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الشرق Ash-sharq Bulletin of the Ancient Near East Archaeological, Historical and Societal Studies Vol 1 No 1 April 2017 Access

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editorial director Laura Battini

scientific committee Silvana Di Paolo Yagmur Heffron Barbara Helwing Elif Koparal Marta Luciani Maria-Grazia Masetti-Rouault Valérie Matoïan Béatrice Muller Tallay Ornan Access Adelheid Otto Jack M. Sasson Karen Sonik StJohn SimpsonOpen Pierre Villard Nele Ziegler

Ash-sharq is a Bulletin devoted to short articles on the archaeology and history of the Ancient Near East. It is published twice a year. Submissions are welcome from academics and researchers at all levels. Submissions should be sent to Laura Battini ([email protected])

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Contents A Short Introduction ��iii Laura Battini 1 �� عمريت خالل العصر الفينيقي المتأخر Michel Al-Maqdissi and Eva Ishaq A Double-Sided Board from Tell Afis �� 9 Anne-Elizabeth Dunn-Vaturi Some Considerations on the Funnels from Tell Afis ��Access 18 Giuseppe Minunno أعمال البعثة السورية في المدينة البيزنطية)تل الكسرة األثري) خالل خمس مواسم )Open (2010-2006 22�� اآلثاري يعرب العبدالله )المديرية العامة لآلثار والمتاحف- مدير المتحف الوطني بدمشق) Yaarob Dahham Men, Animals and Pots. A few Thoughts about a Narrative Motive on Syrian Bronze Age Vessels ��33 Juliette Mas Entrusting One’s Seal in the Ancient Near East in the First Half of the 2nd millennium BC ��40 Julie Patrier Archaeopress Bronze Metallurgy in the Times of the Earliest Cities. New Data on the City I of Mari ��48 Juan-Luis Montero Fenollós Localized Ištar Goddesses and the Making of Socio-Political Communities: Samsi- Addu’s Eštar Irradan at Mari ��55 Elizabeth Knott Of Pins and Beads: Note on a Feminine Costume in Mari ��62 Barbara Couturaud Ships and Diplomacy. The Historical Connection between the Letters RS 18.031 (from Tyre) and RS 94.2483 (from Ugarit) ��69 Juan-Pablo Vita

i © Archaeopress and the authors, 2016. Issues in the Historical Geography of the Fertile Crescent �� 72 Ran Zadok The Kiriath-Jearim Archaeological Mission ��93 Thomas Römer An Entanglement between Nature and the Supernatural: the Early Second Millennium BCE Ceremonial Complex of Hirbemerdon Tepe in the Upper Tigris Region ��96 Nicola Laneri The Architecture of Bahra 1, an Ubaid Culture-Related Settlement in Kuwait � 104 Piotr Bieliński A Summary of the 5th Campaign of the French Archaeological Mission at Qasr Shemamok (Kurdistan, Iraq), 21 September – 19 October, 2016 �� 112 Maria Grazia Masetti-Rouault The Peshdar Plain Project, 2015-2016. A Major Neo-Assyrian Settlement on the Empire’s Eastern Border ��Access 124 Karen Radner, Janoscha Kreppner and Andrea Squitieri Abu Tbeirah’s Craft Area NE: A Preliminary Survey �� 131 Franco D’Agostino and Licia Romano Open The Creation of the First (Divinatory) Dream and Enki(g) as the God of Ritual Wisdom �� 155 Annette Zgoll The Hare has lost his Spectacles. Notes on Contest Scenes, Early Occurrences 162 Reinhard Dittmann Daughters from Good Families and their Seals in the Old Babylonian Period �� 170 Gudrun Colbow Archaeopress Re-contextualizing Clay Figurines, Models, and Plaques from Iščali �� 177 Elisa Roßberger

The Creation of the First (Divinatory) Dream and Enki(g) as the God of Ritual Wisdom

Annette Zgoll Universität Göttingen

To Bram Jagersma in admiration for the ‘Descriptive Grammar of Sumerian’, which helps so much in analysing and understanding this fascinating language

A close reading of the Sumerian version of the Flood Myth shows the god Enki(g) as the creator of the first divinatory dream. Enki(g)’s wisdom is precisely to be understood in this particular way, as ritual wisdom. In addition, Enki(g)’s/Ea’sAccess trick in order to disclose the secrets of the gods without breaking his oath becomes comprehensible: it uses a clever combination of two different types of oracular devices.1

One of the most ingenious deeds of one of theOpen most ingenious gods is his using a trick to save the human race. Having sworn an oath to keep the gods’ plans to annihilate mankind2 secret, he finds a way to let a human protégé know this very plan without telling him directly, thus acting in accordance with the letter of his oath. This plan is so clever that it is not only hidden from the gods within the story, but also obscure to the story’s modern reader. This is due to the fact that the trick of our ingenious god involves two strategies: First, Enki(g)/Ea does not disclose the secret directly to his protégé, but to a wall or reed-fence which has to remember the message and repeat it to the flood hero (Epic of Atram-ḫasīs III 1:18-21; Epic of Gilgameš XI 19-24, George 2003 with Worthington Archaeopress2012: 305-308). Secondly, some part of the message is conveyed by a dream;3 in the Epic of Gilgameš, Ea says to Enlil:

... šunata ušabrišuma pirišti ilāni išme ‘... I let him see a dream, and so he heard the secret of the gods.’ Epic of Gilgameš XI 197

1 Inspiration for this interpretation came while preparing the first workshop of the DFG research group 2064 STRATA on myths in antiquity and in discussions with Gösta Gabriel, Martin Ganter, Martin Worthington, and Christian Zgoll. My thanks go furthermore to Katharina Ibenthal and Jan Steyer for assisting me with checking the literature, and to Martin Worthington for taking the time to improve the English. 2 Epic of Gilgameš XI 196-197. 3 Worthington 2012, 307 with note 990 points out the difficulties in understanding the twofold communication of Enki(g) and the flood hero.

The corresponding passage in the OB version of the Epic of Atram-ḫasīs III 1: 11-21 is fragmentary, but the use of special dream terminology4 makes it clear that Atram- ḫasīs has also received a message from Enki(g) in a dream:

III 1:11 [Atram-hasīs] pī´ašu īpušamma III 1:12 [izzakkar] ana bēlīšu III 1:13 [ša šuttīya w]uddi’a qerebša III 1:14 […..]..di lušte’’e sibbassa 11 [Atram-hasīs] opened his mouth and 12 [began to speak] to his lord: 13 ‘Let me know the (inner part =) meaning [of my dream]! 14 I would seek its (tail end =) consequences [...] ...!’

Looking at the wording, one gets the impression that this passage is strongly condensed.5 Through the dream, Enki(g) lets Atram-ḫasīs understand that it is important to know more about something soon to happen. Atram-ḫasīs realises that this dream has an ominous character and therefore asks his god what consequences the dream will have. The Akkadian versions of Enki(g)/Ea’s trick to save mankindAccess thus show a complex but comprehensible procedure, combining two oracle forms, a dream oracle and a reed wall oracle6. But how strange is the Sumerian version of this myth! Here, line 1497 seems to state explicitly that what occurs is not a dream: Open ma-mu2 nu-me-a e3-de3 enim ba[l …]

The currently established translations take this as a statement that there was no dream involved:8

Civil (1969: 143, also Finkel 2014: 114): ‘It was not a dream, coming out and spea[king …]’ Jacobsen (1981: 522): ‘(he heard) something that was not a dream appearing: conversation’ Jacobsen (1987:Archaeopress 148): ‘something that was not a dream was appearing: conversa[tion]’ Römer (1993: 454): ‘kam (etwas,) obwohl es kein Traum war, heraus: eine Unterha[ltung]’

4 Zgoll 2006, 427, 455f. with an explanation of Akkadian qerbu = Sumerian ša3(g) as ‘core’ (of a dream) and sibbatu as ‘consequence’ (of a dream), all as termini technici of a dream-specific terminology. 5 It shares this characteristic with the quoted Gilgameš passage, which is also written in a highly condensed manner, see Worthington 2012, 306. 6 This has to be discussed elsewhere. 7 CBS 10673 + 10867, obverse 3:15´ = segment c. 8 Different to these translations are Poebel 1914 and Heidel 1949 (for these see below with note 14) and Kramer 1950: 44 ‘Bringing forth all kinds of dreams, [he] …,’ and Kramer 1983: 119: ‘Bringing forth all kinds of dreams, con[versing]’. Kramer obviously doubted that there was no dream involved; his translation of nu-me-a as ‘all kinds of’ is problematic, as it is based on an assumed phonetic shift citing Poebel 1923 § 264 (read § 265), where Poebel interprets nu-me-a, nume, nu-me-a-k and nume-k as variants of name(-k) ‘jeder’, ‘jeglicher’, cf. Kramer 1950: 44, note 44.

(Bulletin of the Ancient Near East Volume 1 No 1 (2017 الشرق © Archaeopress and the authors, 2016. The Creation of the First (Divinatory) Dream and Enki(g) as the God of Ritual Wisdom 157

Black et al. (2004: 214) = ETCSL 1.7.4: ‘Something that was not a dream appeared, conversation’.

This is strange: Already Poebel (1914: 51), who translated differently (see note 14 below), noted that in the late Flood narrative of Berossos, written in Greek, ‘it is expressly stated that Kronos, i. e., Ea, appeared to Xisuthros in a dream and informed him that mankind would perish by a flood’. A closer reading of the small passage of the Sumerian Flood Story reveals a semantic similarity to other myths. Other mythical accounts in Sumerian often tell of important entities which did not exist at some primeval point in time. If a myth starts with such a statement of non-existence, one can be sure that this entity’s coming into being is one of the central concerns of the myth. Some of these passages even use a nominal phrase with the non-finite verbal form nu-me-a, to be understood as a nominal phrase in the locative with a temporal meaning ‘when ... did not yet exist’. Thus, for example, the Debate between Grain and Sheep9 lines 6-7 has the phrasing:

u8 nu-e3-a sila4 nu-šar2-ra 10 u5 nu-me-a maš2 nu-šar2-ra Access when ewe had not (yet) come into being, when lambs had not (yet) become numerous, when goats not (yet) existed, when kids had not (yet) become numerous Open Subsequently, the text continues narrating that these important beings were created by the gods (lines 26-27). Similarly, The Rulers of Lagaš11 states in lines 107-108 that in the beginning there existed no writing, no canals, no tools for carrying the earth in order to dig canals and erect buildings:

u4(d)-ba mu ⌈sar⌉ nu-me-a x […] ge i7(d) nu-un-dun dubsig [nu-un-il2] In those days, when writing not (yet) existed, ……, no canal wasArchaeopress (yet) dug, [no] earth basket [was (yet) carried]. The text goes on to recount that these tools were created and canals were dug; and it is to be taken for granted that writing was also given to mankind.12 – In these lines we can grasp a favourite feature of the literary style of mythical creation narratives in ancient Mesopotamia: they elucidate the emergence of the world or parts of the world, starting with a state of non-existence but leading on to a state of existence. The new state which is thus reached reflects and presents the world as experienced

9 Cf. Lisman 2013: 40-44 and 256-281; Alster and Vanstiphout 1987; ETCSL 5.3.2. 10 CBS 14005 has nu-me-a, UET 6/1: 33 has in parallel to the preceeding line nu-e3-a. The difference between nu-me-a and nu-e3-a is only one of nuance, nu-e3-a stressing the process of creation, nu-me-a the result of it. 11 Cf. Sollberger 1967; Glassner 2004; ETCSL 2.1.2. 12 Only the fragmentary state of preservation of The Rulers of Lagaš makes it impossible until now to find out how this was described.

(Bulletin of the Ancient Near East Volume 1 No 1 (2017 الشرق © Archaeopress and the authors, 2016. 158 Annette Zgoll by those who transmitted this myth. The described stylistic device serves a clear semantic goal: it underlines the importance of the entity which in primordial time did not yet exist, but became an essential part of the world as people knew it. And it highlights the importance of the initiator of the creation.

With this characteristic of mythical narratives in mind, and in light of the passages mentioning non-existence cited above,13 it is worth looking again at the dream in the Sumerian Flood Myth, line 149 (= obverse 3: 15´):

ma-mu2(d) nu-me-a e3-de3 enim ⌈bal⌉ […] This can be analysed as:

{ ma.mu2.d nu-me-a==Ø e3.d==e enim bal[==? ...] } The translation is: In order to let a dream, something which had not (yet) existed, (appear =) come into being, [... a] changing of words [...]14

Whatever may have stood at the end of this line, there is no doubt – considering the context – that Enki(g) is the one who ‘let the dream comeAccess into being’, i.e. that he created this dream. The participle nu-me-a has the function of demonstrating that this creation of Enki(g)’s was something truly new which had not existed before and that it is Enki(g) who earns the credit for bringing it into being. Enki(g) has invented the divinatory dream as an instrument for gettingOpen knowledge about the secrets of the gods, who determine the future of mankind.

This interpretation is confirmed by a new version of the Sumerian Flood Myth. By courtesy of Konrad Volk and Jana Matuszak I am allowed to quote from the corresponding lines of this new version of the Flood story found on a tablet now housed in the Schøyen collection, which Jana Matuszak has copied and transcribed:15

x dEn-ki-ke₄ en ĝeš-tu₉(g)ĝeštu(g) d[aĝal?-la?-ke ?] 4 ⌈ma⌉-mu₂(d) nu-me-a pa! e₃-a [x x (x)] / enim mu-un-⌈da⌉-ba[la-e?]16 This can⌈ be⌉ analyzedArchaeopress as:

13 Such statements are made with nu-me-a and other verbal forms, such as the quoted nu-e3-a. 14 The first translator (Poebel 1914) went in the same direction, translating ‘….ing by dreams which had not been (before), …….’ (1914: 18). Poebel assumed that ‘The ‘bringing forth’ of ‘dreams (or a dream) that had not existed before(?),’ might have depicted Ziusuȓa ‘as the first man who tried to find out the will of the gods by means of dreams’ (1914: 51). We would propose a shift in meaning, taking this, Ziusuȓa’s ability, as a connotation of the denoted meaning that the passage is about Enki(g) insofar as the creation of the first oracular dream is presented as a clever invention of Enki(g), see below. – Heidel (1949: 103) improved the translation: ‘A dream, such as had not been (before), comes forth […]’; but he interpreted the nu-me-a as characterising this dream as ‘extraordinary’ and of ‘singular character’ and therefore difficult to understand (1949: 229). The translations and ideas of Poebel and Heidel have not been accepted by subsequent scholarship. 15 Lines 148a-149 = obverse 2´:16´-17´ of Schøyen tablet MS 3026; the tablet will be published in the forthcoming volume Volk and Matuszak, Sumerische literarische Texte der Schøyen Collection I. 16 I restore the break in this way, parallel to the next finite verbal form which is imperfective (marû) as well.

(Bulletin of the Ancient Near East Volume 1 No 1 (2017 الشرق © Archaeopress and the authors, 2016. The Creation of the First (Divinatory) Dream and Enki(g) as the God of Ritual Wisdom 159

? ! { x En.ki.k==e en ĝeštu.g d[aĝal =ak==e] ma.mu2.d nu-me-a pa e3-a[==...... ] enim ==Ø mu-n.da-ba[la-e?] } The translation is accordingly: ... Enki(g), lord of b[road?] wisdom, was changing words with him (= Ziusuȓa) in a dream), something which had not (yet) existed, but which he had (brightly brought forth =) created.

The Mesopotamian concept of dreaming implies that, while a person is dreaming, his or her dream soul is able to leave the body of the dreamer and get into other parts of the world (Zgoll 2006): in the Sumerian version, the dream soul of the Flood hero stands on one side of a wall and therefore is able to hear what the god of wisdom standing on the other side of the wall is saying:

Zi-ud-su3-ȓa2 da-be2 gub-ba ĝeš mu-[un-tuku] Ziusuȓa, who had stood up at its (= the wall’s) side, he[ard] him.17

Enki(g) is not talking directly to Ziusuȓa, but he is telling the wall everything which is important for his protégé (lines 19ff.). This can be understood in at least three different ways: Access

(1) Enki(g) talks to the wall and tells it to remember everything perfectly, but his words are rather adressed to Ziusuȓa, whose dream soul is on the other side of the wall, able to hear everything. Open (2) Enki(g) talks to the wall, but Ziusuȓa’s dream soul, standing on the other side of the wall, cannot hear these words; therefore the wall has to repeat the god’s message directly afterwards to Ziusuȓa’s dream soul, which remains on its other side. (3) The mythical account is a concentration of two different events, the first being a dream oracle telling Ziusuȓa to come to a special wall, where it was followed by an oracle from the wall.

The two Sumerian Archaeopressrecensions of the Flood Myth are thus not denying the importance of a dream as an essential part of the trick with which Enki(g) saved mankind. On the contrary, the Sumerian versions stress even more how ingeniously Enki(g) acts. It is precisely the phrase nu-me-a which makes it absolutely clear that this dream of Ziusuȓa is to be considered as the very first dream or at least the first divinatory dream.18 The two Sumerian tablets of the Flood Myth present Enki(g) as the creator of this dream, and thereby as the creator of dreaming as a divinatory technique. Enki(g) is to be regarded as the one who gave mankind this special secret and sacred form of communication (‘changing of words’) and its essential rituals. This parallels other

17 Line 152 = segment c line 18. 18 Even if myths do recount first-time events, it is common for textual variants not to say explicitly that an event is meant as occuring for the first time, see C. Zgoll 2016, chapter 3.1.5 ‘Arten der Transformation von Erfahrungsgegenständen durch erzählerische Verdichtung’. It is all the more noteworthy that the Sumerian epic does emphasise that Ziusuȓa’s divinatory dream is the very first of its kind.

myths which portray Enki(g)/Ea as the one who gives ritual wisdom to mankind. Such portrayals are found in many incantations which have Enki(g)/Ea and Asalluḫi help people suffering from illness by giving them the appropriate ritual, or in the Catalogue of Texts and Authors,19 where Enki(g)/Ea is shown as author of the ritual lore of the ritual experts (āšipu) and cultic singers (kalû).

The short passage about the creation of the first dream gives a fresh perspective on the particular wisdom of Enki(g)/Ea. In the Schøyen-tablet of the Sumerian Flood Myth he is called ‘lord of b[road?] wisdom’ in the very moment of creating the first dream. This is in perfect accord with many other texts which show him as the creator and master of rituals. Taking this together, we can specify what kind of wisdom the people of ancient Mesopotamia associated with this god: the wisdom of Enki(g)/Ea is primarily the wisdom of rituals, and Enki(g)/Ea is the god of ritual wisdom.20

References

Alster, B., Vanstiphout, H., Lahar and Ashnan 1987. Presentation and Analysis of a Sumerian Disputation. ASJ 9: 1-31. Access Black, J. A. et al. (ed.) 2004. The Literature of Ancient Sumer. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Civil, M. 1969. The Sumerian Flood Story. In W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard, Atra-ḫasīs. The Babylonian Story of the Flood: 138-145 andOpen 167-172. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ETCSL: Black, J. A. et al. 1998–2006. The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/). Oxford. Finkel, I. L. 2014. The Ark before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood. London: Hodder & Stoughton. George, A. R. 2003. The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Glassner, J.-J. 2004. Mesopotamian Chronicles, Writings from the Ancient World 19. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Heidel, A. 19492. TheArchaeopress Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jacobsen, Th. 1981. The Eridu Genesis. JBL 100/4: 513-529. Jacobsen, Th. 1987. The Harps that Once... Sumerian Poetry in Translation. New Haven/ London: Yale University Press. Kramer, S. N. 1950. Sumerian Myths and Tales. In J. B. Pritchard (ed), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament: 37-59. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kramer, S. N. 1983. The Sumerian Deluge Myth. Reviewed and Revised. AnSt 33: 115- 121. Lambert, W. G. 1962. A Catalogue of Texts and Authors. JCS 16: 59-77.

19 Cf. Lambert 1962. 20 For a broader discussion of this conclusion see the forthcoming book by A. Zgoll about religion in ancient Mesopotamia.

(Bulletin of the Ancient Near East Volume 1 No 1 (2017 الشرق © Archaeopress and the authors, 2016. The Creation of the First (Divinatory) Dream and Enki(g) as the God of Ritual Wisdom 161

Lisman, J. J. W. 2013. Cosmogony, Theogony and Anthropogeny in Sumerian Texts, AOAT 409. Münster: Ugarit Verlag. Poebel, A. 1914. Historical Texts, PBS IV/1. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum. Poebel, A. 1914a. Historical and Grammatical Texts, PBS V. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Museum. Poebel, A. 1923. Grundzüge der sumerischen Grammatik. Rostock: Selbstverlag des Verfassers. Römer, W. H. Ph. 1993. Mythen und Epen I, TUAT III/3. München: Gütersloher Verlagshaus. Sollberger, E. 1967. The Rulers of Lagaš. JCS 21: 279-291. Volk, K. and Matuszak, J. in preparation. Sumerische literarische Texte der Schøyen Collection I. Mit Beiträgen von A. George, C. Mittermayer, L. Vacín und A. Westenholz, CUSAS XX. Bethesda: University Press of Maryland. Worthington, M. 2012. Principles of Akkadian Textual Criticism, SANER 1. Boston/Berlin: de Gruyter. Zgoll, A. 2003. Die Kunst des Betens. Form und Funktion, Theologie und Psychagogik in babylonisch-assyrischen Handerhebungsgebeten an Ištar, AOAT 308. Münster: Ugarit Verlag. Zgoll, A. 2006. Traum und Welterleben im antiken Mesopotamien.Access Traumtheorie und Traumpraxis im 3. - 1. Jt. v. Chr. als Horizont einer Kulturgeschichte des Träumens, AOAT 333, Münster: Ugarit Verlag. Zgoll, C., 2016. Tractatus mythologicus. Theorie und Methodik zur Interpretation von Mythen und ihren KonkretionsformenOpen als Grundlegung einer allgemeinen, intermedialen und komparatistischen Stoff-Forschung. Habilitationsschrift eingereicht an der Philosophischen Fakultät der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (to be published in 2017/18).

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