 3925 o. 10'–11') – muš3: ma-aš (Ha2 o. 4) As can be observed in the preceding list, the interchange of vowels also occurs with other vowels than /e/ and /i/, including /a/ and /i/ in the writings a-maš and i-ma-aš for amaš ‘sheepfold’ and me-lam and me-lim for me-lam2 ‘terror-inspiring splendor’, and the interchange of other vowels in forms like ši for šu ‘hand’, a-ri-du for the city eriduki, and ma-aš for muš3 ‘platform’. Lastly, instances of vowel harmony, when a vowel is colored and pronounced the same as a neighboring vowel in the same word, also occur, as illustrated by forms like ku-tuš for ki-tuš ‘dwelling’, eš-de for aš-te ‘throne’, mi-ri for me-ri ‘foot’, and others: Vowel Harmony: /a/ > /u/, /u/ > /a/ – adab(u)ki: a-du-bu (K46 r. iv 9, 11) – ĝišha-lu-ub2: hu-lu-ub (G6 o. iii' 8) – mu-ud-na: mu-ud-nu (X15 o. i 12) – den-a2-nun: e2-na-na (++BM 16901 o. 6) – niĝ2-gur10: ne-ĝa2-ra (++AO 3925 r. 8) /a/ > /i/, /i/ > /a/ – šakir3: si-ki-ir (K27A o. 13) Proto Ea (Nip) 549: ša-ki-ir (2 sources); sa-ki-ir (Diri Ur 17) – a-ri-a: a-ra-a (X1 side i 10–11) – sipa: sa-pa (X50 o. ii 4) /u/ > /i//, i/ > /u/ – ki-tuš: ku-tu-uš (++BM 78175 o. 4')

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– dmu-ul-lil2: mu-lu-lu (X51 r. iv 3) – šumunda: šu-mi-ni (X48 o. 10') – ti: (šu) tu-a (^VAT 613+ o. ii 28') – ugnim: ug-nu-um (G1 r. vi' 11) /e/ > /a/, /a/ > /e/ – a-eštub: e2-a-aš-tu-ub (X11 o. 3') – aš-te: eš-de (X53 o. 7) – e2-an-na: a-a-an-na (G8 r. iii 6) /e/ > /i/ – dim3-me-er: di-mi-ir (G5 o. iii 6'); dim3-mi-ir (X6 o. 8'–9'; X40 o. 7) – ki-en-gi: ki-in-gi-ra (^BM 78983 r. iv 13') – me-er-si: mi-ir-si (K27B o. i 26') – me-ri: mi-ri (*VAT 3552+ o. 4'; K12 o.? ii? 3'; K16 o.? 8'; X14 o. 6'; X50 r. iii 6', 11'–12') Moreover, the inconsistency in how phonetic writings are rendered in these sources is not restricted to individual consonants and vowels, but can also be observed with entire words: Entire Words: – ama-ušumgal-an-na: ama-u3-šu-um-gal-an-na (^VAT 604+ r. iv 14'); ama-u3šu-gal-la-na (^VAT 604+ o. i 23'); ama-šu-mu-gal-la-na (X52 i 16); ama-šu-gala-na (^VAT 608+ r. iii 18'; X5 r. 10'); ama-u3-šu-gal-[la-na] (X52 o. i 18); a-ma-u2šu-ga-la-na (N1 r. v 6); ama-šu-gal-la-na (X52 o. i 14); ama-šu-ga-la-na (^VAT 615+ o. i 17'); u3-šu-gal-a-na (X52 o. iii 19' – without ama); am-išib-gal-an-na (G13 o. 1'–2') – amaš: a-ma-aš2 (X51 r. iv 8; X21 o. 12'); ama-sa (K1 o. i 5); a-ma-sa(-na) (K7 o. 4'; G13 o. 6'); a-ma-sa2(-na) (++BM 78193 o. 7'); i-ma-ša (G9 r. v' 1'); u3-maš (^VAT 615+ o. i 11'); maš2-sa (K38 o. ii' 13'); ma-sa2 (^VAT 1365+ o. ii' 6') Proto Ea (Nip) 826: a-ma-aš2 (1 source) – babbar: ba-ba-ar (X52 o. ii 9); ba-ba-ra (^VAT 613+ r. v' 10; Ha2 o. 2); ba-pa? (K17 o. 4'); pa-pa-ar (K44 r. 5) Proto Ea (Nip) 157: ba-ab-ba-ar (2 sources), ba-ba-ar (1 source)

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– daĝal: da-ĝal2 (^VAT 608+ o. i 3, 6; X10 r. 5); da-ĝa2-la (^VAT 615+ o. ii 24', 27', 29', 32'; X31 o. 2'); da-ĝa2-lu (*VAT 1420 r. 6); da-ka-la (++BM 78193 r. 12); da-maal-la (^VAT 604+ r. iii 5, 8); da-ma-la (K50 r. 4) da-ĝal2 (BM 29625 o. 16 – PESB) – ddil-im2-babbar2: di-il5-en-babbar2 (^VAT 613+ r. v' 9, 32, 35); di-li-babbar2 (++BM 113236 o. 4'); di-li-bar (X20 o. 14'–15') – e-ne-eĝ3: i-ni-im (X50 o. ii 8); i-ni-ma-ni (X1 side i 1; X50 r. iii 4'); i-ne-eĝ3 (++BM 78175 r. 18'–19'); i-ni-ĝa2-ni (X1 side i 4); i-ni-ĝar (^VAT 608+ o. i 18); i-ni-ka-ni (X1 side i 9); ni-ĝa2-ni (X29 o. 2–3) – ga-ša-an-an-na: ga-ša-an-na-na (K1 o. i 2); ga-ša-an-na (*VAT 1472 o. 11'; X11 r. 4'; K1 r. iii 2); ga-ša-na-na (*VAT 1576 r. 4'; ++BM 78175 r. 13'; X23 r. 3'–4'); ga-ša-na (*VAT 1542 r. 10'); ga-ša-an-an (X41 o. ii 10'); ga-ša-na-an (K29 o. ii' 3'); ka-šaan-na-na (^VAT 604+ o. ii 18'; ^VAT 1365+ o. ii' 3'; X52 o. i 20, 22, iii 21' r. vi 24); ka-ša-an-na (^VAT 615+ o. i 8'; N1 r. v 10); ka-ša-na-na (^VAT 604+ o. ii 22'–23'; ^VAT 613+ o. i 31', ii 20'; K34 r. 2); ka-ša-aĝ2-na-na (X52 o. ii 13); NIN-na-na (G1 r. v' 1–2; G6 o. i' 2) – gi16-le-eĝ3: gi-le-? (X22 o. i 5'); gi-le-ĝa2 (X15 r. viii' 15'; X37 t.e. 1); gi-le-ĝi6 (X42 o. 2', r. 8'); gi-le-em (X17 r. 20'); gi-le-men3 (++BM 16901 o. 1); gi-le-ne (^AO 7685 r. 2'); gi-le-de2 (K1 o. i 13) – ka-na-aĝ2: ka-na-ĝa2 (++AO 3925 r. 15; X1 side i 4; X10 r. 4; X52 o. ii 30); ka-na-am (++BM 113236 o. 11'; *VAT 1542 r. 4'); ka-na-ma (*VAT 1543 o. 5; ^VAT 608+ r. iii 12'; ^VAT 615+ r. iii 13–14); ka-nam (^VAT 608+ o. i 22, 25); ka-ĝa2-ka (X1 side i 5–6) – u3-mu-un: u3-mu-un-ne for (u3-mu-un-e) (X24 o. 1–2); u3-mu-ne2-e (N1 r. v 7); u3-mu-ne (++BM 113236 o. 2'–3'; ^VAT 613+ r. vi' 14 – but note the same source also has u3-mu-un-e in the next line; ^VAT 615+ r. iii 4, 7, 11); u3-mu-ni (^VAT 615+ r. iii 8); u3-mu-na (X15 r. vii' 3') u4-mu-na (K21 o. ii' 6'); u2-mu-eĝ3 (K43 r. 16–17, 21, 24); mu-un (K27B o. i 24', 29', 31'); u3-da (for u3-mu-un-da) (X48 r. 3'–5') In all of these instances, the same word is written phonetically in numerous different ways, indicating that the phonetic writings of specific and forms was not standardized, but instead highly variable. For example, the name of the deity Amaušumgalanna (one of the names of the god Dumuzi), which is normally written (d)ama-ušumgal(GAL.UŠUM)-an-na, is written phonetically at least nine different ways, including as ama-u3-šu-gal-la-na, ama-u3-šu-um-galan-na, ama-šu-gal-a-na, am-išib-gal-an-na, and ama-šu-mu-gal-la-na; daĝal (‘broad, wide’) is written phonetically at least six different ways; and gi16-le-eĝ3 (the Emesal form of ha-lam ‘to destroy’) is written at least seven different ways.

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Moreover, the inconsistencies in how the same words and forms are rendered phonetically can be observed not only across the entire group of phonetically written sources as a whole, but also within individual sources compiled by the same scribe, as well as within group of sources written by the same scribes or from the same place. Examples of the phonetic writings of words and forms that are rendered differently and inconsistently within a single source include: Inconsistent Phonetic Writings of Words and Forms in the Same Source: – ama-ušumgal-an-na: ama-u3-šu-gal-la-na (^VAT 604+ o. i 23'); ama-u3-šuum-gal-an-na (^VAT 604+ r. iv 14'); ama-šu-gal-la-na (X52 o. i 14); ama-šu-mugal-la-na (X52 o. i 16), ama-u3-šu-gal-[la-na] (X52 o. i 18); u3-šu-gal-a-na (X52 o. iii 19' – without ama) – (ha-)ba-: (ha-)pa- (^VAT 613+ r. v' 26, 29b); (ha-)pa3- (^VAT 613+ r. v' 28) – dingir-re(-e-ne-ke4): AN-ne-er-e-ne-ke4 (++AO 3925 o. 6'); AN-ne-re-ni (++AO 3925 o. 10'–11', r. 1); AN-ne-re-ne (++AO 3925 r. 3–4); di-ne-re (++AO 3925 r. 6); AN-ne-re-ni-ke4 (++AO 3925 r. 13) – den-lil2: de-li-la (++AO 3925 r. 5); e-li-la (++AO 3925 r. 7) – ga-ša-an-an-na: ka-ša-an-na-na (^VAT 604+ o. ii 18'); ka-ša-na-na (^VAT 604+ o. ii 22'–23'); ga-ša-an-na-na (K1 o. i 2); ga-ša-an-na (K1 r. iii 2); ka-ša-anna-na (X52 o. i 20, 22, iii 21', r. vi 24); ka-ša-aĝ2-na-na (X52 o. ii 13) – -gin7: -mi-en (^VAT 613+ o. ii 19'–21'); -gi (^VAT 613+ o. ii 23'–25') – gu2: gu (++BM 78175 r. 8', 17'–19'); gu4 (++BM 78175 o. 12); gu2 (++BM 78175 o. 12) – i3-si-inki: i3-si-na (^AO 7685 o. 7'–8'); i-si-na (^AO 7685 r. 6') – ki-tuš: ki-tuš-ša-ni (*VAT 3558 o. 2'); ki-tu-ša-ni (*VAT 3558 o. 3') – sipa: si-pa (^VAT 615+ r. iii 12); si-pa3 (^VAT 615+ r. iv 1–2) – til3: te-le (++BM 78198 o. 3', 8'–9'); te-la (++BM 78198 r. 2–3, 9); di-la (++BM 78198 o. 10') – a-gin7: e-gi-en (K1 o. ii 13'); a-nin (K1 r. iii 9) – du7: du3 (K1 o. i 30'), du (K1 o. i 31') – e-ne-eĝ3: i-ni-ma-ni (X1 side i 1); i-ni-ĝa2-ni (X1 side i 4); i-ni-ka-ni (X1 side i 9) – eĝ3-bara3-ga: am-ba-ra-ga (X48 r. 10'); eĝ3-ba-ra-ga (X48 r. 6')

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– gal: gal-ga-al-le (X16 o. 6'); ga-al-ga-le (X16 o. 6'); ga-al-ga (X16 o. 7') – me-e: me (X52 o. i 20, 22, r. vi 24–25); mi (X52 o. ii 11–12, 15, 19); mi-i (X52 r. v 22') That the inconsistent rendering of the same words and forms was not limited to individual sources, but also occurs in sources from the same site, is evident from the occurrence of similar inconsistencies in the phonetically written sources from Kish. Examples include: Inconsistent Phonetic Writings in Sources from Kish: – am3-: a-am- (K1 o. i 1; K27B o. i 23', 25', 29', o. ii 4'; K35 o. 4'); a-mi- (K1 r. iii 5); am- (K45 o. 4, l.e. 1) – amaš: ama-sa (K1 o. i 5); a-ma-sa-na (K7 o. 4'); maš2-sa (K38 o. ii' 13') – babbar: ba-pa-? (K17 o. 4'); pa-pa-ar (K44 r. 5) – ga-ša-an: ka-ša-an (K3 r. iii' 3'; K34 o. 3–6); ga-ša-ne2 (K11 o. 4'; K50 r. 5); ga-ša-nu (K32 b.e. 2) – ga-ša-an-an-na: ga-ša-an-na-na (K1 o. i 2); ga-ša-an-na (K1 r. iii 2); ga-šana-an (K29 o. ii' 3'); ka-ša-na-na (K34 r. 2) – hul: hul-lu- (K26 o. 5', r. 2'); hu-lu (K16 o.? 4'–5'; K34 r. 3; K39 t.e. 1; K47 o. 2–5) – mu-gi17-ib: nu-gi (K1 o. i 2, r. iii 2; K24 r. 11'); mu-gi-be2 (K34 o. 2); mu-gi-ib (K34 o. 3, r. 1); lu2-gi-ba (K48 r. 2') – dmu-ul-lil2: dmu-lil2 (K1 o. i 18–19); mu-lil2 (K18 o. 11'; K43 r. 15) – pad3: -pa-de3 (K7 o. 1'–4'; K8 o. 1'–2'; -pa-de (K51 r. 5'–6') – du11: du (K1 o. i 7, 11–12, 14–15, r. iii 6'; K2 o. 4'); du-qa (K39 t.e. 2; K43 r. 17); tu-ga (K12 o. 4') While it could be argued that the inconsistencies in the phonetic writings of the same words and forms within a single source is the result of an inexperienced scribe with insufficient knowledge of Sumerian struggling (and failing) to render the content of the lament he or she was hearing (or remembering) correctly, it is more likely, for the reasons discussed above, that the scribes who compiled these sources knew the “correct” writings, but deliberately chose to render the forms phonetically for other reasons. An even clearer indication that the scribes who compiled the phonetically written sources knew how to write the content of the laments correctly, however, are the numerous instances in which the standard writings of words and forms

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occur together with phonetics writings of the same words and forms in the same source. Some examples of phonetic writings occurring together with the correct writing of the same word or form, including in sources from Kish, are: Phonetic and Standard Writings of Word in the Same Source: – a-ša3: a-ša (*VAT 1420 o. 5'); a-ša3 (*VAT 1420 o. 7') – a2: a (^VAT 604+ r. iii 4–5, 7–8, 23', iv 18'); a2 (^VAT 604+ r. iii 16') – ama: a-ma (++CBS 35 r. 10'; K21 o. ii' 5'); ama (++CBS 35 r. 11'; K21 o. ii' 5') – -de3: -de (++BM 78175 o. 5–6) -de3 (++BM 78175 o. 4) – e2: e (*VAT 1548 o. 1–2; K1 o. i 30'; K1 o. ii 9', r. iv 5); e2 (*VAT 1548 o. 2–4; K1 o. i 30'; r. iii 8–10) – -gin7: -gi-en (++AO 3925 r. 9–10, 12); -gi-in (^VAT 608+ o. iv 9'); -gin7 (++AO 3925 r. 11; ^VAT 608+ o. iv 7') – ir2: i-re (++BM 78193 o. 10'–12', r. 7–8); ir2-re (++BM 78193 r. 9) – (den-lil2)-la2: (den-lil2)-la (^VAT 608+ o. i 23); (den-lil2)-la2 (^VAT 608+ o. i 26) – su6: su (*VAT 1509 (+) 1557 o. 4'); su6 (*VAT 1509 (+) 1557 o. 9') – ša3: ša (++CBS 35, o. 9); ša3 (++CBS 35, o. 10) – u3-mu-un: u3-mu-ne (^VAT 613+ r. vi' 14); mu-un (K27B o. i 24', 29', 31'); u3-mu-un (K27B o. ii 2'); u3-mu-un-e (^VAT 613+ r. vi' 15) – ĝin(-na-ĝu10): ĝa2-na-ĝu10 (K1 o. ii 4''); ĝin-na-ĝu10 (K1 o. ii 5'') – lu2: lu (K1 o. ii 7''); lu2 (K1 o. 34'–35') – -me-en: -mi-en (X52 o. ii 29, r. v 22'–24', 26', 28', vi 25–26); -men3 written and then erased and replaced with -mi-en (X52 r. v 24') – mu-gi17-ib: mu-gi-ib (X49 o. ii' 3'–4'); mu-gi17-ib (X49 o. ii' 14', 16') – niĝ2: ni-ig (X52 o. i 26); niĝ2 (X52 o. i 28) – -še3: -ši (X52 o. ii 6–8, r. iv 4'–8', vi 3–4); -še3 (X52 r. vi 4) If the scribes who compiled these, and other sources in which standard writings and phonetic writings occur together in the same source, did not know how to render the content of the laments they were copying correctly, it is unlikely that they would have also been able to write the words in the laments they were

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copying correctly at the same time as they were rendering them phonetically. A more probable explanation for the occurrence of standard writings together with phonetic writings is that the scribes knew the correct writings, and only wrote words and forms phonetically in instances in which they wanted to call attention to their pronunciation. Possible reasons for choosing to do this could have included needing only to write a form phonetically in one or two instances, since its pronunciation would then be easily inferable in every other occurrence of the word, or because the scribe wanted to emphasize the pronunciation of a word or form in specific phrases or contexts in which its pronunciation might have differed from its usual pronunciation, or have been less easy to infer. The numerous inconsistencies in how the same consonants, vowels, words, and even entire phrases are rendered in the phonetically written sources are contrary to what would be expected of an orthography that was developed in a specific time and place to record the correct pronunciation of the laments so that it would not be lost. That phonetic writing was not a local or regional development is evident in the occurrence of inconsistencies in the renderings of specific words and forms across all of the phonetically written sources from the period, and especially in the sources from Kish, which are from the same city. Furthermore, writing the same words and forms in multiple different ways would have increased, instead of reduced the number of possible pronunciations, making it difficult to determine what the correct pronunciation would have been in any given instance. Even with homophonous signs, where the sound correspondence between the standard orthographic writing of a word and its phonetic equivalents is clear and direct, as with du for du3, knowledge of the context and the recurrent themes and expressions in the laments, if not of the content of the lament itself, would be necessary to determine that du is a writing of the verb du3 ‘to build’, and not one of the other of the many verbs that are pronounced /du/, but written with different signs, including du ‘to go’, du2 ‘to give birth’, du7 ‘to be suited for’, du8 ‘to open’, du10 ‘to be sweet’, or du11 ‘to speak’. But the difficulty of reconstructing the intended content of a phonetically written source would have been even more substantial with sandhi writings, in which word- and morpheme-boundaries are eliminated, so that multiple words and phrases are fused into a single, continuous phonological unit. It would not have been possible to identify the numerous sandhi writings, in which the boundaries between phonemes, morphemes, words, and even entire phrases were eradicated or obscured, simply by knowing the pronunciation of each individual sign. In a form like ki-in-da-gu-e-ni-ši for ki ninda ku2-a e3-a-ni-še3, for example, in which the word boundary between ki ‘place’ and (n)inda ‘bread’ is eliminated, and the two non-finite verbal forms, ku2-a ‘(place) where (bread) is consumed’ and e3-a-ni-še3 ‘to (the place) where he (Dumuzi?) comes out’ are conjoined into

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a single utterance, the number of possible word and phrases combinations and identifications are too numerous for the phrase to have been easily intuitable without already knowing which phrase was intended. Does the sign “GU” represent the noun gu4 ‘bull’ or the verb gu7/ku2 ‘to eat’? Is the “E” that follows it the grammatical element /e/ marking the ergative or the locative-terminative case, instead of the verbal base e3 ‘to go out’? Is in-da the writing of the verbal prefix chain, preceding the verb ku2, or part of the nominal phrase ki-in-da for kin-da ‘with work’ instead of the noun (n)inda preceded by ki ‘place’? Although many possibilities can be excluded on the grounds that they do not produce meaningful sentences, narrowing down the number of possibilities would have required substantial prior knowledge of the content of the lament. In this and all of the other instances of sandhi writings, it is clear that the rendering of the entire phrase was only intended to reproduce the general sound of the entire phrase, at the expense of obscuring and eliminating all of the morphological and phonological segmentation necessary for making the individual words and forms comprehensible to readers, reciters, or hearers not already familiar with them.

5.2.3 Phonetic Writings and Scribal Training If knowledge of the pronunciation of the laments was in danger of becoming lost, the writings in the phonetically written sources would have been an ineffective means of preserving it, since the sources with these writings would not have been comprehensible without the very knowledge they were intended to preserve. If the phonetic sources were compiled to preserve the pronunciation of the texts so that it would not be forgotten, then a system of writing that clarified the pronunciation of the content of the laments, instead of complicating it with a difficult and inconsistent orthography, would have served this purpose more effectively. On the contrary, the difficulty and inconsistency of the phonetic writings in these sources presupposes that the compilers and intended users of the sources already knew their content, and were not concerned with preserving the pronunciation of the laments for future generations, but instead to elucidate and call attention to how the laments were pronounced for more immediate and practical purposes. As a point of contrast, the types of phonetic writings that occur in the phonetically written sources for the laments can be compared with the phonetic glosses that occur in sign lists and syllabaries from the same period. The lists Proto-Ea, Proto-Aa, and Proto-Diri were three of the most common and widespread lists used during the Old Babylonian Period to teach apprentice scribes the pronunciation of simple and complex cuneiform signs. Although there was certainly an oral component to the use of the three lists, and the pronunciation of the signs was not

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always written, but was probably provided orally, many of the sources for these lists contain glosses in which the pronunciation or reading of the signs is written phonetically. Since the phonetic glosses in the lists are similar in form and type to the phonetic writings in the phonetically written sources for the laments, it could be argued that the phonetic writings in the sources for the laments were derived from the phonetic glosses in the lists, and that they served a similar function. However, the similarity between the phonetic glosses in the lists and the phonetic writings in the phonetically written sources for the laments is only superficial, and a more detailed comparison of the phonetic writings that occur in both types of sources reveals critical differences among the apparent similarities.36 Since one of the purposes of lists like Proto-Ea and Proto-Aa was to provide the readings or pronunciations of individual signs, one device employed in the lists to indicate the pronunciations of the listed signs was to use homophonous signs or to break polysyllabic signs up into multiple signs corresponding to each syllable in the sign. Examples from Proto-Ea include: Homophonous Signs in Proto Ea:37 – kur for “LAGAB” = kur4 (l.27) – i for “NI” = i3 (l.90) Phonetically written sources for laments(PWSL): i (X52 r. iv 15', 19'; ++BM 78193 o. 8', 14'; ++BM 78175 r. 5'–7'; X50 o. i 7–11) – uš for “BAD” = uš2 (l.103) – u4 for “U” (l.112) – e for “E2” (l.216) PWSL: e (*VAT 1420 o. 4', 6'; *VAT 1414 (+) 1442 r. 24'; *VAT 1548 o. 1–2; *VAT 3552+ r. 6'; ++BM 78193 r. 5; ++BM 78198 o. 12', 14', 18'–19'; ^BM 78983 r. iv 6'–7', 9'; ^VAT 604+ o. ii 23'–24' r. iii 24'; ^VAT 608+ o. i 4, iii 4'–5', 12'–13'; ^VAT 613+ r. v' 4; K1 o. i 30' – note the writing e2 in the same line; K1 ii, 9', r. iv 5; K13 r. 4'; K43 r. 4, 12; G1 o. iv' 5'–6' r. vi' 1, 3–4, 10; G2 r. 12'; G8 o. i 1'–2', r. iv 5; N1 o. ii 4'; X1 side ii 8; X2 o. 11–16; X9 o. 36 For a similar assessment of the relationship between the phonetic writings in the phonetically written sources for the laments and the phonetic glosses in the lists, which is based on a smaller sample set of data, see already Kutscher 1975: 33: “A superficial reading of text B [the phonetic source CNMA 10051] reveals that the reading of Emesal and Emegir forms obtained from the syllabic spelling is different from what is conventionally supposed; the spellings of this text do not conform to the ones recorded in vocabularies which contain a ‘pronunciation’ column”. 37 The line numbers for the examples from Proto Ea and Proto Aa cited here and throughout the chapter follow the line numbers in MSL 14.

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ii' 4'–6'; X17 o. 18, 20, 31; X20 o. 5', 8', 19'; X37 o. 1–2; X41 o. ii 9'; X43 r. 8; X46 o. 12'; X47 r. 5', 9'; X52 o. i 11, 15, iii 9' r. iv 6'); e5(A) (X53 o. 17–18) – ib for “TUM” = ib2 (l.634) – ur for “UR2” (l.658) PWSL: ur (*VAT 1414 (+) 1442 r. 2); u3-re (*VAT 1509 (+) 1557 o. 13'); u2-ra (^BM 78983 r. iii 8'; ^VAT 604+ r. iii 23'; X50 o. ii 6) – mu-u2 for “TUG2” = mu2 (l.66) PWSL: mu (*VAT 1414 (+) 1442 r. 21'; *VAT 1509 (+) 1557 o. 4'; ++VAT 3529 o. 3'–4'; ^VAT 613+ r. vi' 13; K28B o. i 14', 17'; K44 o. 2') – ku-u2 for “KU3” (l.218) PWSL: ku (++BM 16901 o. 12; ++AO 3925 r. 1; ^VAT 613+ r. v' 24–25; VAT 1384 r. 9'; K1 r. iii, 8; K34 r. 1; X1 side i 5; X18 r. 6; X23 r. 4'; X40 o. 4; X1 side ii 6); ku-ga (++VAT 3422 r. 3'); ku-ke4 (X1 side ii 6) – du-u2 for “UL” = du7 (l.282) PWSL: du (*VAT 1417 o. 3'; BM 113236 r. 1; ^VAT 604+ r. iii 32'–34'; ^VAT 613+ r.  ' 26; ^VAT 615+ r. iii 6, 10; K1 o. i 31'; K43 r. 11; X46 o. 11'); du3 (K1 o. i 30') Polysyllabic Word Written with Multiple Signs in Proto Ea: – du-ru for “A” = duru5 (l.3) PWSL: du-ru (X3 o. 11–12; X15 o. i 10); du-ra (K1 o. i 29') – tu-ku-ul for “KU” = tukul (l.24) – ab-ba-ar for “LAGABxA” = ambar (l.42) PWSL: ap-pa-ar (K1 o. ii 9''); a-pa-ar (X17 r. 25'); ab-pa-re (^VAT 604+ o. i 4') – ba-ab-ba-ar for “UD” = babbar2 (l.157) PWSL: ba-ba-ar (X52 o. ii 9); ba-ba-ra (^VAT 613+ r. v' 10; Ha2 o. 2); ba-pa-? (K17 o. 4'); pa-pa-ar (K44 r. 5) – si-la for “TAR” = sila (l.198) PWSL: si-la (^VAT 613+ o. ii 26') – sa-ha-ar for “IŠ” = sahar (l.250) PWSL: sa-ha-ar (X16 o. 12') – gu-ur for “GUR” (l.345) PWSL: gu-ra (++BM 16901 r. 7'); gu-re (K45 o. 3) – ka-aš for “BI” = kaš (l.353) PWSL: ka-aš (++VAT 1344 o. 8; X41 o. iii 5'–6'); ka-ši (^VAT 615+ o. i 9')

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– nu-un for “NUN” (l.391) PWSL: nu-un (++BM 113236 r. 12; X46 r. 10; X52 r. iv 6'); nu-na (*VAT 3580 o. 5'); nu-ne (^VAT 608+ o. i 1, 3) – mu-nu-us2 for “SAL” = munus (l.426) While the use of homophonous signs and the writing of polysyllabic words with multiple signs representing each syllable is also a common means of writing words phonetically in the phonetically written sources for the laments, and some of the same writings can be found in both types of texts (for example, e for e2, ur for ur2, sa-ha-ar for sahar, and nu-un for nun),38 there are also many ways in which mono- and polysyllabic words are rendered phonetically in the lists that are uncommon, or do not occur at all in the phonetically written sources for the laments. For example, mono-syllabic words with a VC or CV reading are very frequently rendered with an extra plene-vowel, as with the forms mu-u2 for mu2, ku-u2 for ku3, and du-u2 for du7 (listed above), but also in forms like lu-u2 for lu (l.62), ba-a for ba (l.146), a-ab for ab (l.285), and e-eš3 for eš3 (l.286), in which the glossed sign is repeated, instead of being replaced by a homophonous sign, and the vowel at the beginning or end of the word is expressed with an additional sign that repeats the vowel. However, writings of these types are rarely attested in the phonetically written sources for the laments, and in the few instances in which plene-vowels do occur in the phonetic writings of monosyllabic words (for example, in the writings -de-e for -de3 in VAT 615+ r. iv 1–2, mi-i for me-e in X52 r. v 22’, and the relatively frequent addition of -u2 or -u3 to the possessive suffix -zu), the word with the plene-vowel is written with a homophonous sign (instead of the same sign), or, in the case of -u2 with -zu, the plene-vowel is probably being used to indicate vowel length or accent, and not to indicate how the sign “ZU” is to be pronounced. Similarly, although polysyllabic words like sahar and nun are sometimes written with the same multiple signs representing each syllable, these and other words frequently occur in contexts in the phonetically written sources for the laments in which they are marked with grammatical elements. In contrast to the lists where the words listed are always unmarked, the addition of a grammatical element changes the syllabic segmentation of the form, necessitating a different phonetic form than the phonetic form of the same word that occurs in the lists. The words silim and za-gin3 are written phonetically as si-li-im and za-gi-in in both the lists and the phonetically written sources for the laments, but 38 For references to the occurrence of these and other forms that are duplicated in the phonetically written sources for the laments and in the lists see the complete list of phonetic writings in Appendix 3.

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in instances in which the two words are marked with the grammatical element /a/, they are rendered phonetically as si-li-ma and za-gi-na, writings that never occur in the lists, because these and the other words listed are not marked with grammatical elements. For the same reason, the appearance of words in the context of complete lines and phrases, as opposed to the decontextualized form in which they appear in the lists, leads to much more complex phonetic writings than in the lists. This is particularly evident in the case of the numerous sandhi writings that occur in the phonetically written sources for the laments. Furthermore, the differences between the phonetic writings in the two types of texts are even more evident in the numerous inconsistencies in the writings of the same words and forms in the phonetically written sources for the laments. Although occasional variance in the writing of the same word can also be found in individual sources for the lists, as for example, in the variant writing ba-ba-ar instead of ba-ab-ba-ar in one source for the Nippur version of Proto Ea l.157 and the variants writings tu-u4, tu-u2, and tu in the phonetic gloss for tug2 (= tu9) in Proto Ea l.67, variation in how specific words are rendered is much less common, and much less complex and substantial than it is in the phonetically written sources for the laments, as evidenced, for example, by the frequent inconsistencies in the rendering of specific vowels and consonants, as well as in the multiple different writings of words like ama-ušumgal-an-na and daĝal, described above. It is consistent with the purpose of the phonetic glosses in the lists, that the phonetic writings in the sources for these lists, which were intended to teach apprentice scribes the pronunciation and reading of individual signs, are written consistently in the same way, and would have been easily comprehensible to readers and users who did not already possess this knowledge. The types of phonetic writings that occur are limited to the use of homophonous signs and the rendering of polysyllabic words with signs that correspond to each of their constituent syllabic units, and can be understood by anyone with even a basic knowledge of the cuneiform writing system. By contrast, there is a much wider range of different types of phonetic writings in the phonetically written sources for the laments, and many of these writings, including sandhi writings and the omission or disambiguation of consonants and vowels, would have required an advanced knowledge of the writing system to comprehend. Moreover, the ways in which the same words and forms are rendered is much less consistent in the phonetically written sources for the laments than it is in the phonetic glosses for the lists, making these sources more difficult to understand without prior familiarity with their content. For these reasons, it seems improbable that the phonetic writings in the phonetically written sources for the laments were derived from lists like Proto Ea, Proto Aa, or Proto Diri, and that they were intended to serve a similar purpose.

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5.2.4 Phonetic Writings as Pronunciation Aids If it is unlikely that the writings in the phonetically written sources reflect a declining knowledge of Sumerian orthography, or reflect an alternative, regional orthography that was developed to preserve the pronunciation of the laments so that it would not be forgotten, what evidence is there for the third possibility, that the phonetically written sources were intended to aid in the pronunciation of Sumerian laments when these compositions were sung or recited in performance? In a brief study of the phonetic writings that occur in one of the sources (CNMA 10051) for the lament a-ab-ba hu-luh-ha (‘Oh Angry Sea’), Raphael Kutscher compared the phonetic writings in this source with the phonetic shifts and the tendency to indicate word pronunciation that characterize the standard Emesal dialect of Sumerian.39 Although Kutscher ultimately concluded that there were both critical similarities and differences in the phonetic shifts that occur in Emesal and in phonetically written sources for laments, and called for a more detailed investigation of the phonetic writings in sources for Emesal and standard Sumerian texts,40 in an earlier description of the CNMA 10051, the phonetic source that was the basis for this comparison, he characterized this source as a “precise phonetic guide to the pronunciation of the congregational lament [a-abba hu-luh-ha]”, and stated:41 It is our belief that text B [CNMA 10051] is extra-canonical and served as an aid in the teaching of the composition (to the gala priests?) which had to be recited during services.

The evidence from the phonetic writings described and discussed in this section, suggest that Kutscher’s assessment of CNMA 10051 as a pronunciation guide is likely to be correct. It is evident from the types of writings that occur in the phonetically written sources for the laments that many of these writings were intended to make clearer the pronunciation of the laments by rendering every individual syllable in entire words and phrases and eliminating signs that do not contribute directly to their pronunciation. However, since writing and understanding the phonetic writings that occur in the phonetically written sources require advanced knowledge of the writing system and of the content of the laments, Kutscher’s suggestion that the phonetic sources were used as a “aid in the teaching of the composition” is unlikely, unless it is assumed that the trainees already knew the laments and learned the phonetic writings in 39 Kutscher 1975: 32–43. 40 Kutscher 1975: 43. 41 Kutscher 1975: 22–23.

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these sources to clarify and elucidate the pronunciation of the texts for a more immediate and practical purpose. Since many of the laments that were copied phonetically would have also been performed, it seems very likely that one such purpose might have been to aid in the performance of the compositions, by making it is easier for the performer to recognize how the words in the text were to be enunciated when sung or recited. The phonetically written sources could have served this function either by providing the ritual specialists who performed the laments with a phonological template that could be memorized or used as a mnemonic aid for the performance of a specific lament, or to elucidate the pronunciation of the laments in writing so that these sources could be used to train apprentice practitioners to learn how the laments were to be pronounced in performance, as Kutscher suggested. One particularly clear and decisive example of sources written in a highly phonetic orthography being compiled for readers, reciters, or performers to aid in the performance of Sumerian laments, is a pair of sources in the collection of the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin (VAT 1367 [VS 2: 95] and VAT 1419 [VS 2: 94]) that contain a nearly identical passage from the same lament, identified as an Ershemma to Inana, in one of the additional duplicates of the same composition (BM 85198 [CT 42: 16]). What is of particular interest in these two tablets, which are probably from Sippar, is that one of the two sources (VAT 1419) contains only the first three to four signs in each of the lines that are written in their full form in the other source (VAT 1367), followed by a blank space on the tablet, where the scribe has omitted the remainder of each line. Moreover, in contrast to VAT 1367, which is written in standard Emesal orthography, the words and phrases in VAT 1419, the source in which the lines are abbreviated, are written in a highly phonetic orthography. Examples include the following lines in VAT 1419, which read: 1: u3-u8 ga-am3-du11 u3-u8 ga-am3-du11 (I want to say, Woe! I want to say, Woe!) VAT 1419: u3 ga-am-du VAT 1367: u3-u8 ga-am3-du11 [. . .] 3: na-aĝ2 e2-ĝu10-še3 u3-u8 ga-am3-du11 (On account of my house, I want to say, Woe!) VAT 1419: -ĝi6-ĝu10-še3! VAT 1367: na-aĝ2 e2-ĝu10-še3 u3 [. . .] 5: lu2 eĝ3-ĝu10-a i-bi2 bar-ra me-en (It is me, who looks after my things) VAT 1419: ?-a-ĝu10- VAT 1367: lu2 eĝ3-ĝu10-a igi [. . .]

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The omission of all but the first word or form in all of the lines in VAT 1419 is a clear indication that the source was intended to be used by somebody who already had prior knowledge of the content of the composition, who would presumably have known the composition by memory, and would have been able to remember the content more easily simply by seeing the first word or phrase in each line. Furthermore, since mnemonic cues function more effectively when they are heard, as opposed to seen, using phonetic writings to activate the pronunciation of the beginning of each line would have made this copy a particularly effective aid in helping the performer remember the lament. Moreover, the use of blank space in places on the tablet where words and phrases have been omitted is not unique to VAT 1419, but occurs frequently in the sources for Sumerian laments, and is one of the few graphic or visual conventions that distinguish the sources for these composition from other Sumerian literary sources, suggesting that many, if not all of the Old Babylonian sources for Sumerian laments were compiled for readers and users who already knew the content of the laments from other contexts. The strongest evidence that the phonetically written sources for the laments were compiled to aid in performance, however, is the occurrence of identical types of writings in sources for Sumerian incantations from the same period. Although the number of phonetically written sources, proportionate to the number of sources written in standard Sumerian orthography is not as large for Sumerian incantations as it is for the laments, there are at least 11 Old Babylonian sources containing Sumerian incantations that are written in a highly phonetic orthography.42 Each of the five main types of phonetic writings that occur in the phonetically written sources for the laments also occur in the phonetic sources for the incantations: Homophonous Signs: – a-la for a-la2 (M5 o. ii 9) – a-ša-ga for a-ša3 (M5 o. ii 16) Phonetically written sources for laments(PWSL): a-ša (X43 r. 11; X47 r. 8')

42 These sources comprise: Meturan A (MA) = Cavigneaux and Al-Rawi 1993 and Cavigneaux and Al-Rawi 1995a (MA 1 = col. i 1- col. ii 28; MA 2 = col. ii 29- iii 5; MA 3 = col. iii 6 – iv 12; MA 4 = col. iv 14- v 6; MA 5 = col. v 7–30; MA 6 = col. v 31 – col. vi end); Meturan B (MB) = Cavigneaux and Al-Rawi 1995b; M3 = H 72 (Cavigneaux 1999); M4 = H 74 (Cavigneaux 2002); M5 = H 103 (Cavigneaux 2002); M6 = H 60 (Cavigneaux 1995); X1 = YBC 8505 (YOS 11, 68); X2 = VAT 8361 (VS 17, 3); X3 = VAT 1460 (VS 10, 192); X4 = BM 29383 (Michalowski 1993); X5 = BM 79949 (Finkel 1999: 230–31, 245).

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– bad for bad3 (MA 1: 22) – bi- for bi2- (MA 3: 16; MB 3: 19) PWSL: bi- (*VAT 1414 (+) 1442 r. 1–3; VAT 1417 r. 5'–6'; *VAT 1472 o. 10'–12'; *VAT 1546 o. 2'–5'; ++BM 78193 r. 10; ++BM 78175 o. 22–23; ++AO 3925 o. 11', r. 8; ++VAT 1356 o.? 8'; ^VAT 613+ o. i 25'); mi- (VAT 604+ r. iii 35'–40'; K1 o. i 11–12; K27B o. ii 5'–6' and 11'; K40 o. 8'–9'; G1 r. vi' 1'–2'; G5 o. i 5'; G8 r. iii 8; X2 o. 18–19, r. 13'–14'; X3 o. 14; X7 o. ii 7'–10'; X38 r. 2'; X50 o. i 4–5; X51 r. iii 4–7) – de for de2 (MA 5: 2–9; MB 5: 2–5; MA 6: 12; M5 r. iii 20) PWSL: de (X44 r. 9) – de for de6 (M5 r. iii 23-iv 2) – du for du6 (MA 1: 26) PWSL: du (++BM 16901 o. 12) – du for du11 (MA 1: 20) and du-qa-zu for du11-ga-zu (M5 r. iv 13) PWSL: du (*VAT 1414 (+) 1442 r. 1–3; ++BM 78198 o. 11'; ^VAT 604+ r. iii 35'–40'; ^VAT 613+ r. v' 26; K1 o. i 7, 11–12, 14–15, r. iii 6'; K2 o. 4'; N1 o. i 5'; X17 o. 1–2, r. 26'; X38 r. 6'; X48 r. 1'–2'; X50 o. i 5, r. iii 10'); du-ga (++BM 78193 r. 10; ++BM 16901 r. 8'; ++ BM 78175 o. 13; ++VAT 1384 r. 5'); du-ka (++BM 78175 o. 8; X50 o. i 4–5); du-qa (K39 t.e. 2; K43 r. 17) – ur for ur2 (M5 r. iii 13) PWSL: ur (*VAT 1414 (+) 1442 r. 2) – za for za3 (MA 1: 4–5; M4 r. 6; M5 o. i 19) PWSL: za (X4 o. i 8'–9') Polysyllabic Words Written with Multiple Signs: – a-la-na for alan (MA 1: 15) – a-sa-al-lu-hi for dasar-lu2-hi (M5 o. ii 6) – bu-ru for buru5 (M5 r. iii 17) PWSL: bu-ru (K1 o. ii 8''; K52 o. 3'–4'; X17 r. 25') – bu-ra-na for i7buranun (M5 r. iii 26) – da-da-ga for dadag (M5 r. iii 22) PWSL: da-da-ga (^VAT 613+ r. v' 21; X52 o. iii 8'); da-da-ge (^VAT 613+ r. v' 17) – e-zi-na-am for dezinam (M4 r. 1; M5 o. i 14) – ga-ba for gaba (M5 o. ii 19)

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PWSL: ga-ba (^VAT 608+ o. i 9, 13) – i-gi for igi (M5 o. i 4) PWSL: i-gi (++BM 78198 r. 4–5; ^VAT 608+ o. i 23, 26; ^VAT 615+ o. ii 20'–22'; X5 o. 6'–7'; X17 r. 8; X34 o. 1–2; X52 o. iii 3') – ki-ti-im for gidim (M5 r. iv 12) PWSL: ki-ti-im (X17 r. 30') – u2-šu-um-gal for ušumgal (M5 o. ii 5; X5 o. 1) PWSL: ušum-gal (*VAT 1533 r.? 1'), u3-šu-gal (^VAT 608+ o. i 8; ^VAT 615+ o. i 11'), u3-gal (^VAT 608+ o. i 12) Consonant Reduplication Avoided: – a-da for ad-da (MA 1: 25) – di-be2 for dib2-be2 (MA 1: 11; X3 o. 6) PWSL: di-be2 (++BM 78198 o. 18', r. 10; ^VAT 608+ o. iv 10'; X43 o. 9); di-ba (X25 r. 6'); di-pa (K1 o. i 36'–38') – gi-ga for gig-ga (MA 1: 17, 52; MA 5: 10) PWSL: gi-ga (X5 r. 8'; X52 r. v 20'); gi4-ga (X52 r. v 20'); ki-ga (X17 r. 26') – nam-nu-ne2 for nam-nun-ne2 (M3 r. 3) – nam-ta-ra for nam-tar-ra (M3 r. 7) – sa-ĝa2 for saĝ-ĝa2 (M5 r. iv 10) PWSL: sa-ĝa2 (K1 o. i 28', 34', r. iii 11; X34 o. 1–2'; X45 o. 11') – še-na for šen-na (M5 r. iii 22) PWSL: še-na (K1 r. iii 10; K10 o.? 3'; X45 o. 10') – ta-pa for tab-ba (MA 4: 9; M6 o. 4) – ta-ra for tar-ra (M5 r. 7) PWSL: ta-ra (X17 r. 27'); ta-re (++VAT 3417 o. col.ii', 1'; ++VAT 3426 o.? ii' 3', 5'; ++ BM 78175 o. 14–20; ^VAT 615+ r. iv 4; K1 o. i 17; G2 l.e. 1; G7 o. ii' 1'; X17 r. 31') – u3-ge for ug5-ge (MA 1: 9) PWSL: u3-ga (++AO 7697 o. i 7, 9; ^VAT 1365+ o. ii' 12'; ^AO 7685 r. 5'; ++VAT 1384 o. 7') Sandhi Writings: – a-la-ah-la for a-la2 hul-a (M5 r. iv 20)

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– di-ma-na for dim an-na (X3 o. 1) – du-ki-in for dug-gin7 (M5 r. iv 14, 21, the same source has du-ki-en in iv 24; cf. du-gi-in in M6 r. 2) – du10-sa-ra-na-ke for dub-sar an-na-ke4 (M4 o. 11 – cf. M5 du-ub?-sa-ar-rana-ke) – i-ni-in-ki-ki for en den-ki-ke4 (M5 o. ii 12) – ka-ki-da-aš-ta-am for kar-kid2 e2-eš2-dam (MA 1: 47) – ki-gi-lu-lu-bi for ki-gig lu2-ulu3-bi (MA 3: 18) – min-kam-šu-ub-tu for min3-kam-ma-aš u3-ub-du11 (MA 3: 25) – sa-ĝa2-an-ti-ib-le for saĝ na-an-ti-bala-e (M5 r. iv 15) – u2-du-uh-lu for udug2-hul (M5 r. iii 11) Determinatives Omitted: – a-sa-al-lu-hi for dasar-lu2-hi (M5 o. ii 6) – a-sa-re for dasar (M6 o. 15) – ba-an-su-ra for ĝišbansur (MA 6: 39) PWSL: ba-an-su-ur (X46 r. 3); ); pa3-an-su-ra (++AO 3925 r. 7); pa-an-su-ur2 (^VAT 608+ o. i 17, 20) – bu-ra-na for i7buranun (M5 r. iii 26) – e-ri-du-a for eriduki (X5 o. 1) – ha-šu-ra for ĝišhašhur (M3 r. 5) PWSL: ha-šu-ra (*VAT 3580 o.? 4'; K44 b.e. 1); ha-aš-hu-ur2 (X4 o. i 10'); ha-ašku-ra (X52 o. i 5) – iš-gar3 for munusaš2-gar3 (M4 r. 5; M5 o. i 18) – ku-su for dku3-su3 (MA 1: 59) – ma-nu for ĝišma-nu (X3 o.1) – ni-in-gi-li-an-na-ak-ka (M4 r. 7; M5 o. i 20) and niĝ2-gi-li-li-an-na-ka (M5 o. ii 5) for dnin-kilim-an-na

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The other common types of phonetic writings that occur in the phonetically written sources for the laments are also well attested in the phonetic sources for the incantations: Phonemes not Attested in Sumerian – /q/ and /y/: – a-ya for a-a (MA 1: 33–34; MA 3: 24; MA 4: 19–20; MA 5: 14–15; MA 6: 12–13; M5 o. ii 7) PWSL: a-ya (*VAT 1509 (+) 1557 r. 8', 10'; *VAT 1548 o. 5–6; ++VAT 1344 o. 13; ++ CBS 35 r. 11'; K43 r. 15–19; X1 side ii 1; X9 o. ii' 2'; possibly X10 o. 1'; X17 o. 23–24, r. 31'; X51 r. iv 3–4) – du-qa-zu for du11-ga-zu (M5 r. iv 13) PWSL: du-qa (K39 t.e. 2; K43 r. 17) – qa-na for ga-na (M5 o. ii 11) – ki-si-qa for ki-si3-ga (MA 3: 47) – su-qa-al for sukkal (M5 o. ii 5) Phonetic Rendering of Reduplicated Forms: – di-di-be2 for dib2-dib2-be2 (X3 o. 7) PWSL: di-di-be2 (N1 o. ii 11') – gu-ul-gu-ul for gul-gul (X1 o. 5 = r. 5) PWSL: gu-ul-gu-ul (N1 o. ii 4'; X51 r. iv 7, 11); ku-ul-ku-ul (G2 o. 4) – ki-ki-ši-da for keš2-keš2-da (M4 r. 6; M5 o. i 19) – su-ur-su-ur for sur-sur (M5 r. iv 14) – tu-tu-ur for tur-tur (M5 o. ii 22) PWSL: tu-tu-ur (++BM 78175 o. 7); tu-tu-re (++BM 78175 o. 8); tu-tu (K1 o. ii 8") Omission of Consonants and Vowels: – du10-sa-ra for dub-sar (M4 o. 11) – du10-gu for dungu (MA 5: 22) – e-ga-re for engar (M5 r. iv 11) – nu-mu-bi for numun-bi (M5 r. iii 16) – nu-ga-al for nun-gal (M5 r. iv 10)

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– ki-is3-ki-ra for ki-sikil (MA 3: 5) PWSL: ki-iš-ke-el (K1 o. i 25'); ki-iš-ki-il2 (K43 r. 2); ki-iš-ki-il (X51 r. iv 14) – it-ku-re for (i3-)tukur2 (M5 r. iii 13) Moreover, the same inconsistencies in the phonetic writings of the same consonants and vowels as well as of the same words and forms that can be observed in the phonetically written sources for the laments are equally present in the phonetic sources for the incantations: Inconsistent Writing of Vowels and Consonants: /e/ and /i/ – e-me (MA 3: 22; MA 4: 1–2, 20, 25; MB 4: 1; M4 o. 9; M5 o. i 9) and i-me (X4 o. 6) for eme – -še (MA 2: 1–3, 5; MA 3: 10, 38; M5 r. iii 8 – note that the same source write -ši in iii 10) and -ši (MA 2: 6; MA 6: 8; M3 r. 7; M6 o. 11) for -še3 PWSL: -še (*VAT 1414 (+) 1442 o. 16'; *VAT 1416 r. 12; *VAT 1420 o. 5'; *VAT 1509 (+) 1557 o. 21'; *VAT 1546 o. 2'–5'; *VAT 1556 o. 7'; *VAT 3544 r. 2'; *VAT 3547 o. 1', r. 2; ^VAT 604+ r. iii 4, 7; ^VAT 615+ o. i 10'; K1 o. ii 4''–5''; K7 r. 2; K9 o. 6'; K26 o. 3', 5', r. 2' and 4'; K27B r. iii 3–4; K44 b.e. 1; K45 r. 8'; G1 o. iv' 4'–7'; G3 r. vii' 6'; G4 r. viii' 3'; G6 o. iii' 3–7, r. iv' 3; G8 r. iv 1; G9 r. iv' 1'; G11 r. iv' 1'; N1 o. ii 8'; Ha1 r. 5–8; X26 r. 6'; X37 t.e. 2; VAT 1544 o. 7'); -ši (*VAT 3526+ o. 4; ++BM 78198 o. 12', r. 5; ++BM 113236 r. 6; ++BM 78175 o. 26; ++AO 7697 o. i 8–9; ^VAT 608+ r. iii 11', 13'; ^VAT 613+ o. ii 27'; ^VAT 615+ o. i 9', ii 30', 33'; ++VAT 1384 o. 6'; X9 o. ii' 9'; X16 o. 3'; X41 r. v 7–8; X50 o. i 1, ii 1–4; X52 o. ii 6–8, r. iv 4'–8', vi 3–4) /g/ and /k/ – ga-ka-az for gaz-gaz (M5 r. iv 14) – ga-te-eš for ka-teš2 (M5 o. i 23) – ka-am-ka-am for gam-gammušen (M5 r. iii 118) /b/ and /p/ – ba-ap-pa-ar for babbar (M4 r. 6; M5 o. i 19) PWSL: ba-ba-ar (X52 o. ii 9); ba-ba-ra (^VAT 613+ r. v' 10; Ha2 o. 2); ba-pa-? (K17 o. 4'); pa-pa-ar (K44 r. 5) – gup-pa for gub-ba (MA 6: 56) – ta-pa (MA 4: 9; M6 o. 4) and ta-ab (X3 o. 8) for tab

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/d/ and /t/ – ku-te for ku5-de3 (M5 r. iii 13) – su-te-en for su-dinmušen (M5 r. iii 17) /ĝ/ and /n/ – ni-iš-gi for ĝiš-gi (M4 r. 4; M5 o. i 17) PWSL: ne2-eš-ki (++BM 78175 r. 6'); ni5-iš-gi (X5 r. 13') – ni-iš for ĝiš3 (M4 r. 5; M5 o. i 18) Entire Words: – ama-lu (MA 3: 3) and a-ma-lu (MB 3: 3) for amalu PWSL: ama-lu2 (G1 o. iii' 9'–10') – ga-na-qa-na (M4 r. 4; M5 o. i 17); qa-na (M5 o. ii 11); and ga-na (M5 o. ii 15–16; iii 19) for gana2(-gana2) – gig (MA 3: 26); ki-gig (MA 5: 16); gig-gig (MA 4: 39; MA 6: 8, 14, 48, 57); and ki-gi (M5 r. iii 6) for gi4-gi4 – ha-šu-ra (M3 r. 5) and ha-aš2-hu-ra (M5 r. iii 15) for ĝišhašhur PWSL: ha-šu-ra (*VAT 3580 o.? 4'; K44 b.e. 1); ha-aš-hu-ur2 (X4 o. i 10'); ha-ašku-ra (X52 o. i 5) – ni-in-gi-li-an-na-ak-ka (M4 r. 7; M5 o. i 20) and niĝ2-gi-li-li-an-na-ka (M5 o. ii 5) for d nin-kilim-an-na Since the types of phonetic writings that occur in the phonetically written sources for the incantations are very similar, and in many cases even identical, to the phonetic writings that occur in the phonetically written sources for the laments, it is very likely that these writings had a similar function for both types of texts. Incantations, like Sumerian laments, were recited in ritual contexts to produce a tangible and beneficial effect. In the case of incantations, the purpose of the recitation of the text was to expel a demonic or malevolent entity responsible for a sickness or misfortune, or to protect people, places, and cultic objects from being visited by such an entity by purifying them, or by means of the apotropaic quality of the spell. Since the recitation of an incantation was essential to its efficacy, incantations had to be recited or read out loud in the presence of the agent of misfortune, and the person, place, or object that it had afflicted, or could potentially afflict in order to take effect, and achieve the desired effect of removing the malevolent entity or protecting the patient from being harmed by it. The phonetic writings

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in the sources for incantations that contain them were therefore almost certainly intended to articulate and reproduce the sound of the spell when the incantation was recited. Although it is also possible that the phonetic writings could have been viewed as a performative means for the incantation to recite itself from the tablet, or object on which it was inscribed, from a more practical perspective, the writings would have also been useful for indicating how the words in the spell were to be read out loud for the exorcist reciting it. Since Sumerian laments and incantations were recited and performed orally, and the phonetic sources for both types of texts contain the same types of phonetic writings, it is not improbable that the phonetically written sources for the laments served a similar purpose, and like the phonetic sources for incantations, were intended to serve as an aid for pronouncing the texts in recitation or performance.

5.3 The Interface of Sound and Meaning in Sumerian Laments Returning to the question posed at the beginning of the chapter: what was the relationship between sound and meaning in the performance of Sumerian laments? If the phonetically written sources for the laments were compiled to aid in the performance of these compositions by clarifying and elucidating the pronunciation of the texts, as argued in the previous section, then the phonetic sources provide at least one clear indication that in some instances, sound was considered to be just as important, if not more important than meaning. But not all of the sources for Sumerian laments are phonetic, and all of the known Sumerian laments, without exception, have a semantic meaning that relates directly to the purpose of performing the texts, which was to induce grief and mourning to appease the anger of the gods. How then did the sound and meaning of the laments interact in performance, particularly in instances in which the texts could be heard, but not understood, and what role did the interaction of sound and meaning play in helping the laments achieve their function? In addition to the similarities in the types of phonetic writings that occur in the sources for Sumerian laments and incantations, another critical respect in which laments are similar to incantations is in the way the meaning and sound of the language in which they are composed would have interacted when they were recited or performed. Since Sumerian was no longer spoken during the periods in which written copies of the laments are attested, it is unlikely that many of the people who participated in, or experienced the performance of Sumerian laments understood the meaning of their linguistic content. In partial contrast, many incantations are composed in the language that was written and spoken at the time they were written. Incantations dating to Early Dynastic and Ur III

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periods, in the second half of the third millennium, are nearly always written in Sumerian, which was the language that was written and spoken in southern Mesopotamia during this time, while incantations dating to the second and first millennia, when Akkadian had replaced Sumerian as the primary language, were sometimes, but not always, written in Akkadian. Since the incantations in both of these periods were written in the language that was spoken at the time, they would have almost certainly been understood when they were recited. However, by the second millennium, the period when the earliest known written sources for Sumerian laments were compiled, incantations also began to be written in languages other than the primary spoken language that would not have been widely understood. The majority of these incantations are written in Sumerian, which had already died out as a spoken language by this time, but a smaller number were also written in languages like Elamite and Hurrian that were not indigenous to Mesopotamia, or in an abracadabra-language, consisting of meaningless, nonsense syllables. Like Sumerian laments, the meaning of the incantations in this group would therefore probably not have been comprehensible to many or all of the people who heard them recited or performed. One particularly productive approach to the use of texts in rituals has been to examine the content of cultic texts not only for its semantic meaning, but also with respect to the pragmatic function of performing it in a ritual context. The relationship between semantics and pragmatics is specifically addressed in speechact theory, which has influenced numerous subsequent anthropological studies of ritual and performance.43 In his book How to Do Things With Words,44 which contains the initial formulation of the ideas undergirding this theory, J. L. Austin 43 Although the focus of much of speech-act theory, particularly as formulated by Austin and Searle, is on the representational aspects of language, and specifically the distinction between the semantic content of a linguistic utterance, and the pragmatic effects of such utterances when they are used representationally, one of the primary shortcomings of this approach is that it neglects to take into account the other performative aspects of speech-acts, and in particular, their affective, non-representational dimension. As argued by Jane Bennett and William Connolly, “language is not only a matter of significations and failures of signification. It is also about sound, noise, and differential intensities or affects. Is there not, as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari suggested, a ‘sonority’ to language that cannot be ignored as long as humans are animals? Sonority: the aural effectivity that living, moving, snorting, weeping, laughing bodies possess. Sonority does not represent, for it does not operate via images or in the visual mode; it is rather, a ‘block that opposes the visual memory’” (Bennett and Connolly 2002). The sonorous aspects of Mesopotamian laments are briefly considered in this section; however, a fuller exposition of the interplay of the pragmatic function of the representational with the non-representational aspects of linguistic utterances like sonority in generating specific performative effects would require another study. 44 Austin 1962: 1975.

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made a critical distinction between two different types of linguistic expressions. The first, which he called “constative statements,” comprise descriptive expressions whose semantic content can generally be evaluated as either true or false.45 The second, which he labeled “performative utterances,” refers to expressions which are used to perform an action. In contrast to constative statements, which communicate semantic meaning, performative utterances move beyond semantics to cause an actual change in an existing state of affairs.46 The example that Austin gives to illustrate this is the use of the phrase “I do” during a wedding. By uttering these words at the appropriate time the bride and groom do more than just describe what they are doing; they cause themselves to be married through the very act of uttering the phrase. In contrast to descriptive statements like “it is raining,” which describe a fact about a situation, the expression “I do”, when uttered in the context of a wedding, is doing more than describing; it is actively causing something to happen.47 John Searle, working from the same basic distinction between constative statements and performative utterances, later developed this idea into a more complete system in his book Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language.48 In his fuller formulation of the theory, speech acts are conceived as a “total system of communication” in which there is an inseparable connection between what an utterance means semantically, what the speaker intends to accomplish by issuing the utterance, and what the intended recipient interprets the utterance to mean.49 Applying this conception of language use to written texts, particularly when they are performed in rituals, the semantic meaning of a text is inseparable from what it is intended to accomplish and what it actually succeeds in accomplishing. As a consequence, texts express their meaning in rituals – and in many other contexts – not directly or solely through their content, but instead through how their content is used to accomplish the intended effect of the performance as a whole. In a pioneering study of poetic language, Roman Jakobson argued that since language is never self-contained, a linguistic study of language must begin by taking into account the addresser and the addressee, as well as the content, message, contact, and code of a communicative act.50 To each of these components of language use he assigned one of six functions, each of which is focused on the primary orientation of the specific use of language in that instance: a refer45 Austin 1975: 3. 46 Austin 1975: 6–7. 47 Austin 1975: 5–7, 12–13. 48 Searle 1969. 49 Searle 1969: 21. 50 Jakobson 1960.

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ential function;51 an emotive function;52 a conative function;53 a phatic function;54 a metalingual function;55 and a poetic function.56 With the possible exception of the poetic function, which is focused on the message for its own sake, all of these functions have a pragmatic dimension, which connects the function of the language with at least one aspect of the communicative act outside the message itself. The referential function of language, for example, is oriented toward the context in which the language is used, while the phatic function, defined as a message serving to establish, prolong, or discontinue conversation, necessarily situates the significance of the message in the interaction between at least two participants, and deemphasizes the importance of the content of the message itself.57 In each of these instances what the language is doing pragmatically takes precedence over the purely formal aspects of semantics, grammar, and phonology. The relevance of Jakobson’s functions is particularly evident in the case of ritual language, which could be argued always to involve some combination of all six functions. Rituals involving two or more people are inherently social and are used to transmit messages by means of a complex system of communication, which, when the recitation or performance of texts is involved, uses language referentially to direct attention to the context of the ritual, emotively to call attention to the intention of the performers, conatively to transmit its meaning to the addressees, phatically to ensure that the ritual is continually prolonged, poetically to emphasize the message of the performed texts, and metalingually to establish and re-establish that the performers and the audience are using the same code. With respect to the use of written texts in rituals, the first four functions can be utilized to varying degrees, but the poetic and metalinguistic functions of language are unquestionably the most central. Jakobson defines the metalingual function of language as the use of language to check or ensure that the addresser and addressee are using the same code.58 In a series of influential studies by the linguistic anthropologist Michael Silverstein,59 Jakobson’s conception of metalinguistic functioning has been developed considerably to argue that there are many additional types of metalingual

51 Jakobson 1960: 353. 52 Jakobson 1960: 354–55. 53 Jakobson 1960: 355. 54 Jakobson 1960: 355–56. 55 Jakobson 1960: 356. 56 Jakobson 1960: 356–57. 57 Jakobson 1960: 353–57. 58 Jakobson 1960: 356. 59 See, for example, Silverstein 1976, 1981, and 1993, among others.

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communication beyond the purely referential use of metalanguage implied by Jakobson’s definition. In Silverstein’s view, metalanguage is always pragmatic, and the pragmatic use of language necessarily involves a metapragmatic dimension, which he defines as the “overt conceptualization of speech events” and acts when pragmatic rules are purposively manipulated.60 In a later treatment of metapragmatic phenomena,61 Silverstein argued that the metapragmatic use of language operates as a metapragmatic-pragmatic nexus, governed by three axes of comparison, which he identified as “metasemantic semiosis”, “denotational explictness”, and “pragmatic calibration”.62 The primary distinguishing feature of each of the three axes is the extent to which the speaker is aware of the rules and function of his or her use of metapragmatic language. Silverstein claims that speakers are the most aware of the metasemantic semiotic aspects of language use, because they are unavoidably referential, continuously segmentable, and presuppose a context which is immediately accessible and understandable to the speaker.63 One type of pragmatic calibration which is particularly pertinent to ritual is what Silverstein terms “nomic calibration”.64 An example of nomic calibration is when the interactional text, or textualized event, is mythical, but the event used to signal it is not.65 As noted by Charles Briggs, this form of nomic calibration occurs when, during a ritual, the imaginary space of a mythological narrative is mapped onto the physical features of the landscape in the place where the ritual is being performed, causing the superordinate space of the narrative to converge with the profane space of the ritual, which belongs to a different and fundamentally incompatible ontological register.66 In this instance, and in ritual more broadly, ritual, and the speech events that take place within in, incorporates metapragmatic devices, like the overt reconfiguration of the indexical meaning of the landscape, to effect a pragmatic change of state in the participants by transforming their profane environment, and with it the space occupied by the participants, into the sacred space of the narrative. Since the work metapragmatic speech is doing to effect this transformation takes place without the direct awareness of the performers and the participants, it also has a strong ideological component,

60 Silverstein 1976: 48. 61 Silverstein 1993. 62 Silverstein 1993: 38–40. 63 Silverstein 1981: 5. 64 Silverstein 1993: 52. 65 Silverstein 1993: 52. 66 Briggs 1993: 200.

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producing a change in the way reality is perceived that is experienced as a completely natural and unquestionable representation of how the world actually is. When the emphasis is shifted from the formal study of the phonetic writings in the Sumerian sources for laments to their pragmatic functions, the extreme variability in the extent to which the same words and forms are written phonetically would suggest that at the level of pragmatics and metapragmatics, the scribes who compiled the phonetic sources for the laments were much less concerned with finding an orthographic means of rendering Sumerian phonology precisely and accurately than they were with creating a convenient and effective means of making it easier to pronounce the texts during performance so that they sounded like they were written in Sumerian. From the perspective of pragmatics and metapragmatics, as it is described by Silverstein, the use of a different and distinct register of language that is both confined to and inextricably associated with a specific social context belongs to the metapragmatic devices he identifies as metasemantic semiotic. Instances in which a separate register of the language is used in a rigidly prescribed social context are characterized by Silverstein as being metapragmatically transparent, since the use of the register unavoidably refers the recipients to the context with which the register is associated and in so doing presupposes that the recipients are already aware of the register’s connection to the context in which it is used. From the contexts in which Emesal occurs, it is clear that it had many of the same features and was also metapragmatically transparent. Like the example of the mother-in-law register of Djirbal given by Silverstein, in which there is an entirely separate set of vocabulary that was obligatory, but also could only be spoken in the presence of a mother-in-law, the social contexts in which Emesal was used were also rigidly prescribed. Since Emesal was probably only used in place of conventional Sumerian when cultic laments were performed, and less frequently, in mythological or literary contexts in which goddesses or women speak, its use alone would have been sufficient to activate awareness of the context it presupposed. If one of the functions of Emesal then was to trigger awareness of the social context with which it was associated, simply performing a text that sounded like Emesal would have been all that was necessary to accomplish this purpose, particularly since it is likely that few people participating in the rituals with Emesal laments would have understood their content. That the primary function of the phonetic writings in sources for Emesal laments was intended more to reproduce the general sound of the register so that hearing it would activate recognition of the context with which it was associated, and not to ensure that individual words and forms were pronounced correctly is evident from the types of phonetic writings that appear in these sources. The proportionately large number of phonetic writings in which polysyllabic

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words, typically written with a single sign, are written with multiple signs to delineate each individual syllable is a strong indication that metapragmatic writings such as these were intended to ensure that the words as a whole, as opposed to the individual phonetic segments within them, were pronounced clearly and recognizably. Moreover, the frequent use of sandhi writings in which the pronunciation of pairs of words and forms could be pronounced recognizably as a group at the expense of phonemic segments that are eliminated and word and morpheme boundaries that are violated, is the opposite of what would be expected if the goal of these writings was to ensure that the individual phonemes of the words in these phrases were pronounced accurately. Clear examples of this include the writing mi-li-gur-u3 for me-limx gur3-ru in VAT 613+ in which the final “m” of me-limx is omitted at the end of the word, presumably because its presence would have been obscured by the phonetically similar /g/ at the beginning of the next word (gur3) when the two words were spoken in sequence; and the writing ama-šu-ga-la-na for ama-ušumgal-an-na in VAT 615+, in which both the “u” and “m” of ušum are omitted in the presence of the neighboring phonemes “a” and “g”. In both instances, the full phonetic structures of the words me-limx and ušum have been reduced in order to reproduce more clearly the pronunciation of the entire phrase in which the words appear at the expense of accurately replicating the pronunciation of the individual words within it. Lastly, the attention devoted to replicating the general sound of words and not their exact pronunciation is further underscored by the inconsistency with which the same words and morphemes are written phonetically, often even within a single source. The group of sources for Sumerian laments that were copied phonetically belonged to an active liturgical tradition in which performance played a critical role. In considering the function of ritual as it emerges from anthropological analyses of it, it becomes evident that the meaning of the compositions that are performed is secondary to the effect of the performance as whole. In fact, there seems to be a direct tension between semantic content, which typically requires analysis and is open to interpretation, and the desired purpose of ritual, which necessitates an immediate and uncritical emotional response. As argued by Roy Rappaport, rituals are not merely an alternative form of communication, but rather “there are certain things that can only be expressed in ritual”.67 In other words, rituals are able to communicate something that cannot be expressed by semantics alone. As shown by the continued performance of Sumerian laments long after their meaning had ceased to be understood – and the emphasis that

67 Rappaport 1979: 174.

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was placed on reproducing the general sound of the liturgical language of these compositions – there seems to have been a clear awareness that language was important not just for what it meant, but for what it could be used to do. The types of writings that occur in the phonetically written sources for the laments, and the inconsistency in the way words and elements, and specific vowels and consonants are written strongly suggest that in certain instances, more emphasis was placed on how these texts sounded when they were sung or recited than on what they meant. Although the slight inconsistencies in the way words and elements were pronounced and the interchange of phonetically related consonants and vowels would not have prevented somebody who knew the texts from recognizing which words and forms were intended, the sound of their language would have been immediately recognizable to anyone who had learned the cultural meaning of this sound and its relation to the ritual acts with which it was associated. Since the cultural meaning of the laments, and its relation to the ritual acts that accompanied them, would have been inextricably associated with the sound of the language in which the texts of the laments were composed, simply hearing the language would have been sufficient to active the emotion of intense grief associated with it. Moreover, since sound is irreducible to meaning, singing and reciting the laments would have naturalized and legitimized their performance, by grounding it in the everyday experience of grief, and the hope for deliverance the familiar sounds of their language would have promised.

Chapter 6 Conclusion – the Cultural Function of Mesopotamian Lamenting Ritual is a fundamental and essential aspect of society and culture, and in particular of religious practice. Regardless of whether ritual is conceived broadly to encompass any form of behavior that involves carrying out habitual or prescribed actions, or defined more narrowly as “the performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances not encoded by the performers”,1 there are no societies without rituals, or people in any time or place that have been able to exist in the absence of them. From birth to death, from waking up in the morning until going to sleep at night, nearly every element of everyday life, mundane or sacred, conscious or unconscious, meaningful or meaningless, is governed by repeated patterns of behavior that are not innate or biological, but instead socially and culturally specific. Of the many different forms of ritual, religious ritual has been studied to a much greater extent than rituals of any other type, perhaps because it is outwardly the most distinct, or because, like religion more generally, it is frequently a source of mystery and fascination for those who do not practice it. With respect to the question of differing “worldviews” or “mentalities” raised at the beginning of this book, religious ritual, like the ancient past, is often considered to be “wholly Other” and “outside of normal experience and indescribable in its terms”.2 As with all practices that cannot be easily understood and are unfamiliar to those who study them, the same questions are asked of religious rituals that are asked of any behaviors that are thought to require an explanation. What are they? How and when are they carried out? By whom? What purpose do they serve? And almost inevitably: why do people continue to perform them in the absence of any apparent empirical evidence that they can fulfill the functions that are attributed to them by their practitioners? One of the first difficulties confronted in studying ritual is determining what it is, and nearly every general study of ritual includes an attempt to define it. Although there are almost as many definitions of ritual as there are scholars who study it,3 it has become increasingly more common to avoid trying to define ritual 1 Rappaport 1979: 174. 2 Otto 1917 apud Jacobsen 1976: 3. 3 See, in particular, the list of definitions of ritual compiled by the ritual studies scholar, Ronald Grimes, which includes close to 100 different definitions of ritual proposed by different scholars from the 19th century until the present (Grimes 2014b). https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501512650-006

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universally, and instead to use the term “ritual” as a heuristic concept for identifying practices that possess one or more a common features that share a “family resemblance”.4 Understanding ritual in this way avoids reifying or essentializing the concept, while at the same time allowing for practices with similar features to be studied as a group, apart from practices that do not possess any of the same features, to arrive at conclusions that apply more generally to practices across the group as a whole. While religious ritual has been studied from a wide range of perspectives, what nearly all theories of ritual have in common is the assumption that rituals are carried out to fulfill a specific function. In the evolutionary theories of ritual from the 19th century, like those of Edward Tylor and Robertson Smith, ritual belongs to an early stage of human development, and is a “primitive” practice that is carried out as a superstition, resulting from an erroneous understanding of the laws of cause and effect.5 When viewed from this perspective, the “function” of ritual is to provide an alternate means of controlling and influencing the natural world that precedes the development of logical reasoning. In opposition to this view, a sociological theory of ritual was proposed near the turn of the century by scholars like Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, who attributed to ritual the social function of forging groups and collectivities by creating a sense of communal unity. In the decades that followed, further theories of ritual were developed, including the psychoanalytic theory of ritual proposed by Sigmund Freud, in which ritual is claimed to have originated from neurotic sets of actions (or Zwangsneurose) that are obsessively carried out as a substitute for repressed, unconscious instincts.6 Two decades later, this theory was gradually superseded by the structuralist approaches of Claude Lévi-Strauss and his successors, in which ritual is seen as a symbolic system for imposing order and meaning on experience, primarily through binary oppositions like good-evil, clean-unclean, raw-cooked, etc., which, in the words of Clifford Geertz, serve as both a “model of” and a “model for” how the world is and should be conceived.7 More recent approaches include the study of ritual and its relation to performance (in which ritual is studied for what it does as opposed to what it means);8 ritual and

4 For a similar understanding of ritual, see, for example, Grimes 2014a: 186–89. 5 See Chapter 1, Section 1 for a discussion of Tylor, Robertson Smith, Mauss, Freud and other 19th and early 20th century theories of religion and ritual noted here. For a more detailed overview of these and other theories of ritual, see also Bell 2009: 1–89. 6 Freud 1907. 7 Geertz 1966. 8 For performative approaches to ritual see, in particular, Tambiah 1968 and Bourdieu 1972. Performativity has also been studied from a wide range of other perspectives, including the

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collective memory formation;9 ritual and political power10; and most recently, from a psychological perspective.11 Although differing widely in what the specific function of ritual is thought to be, the explanations for why rituals are performed can be divided into two main groups. One group consists of social-functional theories of ritual which argue that ritual is a means of achieving a particular social end. The other group consists primarily of evolutionary-psychological theories, in which ritual is considered to be a form of action that is based on an inherently flawed conception of how the natural world works. The first type of explanation, in which ritual is argued to have a social function, is reflected in the following statement by Catherine Bell, who in writing about the relationship between myth and ritual, argued: A myth – like ritual – simultaneously imposes an order, accounts for the origin and nature of that order, and shape’s people’s dispositions to experience that order in the world around them.12

In this view, ritual actively transforms the worldview of the people who experience and participate in it, creating an image of the world that is made to seem natural through the participation in rituals in which this image is presented and reinforced. A similarly strong view of the social functionality of ritual is reflected in the following statement by Roy Rappaport, who also argues, like Bell, that ritual is a means of naturalizing the unnatural (or supernatural), locating its capacity to do so in the way it presents sacred postulates and numinous experiences as unfalsifiable and undeniable: The unfalsifiable supported by the undeniable yields the unquestionable, which transforms the dubious, the arbitrary, and the conventional into the correct, the necessary, and the natural.13

In contrast to the functional approaches to ritual, which understand ritual as a tool for shaping people’s minds to believe in or accept a vision of the world that is not completely natural, the evolutionary and psychological theories of ritual,

relationship between ritual and theater (see, most notably, Schechner 1988 and Turner 1987), and the role of performance in gender construction (see especially Butler 1999). For an overview of these and other approaches to performativity, see Loxley 2007. 9 In particular, Halbwachs 1925, Nora 1989, and Connerton 1989. 10 See, especially, Kertzer 1988. 11 For influential psychological approaches to ritual, see, among many others, Sperber 1996; Whitehouse 2000 and 2004; McCauley and Lawson 2002; and Boyer 2001. 12 Bell 2009: 21. 13 Rappaport 1979: 217.

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proposed by Robertson Smith, Freud, and more recent cognitive psychologists like Whitehouse, Boyer, and Sperber, attribute ritual to the inherent fallibility of the human mind, and in particular, its tendency to succumb to irrational or illogical thinking. For earlier evolutionary theorists like Robertson Smith, this deficiency is assumed to be characteristic of a lower stage in the evolution of the mind before the development of logic, reason, and science, whereas in contemporary psychological approaches to ritual, ritual is argued to coerce people into believing falsehoods by appealing to the emotions and suppressing or circumventing critical thinking in various ways. One of many recent examples of the latter view is the following statement by Pascal Boyer, who argues that ritual and religion function by bypassing careful reasoning and activating inference systems that make supernatural agents and concepts seem real: So it may well be the case that rituals are not so much a result of people’s representations of the gods’ powers as one of its many causes. That is, rituals are organized in such a way that they give a particular shape and tenor to people’s notions of supernatural agents and make more plausible the gods’ involvement in their existence.14

The social-functional and evolutionary-psychological approaches reveal a basic tension in the study of ritual. Is ritual the result of the way the mind works, or does it actively shape and influence the way people think and see the world? Is ritual a product of certain types of cultures, or is it a medium for transmitting cultural knowledge? Does ritual stand in direct opposition to logic and reason, or is it a complementary means of creating order and legitimizing social norms? While these questions are still of primary concern in nearly all of the approaches to ritual that have been developed during the past two centuries, in recent studies it has become more common to reject these dichotomies and to argue instead that there are many different types of rituals, which do not share the same function or functions, and which, in many cases, are not reducible to a single function or psychological cause. One of the leading proponents of a more pluralistic understanding of ritual is the ritual studies specialist, Ronald Grimes. As noted in the Introduction,15 Grimes argued that rituals have a function in at least two different senses of the word. On the one hand, rituals can accomplish specific objectives, such as creating a sense of communal unity or allegiance to a political movement, but on the other, they can also have specific effects on the people who participate in them, such as eliciting a particular emotional response or arousing hostility against a

14 Boyer 2001: 237. 15 See Chapter 1, Section 3.

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rival group. Furthermore, rituals can accomplish their functions in either or both senses of the term to greater or lesser extents, effectively or ineffectively, and in some instances, rituals have no apparent function at all, or their purported function is secondary to the other reasons why the ritual is performed. In accordance with the position that there is not a universal definition of ritual, but instead ritual practices that share common elements, Grimes proposed a method for studying ritual that takes into account the characteristic features of rituals, the various modes in which rituals are performed, and the different functions (in both senses of the term) that rituals can serve. Envisioning ritual as a set of units that interact to generate ritual processes, Grimes defined ritual as “embodied, condensed, and prescribed enactment”.16 Elaborating on each of the concepts in the definition, Grimes understands “embodied” as meaning to involve the body in an overt and direct way; “condensed” as being “packed tightly” so as to set ritual apart from ordinary and quotidian behavior by requiring that it be “unpacked” in order to be understood; “prescribed” as there being a right and a wrong way of performing the ritual; and “enacted” as a manner of performing that distinguishes ritual from both theater and ordinary action by putting something “into force or into play”.17 In addition, Grimes also developed a schema for classifying rituals of different types that in contrast to typologies that are based on the content, structure, or function of the ritual, is based instead on the mode in which the ritual is performed.18 In this schema, Grimes identified ritualization, decorum, ceremony, magic, liturgy, and celebration as the six main types of modes of performing rituals. He associated each of these six modes with specific sets of “layers” (understood in the sense of layered aspects that interact to give different types of rituals depth and density), actions, and moods.19 The “layers” of the magic mode, for example, include that it is causal, means-end, and technologically oriented; the “actions” that it involves include making, causing, and manipulating; and the “moods” with which it is associated include anxiety, desiring, or ambivalence.20 By contrast, the liturgical mode is associated with the layers religious and sacred; the actions mediating, invocating and praising; and the moods reverence, attunement, and correctness.21 As with Grimes’s definition of ritual, these modes and

16 Grimes 2014a: 196. 17 Grimes 2014a: 195–96. 18 Grimes 2014a: 203–207. 19 For a table of all six modes and their associated layers, actions, and moods, see Grimes 2014a: 204. 20 Grimes 2014a: 204. 21 Grimes 2014a: 204.

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their associated layers, actions, and moods were intended as a heuristic for classifying rituals that are performed in a similar manner, and not as a description of “facts” about rituals of different types. Recognizing that there are certain rituals that are not carried out in any of the six modes, and other rituals that possess different aspects of more than one mode, the schema nonetheless provides a useful means of orientation for classifying rituals on the basis of shared features without necessitating that any of the features are absolute, or that rituals must be associated with all of the same layers, actions, and moods before they can be compared to other rituals attributable to the same mode. In conjunction with proposing a flexible definition of ritual, in which ritual is understood as the interaction of actions of specific types (embodied, condensed, prescribed, and enacted), and enumerating the modes in which rituals are performed (ritualization, decorum, ceremony, magic, liturgy, and celebration), Grimes also developed an equally heuristic framework for identifying the functions of ritual. Distinguishing ritual functions (what a ritual actually accomplishes) from ritual intentions (what the practitioners of a ritual think they are accomplishing) and ritual effects (what happens, intended or otherwise, when a ritual is performed),22 Grimes identified four sets of functions, conceived as binary pairs of functions at opposite ends of a continuum, that he argues scholars persistently attribute to rituals23: 1) Empowering and disempowering groups 2) Attuning and disattuning bodies 3) Reinforcing the status quo and enacting transformations 4) Making and unmaking meaning. As a means of empowering or disempowering groups, rituals can be used both as a means of empowering a group by conveying to its members that they are unique and superior to other groups, and at the other end of the continuum, to generate anger against another group to weaken its power and authority.24 With respect to attuning and disattuning bodies, rituals, in Grimes’s words, can “model bodily comportment outside rituals by prescribing actions inside rituals”,25 but, at the other extreme, they can also “routinize emotions and dull the senses”.26 22 Grimes 2014a: 301. 23 Grimes 2014a: 302. For a detailed description of each of these pairs of functions, see Grimes 2014a: 302–28. 24 Grimes 2014a: 302–306. 25 Grimes 2014a: 307. 26 Grimes 2014a: 310.

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Similarly, rituals can “reinforce the status quo” by associating ritual with tradition, or conversely, enact transformations by stimulating or introducing change: On the one hand, rituals may keep, or appear to keep, things as they are. On the other hand, there is inevitably an undercurrent, a swirling dynamic threatening to upend apparently static ritual traditions... Since form and dynamic, structure and process, are necessarily a pair, rituals can not only resist change, they can induce it, transforming their participants and environments. Rituals can construct, create, even subvert. By means of rituals, people generate ideas, ignite imaginations, inspire art, and foster ecological attunement. Rituals have the capability of evoking change, renewing what is decaying, and rendering social constellations anew. The two functions, retarding change and fomenting it, are not always balanced, nor do participants always value them equally.27

Lastly, as a way of making or unmaking meaning, rituals can “make meaning by performatively activating sets of symbols, thereby embedding values in webs of significance”,28 or unmake meaning by redundantly communicating the same information over and over until it ceases to be meaningful, or by bypassing semantic meaning entirely by doing something without meaning anything at all.29 As with Grimes’s definition of ritual and the six modes for classifying it, the pairs of functions Grimes attributes to ritual are understood as conceptual continua for identifying a broad range of functions for rituals of different types, and not as an all-encompassing description of every possible function a ritual can possess. Furthermore, by recognizing that rituals can have numerous, and in some instances, even paradoxical or contradictory functions, Grimes provides a useful framework for studying rituals dynamically, instead of as static entities with only a single purpose. This framework also has the strength of taking into account the multi-functionality of ritual, without assuming that a ritual with one function cannot also have other, seemingly unrelated functions. If rituals can have multiple functions in all of Grimes’s senses of the term “function”, what are the functions of Mesopotamian cultic lamenting? Assuming, with Grimes, that the intentions of the practitioners of a ritual are not always identical to what the ritual actually does, did cultic lamenting in Mesopotamia have any additional functions beyond the intention of appeasing divine anger to prevent catastrophes? In what ways did lamenting affect those who experienced its performance, apart from what it accomplished and what it was intended to do?

27 Grimes 2014a: 315. 28 Grimes 2014a: 319. 29 Grimes 2014a: 318–19.

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Although the practice is not directly related, and is performed for different reasons, the potential strength of Grimes’s framework as a means of conceptualizing and identifying the functions of Mesopotamian lamenting can be illustrated by showing how it can be applied to another form of ritual lament, the Shiite rites for the Martyrdom of Husayn, which were described in the Introduction.30 In Al-Haidari’s examination of the performance of the ritual during the 1970s, he identified multiple different functions, which can be classified more broadly as theological, socio-political, and economic.31 The theological functions identified by Al-Haidairi include that lamenting the death of Husayn is a religious obligation that must be carried out at all times of the year, but especially during the ten days of Muharram, by every Shiite Muslim,32 and the conviction that mourning and shedding tears for Husayn can heal those who are sick and bring them closer to paradise.33 In addition to these theological functions, Al-Haidari also attributed at least two different socio-political functions to the ritual. The first of these is to provide a means of expressing political resistance to oppressive powers by using Husayn’s resistance to a malevolent oppressor as a model for insurrection and freedom from tyranny: Die Tyrannei und Unterdrückung der Omaiyaden, für die Yazīd das Vorbild abgibt, werden mit der Tyrannei und Unterdrückung durch die Herrschenden gleichgesetzt, wogegen Husain das Vorbild des Aufstandes und der Befreiung von Tyrannei und Unterdrückung ist, von denen die armen Schiiten sich selbst betroffen sehen.34

The other socio-political function of the rites of Muharram is to serve as propaganda to generate anger against rival political groups or the enemies of the Shiites by evoking and portraying the brutal and unjust violence of Yazid and his army against Husayn and his family, and equating it with that of the targets of the generated anger.35 Lastly, Al-Haidari identified four different economic functions of the rites of Muharram: donating large amounts of money for the performance of the rites as a means of generating prestige for the wealthy and elite groups providing the donations; the money earned by selling cigarettes, pastries, and other items throughout the ritual; the opportunity for poor people to acquire what is being 30 See Chapter 1 for Al-Haidari’s description of the ritual for the Martyrdom of Husayn. 31 Al-Haidari 1975: 157–83. 32 Al-Haidari 1975: 160. 33 Al-Haidari 1975: 164. 34 Al-Haidari 1975: 169. 35 Al-Haidari 1975: 175–79.

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sold or given away during the rites; and the profit accrued by the Shiite religious authorities as compensation for the performance of the ritual.36 It has already been conclusively established that the primary cultic or theological function of Mesopotamian lamenting was to appease the hearts of deities like Enlil to prevent different types of catastrophes that could be caused by their anger from occurring.37 But as is evident from Al-Haidari’s analysis of the rites of Muharram, ritual lamenting of any type is unlikely to be limited in function to its theological purpose. When a similar framework is applied to Mesopotamian lamenting, it becomes clear that by analogy to the theological, socio-political, and economic functions of the Martyrdom of Husayn identified by Al-Haidari, ritual lamenting in Ancient Mesopotamia also possessed other functions. One of the main arguments of this book has been that it is not possible to understand the social and cultural significance of Mesopotamian laments on the basis of their written content alone, without also taking into account how these texts might have been experienced in performance. The evidence presented throughout the book that the Sumerian laments, as they are preserved in the surviving written sources dating to the early 2nd millennium (the Old Babylonian Period), were actively performed and not read or contemplated in silence, includes: 1) Textual references to the performance of Sumerian laments, including in administrative texts and royal inscriptions from as early as the late 3rd millennium BCE, and the description of a ritual to Ishtar from Mari dating to the early 2nd millennium, in which the performance of individual sections of the lament, Uruamairabi, at various points in the ritual is described. 2) The names of the two main genres of laments, balaĝ and er2-sem5-ma, which name the musical instruments that were played when the laments of these two types were performed; as well as the occurrence of other rubrics and subscripts, like ki-ru-gu2 and ki-šu2-bi-im, which allude to different aspects of the performance of the laments with which these terms are associated. 3) The widespread geographic distribution of textual sources containing laments and the occurrence of variants that are specific to the places in which the sources were compiled, suggesting both that the laments were performed throughout northern and southern Mesopotamia in the early second millennium, but also that the content of the laments was sometimes adapted to local cultic traditions. 36 Al-Haidari 1975: 180–83. 37 For a discussion and summary of the evidence that Mesopotamian laments were intended to appease divine anger, with references to previous literature, see Chapter 1, Section 2, and the introduction to Chapter 2.

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4) The pairings of Balags and Ershemmas in the colophons of written copies of the laments, and the close parallels between individual sections of Balags and Ershemmas that begin with the same incipit, indicating that the two types of laments were performed together. 5) The occurrence of the phrase šud3-bi še-eb T(emple)N(ame)-a(-ta) ki-na (dingir) gi4-gi4-ra ‘for the one who returns the god to the brickwork of TN’, at the end of at least four Old Babylonian sources containing Balags, which is likely to be a performative note identifying the cultic purpose of the laments copied in the sources with this note. 6) Marks of “residual orality” (as identified by the Medievalist O’Brien O’Keeffe) in the written sources for the laments, such as inconsistencies in the orthography of the written sources for the laments – and in particular the phonetically written sources – that would have made the sources difficult to read or comprehend without prior knowledge of the content of the laments copied in these sources, indicating that these sources were intended to aid in the performance of the laments, and not as archival copies that were compiled to preserve the content of the laments over time. 7) Features of the content of the laments that have been shown to be closely associated with oral performance in studies of orality in other cultural traditions, including substantial variability in the content of different versions of the “same” texts; the frequent occurrence of the same or similar textual blocks (or “Versatzstücke”) in different laments; and that the content of the laments is often additive, aggregative, and redundant, features that have been argued to be characteristic of orally performed texts. 8) The affective valence of the content of the laments, which are structured to generate, intensify, sustain, and spread a feeling of profound loss and sorrow by mimetically depicting in unsparing detail the complete destruction of the city and land, and the unbearable consequences of this destruction on its inhabitants, the tragic separation of Inana from her lover Dumuzi, as he is seized and taken to the netherworld in the prime of his life shortly after the consummation of their marriage, and other related themes of catastrophe and loss that, through their vividness and frequent repetition throughout the texts, were almost certainly intended to elicit extreme empathy and emotional participation in those who experienced them in performance. 9) The proportionately large number of sources for the laments that are written in a highly phonetic orthography, instead of in the standard Emesal orthography used for writing laments, suggesting that in some, if not many instances, the sound of the laments in performance was emphasized over the meaning of their linguistic content, and that these compositions were thus intended

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to be heard and felt in ritual or experiential contexts, and not to be read or consumed passively like modern works of literature. While the main theological purpose of Mesopotamian lamenting was to appease divine anger to prevent catastrophes, cultic lamenting in ancient Mesopotamia undoubtedly also had economic and social functions. Economically, the laments were performed in temples that had to be built and run by a large number of cultic officials, who were often, if not always, accompanied by musicians who had to be trained and presumably also compensated for their work. It is also probable that food and drink would have also been produced and consumed during some or all of the occasions during which laments were performed. Socially, the performance of laments was first and foremost an officially sanctioned cultic act, and like any institutionally sponsored religious practice, it would have contributed to generating, maintaining, legitimizing, and/or disseminating a specific conception of the cosmos, the relationship between the human and the divine, and a set of social norms and ideals. What these conceptions might have been and how successful lamenting would have been in constituting and communication them will probably never be known, but it can at the very least be generally inferred from the content of the laments that the view of the cosmos they presented was one of extreme precariousness, in which humanity can be destroyed at any time through the irreversible will of violent and capricious deities. Speculating even further, it is not difficult to imagine how this conception of the asymmetric dependence of humanity on destructive and unpredictable gods could have served to legitimize the rights of political rulers to exercise violence without the consent of the people over who they ruled, in the same manner as the deities who appointed these rulers as their representatives. However, even if the economic and social functions of Mesopotamian lamenting cannot be determined with complete certainty, the practice had at least one other essential function, in addition to its theological function, that can be identified on the basis of the existing evidence, and this is the generation of emotion through the performance of the laments. The predominant mood of all of the known Sumerian laments is one of intense pain and sorrow experienced in the face of catastrophe and loss, and compounded by the abject helplessness felt from being completely at the mercy of powerful and terrifying gods like Enlil whose destructive anger could only be appeased through tears, supplication, and extreme displays of grief. The grief conveyed by the laments would therefore have been a highly effective means of generating grief in anyone who experienced their content in emotionally charged ritual contexts, and the grief generated by the laments in such settings would have been intensified even further through active participation in the expression of grief during these rituals.

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 Chapter 6 Conclusion – the Cultural Function of Mesopotamian Lamenting

Ritual lamenting has been, and continues to be practiced for a wide variety of reasons in a large number of societies. While the function of lamenting differs across contexts, the immediate emotional effect of lament, which is to generate outward expressions of extreme grief, is remarkably consistent. Regardless of whether the expressed grief is actually felt inwardly, or is always felt the same way, collective lamenting creates an emotional mood that can easily be mobilized for many purposes. To cite only two examples, the extreme forms of lamenting that are expressed for Husayn during the Shiite Muharram ritual can arouse intense anger against the national and religious enemies of the Shia, and lamenting the crucifixion of Christ can strengthen the faith Christians have in their savior in a manner that has been utilized by religious and political leaders to secure allegiance to their groups and win support for their causes. It is equally likely that the grief generated through Mesopotamian lamenting served similar purposes and could have been used to legitimize rulers or direct anger toward the enemies of the land. But even though the ends to which the generation of grief were used must await further study, recognizing the role of emotion in the performance of Sumerian laments is an essential first step toward understanding the cultural significance of these important compositions.

Appendix 1 Edition of uru2-am3-ma-i-ra-bi (Kirugus 1–5) Sources Main Source NCBT 688 (Cohen 1988: 840–43 = Source C). A long single column tablet containing five sections of a text which begins with the incipit uru2 am3-i-ra-bi. There are Winkelhaken (10-marks) after every 10th line on the tablet, and tallies of the total number of lines in each section which precede the kirugu-notation for that section/kirugu (note also that these tallies include the kirugu-rubric for the preceding rubric in the line tally, indicating that the scribe was not counting the number of lines in the section, but the total number of lines on the tablet before the new section). In addition to the subtotals with the number of lines in each Kirugu, the tablet also notes the total number of lines on the tablet on the left edge of the tablet, to the right of the catch-line for the following Kirugu. This source contains the Old Babylonian version of Kirugus 1–5 of this lament, as well as the incipit to Kirugu 6. Measurement: 21cm in height and 7.7cm in width. Except for a tiny part of the bottom right corner of the tablet, the tablet is completely preserved. Rubrics: kirugu-notation for Kirugus 2–5, each of which is preceded by a number giving the total number of lines in that Kirugu. There is a also a catch-line at the end of the tablet: me-e ur-re men3 me-e KAS4 men3, which is the first line of the next section of the text. Incipit: uru2 am3-i-ra-bi a di4-di4-la2-[bi] Catch-line: me-e ur-re men3 me-e KAS4 men3 Lines corresponding to each Kirugu in this source: – Kirugu 1 = 1–61 – Kirugu 2 = 62–94 – Kirugu 3 = 95–97 – Kirugu 4 = 98–122 – Kirugu 5 = 123–126 – Kirugu 6 = catch-line

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501512650-007

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Obv. 1–61(sdl) [Notation for Kirugu 1 broken] Bottom edge: 62–66 Rev. 67–94(sdl1, k.22), 95–97(sdl, k.3), 98–122(sdl, k.4), 123 Top edge: 124–126 (sdl, k.5) Left edge: catch-line k.6 + total line count

Other Sources Sources from Kish 1) – K1 = AO 10672 (PRAK C 52) + AO 10737 (PRAK C 121) 1a) – K1A = Ki 1033 (PRAK B 442) – possibly belongs to same tablet as K1, but Volk (1989: 5 with n. 44) is not completely certain. Both pieces are from a multi-column tablet (2 columns per side) Notes to individual pieces of this source: – PRAK C 52 = AO 10672 (= Cohen Source H): The transliteration of lines 1–6 assumes the join proposed by Volk with PRAK C 121 and PRAK B 442, and uses the collations listed by Volk (1989: 19) in the citation of these lines. This piece is the top left corner of what was almost certainly a multi-column tablet that belongs to the same tablet as PRAK C 121 = AO 10737, which has the same ductus (note, for example, the similar writing of signs like “ta”, “ga”, and “bi”, which are all distinct), and though the pieces do not physically join, the width of the surviving edges when the pieces are positioned where they would have been when the tablet was whole are consistent with the pieces belonging to the same tablet. The measurement of PRAK C 52 is 9.5cm in height, 6cm in width, and 2.8cm in thickness at its thickest point. When the two pieces are put together PRAK C 52 must contain the top half of column i of the obverse and the very end of column iv of the reverse and PRAK C 121 must contain the bottom half of columns i and ii and the top halves of columns iii and iv (note from the curvature of the top edge of PRAK C 121 that it is very unlikely that the tablet had more than four columns). Note also that the break between where the lines in col. i of PRAK C 52 end and the lines in col. i of PRAK C 121 begin cannot have been very large and probably only 2 or 3 lines are missing. When the break is aligned with the content of NCBT 1 sdl = single-dividing line. 2 k. = Kirugu.

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688 only one full line is missing. If there was more than one line in the break, these lines would have had to have been additional lines that do not occur in NCBT 688. The only serious difficulty posed by the relationship between the two pieces is the placement of the traces of the lines preserved at the end of the left column on the reverse of PRAK C 52. If PRAK C 52 joins PRAK C 121, then these lines must correspond to a section of the text between lines 107 and 115 of the composition as it is preserved in NCBT 688, since PRAK C 121, col. iii (which is the left-hand column of the reverse) ends with l.106 and resumes in the first line of col. iv with l.115. Because the reverse of PRAK C 52 contains the last three lines of the column and is preceded by a break of 5–8 lines, it would be expected that the preserved lines correspond to lines 112–114 of the composition. Since it is difficult to line up the traces of these lines in PRAK C 52 with l.112–114 of NCBT 688, however, there are at least three possibilities: 1) PRAK C 52 does not belong to the same tablet as PRAK C 121 and thus contains a different version of the composition, which is unlikely in light of all the other correspondences between the two pieces; 2) lines 107–114 are very different in K1 than the lines in NCBT 688 and the other sources with these lines, which is possible, but also not very likely in light of the few instances in which K1 has lines not found in NCBT 688; or 3) K1 omits lines 112–114 and the preserved lines correspond to lines closer to l.108 in the text. For lack of a more plausible alternative, the third possibility has been assumed here and the lines have been assigned to lines 108–109, and l.111, since there is at least partial correspondence between some of the preserved signs and the content of these lines in NCBT 688. – PRAK C 121 = AO 10737 (= Cohen Source J) – Source overlaps in content and sequence with much of NCBT 688, the main source for this composition. Note: this piece is almost certainly the bottom half of PRAK C 52. The measurement of the piece is 8.8cm in height, 9cm in width, 2.5cm in thickness at the thickest point of the left edge and 2.5 cm at the thickest point of the bottom edge (note that this is consistent with the thickest point of the top edge of PRAK C 52 which would have been around 2.8cm in thickness). Assuming that the three pieces all fit together a preliminary reconstruction of the content of the tablet as it corresponds to NCBT 688 is as follows: Obv. col. i: lines 1, 4, 5a–7, 9–22, 24–26[ , ]28–30, 33–41, 46–50 PRAK C 52 = 1, 4, 5a–7, 9–22, 24–26[ PRAK B 442 = ]17–22, 24–26[

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PRAK C 121 = ]28–30, 33–41, 46–50 col. ii: ]59–61(sdl) 62–63, 64a–69, 71–75[ , ]83–85, 88–91, 93–94 (ddl) PRAK B 442 = ]59–61(sdl) 62–63, 64a–69, 71–75[ PRAK C 121 = ]83–85, 88–91, 93–94 (ddl) Rev. col. iii (written on the left half of the tablet): 98–106([])?107?–107a?, 108?–109?, 110a-d, 111?–114? PRAK C 121 = 98–106/7[ PRAK B 442 = 107?–107a? (sdl) 108?–109?, 110a-d, 111?[ PRAK C 52 = ]111?–114? Note: none of the lines from 107 to 114 entirely line up with the corresponding section of NCBT 688 making it possible that these lines, most of which follow the single dividing line in PRAK B 442, may belong to another Kirugu, or that this section differed substantially from the corresponding section of NCBT 688. col. iv (written on the right half of the tablet): 115–116, 118–119?[ , ]122–123a-c[ = alternate version of lines of Kirugu 5 PRAK C 121 = 115–116, 118–119?[ PRAK B 442 = ]122–123a-c[ = alternate version of lines of Kirugu 5 2) – K2 = Ki 976 (PRAK B 396) + Ki 1035 (PRAK B 444) Appears to be the top edge of a single column tablet containing the beginnings and end of the extract. PRAK B 396 contains all of line 1 and the middle of two lines at the end of the reverse. PRAK B 444 joins PRAK B 396 at line 2 of the obverse and breaks off after line 7 = NCBT 688 l.11 (the source omits lines 6–8), and although for PRAK B 444 the copyist notes that there are traces of signs on the reverse, these signs were not copied. PRAK B 396, however, contains traces of two lines at the end of the reverse, and since these lines are at the end of the tablet and the first three signs of the last line seem to correspond to the beginning of the last line of Kirugu 1 in NCBT 688, it is possible (though far from certain, since other than these three signs, the other preserved signs in the preserved parts of the two lines on the reverse do not seem to correspond to the remaining content of the last two lines of the Kirugu as it is preserved in NCBT 688) that the tablet originally contained all of Kirugu 1. Obv. 1–2, 4–5, 9–11[ Rev. ]60–61 3)– K3 = PRAK B 389 Appears to be from near the top of the obverse(?) of a single column tablet, with five preserved lines of text followed by blank space, where the scribe seems to have stopped writing and did not complete the tablet.

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Lines 2–7. The identification of this source with Uruamairabi is not completely certain, since the best preserved lines merely line up with the common sequence of epithets for Inana and the overlap with the lines immediately before and after this sequence is partial, but not complete. Obv. ]2, 3a, 4, 6–7 Rev. uninscribed 4)– K4 = PRAK B 348 Very small fragment from the middle of the left edge of what could be either a single or multi-column tablet. Volk (1989: 5) is uncertain whether the source contains Uruamairabi, but thinks that it is probable. Contains lines 26–35 on the obverse and traces of signs from unidentified lines on the reverse. Obv./col. i? ]26–28, 30[ Rev. traces of signs from unidentified lines Sources from Ur 1) – Ur1 = U.16861 (UET 6/2: 140). Published in UET 6/2 and recopied with notes by Ludwig (2009: 139–42) in Literarische Texte aus Ur. Cohen (1988: 537) attributes the sources to the Neo-Babylonian Period, but Cavigneaux (1993: 253–54), in his review of Cohen 1988, argues that the tablet dates to the Old Babylonian Period. Ludwig is less certain of the date, and presents the evidence for and against dating the tablet to the Old Babylonian Period, before tentatively concluding that the tablet is probably Old Babylonian in date. The reasons Ludwig cites for an earlier date include the tablet’s physically similarity to UET 6/2, 188, which is an Old Babylonian school tablet (unfortunately without exact provenience at Ur), as well as other aspects of its ductus and format. The reasons against an earlier date include unusual writings like tu2-kul(UD.HI), which is a reading that would only be expected in a later text, and the likelihood, that although the tablet was purportedly found at No. 1, Broad St., it could very well be from the Neo-Babylonian levels of the house. Note also that Wasserman and Gabbay (2005: 76–77), consider it likely that this tablet was found in close proximity to UET 6/2, 403, a tablet containing the Akkadian translation of a number of lines from the 2nd and possibly 3rd Kirugu of Uruamairabi, which might have also been found at No. 1, Broad St. They even suggest the possibility that the two tablets were copied as school exercises in the house. In this edition it will be tentatively assumed that this source dates to the Old Babylonian Period. Since, however, the identification of this source as Old Babylonian is tentative, it has not been included in the catalogue of sources for the laments and the types of laments they contain in Appendix 2.

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Obv. 1, 3, 9–12, 12a, 21, 23–28, 30, 30a-g Rev. 30h-o, 98–102, 104–105, 103, 103a-d 2) – Ur2 = U.17900A (UET 6/2: 403) = Wasserman and Gabbay (2005). An 8cm long single column tablet containing an Akkadian translation of lines 69–83 and 91–94 of the text as it is preserved in NCBT 688. The tablet could be from No. 1, Broad St., like the other source from Ur, but this is not certain. Obv. ]69, 71, 74–79, 83 Rev. ]91, 94, 62(?) = incipit of Kirugu 2 Source from Girsu: 1) – G1 = AO 4327 (= Cros, NFT: p. 203) (Cohen Parallel Source NN). The source is divided into cases and is 15.5cm in height, 11cm in width, and 2.5cm in thickness at the thickest point. When an estimate based on the tapering of the preserved part of the tablet edge and the width of each column is made the tablet was probably approximately 22cm in height and 16cm in width. Two columns on the reverse of this source (ii and iii) have lines that correspond to 62–76[ and ]83–88[ of Kirugu 2 as it is preserved in NCBT 688. Even though the remaining content of the source (all three of the preserved columns on the obverse and the beginning of col. i on the reverse before the dividing lines indicating the end of a Kirugu) does not correspond to any of the preserved sources for Uruamairabi, since one section of the source seems to contain an entire Kirugu of the composition it is treated here as a main source for the text. Obv. col. i'-iii': another composition Rev. col. iv': another composition with a double-dividing line after l.4 where either a new Kirugu or a new text begins col. v': 62–63, 67–76[ col. vi': ]83–85, 85a, 88[ Source from Susa 1) – Su1 = Sb 12436: small landscape-shaped school exercise tablet, 4.7cm in height and 6cm in width. The tablet contains all of the 5th Kirugu (as it appears in NCBT 688) and the catch-line to the 6th Kirugu. Obv. 123–126

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Bottom edge: kirugu-notation for k.5 Rev. catch-line for l.127 = first line of k.6 (in NCBT 688) Sources from Unknown Proveniences 1) – X1 = AO 6905b (TCL 16: 68; pl. 131–32) = Cohen Source A – note that MIN appears to be used in this source to indicate line divisions when two lines are written in the space of a single line on the tablet. The preserved lines on the obverse and the first half of the reverse of this source overlap almost completely with lines in the 2–4 Kirugus of Uruamairabi as it is preserved in NCBT 688 and K1, as well as a few other sources, but after the notation for Kirugu 4, there are two lines, identified as belonging to Kirugu 5, which do not correspond to Kirugu 4 as it is preserved in NCBT 688 and Su1, and the first line of the following Kirugu in the source does not seem to line up with the incipit of Kirugu 6 as it is preserved in NCBT 688 and Su1, although the possibility should probably be left open that it is a variant of it (the first line of this Kirugu in X1 reads: [. . .] a ga-ša-an-na me-en ĝa2-e u2!(?)-re (for ur-re?) me-en, while in NCBT 688 (and Su1) the first line of the 6th Kirugu reads: me-e ur-re men3 me-e KAS4 men3). Note 6905b is the bottom of a single column tablet, 5.4cm in height and 5.3cm in width, written in a tiny microscript. Cavigneaux (1993: 256) suggests that the source might be from Susa on the basis of the use of “ša3” in the Akkadian gloss in the line. Obv. ]85, [86?], 87–88, 90–91, 93–94(sdl, k.2), 95–97(sdl, k.3), 98–109 Bottom edge: 110–111 Rev. 112–122(sdl, k.4), 123a-c = alternate k.5(sdl, k.5), 124a-h[ = alt. k.6 2) – X2 = VAT 8201 (VS 17: 51) = (Cohen Parallel Source RR). The top edge of a single column tablet containing a composition which begins with the same lines that occur at the beginning of the 4th Kirugu of Uruamarabi as it is preserved in the main sources for the text, including NCBT 688. The lines on the reverse, however, do not seem to correspond to any of the known parts of the composition, which may indicate that this source contains a different text. Note, however, that the scribe seems to have deliberately erased all of the lines preserved at the end of the reverse of the tablet, so it is possible that the tablet was originally intended to contain all of the 4th Kirugu of the text. It is also possible, however, that this source contains a different composition with lines that also occur in Uruamairabi. Rubrics: none preserved Incipit: [. . .] gu3 uru2-na na-nam Colophon: none Measurements: none taken

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Obv. 98–101[ Rev. ] unidentified lines, possibly deliberately effaced The preserved lines at the end of the reverse read: (Beginning of reverse broken in X2) Note: most of the preserved part of the reverse seems to have been intentionally defaced or scratched out by the scribe leaving all but the very ends of the lines and occasionally one or two signs earlier in the lines. X2 (rev. 1'a): [. . .] X2 (rev. 1'b): [. . .] X2 (rev. 1'c): completely scratched out X2 (rev. 1'd): completely scratched out X2 (rev. 1'e): [. . .] ? ? [. . .] ri X2 (rev. 2'): [. . .] a X2 (rev. 3'): [. . .] ? ?-? -? U.GAN šen NU/MI2?a-MU/lu2 / a-gin7 KAxNIG2? double dividing line at the bottom of the tablet (End of reverse in X2) Sources from Schøyen Collection Sch1 = MS 2921: single column tablet, with k.1 obv. 1–21[ , rev. ]24–36, after which, the rest of the reverse is uninscribed. The scribe seems to have confused the sequence of lines near the end of the reverse and may have stopped copying the rest of the Kirugu because the mistakes in sequence could no longer easily be corrected. Sch2 = MS 2289: single column tablet, with k.2–3 + the catch-line to k.4 obv. l.62– 86[ , rev. 88–98. There may be something written on the left edge of the tablet, but the signs (if this is what they are) cannot be read from the CDLI photo. Note also the presence of a triangular-shaped drawing in the blank space after the last line on the reverse, which may be modern and not ancient. Other than the consistent writing of uru2 as URUxUD, the ductus and format of this source differ enough from that of Sch1 that it is unlikely that the two sources were written by the same scribe. 1st millennium Sources 1) Nin1 = Sm. 323 (BL 67) = Cohen KK. A surface fragment from the obverse(?) of a single(?) column tablet containing lines that overlap almost completely in content and sequence with NCBT obv. lines 17–28.

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obv.?/col. i'?: ]17–18, 18a, 19–20, 22, 22a-b, 24–28[ rev.?: completely broken 2) Nin2 = K.8644 (BL 11) + K.8150 (Cohen 1988: 820) = Cohen EE. A middle fragment from the obverse(?) of a multi-column tablet containing a bilingual version of lines from the 4th Kirugu of the Old Babylonian version of the text, as it is preserved in l.100f. of NCBT 688. The lines this piece contains correspond to ]100–105[ of NCBT 688. 2a) Nin2A = K.2759 (unpublished), transliteration in BL, pp.93–94. According to the British Museum cuneiform tablet database this piece joins K.8644 + K.8150, but since there is not a copy or photo of the fragment available, it will only tentatively be assumed, for the purposes of transliteration, that it joins. The lines in this fragment (which is from the reverse of a tablet) correspond to ]120, 123–127 of NCBT 688. Note also that the last line of the tablet is a catch-line which corresponds to the incipit of Kirugu 6 of the Old Babylonian version of Uruamairabi, followed by a colophon identifying the content of the tablet as being from the third extract of Uruamairabi. Note that this piece is also joined to K.8644 and K.8150 by Volk (1989: 5 n. 46), who notes that this join was reported to him by Civil and Black. Obv. col. i(?): ]99a-c, 100–105[ Rev. col. iv(?): 120–121, 123–125, 125a, 126(dl), 127 = catch-line k.6 3) X11 = AO 18589 (RA 33: 104) = Cohen Source M. A single column source missing all but the beginning and end of the tablet containing lines that overlap with lines 104–117 of NCBT 688, and which thus probably originally contained all of Kirugu 4. Obv.: 104–105, 105a-c, 106–110 Rev. 110a-b, 111–117[ 4) X12 = VAT 1157 (VS 17: 48) = Cohen Parallel Source VV, a fragment from col. ii'(?) of the obverse(?) of a multi-column tablet with lines from another composition containing three lines that correspond to NCBT 688: l.123–126. Obv., col.ii'(?): 123–126 (note that although these lines are preceded by lines from another composition they are set apart as a separate section which is preceded and followed by kirugu-notation, indicating that the entire Kirugu is identical to Kirugu 5 of Uruamairabi).

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1st millennium Parallel Source 1) Uruk1 = VAT 14490 (LKU 14) (Cohen, Parallel Source SS), a multi-column tablet dating to the Neo-Babylonian Period, which contains lines in col. ii of the obverse which overlap with lines from the Old Babylonian version of Uruamairabi. The remaining lines in the text, however, are from a different composition. Obv. col. i: different composition col. ii: ]50–51, 42–43, 52, 48, 55–61, source continues with lines not in Uruamairabi col. iii: different composition Transliteration and Translation: Line numbering follows NCBT 688, which is used as the main source for this text. This source was collated in the Yale Babylonian Collection in March 2013, January 2016, and February 2019. Sources Ur1 and Ur2 were collated in the collection of the British Museum in May 2013; source X2 was collated in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin in June 2013; and sources K1, G1, Su1, and X1 were collated in the Louvre in July 2013 and May 2016. Sch1 and Sch2 were read from photographs on CDLI (Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative), which Konrad Volk brought to my attention (after the work on this edition had been completed). Since a volume of all of the Emesal laments in the Schøyen collection is currently being prepared for publication in the CUSAS (Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology) series by Konrad Volk, and I was not given any further information about these tablets (other than that they exist), they have not been included in the catalogue of Old Babylonian laments in Appendix 2, and Sch1 and Sch2 have been cited separately, and without commentary, only for comparative purposes. Obv. 1: am3-i-ra-bi a di4-di4-la2- NOTE: “uru2” is written with the “URU” sign with one extra horizontal wedge in the middle of the sign – the script is too tiny to have space for “UD” inside the sign. K1 (o. i 1): uru2 a-am-i-ra-(?) ? ?-[. . .] NOTE: “de3” is possible on the basis of the few preserved traces, but it is also possible that this is another sign. Note also that the beginning of the sign read as “bi” here looks nothing like the beginning of the other “bi” signs throughout the tablet and the traces really do suggest a sign like “e” instead.

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K2 (o. 1): uru2 am3-ma-i-ra-bi [. . .] / a2 di4-di4-la2- [. . .] Ur1 (o. 1): uru2 ki a-ma-ra-a-bi a di4-di4- [. . .]3 Sch1 (o. 1): am3-ma-ir-ra-? a ?-?--bi NOTE: the sign read as “bi” looks a little like “na”, but the clear presence of “-ir-ra-a-bi” in the next line suggests that this sign is either “bi” or “bi!”. Note also, however, that “bi” is written in an unusual way throughout the tablet so that often the top and bottom wedges at the beginning of the sign are not parallel and there is a single vertical wedge cutting through the two wedges near the final vertical wedge of the sign, which the scribe sometimes omits. That city which has been plundered! Woe, its little ones. 2: ama mu-gig uru2 am3-i-ra-bi a di4-di4-la2- K1: omits K1 2: nu-gi-a-na ga-ša-an--? [. . .] K2 2: -(PRAK B 396)-(B 444) / [x] -ma-i-ra-bi(B 444) K3 (o.? 1'): [(x) x] ? a [. . .] Ur1: omits Sch1 3: ama mu-gig uru2 am3-ma-ir-ra-bi / a di4-di4-la2-bi (Oh) mother, mistress, that city which has been plundered! Woe, its little ones. 3: kul-aba4(ABxU)ki uru2 am3-i-ra-bi a di4-di4-la2- K1: omits K2: omits K3 2': [(x)] -gig uru2 ?(A.?) -bi a [. . .] Ur1 2: --baki a-?-i-ra-bi a di4-?-? Sch1 2: kul-aba4ki uru2(URUxUD) am3-ma-ir-ra-a-bi / a di4-di4-la2-bi NOTE: here and in other instances there are at least two Winkelhaken inscribed in “URU”, which may belong to the “UD” sign. (Oh) Kullab, that city which has been plundered! Woe, its little ones. 4: mu- an-na ga-ša-an-an-na- NOTE: while it is possible that the last preserved sign is not “na” the few traces that survive at the beginning of the sign do not really look like “ke4”. 3 Or: a-ra2?-a-ra-bi a di4-di4-? [. . .]. Volk (1989: 5) reads: u4- a--a-rabi at the beginning of the line.

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K2 3 (B 444): [. . .] -ib-an-na / [x] ša-an-an-na-ke4 K3 3': [x] -an-na ga-ša-an-na- (PRAK B 444) Ur1: omits Sch1 4: mu-gig an-na dga-ša-an-an-na-ke4 The mistress of heaven, Inana, 5: kur [gul]-gul ga-ša-an e2-an-na- NOTE: There is a deep hole on tablet after “kur” which is large enough for “gul” where the sign has been gouged out. K1 3: kur gul-UL ga-ša!-an hur-saĝ- [. . .] NOTE: “ša” is missing its final vertical wedge. K2 4: [x] -gul ga-ša-an / [hur]-saĝ-kalam-ma (PRAK B 444) K3: omits Ur1: omits Sch1 5: kur gul-gul dga-ša-an e2-an-na-ke4 The destroyer of the lands, the lady of the Eanna, 6: dub2-ba ga-ša-an ĝi6-par3-ra- K1 4: an tu-pa ama gal ki!(DI) ?[. . .] K2:: omits K3 4': [. . .] -ba ga-ša-an ĝi6-par3 [. . .] Ur1: omits Sch1 6: an dub2-ba dga-ša-an ĝi6-par3-ra-ke4 The one who makes the heavens tremble, the lady of the Gipar, 7: -la2 en-na ga-ša-an tur3 amaš-4 K1 5: e2-lil2 ga-ša-an- -sa [. . .]5 NOTE: the traces of the sign read as “ama” are consistent with “ama”, though they do not necessitate it; since “ama-sa” is a possible phonetic writing of “amaš”, however, it seems likely that the sign is “ama”. K2: omits K3 5': de2-lil2

4 Repeated collation of the tablet confirms that there is no trace of “AN” on the side of the tablet as transcribed by Cohen. 5 Cavigneaux (1993: 256) reads this line E2.LIL2 ga-ša-an [a]--sa [. . .].

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The rest of source K3 is uninscribed Ur1: omits Sch1 7: e2?-lil2? ?-na en-na ga-ša-an tur3-amaš-a-ke4 NOTE: the first three signs are uncertain – the first sign is probably either “e2” or “lil2” written over another sign; and the sign after it may be “lil2”, but looks a little like “URU”, and there are traces after this sign that may either belong to a small “en”, or even more likely “la2” or “a”, but which may not belong to any sign at all. The next sign is definitely “na” followed by “en-na”, though. A tentative reconstruction might be: e2-lil2-la2-na en-na. Lilla’enna, the lady of the cattlepen and sheepfold, 8: ama unugki ga-ša-an-sun2-na- K1: omits K2: omits Ur1: omits Sch1: omits Mother of Uruk, Ninsun, 9: di4-di4-la2-bi gal-gal-la2-bi K1 6: de3-de3-la-bi -gal-la- [. . .] K2 5: [x x] la2-bi gal-gal-la-bi (PRAK B 444) Ur1 3: --- gal-gal-la-bi Sch1 8: di4-di4-la2-bi gal-gal-la2-bi Its little ones, its larger ones, 10: (10-mark left edge) tur-tur-bi šu-ta du11-ga-bi K1 7: di-de3-el-le šu-ta du-? [. . .] K2 6: [. . .] ?-ta du11-ga (PRAK B 444) Ur1 4: di4-di4- šu-ta du11-ga-am3-ta Sch1 9: TUR.TUR-e šu-ta du11-ga-bi Its young ones who have been seized by the hand, 11: gal-gal-bi me-ri-ta DU-a-bi K1 8: gal-gal-le ĝa2-ri-ta la-ha [. . .] K2 7: [. . .] (PRAK B 444) Ur1 5: gal-gal-e ĝir3-ta la-ha-bi

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The rest of the obverse is broken in K2 Sch1 10: --?-? me-ri-ta DU.DU-a-bi NOTE: the tablet is largely broken where “la2” and “bi” would have been, and it is possible (though far from certain) that the scribe either wrote just “bi” or even “e” followed by nothing – however, there do seem to be traces of the end of a “bi” sign before “me”. Its older ones who have been carried away by the feet, 12: uru2 hul-hul-lu-de3 ba-ab-i-ra-bi K1 9: hu-hu-te ba-bi-ra-bi Ur1 6: uru(2)?ki hu-ul-hu-ul-TI ba-bi-ra-ĝu10 Ur1 7: uru(2)?ki mu-lu ? DAR-ta ba-ra-gub-ba-ĝu10 Sch1 11: ? -hul-de3 ba-ab-ir-ra-bi That city, which has been plundered so that it will be destroyed, 13: e2 hul-hul-lu-de3 ba-ab-i-ra-bi K1 10: [x] -hu-te ba-bi-ra-bi Ur1: omits Sch1 12: ? hul-hul-de3 ba-ab-ir-ra-bi That house, which has been plundered so that it will be destroyed, 14: i3-gi16-le-eĝ3-ĝa2-de3 bi2!-in-du11-ga-bi NOTE: The scribe seems to have written “ba” and then scratched it out to change it to “NE” (= “bi2”) producing a sign that is only partly readable and which only approximately resembles “bi2-”, although this was clearly the intended sign. By contrast, the “bi2-” in the next line is clearly and correctly written. K1 11: [x x (x)] ĝa2- bi-du-qa [(x)] Ur1: omits Sch1 13: ?-gi16-le-eĝ3-!-de3-en bi2-in-du11-ga-bi NOTE: the sign following “eĝ3” is far from being a clear “ĝa2” and may even be “e”. Either way there are two wedges (a vertical row of two Winkelhaken) preceding this sign that either belong to another sign over which this sign was written, or which may even belong to this sign, in which case this sign would be neither “ĝa2” nor “e”, but another sign entirely (maybe “ze2”?). Compare l.16 where it is also possible that the sign after “eĝ3” is “e” and not “ĝa2”.

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That (city and house) for which it has been decreed they will be annihilated, 15: i3-ug5-ge-de3 bi2-in-du11-ga-bi K1 12: [x x x (x)] bi-du-qa [(x)] Ur1: omits Sch1 14: ?-ug5-de3-en bi2-in-du11-ga-bi The ones for whom it has been decreed they will be killed, 16: ga-ša-an-bi gi16-le-eĝ3-ĝa2-de3 ba--(.DU)- e3-a-bi NOTE: The scribe wrote “-ra-e3-a-bi” after “ba-” and then, probably realizing that “ab” had mistakenly been omitted, scratched out the end of “ra” and the following UD, and partially erased “bi”, before writing “e3-a-bi” again. This part of the line should therefore probably be read “ba--e3-abi(partially erased>>-e3-a-bi”. K1 13: [x x (x)] ge-le-de2 [. . .] NOTE: there may be very faint traces of the ends of two vertical wedges at the beginning of the line, but it is equally possible that this is illusory. Ur1: omits Sch1 15: ?-ša-an-bi gi16-le-eĝ3-ĝa2?-de3-en / ba-ra-ab--a-bi NOTE: there may be as many as two signs before “” and since the traces of the sign at the beginning of the line are far from certainly belonging to “d”, it is possible that something else entirely was written here. Another possibility to consider is that the scribe deliberately erased these signs before writing “ga-ša-an”. The sign after “eĝ3” is written on the curvature of the tablet and is difficult to read with certainty – the visible wedges do suggest, however, that it is equally likely that the sign is “e” and not “ĝa2”. Note also that it is possible that there is gunu-marking in the “UD” of “e3” (the inside of the sign is broken), making it possible that this sign is “e11” instead of “e3”. That (city) whose lady did not come forth so that it would be spared being destroyed, 17: uru2 e4(A) du11-ga -a-bi NOTE: “gi4” is partially effaced, probably because the scribe scratched out the mistakenly written signs, “-a-bi”, directly above it (almost certainly realizing the mistake after the tablet had already been copied, scratching into the correctly copied “e4” and “gi4” in this line).

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K1 14: uru2 -qa gi-ya [. . .] K1A (PRAK B 442 o. i 1"): [. . .] za NOTE: it is possible that the second sign in the line is “da”, but since the second part of the sign is completely broken and the possible traces of two Winkelhaken may be illusory, and the beginning of the sign is completely consistent with “e”, “e” seems more likely. Note also that there are definitely traces of a vertical wedge in the top right corner of the broken sign before “gi” making it impossible that this sign is “i” and more likely that it is “e”.6 Ur1: omits Sch1 16: (URUxUD) du11-ga e4 gi4-a-bi Nin1(1st mill) o.? 1': [. . .] [. . .] // 2': [. . .] du11-ga [. . .] That city which has been destroyed by water, which has been washed away, 18: kul-aba4(ABxU)ki a du11-ga ?-?-ta ba-ra-e3-a-bi NOTE: “ta” is certain, but the sign before it, which was partially scratched out when the scribe erased the signs in l.16 directly above it, is not “a”, and has a frame that is consistent with “e”, “šu”, or even “ĝa2”, but none of these are completely certain. It is also possible that there are traces of another erased sign before this sign, and since the signs at the beginnings of the second halves of the lines are all carefully aligned in this part of the tablet, and the erased sign would have been aligned directly with the first signs in the seconds halves of the lines above and below it, there was probably originally a sign before “e” in this space. K1 15: e du-qa e- [. . .] K1A (PRAK B 442 o. i 2"): [. . .] Ur1: omits Sch1 17: kul4-aba4ki e4 du11-ga e4-ta! du11-ga! / ba-ra-be2 NOTE: the sign after “du11” is either “ga” or “bi” and it is unclear whether “ba-ra-be2”, which is written below and to the right of this sign on the tablet edge, belongs to this line or the end of the following line – parallels with NCBT 688 l.18 suggest that it belongs here, but the placement of the signs on the tablet makes this uncertain. Nin1 3': [. . .] ki a du11-ga a [. . .] / [. . .] a du11-ga a-ta [. . .] Nin1 4': [. . .] ki a du11-ga a-ta [. . .] That city Kullab which has been destroyed by water, which does not emerge from the water,

6 Cavigneaux (1993: 256) argues that the beginning of the line in K1 is to be read “uru2 du-qa” without “e”.

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19: uru2 izi-a ki! us2-sa-bi NOTE: while it is possible that the sign read as “ki” is a poorly written “ki” (which is too wide), it is also possible that “hul”, or a sign with a similar Gestalt, was written here. K1 16: uru2 zi-a gi-bi ? [. . .] K1A (PRAK B 442 o. i 3"): [. . .] Ur1: omits Sch1 18: izi-a !(?) us2-sa-bi NOTE: it is uncertain that the sign read as “ki” is “ki” – the preserved traces suggest a thin, box-shaped sign like “ŠE3” with at least one horizontal wedge inside the sign near the bottom of the sign, and damage to the tablet before these wedges may indicate that there were additional wedges belonging to this sign and that something other than “ki” was intended here. Note also, though, that “ki” in l.24 has a different Gestalt and looks more like the usual writing for “ki”. Nin1 5': [. . .] izi-a ki us2 [. . .] That city which has been levelled with fire, 20: (10-mark) uru2 na-aĝ2-bi nu-tar-re-da-bi K1 17: uru2 na-bi nu-ta- [. . .] K1A (PRAK B 442 o. i 4"): [. . .] da Ur1: omits Sch1 19: [(x)] -aĝ2-bi nu-tar-re-da-bi Nin1 6': [. . .] na-aĝ2-bi nu-tar-re [. . .] That city, whose fate is not to be decided, 21: uru2 u3-mu-un-e en3 li-bi2-in-tar-ra-bi K1 18: mu-lil2-bi e2 [. . .] K1A (PRAK B 442 o. i 5"): [. . .] re Ur1 8: uru(2)?ki MU.MU me-en en li-bi-tar--ĝu10 Sch1 20: [. . .] ?--e en3 li--?---? Nin1: omits That city, which because of this, the lord does not tend to it, 22: uru2 dmu-ul-lil2-le ba-e-ul4-la-bi K1 19: [x] -lil2-le [. . .] K1A (6"): [. . .] Ur1: omits Sch1 21: traces

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Nin1 7': [. . .] dmu-ul-lil2-la2 ba-ul4 [. . .] Nin1 8': [. . .] na mah-mah NE in [. . .] Nin1 9': [. . .] dmu-ul-lil2-la2 lu2 NE [. . .] That city against which Enlil rushes, 23: uru2 dnin-lil2-le du14! mu2-a-bi NOTE: The sign “du14” is written defectively, with a small diagonal wedge inside the head of “LU2” in place of a fully inscribed “NE” (for which there would not have been sufficient space inside the sign). K1: omits Ur1 9: uru(2)?ki dnin-lil2 du mu-da-ĝu10 Sch1 23: traces which include traces of a possible “bi” sign on the bottom edge of the tablet. Nin1: omits That city with which Ninlil starts a quarrel, 24: an-ne2 saĝ-ki-ni gid2-da-bi K1 20: [x x] -ki-ni [. . .] K1A (7"): bi Ur1 10: ? SI.A ki-ne šu?-ba-ĝu10 NOTE: it is also possible that the sign read as “šu” is “DUL”, as Cohen (1988: 548) reads it. Note, however, that the sign before “ki” is definitely not “saĝ”, and the signs before this are not “an-ne2”, as Cohen reads them. Sch1 (r. l): [. . .] gid2-da-bi NOTE: this line is written on the curvature of the bottom edge and the beginning of the reverse. Nin1 10': [. . .] saĝ-ki gid2 [. . .] That city upon which An has frowned, 25: dnu-dim2-mud --ba-bi K1 21: [x x x] NE [. . .] K1A (8"): bi Ur1 11: dnu-dim2-mud saĝ dub-ba-ĝu10 Sch1 r. 2: [. . .] ?-? ša3 dib-- Nin1 11': [. . .] dnu-dim2-mud-ra ša3 [. . .] That city which has made Nudimmud enraged,

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26: uru2 na-aĝ2-tar gig-ga ---!-a-bi NOTE: It is possible that the sign read as “du3” is “BAD”, but the final Winkelhaken seems too faint, and is probably not a wedge belonging to the sign. However, the surface of the tablet is scratched out where the bottom half of the sign would have been, making it difficult to confirm whether “du3” was written here. K1 22: [. . .] ? [. . .] K1A (9"): Rest of obverse col. i broken in PRAK C 52 and PRAK B 442, source K1 resumes with PRAK C 121 K4 (o./i?) 1': uru2 ? [. . .] Ur1 12: uru(2)?ki nam-tar gig-ga-te ba-DU-a-ĝu107 Sch1 r. 3: [. . .] gig-ga / [. . .] -du3-a-bi Nin1 12': [. . .] na-aĝ2-tar gig-ga [. . .] That city which was built(?) with a bitter fate, 27: uru2 ĝištukul saĝ-e ba-ab-zi--bi K1 o. i 23': broken K4 2': uru ĝiš? [. . .] Ur1 13: uru(2)?ki tu2(UD)-kul(HI)-ta MU ba-zi-ga-ĝu10 Sch1 r. 4: [. . .] ba-zi!-ga-bi Nin1 13': [. . .] saĝ-ĝa2 ba [. . .] That city against whose head a mace is raised, 28: uru2 ĝištukul-ta la-ba-ra-šub-- K1 (PRAK C 121) o. i 24': [. . .] -ta la- [. . .] K4 3': uru2 ĝiš? [. . .] Ur1 14: uru(2)?ki-MU tu2-kul-ta ba-ra-gub-ba-ĝu10 Sch1 r. 5: uru2(URUxUD) ĝiš[x x] la-ba-ra-šub-ba-bi Nin1 14': [. . .] ba [. . .] Rest of Nin1 broken That city which cannot escape the weapon, 7 The repetition of this line in Ur1 r. 6 reads: uru(2)?? ki nam-tar gig-ga te-ba DU?-a-ĝu10. Collation confirms that the sign read as “te” looks more like “te” than “im”. If this is the case, then “te” may be a writing of “de3”, which would result in the translation: “My city which was built so that it would have a bitter fate” (assuming that “DU” is a phonetic writing of “du3”).

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29: uru2 me3-a ba-an-gul-la-bi K1 27': uru2 mi-a ba-gul-la-bi ? [(x)] Note: although it is more likely that the sign read as “ba” is “ba”, it is also possible that it is “KU”. K4: omits Ur1: omits Sch1 r. 6: uru2 me3- --gul-la-bi That city which is destroyed in war, 30: (10-mark) me3 saĝ-e gaba-ri-a-bi K1 28': uru2 mi sa-ĝa2 gaba-ri-a-? [(x)] K4 6': [x (x)] [. . .] Note: there are traces of a wedge belonging to an unreadable sign in the line after this one and then the obverse of K4 breaks off Ur1 15: uru(2)?ki zi-mu-ma GAM-mi saĝ-ĝa2 dub2? ĝar-ra Ur1 continues with 15 lines that do not occur in NCBT 688. Sch1 r. 7: me3 saĝ-e gaba-ri-a-bi That city which is rivalled (even at) the beginning of a war, 31: uru2 dam šub-ba dumu šub-ba-bi K1: omits8 That city which the wife abandons and the son abandons, 32: uru2 ki-sikil šub-ba ĝuruš šub-ba-bi K1: omits That city which the young women abandon and the able-bodied men abandon, 33: uru2 mu-bi duru5ru gi-bi duru5ru-bi K1 29': uru2 mu-bi du-ra qa-bi du-ra- Sch1 r. 10: uru2 mu-bi duru5 [(x) (x)] duru5ru-a-

8 The scribe of Sch1 seems to have accidentally omitted this line and the next, probably as a result of seeing “uru2 ki-sikil” in l.32 and skipping ahead to l.34, which begins with the same signs (an example of parablepsis, and probably an indication that the scribe was copying from another exemplar).

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NOTE: the rest of the tablet is uninscribed after this line, probably because the scribe realized the mistake with the omitted lines and stopped writing – over half of the remaining space on the reverse is uninscribed, and there is not a doubleruling after this line. That city whose men are damp, whose women are damp, 34: uru2 ki-sikil-bi nu-hul2-le-de3 K1 25': [. . .] ki!(DI)-iš-ke!(DI)-el-bi -? [x x (x)] K4 4': [x] ki-sikil-bi [. . .] Sch1 r. 8: uru2 ki-sikil-bi --le-bi So that the young women of the city do not rejoice, 35: uru2 ĝuruš-bi nu-lib(LUL)-be2-de3 K1 26': ? mu-ru-bi nu-li- [. . .] NOTE: the traces of the first sign are consistent with “uru2”, but do not necessitate it. Note also that there appear to be traces of at least one horizontal wedge inside the beginning of the sign read as “bi” making it possible that this sign is “ga”. The “la” at the end of the line, however, is clear and unambiguous. K4 5': [. . .] ?-bi [. . .] Sch1 r. 9: uru2 ĝuruš-bi nu [(x) (x)] bi NOTE: It is possible that the scribe deliberately erased 1–2 signs after “nu” (and the two signs in the middle of the next line) after realizing that he/she had skipped lines. It is possible (though far from certain) that the signs before “bi” are “šub” and “ba”, resulting from confusion with the ends of lines 31–32, which the scribe accidentally omitted. So that the young men of the city do not become jubilant, 36: e2 tuku!-bi e2-a-na nu-du7! K1 30': e2 KU-be2 e-ya(-)nu(-)du3!(NI) [(x)]9 The one who does not have a house(?) is not suited for his house,

9 Cavigneaux (1993: 254) reads this line and the following line: “e2 {tu}-ku-bi e2-ya nu-zal // magi-ur tu-ku-bi šu nu-du GIŠ?”, and also considers the possibility that “e2 ku-bi” is a phonetic writing for “e2 tuku-bi”.

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37: mu-un-ga tuku!-bi šu nu--du7 K1 31': ma-gi-ur tu-ku-bi šu nu-du-ud / ?10 He does not finish putting his possessions outside(?),11 38: ur-bi ad6!-a ---nu2 K1 32': ur-bi a-ta im-da-e-nu-um 38: Its dogs lie down (in repose) around corpses, 39: uga()-bi im-da-ku2!(KA)-e K1 33': u4-ga-bi at-ti!(BALA) im-da-gu2-e 39: While its ravens devour the corpses, 40: (10-mark) lu2 saĝ- saĝ-e ba-ab-ga-am3 K1 34': lu2 sa-ĝa2 ama sa-ĝa2 ba-ab-qa The men and the mothers are carried away from/by the front, 41: lu2 egir-ra [(x) (x)] -ra ba-ab-ga-am3 K1 35': lu2 gi-re ama gi-re ba-ab-qa The men and the mothers are carried away from the back, 42: bar kar--bi [. . .] -?-dam NOTE: the surface of the tablet is almost completely broken and effaced before “dam”, making it almost impossible to determine what the 2–3 signs preceding it would have been. K1: omits Uruk1 (o. ii 3'): buru5 ka-ra-bi [. . .] Akk. (3a'): e-MAN-su [. . .] Its fleeing foreigner(?) ... 10 There are faint traces of a sign directly beneath “UD” and above “um” at the end of the next line, which may belong to an erased(?) “gi” or “gu2”. Since, however, the traces of this sign look very similar to the sign read as “gu2/gi” at the end of l.10' it is possible that the scribe was copying from another exemplar and that his or her eyes accidentally skipped over to the end of l.10' before the mistake was realized and the mistake was erased. Note also that “šu” may have been written over another sign making it look a little like “ya” without the second vertical wedge at the end of the sign. 11 Cavigneaux (1993: 254) translates: “avec sa fortune il ne l’a pas achevée”.

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43: LU2xKAR2!(LU2) kar-ra-bi [. . .] NOTE: There is an extra wedge inside the “LU2” sign, distinguishing it from the “LU2” in l.40, making it likely that the scribe was indicating the presence of an inscribed sign in this sign. K1: omits Uruk1 (o. ii 4'): mu-lu kar-ra-bi dib-ba mu- [. . .] Akk. (4a'): LU2 -reb-šu2 ka-meš i- [. . .] Its fleeing person ... 44: ma sipa(PA.LU)-da-bi [. . .] Note: The signs “PA” and “LU” are written with a space between them, and the final wedges of the sign at the end of the line could belong to either “dam” or “NE”. K1: omits Its shepherd’s hut ... 45: ma mu-un-gar3-bi [. . .] K1: omits Its farmer’s hut ... 46: i7-da dib-ba ĝiš [. . .] K1 36': id-di-pa ma-tu ma-nu- ma-tu / ? ? in-ga NOTE: it is possible, though not likely, that there are traces of two small wedges (large enough to be a sign like “MI2” but no larger) directly before the sign read as “ur” in the second part of the line. The one who tries to cross the water on a willow plank is carried away by the plank, 47: har-ra-an-na dib-ba ĝiš [. . .] GAM K1 37': ha-ra-na di-pa gi-qa- ma-nu- / gi-qa-ri / in-ga The who tries to travel on a road with a willow chariot is carried away by the chariot, 48: uru2 zi-ĝa2 kaskal-? [. . .] RU NOTE: It is possible that the traces of the sign after “kaskal” belong to “e”, but “la” seems more likely. K1 38': uru2 zi-ĝu10 kaskal-la di!(KI)-pa u4-lu ba-da / ri

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Uruk1 (o. ii 6'): uru2-ĝu10 [x (x)] -e ga-an-ĝin u4 hul ba-an [. . .] Akk. (6a'): ša2 ana URU ki-i-nu a-na har-ra-nu il-li-ki u4-mu lem-nu im- [. . .] The one who sets out on a journey to my faithful city is struck by a storm, 49: e4 nu-zu-gin7 e4 [. . .] -e K1 39': e2 nu-zu!-bi e2-e ba-ga The one who does not know the canal is carried away from the canal, 50: (10-mark) peš10(KI.A) nu-zu-gin7 a [. . .] ?.?-e NOTE: “DU.DU” at the end of the line is reasonably, but not completely certain. K1 40' bi-iš nu-zu!-bi bi-ša ba-ga This is the last line at the end of col. i in PRAK C 121 = K1 Uruk1 (o. ii 1'): ? [. . .] Akk. (1a'): [. . .] The one who does not know the river bank is carried away from the riverbank, 51: ĝišerinax(I.LU2xšeššig.NA) ki [. . .] ?-an-da-gul NOTE: the sign before “an”, read here as “ba”, looks like it may have been deliberately erased, and if this is the case the broken sign before it might be the “ba” at the beginning of the verbal chain. Uruk1 (o. ii 2'): ĝiši-- [. . .] Akk. (2a'): ša2 šur-šu2 ṣa-ba-tu la i [. . .] The one who has been seized by the roots ... is destroyed, 52: lu2 ši-ni-še3 ba- [. . .] - lu2 ba-DU Uruk1 (o. ii 5'): mu-lu --še3 ba-an-da-kar-ra-bi me-ri-ni- [. . .] Akk. (5a'): ša2 ana -[piš]-ti-šu2 in-na-ar-bi me-ra-nu-uš-šu2 ? [. . .] The one who fled for his life was pursued at his feet [while fleeing], 53: lu2 šub5(ZI::ZI.LAGAB)-še3 ba- [. . .] -še3 ba-da-ab-ku5 The man who [flees?] to the sedges is cut down by the sedges, 54: lu2 u2šu-mu-še3 [. . .] -bi u2šu-mu-še3 ba-da-ab-ku5 The man who flees(?) to the alfafa grass is cut down by the alfafa grass,

Appendix 1 Edition of uru2-am3-ma-i-ra-bi (Kirugus 1–5) 

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55: mušen šub5(ZI::ZI.LAGAB)-še3 i3-dal-la-bi u2(SAR)-še3 ba-da-ab-ku5 NOTE: In contrast to the writing of šub5 in l.53 and at the beginning of this line, which is written with “ZI::ZI” followed by “LAGAB”, the second “šub5” in this line begins with a sign that looks identical to “u2” followed by “SAR”. Uruk1 (o. ii 7'): mušen-bi u2šub5-še3 i3-dal-la-bi u2šub5-še3 ba-da- [. . .] Akk. (7a'): iṣ-ṣur-šu2 ša2 šup-pa-ti ip-par-šu2 ina šup-pa-ti im- [. . .] The bird which flies to the sedges is cut down by the sedges, 56: mušen u2šu-mu-še3 i3-dal-la-bi u2šu-mu-še3 ba-da-ab- NOTE: In this line and the next the traces of the two Winkelhaken of the last sign are preserved, but the space to the left of these wedges is no longer preserved on the tablet. Uruk1 (o. ii 8'): mušen-bi u2numun2-še3 i-dal-la-bi u2numun2-še3 ba-da- [. . .] Akk (8a'): iṣ-ṣur-šu2 ša2 ana el-pa-ti ip-par-šu2 ina el-pa-ti im-tu [. . .] The bird which flies to the alfafa grass is cut down by the alfalfa grass, 57: mušen-e ki dal-la-ta [. . .] Uruk1 (o. ii 9'): mušen-bi ki dal-a emmen2-na ba-an [. . .] Akk. (9a'): iṣ-ṣur-šu2 a-šar ip-par-šu2 ina ṣu-mu [. . .] Those birds wherever they flew were cut down ... Uruk1: Its bird which flees ... of thirst. 58: mu-lu2-bi ki-kas4!(DU) du11-ga-ni!(DU3)-a