Sumerian Mythology: A Review Article Author(s): Thorkild Jacobsen Source: Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Apr., 1946), pp. 128-152 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/542374 . Accessed: 07/03/2011 12:00 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Near Eastern Studies. http://www.jstor.org SUMERIAN MYTHOLOGY:A REVIEW ARTICLE' THORKILD JACOBSEN HEstudy of ancientMesopotamian and for many of them it still holds--that civilization may be said to have "the story seemed to make no connected reached the threshold of a new sense; and what could be made out, epoch. For only now does the vast and seemed to lack intelligent motivation" profoundly important early Sumerian lit- (Dr. Kramer, with reference to the myth erature begin to be accessible in a real of Inanna and Enki).4 Hence many more sense. It is not that the task of publishing of the fragments lying unpublished in the the thousands of fragments of clay tablets museums of Istanbul and Philadelphia upon which this literature was inscribed had to be made available, for each such has only now begun. Rather the major fragment now promised unusual returns: part, and in many respects the heavier a few lines, unimportant in themselves, end, of that task was accomplished in long might furnish the link between large but years of valiant work by many devoted separately unintelligible sections of a scholars. If any single name should be story and thus for the first time make that mentioned, it would perhaps be that of story understandable. It is greatly to Dr. Edward Chiera, whose contribution-- Kramer's credit that he clearly realized judged on the double standard of quality the import of this situation and that he and quantity combined-is outstanding.2 energetically bent his efforts toward pub- Chiera also accomplished the first and lishing and placing more texts. In Istanbul most difficult part of the task of distin- he collated earlier publications and copied guishing the various compositions in- 170 hitherto unpublished fragments;5 volved and of assigning the relevant frag- some 675 further fragments in the Uni- ments to them so that now, when the versity Museum in Philadelphia are being style and subject matter of the major lit- prepared for publication by him. When erary compositions are known, the placing these texts have been made available, Dr. of new fragments-even small ones-has Kramer will have lastingly inscribed his become incomparably easier.3 name in the annals of Sumerology, and With all this work done, however, the Sumerology itself can enter upon a new compositions remained fragmentary. For era-an era of interpreting and evaluating most of them the statement was true-- Sumerian literature. 1 S. N. Kramer, Sumerian Mythology: A Study of Dr. Kramer plans to publish the results Spiritual and Literary Achievement in the Third Mil- of his researches in a series of seven vol- lennium B.C. (Philadelphia, 1944). 2 In painstaking exactitude of copies, translations, umes, of which the book here reviewed and interpretation, nobody surpasses Poebel, but he represents the first. Volumes II-VI will has published relatively little in this field. Radau's copies and translations are very commendable, his in- be devoted primarily to source material; terpretations less so. De Genouillac and Langdon will they will give the text of the Sumerian be gratefully remembered by workers in this field chiefly for the large volume of materials which these compositions in transliteration accom- two scholars made available. panied by translation and notes. Hitherto 3 We have in mind especially the results embodied in the introduction to SR T, SEM, STV C, and in the 4 Op. cit., p. 65. article JAOS, 54 (1934), 407-20. Dr. Kramer, who 5 S. N. Kramer, "Sumerian Literary Texts from edited all but the first of these after Dr. Chiera's Nippur in the Museum of the Ancient Orient at Istan- death, deserves great credit for having made these bul," AASOR, Vol. XXIII (New Haven, 1944). We important studies of Chiera available. abbreviate it as SLiT. 128 SUMERIAN MYTHOLOGY: A REVIEW ARTICLE 129 unpublished documents utilized to estab- had previously published in various jour- lish the text will be added in autograph nals, and adding a few unpublished ones- copy. Each volume will deal with one lit- constitute a most welcome feature. Very erary genre: epics, myths, hymns, lamen- useful also?are the notes in which Kramer tations, and wisdom texts. A concluding lists the fragments utilized for recon- volume will endeavor to sketch the reli- structing the text of each myth treated. A gious and spiritual concepts of the Sume- number of misprints in figures and abbre- rians as revealed in the previously pub- viations will, we understand, be corrected lished materials. by the author elsewhere. The complete- This plan seems excellently conceived. ness with which the material has been One might-considering the difficulties utilized and the various fragments as- still attending the translation of Sume- signed to their proper places is admirable. rian-have preferred that translations and We have noted only one omission: the notes should be published separately from bilingual fragment OECT, VI, P1. XVI, transliterations and copies, but the point K. 2168, contains on the obverse the be- is not very important. The main thing is ginning of the myth which Dr. Kramer that the texts now unpublished or scat- calls "The Creation of Man" and on the tered in fragments in a variety of publica- reverse a few lines dealing with the crea- tions will be brought together in orderly, tures formed by Ninmah. practical, and convenient fashion so that Although the introductory chapters of they will be readily available for study. Dr. Kramer's book-sketching the history The first volume of the series is intend- of Sumerology in a somewhat personal ed as introductory. It is meant, the author perspective and outlining the older his- states, to give "a detailed description of tory of Mesopotamia strictly in racial our sources together with a brief outline terms-contain much which would nor- of the more significant mythological con- mally have invited comment, all such cepts of the Sumerians as evident from points are necessarily overshadowed by their epics and myths" (p. ix). After the the immediate importance of the chief first chapter, which traces the decipher- subject matter of the book. Has the au- ment of cuneiform and the history of Su- thor been able-as he is himself firmly merology (pp. 1-25), follows a discussion convinced that he has-to "reconstruct of "The Scope and Significance of Su- and translate in a scientific and trust- merian Mythology" (pp. 26-29). Then worthy manner the extant Sumerian lit- comes the actual substance of the book, erary compositions" (p. xi)? This issue which retells the more important Sumeri- is crucial and must take the central place an myths under the headings "Myths of in any review. We shall therefore proceed Origins" (pp. 30-75), "Myths of Kur" directly to a discussion of the statement (pp. 76-96), and "Miscellaneous Myths" of Sumerian mythological concepts given (pp. 97-103). Interspersed among the by Dr. Kramer, considering first the trans- stories are sections endeavoring to recon- lations upon which that statement is struct and interpret in more systematic based, then both specific and general ques- fashion the Sumerian cosmogonic con- tions of interpretation. cepts as a whole. The book is profusely il- It is perhaps hardly necessary to men- lustrated with excellent photographs of tion that two different translators will oc- ancient Mesopotamian seal impressions, casionally arrive at somewhat different tablets, and copies of tablets. The latter-- results; for all translating involves a uniting in one place copies which Kramer choice between possibilities and allows the 130 JOURNALOF NEAR EASTERNSTUDIES ' personal factor a certain amount of play. K ui - g 16 is not "knower" (pp. 51 A reviewer thus has the advantage of and 61) but "inspector of canals." It was being able to state alternatives whenever borrowed by Akkadian as gugallu and they seem to him to merit attention. meant originally "one who stocks (ponds and rivers) with fish," k u6 - g 1. (Cf. I. TRANSLATIONS Thureau-Dangin, RA, XXXIII [1936], and No. In trying to form an opinion about 111, Meissner, MAOG, XIII, 2, translations such as those offered in Dr. pp. 8-9. Meissner's meaning 2 belongs with 3 and here also Kramer's book, one will consider-but closely may belong as an of Adad.