Desire, Discord, and Death : Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Myth / by Neal Walls
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DESIRE, DISCORD AND DEATH APPROACHES TO ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN MYTH ASOR Books Volume 8 Victor Matthews, editor Billie Jean Collins ASOR Director of Publications DESIRE, DISCORD AND DEATH APPROACHES TO ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN MYTH by Neal Walls American Schools of Oriental Research • Boston, MA DESIRE, DISCORD AND DEATH APPROACHES TO ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN MYTH Copyright © 2001 American Schools of Oriental Research Cover art: Cylinder seal from Susa inscribed with the name of worshiper of Nergal. Photo courtesy of the Louvre Museum. Cover design by Monica McLeod. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Walls, Neal H., 1962- Desire, discord, and death : approaches to ancient Near Eastern myth / by Neal Walls. p. cm. -- (ASOR books ; v. 8) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 0-89757-056-1 -- ISBN 0-89757-055-3 (pbk.) 1. Mythology--Middle East. 2. Middle East--Literatures--History and crticism. 3. Death in literature. 4. Desire in literature. I. Title. II. Series. BL1060 .W34 2001 291.1'3'09394--dc21 2001003236 Contents ABBREVIATIONS vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS viii INTRODUCTION Hidden Riches in Secret Places 1 METHODS AND APPROACHES 3 CHAPTER ONE The Allure of Gilgamesh: The Construction of Desire in the Gilgamesh Epic INTRODUCTION 9 The Construction of Desire: Queering Gilgamesh 11 THE EROTIC GILGAMESH 17 The Prostitute and the Primal Man: Inciting Desire 18 The Gaze of Ishtar: Denying Desire 34 Heroic Love: Requiting Desire 50 The Death of Desire 68 CONCLUSION 76 CHAPTER TWO On the Couch with Horus and Seth: A Freudian Analysis (Or, The Case of Pharaoh’s Mommy) INTRODUCTION 93 Oedipus in Ancient Egypt 95 A CONTENTIOUS COURT: TWO EPISODES 98 The Insult and the Enigma 99 Island Intrigue 104 v vi THE THREE CONTESTS 108 Under the Water 108 In the Bed 112 On the Boat 115 CONCLUSION 116 CHAPTER THREE Desire in Death’s Realm: Sex, Power, and Violence in “Nergal and Ereshkigal” INTRODUCTION 127 Giving Death its Due 133 CRUCIBLE OF DESIRE 137 Ereshkigal’s Wiles 141 A GODDESS SCORNED 147 Ereshkigal’s Complaint 152 TO REIGN IN HELL 161 Nergal’s Return 161 Gender and Power 165 CONCLUSION: DESIRE AND DEATH 169 REFERENCES 183 SUBJECT INDEX 205 TEXT INDEX 207 Abbreviations ABD ................... The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992) AHw ................... Wolfram von Soden, Akkadisches Handwörterbuch (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1965-81) AOAT ................ Alter Orient und Altes Testament CAD ................... The Assyrian Dictionary of the University of Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1956–) CANE ................. Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack M. Sasson (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1995) DDD .................. Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, eds. Karel van der Torrn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1999) GAG ................... Wolfram von Soden, Grundriss der akkadischen Gram- matik, 3rd ed. Analecta Orientalia 33 (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, 1995) HR ...................... History of Religions HSM .................. Harvard Semitic Monographs JBL ..................... Journal of Biblical Literature JCS ..................... Journal of Cuneiform Studies JEA .................... Journal of Egyptian Archaeology JNES .................. Journal of Near Eastern Studies LÄ ...................... Lexikon der Ägyptologie, eds. W. Helck and W. Westendorf (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1972–) OBO ................... Orbis biblicus et orientalis RlA ..................... Reallexikon der Assyriologie, eds. E. Ebeling et al. (Berlin: de Gruyter & Co., 1932–) TUAT ................. Texte aus der Umwelt des Alten Testaments, ed. Otto Kaiser (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1982–) UBL ................... Ugaritisch-Biblische Literatur UF ...................... Ugarit-Forschungen ZA ...................... Zeitschrift für Assyriologie vii Acknowledgments I would like to thank numerous friends and colleagues who aided and abet-ted me in the production of this book with their many acts of kindness. These include, among others, David Casson, Amy Cottrill, David Garber, Brad Kelle, Jacqueline Lapsley, Brian Mahan, Victor Matthews, Dan Mathewson, and Tim Sandoval. I am especially grateful to Billie Jean Collins, Jerry Coo- per, Chip Dobbs-Allsopp, and Carol Newsom for their wise advice and con- tinued encouragement, and to my research assistant, Katherine Logan, for her many hours of labor on this project. Support for the research and writing of this book was provided by gen- erous grants from the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion and the University Research Committee of Emory University. viii I N T R O D U C T I O N H i d d e n R i c h e s i n S e c r e t P l a c e s The prophet Isaiah ben Amoz proclaimed an ominous fate for the glorious city that once dominated the ancient Near East: And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the proud splendor of the Chaldeans, will be like Sodom and Gomorrah when God overthrew them. Nevermore shall it be inhabited, nor settled through all the ages. No Arab will pitch his tent there, no shepherd will rest flocks there. But wild animals will rest there, in houses filled with howling creatures. Ostriches will reside there, and there will satyrs dance. Hyenas will howl within its fortresses, and jackals, in the pleasure-palaces. (Isaiah 13:19–22)1 Isaiah’s prophetic oracle of Babylon’s abandonment foresaw the great city’s utter desolation from ancient times to the present. Like Akkad and Nineveh before her, Babylon would eventually succumb to the relentless forces of change and decay. While Babylon’s memory survived in the Christian and Muslim worlds as a symbol of pagan excess, much of her actual splendor lay forgotten, buried under the drifting soil of the Mesopotamian plain. The teeming metropolis ruled by Hammurapi (c. 1792–1750 BCE) and Nebuchadrezzar (604–562 BCE) was reduced to a heap of ruins on the distant horizon. Yet, as the Sufi mystic Rumi wrote, “Where 2 there is ruin, there is hope for treasure.” This hope was fulfilled by 1 2 DESIRE, DISCORD, AND DEATH modern archaeologists who in the nineteenth century began to excavate the sites of Babylon, Nineveh, and other ancient Near Eastern cities from Mesopotamia to Egypt. The archives of cuneiform and Egyptian texts that they brought to light after two thousand years of entombment include treasures of world literature. Indeed, these literary texts are among the “treasures of darkness and hidden riches in secret places” that Isaiah so long ago promised to Cyrus, the Persian conqueror of Babylon (Isaiah 45:3).3 Ancient Near Eastern literature may lack the poetic grace of Homeric metaphors or the delightful expression of Norse kennings, but it possesses its own stark beauty and poetic charm. Some ancient poems sing in sonorous voices of primordial events or serenade us with lovely songs of the splendor of the gods. Other texts, however, are not so beautiful; their ideologies of conquest and oppression are distasteful to contemporary readers. Sometimes the words of the story lay heavy upon the page, obscure and unintelligible. Perhaps the narrative lacks artistry; perhaps we are simply unable to perceive it. As our western eyes are unaccustomed to reading cuneiform and hieroglyphic scripts, so our modern ears are not attuned to the rhetorical forms of this alien and exotic literature. Our hearts are not always warmed by the ancients’ concerns nor our minds enlightened by their insights. In general, our interests and obsessions are different from theirs. No matter: the allure of ancient voices compels us to meditate upon their sacred literature and listen attentively to their myths repeated from the dawn of civilization. Ancient Near Eastern mythology offers its readers fantastic accounts of the birth of the gods and the creation of the world, the flood and its few survivors, the mount of the gods’ assembly, and the gloomy underworld of departed shades. Composed in hieroglyphic characters on papyrus scrolls or inscribed on clay tablets in cuneiform signs, the world’s earliest literature records the myths of Ishtar and Gilgamesh, Isis and Osiris, Horus and Seth, and Nergal and Ereshkigal, to name but a few. These narratives construct elaborate scenarios of divine conflicts on the Nile’s African shores, heroic journeys across Asian landscapes, and Netherworld itineraries for the restless dead. The mythological imagination and literary subtlety displayed by this early literature deserve greater acclaim and deeper appreciation than generally accorded by scholars of comp- HIDDEN RICHES IN SECRET PLACES 3 arative myth or Near Eastern studies. Many riches still remain hidden in these texts. In an effort to display the literary art and poetic vision of ancient Near Eastern mythology, this collection of essays uses contemporary methods of literary analysis to explore the interrelated themes of desire, divine conflict, and death’s realm in selected mythological narratives. Common to all chapters is the theme of erotic desire—its various manifestations, the conflicts it produces, and its symbolic association with death. The book’s first chapter, informed by queer theory, traces the poetic construction of desire in the Gilgamesh epic’s extended meditation upon love and death. The second chapter uses a Freudian lens to interpret the bizarre sexual symbolism and competing desires of Horus and Seth in “The Contendings of Horus and Seth.” The entwined themes of desire, discord, and death most fully converge