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With Roots in the Abzu and Crown in the Sky: Temple Construction in Between Myth and Reality

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With Roots in the Abzu and Crown in the Sky: Temple Construction in Between Myth and Reality With roots in the Abzu and crown in the sky: Temple construction in between myth and reality - A study of the Eninnu temple of the Gudea cylinders as divine house and cosmic link. Fig. 1: Statue of Gudea. Anne Rebekka Øiseth A dissertation presented to Institutt for Kulturstudier at the University of Oslo, for partial fulfilment of the degree of Master in History of Religion. August 2007 2 Preface The major background work for this dissertation consisted in reading through the entire text of the Gudea cylinders, from the original hand-copies of the cuneiform to comparing various translations. The opportunity to go through the text in this manner has been a priceless aid in the further work with this dissertation, and provided me with a familiarity with the Cylinders I would never otherwise have obtained. Hence, my sincerest thanks go to those individuals who made this a possible and, not least, entertaining and inspiring undertaking! I worked through Cylinder A together with Mr. Alexander Lange Ziesler, much of the time in his sitting room encouraged by his impressive red cat and many a strong coffee, during the best part of a year of regular reading sessions. Thank you for sharing so generously of your time and knowledge! Partly preceding and overlapping this period, we read through Cylinder B at the weekly seminar of the Norwegian Institute of Palaeography and Historical Philology, which is lead by Professor Jens Braarvig. It was here I was first introduced to the Gudea text and became inspired and encouraged to make its study my own project. Jens has been a great tutor - thank you for your constant inspiration, enthusiasm, patience and flexibility! And not least to the rest of the participants of the weekly seminar group, for keeping the study of dead things alive. Thanks also to Professor Andrew George for setting me on the writings of Averbeck, which greatly sped up my search for recent material on the Cylinders, and to Dr. Richard Averbeck himself for his encouraging reply to my email! Also, to the eminent archaeologist Ole for reading through and commenting on major parts of this dissertation, and, lastly, to friends and family for putting up with and appreciating my somewhat eccentric interests. 3 Table of contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………….…....……….6 I Presentation and scope………………………...........................................................................6 II The text of the Gudea cylinders – notes on genre, function and context……………………..8 III Literature review……………………………………………………………………….........12 IV Method………………………………………………………………………………………14 V Theoretical concepts and perspectives………………………………………………………16 1. Gudea and the Cylinders: ‘Locus’ and context………………………….……..................23 1.1. Gudea and his time………………………………………………………………………....23 1.2. The cylinders……………………………………………………………………………….24 2. A synopsis of the Gudea cylinders, with a preliminary explanation of important names and notions………………………………………………..27 2.1. Names and concepts………………………………………………………………………..27 2.1.1. Dramatis personae……………………………………………………………….....27 2.1.2. A clarification of certain notions…………………………………………………...34 2.2. A synopsis of the Gudea cylinders…………………………………………………………38 2.2.1. Cylinder A……………………………………………………………………….....38 2.2.2. Cylinder B………………………………………………………………………….42 3. Temple and divine presence: modes of identification…………………………….............45 3.1. The physical Eninnu in Archaeology and text……………………………………………..46 3.2. Backdrop: confronting, imagining and placing ‘the sacred’ in Sumer…………………….47 3.2.1. A look at me-lam and ni…………………………………………………………....49 3.2.2. The nature of the divine: phenomenon, deity and image…………………………..51 3.3. “Eninnu, being the bright Thunderbird…:” On the metaphorical relation of the temple to Ningirsu and Imdugud…………………………………………………………………56 3.3.1. Different views on Imdugud as Ningirsu’s accomplice: original form, emblem or enemy?............................................................................57 3.3.2. Imdugud as the metaphorical link between Eninnu and Ningirsu…………………61 3.4. Summary and conclusion to this chapter…..........................................................................66 . 4. “I will make its me resplendent in heaven and on earth”: Considering the Eninnu as cosmic link and microcosm…………………………………….67 4.1. Introduction to the further study…………………………………………………………...68 4.2. Eninnu in the making: Cosmic link and focal point……………………………………….71 4.2.1. “The House, mooring post of the land…”: Axis mundi, mooring rope, or navel?....71 4.2.2. “The House is like a great mountain reaching toward heaven”: Eninnu considered in the shape of a Cosmic Mountain…………………………...77 4.2.3. Of roots and clouds…………………………………………………………………83 4.3. “…its me made resplendent in heaven and on earth”: Eninnu as a microcosm……………87 4.3.1. A time-less and space-less model decreed on high: the form of the temple……….87 4.3.2. Parallel actions: the anchoring of earth’s rituals in heaven’s perfection…………...92 4.4. Summary and conclusion to this chapter..………………………………………………….94 5. General Conclusion………………………………………………………………….………98 4 Appendixes Appendix 1: ETCSL composite translation and transliteration of Gudea cylinders A and B Appendix 2: My translation of major parts from the Cylinders, from Verdens Hellige Skrifter (with extended notes). Bibliography 5 1. Introduction I. Presentation and scope The Cylinders of Gudea comprise one of the longest and most complete pieces of Sumerian literature that is known to date. The lengthy hymn celebrates the rebuilding of the grand Eninnu-temple of the god Ningirsu by Gudea, the governor (ensi) of the region and city of Lagash during its 2nd dynasty, which may, according to the most likely chronologies, be dated roughly to 2125 BC. The temple was built in the ancient city of Girsu, now the site of modern Telloh in southern Iraq. The principal aim of the present dissertation is to study the ‘metaphysical’ side of the Eninnu-temple on the basis of this text, more precisely, the identification of the temple with its god, and the position of the temple in the cosmos as a link and ‘meeting point’ between the worlds. In my view, the Gudea text conveys a clear idea of transcendence as essential to Sumerian thought. I will argue that, throughout the process that the cylinders describe, it runs through as a core that the aim is to express and ‘catch’ this transcendent reality and make it immanent by means of the correct rites and symbols; one might say that the dichotomy between the ‘transcendent’ and the ‘immanent’ becomes bridged by the correctly functioning (i.e. cultically right) symbols, realised in the text through metaphorization and figurative language. It is this world of symbols that I will describe and discuss in the main parts of this dissertation, and the way these symbols partake in a particular metaphysical horizon. Thorkild Jacobsen1 has described the Sumerian ‘numinous’ reality as basically “intransitive” and immanent, echoing the tautagorical ideas of German romanticism, but I will hold that the picture is more complex. It seems evident that one should not underestimate ability of the Sumerians to abstract thinking and forming metaphysical concepts, of which one testimony is the development of their writing system and their poetry, where the use of metaphor and the playful alteration between abstract and concrete sign-values is a central characteristic. The story told in the Gudea cylinders is so rich and complex that, even with a vantage point limited by a particular focus like the present, it proves hard to cut down on the great many 1 1976 6 elements that could always find a relevant place within our study. However, I have tried to select and stick to the elements that stand out as most significant in relation to the identification of the temple with the divine and its function and definition as ‘cosmic link’. The text is laden with metaphors when it describes the ritual process of the temple building and its circumstances, and often appears to deliberately place the action in an ambivalent position in between myth and reality. In my view, this language clearly reflects something of greater cultic importance than mere descriptive praise, and no less so with the ritual process described, in which any distinction between the mythical and the ‘real’ is wiped out. This tells of a wish to establish a bond between the realm of divine operations (which is eternal and stable) and the human sphere of the practical and performative (so that it may become eternal and stable), in creating a mirror-image of the divine plan which is loaded with, and activated by, its metaphorical meaning. As our primary source is a document originally written in the Sumerian language, it is unavoidable that our study is conditional upon several difficult and ambiguous notions, and important values of meaning are easily lost or significantly altered with the varying translations. Hence philology has an important place in this study, and indeed it is philology that forms its very foundation – this being, after all, a study of a particular text that must be approached with a constant awareness of the original language and context. This ‘double’ focus – history of religion mediated by philology – seems to me what makes such a study particularly interesting, as we rarely see the two fields joining forces in order to calibrate their results. A treatment of such a text as the Gudea cylinders ignorant of the religious and cultic context is bound to miss out on important points, and so it would seem
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