MISCELLANEOUS BABYLONIAN INSCRIPTIONS

YALE ORIENTAL SERIES

No. 1 OLDEST RELIGIOUS TEXT FROM BABYLONIA - Kharsag I -

This cylinder, found by Dr. Haynes at Nippur, remained unpacked in the basement of the Museum until after Professor Hilprecht's connection with the Museum had been severed. It was apparently broken when found, for parts of it were obtained from three different boxes. The Museum attendant afterwards fastened them together. Parts of nineteen columns of writing remain. Not more than one whole column of writing is lost.

The beginning of column 1 is unfortunately lost. The only proper names beside those of deities that can be identified in it are those of Nippur, Kesh, and Khallab (Aleppo). The interpretation of an inscription written in pure Sumerian would be in any case difficult, in the present instance interpretation is rendered doubly difficult by the loss of the opening sentences, which, perhaps, contained the name of the writer and certainly indicated the occasion of the composition. Under these circumstances it cannot be too strongly emphasized that the interpretation offered below is purely tentative. The conclusion that the writer has reached is, however, that the inscription was written as a foundation cylinder at a time when the temple at Nippur was repaired, and that this repair was probably undertaken because of a plague that had visited the city. Apparently the plague had made its way to Nippur from Kesh. While the occasion of the inscription appears therefore, to have been historical, the inscription itself is of the nature of an incantation.

The script in which it is written is that of the dynasty of Agade.¹ It is slightly more archaic than the busines documents of this period,² but similar differences are observable between the business scripts and those of religious texts in every period of Babylonian writing. As the dynasty of Agade ruled from about 2800 to 2600 B. C., the incantation here recorded is of equal if not greater antiquity than the Pyramid Texts of Egypt.

During the excavations a pavement of the temple terrace at Nippur laid by Naram-Sin and his successor Shargalisharri was found.³ It is, in the absence of definite information as to where Dr. Haynes found this cylinder, plausible to conjecture that it was written at the time of this reconstruction. The probability that our text comes from one of the two great kings of Agade mentioned above is increased by the fact tha the hold of the later rulers of the dynasty upon Nippur seems to have been uncertain, and there is no evidence that they did any building there.⁴ We now know that these two monarchs belonged to the dynasty of Kish and Agade that ruled Babylonia for 197 years, and the data published in 1914 by Dr. Poebel ⁵ and in 1915 by Professor Clay ⁶ enable us to fix this period as from 2794 B. C. to 2597 B. C. Naram-Sin ruled for

1 Compare BARTON, The Origin and Development of Babylonian Writing, Part I, pp. 204-221.
2 See BARTON, Sumerian Business and Administrative Documents from the Earliest Times of the Dynasty of Agade.
3 See HILPRECHT, Exploration in Bible Lands During the Nineteenth Century, 1903, p. 388 ff. and CLAY, Light on the Bible from Babel, 1907, p. 117.
4 See A. POEBEL, Historical Texts, Philadelphia, 1914, p. 133 f.
5 PEOBEL, Historical and Grammatical Texts, No. 3, Historical Texts, pp. 92 ff. and 132 ff.
6 CLAY, Miscellaneous Inscriptions in the Yale Babylonian Collection, p. 30 ff.

forty-four years (2704-2660 B. C.) and Shargalisharri twenty-four years (2660-2636 B. C.). The oldest of the pyramid texts of Egypt was written in the reign of Unis, a king of the fifth dynasty, whose reign, according to Breasted's chronology, was 2655-2625. It seems more probable that our text came from the reign of Naram-Sin than from the reign of Shargalisharri. The bricks of Naram-Sin were three times as numerous in the pavement of the temple court at Nippur as those of his successor. Naram-Sin¹ and Shargalisharri.² each calls himself', builder of the temple of Enlil', but it would seem probable that Naram-Sin constructed the terrace early in his reign of forty-four years and that Shargalisharri repaired it after it had had time to fall into disrepair fifty or more years later. If our somewhat uncertain chronologies are correct, Shargalisharri's reign was nearly contemporaneous with that of the Egyptian king Unis, while that of Naram-Sin antedated it. It is more probable that a foundation cylinder would be placed beneath the structure when it was first constructed than when spots in its worn pavement were repaired. It is, accordingly, a plausible conjecture that our cylinder was written early in the reign of Naram-Sin. In that case it is probably half a century older than the pyramid text of Unis and is the oldest extended religious expression that has survived from any portion of the human race.

This consideration gives to the text a supreme interest. It contains a primitive, but comparatively refined strain of religious thought. The men who wrote it entertained the animistic point of view. The world was full of spirits of which they were in terror, but chief among these spirits were gods,

1 HILPRECHT, Old Babylonian Inscriptions, No. 3.
2 Ibid., Nos. 1 and 2.

who, however capricious, were the givers of vegetation and life. They could be entreated, and man's hope lay in placating them. The text exhibits the neighborly admixture of religion and magic so characteristic of Babylonian thought. When compared with the pyramid texts it presents one striking difference. They centre around the king and are interested in his fortunes as he enters among the gods. One text represents the Egyptian king as a cannibal, who in heaven eats gods to obtain their strength¹ This Babylonian text, on the other hand, represents the community. If not the religious expression of a democracy, it comes at least from an aristocracy. The interests involved are those of the city of Nippur. It represents the point of view of a Babylonian city-state.

1 See BREASTED, Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, New York, 1912, 127 ff.

TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION

[from Sumerian transcript]

See Notes (after the following text) in respect of the above Transcript as referenced by Christian O'Brien in The Genius of the Few.

An interesting peculiarity of the palaeography is the writing of the determinative kam, which is often placed after numerals as in the cone of Enlitarzi. 2 In column xi, 10, of our text it is written on the next line after the numeral to which it points. The possessive mu 'my' in the same line refers back to the noun in the preceding line.

It is interesting to note that in this text, in accordance with a wide-spread conception of early men, water was regarded as holy. The Tigris and Euphrates are twice spoken of as holy rivers, and the 'mighty abyss' (or well of the mighty abyss)is appealed to for protection (col. iii, 10).

As was to be expected the principal deity mentioned in the text is Enlil, though Enki is also prominent, and Enzu and some minor gods are also mentioned. The name Ninlil does not occur. The spouse, of Enlil is here called by two other names, Ninkharsag and Mush or Sir. That Ninkharsag was one of the names of the consort of Enlil has long been known, but the new light that the text throws on the Snake goddess Sir is important. That she was a goddess down to the time of Esarhaddon has long been known,¹ though Jastrow in his great work, Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens² appears to have overlooked it. In an inscription of Esarhaddon published in BA, III,³ Sir is defined as il be-lit, 'the divine lady', while in another copy of the text we find Sir il bel.⁴ The scribes of Esarhaddon were therefore uncertain as to her sex, a fact that indicates that she was actually in process of being transformed from a feminine to a masculine deity.⁵ Zimmern⁶ supposes that Sir was identical with the dragon-serpent Tiamat, but the references to her in our text disprove that view. She was regarded as a beneficent goddess, a friend to mankind. Although Sir appears in this text as a goddess, the serpent deity was also from early times sometimes regarded as a god.⁷ According to our text Mush (Sir) was a spouse of Enlil. She was very wise. Her counsels strengthen the wise divinity of Anu (xi, n, 12), a statement which reveals a point of view similar to that of Genesis 3*: 'Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field.⁸ Snake worship is very old and has been widely scattered over the earth. It is not strange, therefore, that one of the roots of the cult at Nippur should

1 Cf. ZIMMERN, KAT3, 504 ff.
2 Vol. I, 55, 105, 163 ff. So also WARD, Seal Cylinders, p. 127, and LANGDON, Tammuz, 120 f.
3 P. 297, 42, cf. p. 238, 42.
4 Cf. BA, III, 307, 34.
5 See the writer's Semitic Origins, pp. 120, 125, etc.
6 Loc. cit.
7 See WARD, Seal Cylinders, No. 362 f., and LANGDON, Tammuz, 120 f.
8 In later times 'Sir' appears mainly on the boundary stones, cf. W. J. HINKE, BE, Series D, Vol. IV, p. 229 and the translations passim.

have been the snake-goddess. One passage concerning her is very interesting. 'From his cohabitation with Sir (Mush), he begat one strong as a large ibex, whom he told to guard life'. (ix, 8-1 1). This statement embodies an idea very wide-spread among men, that important acts of creation are the result of cohabitation between a god and a goddess. This idea isexpressed in lines 22-30 of a tablet which describes the origin of a city and the beginnings of agriculture, published byLangdon, and which he calls the Sumerian Epic of Paradise, the Flood, and the Fall of Man,¹ as well as in No. 4, line 22 fT., and in Nos. 4 and 8 of this volume, it appears in the Japanese myth that all things were generated by the union of Izanagi and Izanami,² in Indian myths, which represent the earlier Vedic cosmogonic ideas, and which refer to acts of creation as acts of generation.³

Another point of interest which the text makes prominent is the connection of Ninkharsag with enchantment. To her is attributed the function of enchanting the demons, or of keeping them away by incantations. If I rightly understand the text, a number of sentences are given, the utterance of which by her, was supposed to banish demons from the temple. A recollection that some such function attached to Ninkharsag is found in one of the Ritualtafeln ⁴ published by Zimmern, in which divination by oil, connected with the name of Enmeduranki is somehow also connected with the name of Ninkharsag. A line in the text is broken, so that it does not appear whether it is divination by oil, or Enmeduranki himself that is

1 See G. A. BARTON, in American Journal of Theology, XXI, 576 ff., and JASTROW in AJSL, XXXIII, 112 f.
2 See G. W. KNOX, The Development of Religion in Japan, New York, 1907, p. 21 ff.
3 Cf. A. A. MACDONNELL, History of Sanskrit Literature, New York, 1900, p. 132.
4 H. ZIMMERN, Ritualtafeln fur den Wabrsager, Leipsig, 1901, No. 24, I. 26.

called 'a creation of Ninkharsag', but the text attests a later belief in her connection with the subject. It appears that in the lapse of time her patronage was transferred from enchantment to divination. In this connection it is stated that a deity named Bada, who is otherwise unknown to me, opposed, or was hostile to Ninkharsag. From the point of view of suffering men, Bada, then, if not an actual devil, was one of the not-altogether-friendly divinities that had in him the potentialities of devilship. Perhaps this is too strong a statement of the case, for, in Babylonian thought, the gods were subject to all the passing moods of men, and Bada may have been thought to oppose Ninkharsag's beneficent restraint upon demons, not of settled purpose, but on account of some temporary dislike of men.

In column x, 13 mention is made of Urudu-e, or the Bronze god. In CT, XXIV, 49, 5b Urudu is defined as Ea. It is probable, therefore, that in our text Urudu is an epithet of Enki. The lists of gods in CT, XXIV further record a god Urudu-nagar-dingir-e-ne, literally 'The bronze-carpenter of the gods' or 'The metal-worker of the gods' (cf. CT, XXIV, 12, 25, 25, 8yb), and Urudu-nagar-kalam-ma, 'The metal-worker of the world' (CT. XXIV, 12,24, 25, 87a).¹ The simple phrase, 'the Bronze god', suggests a god represented by a bronze statue, but the name may have originated because the god of wisdom was believed to have imparted the knowledge of working metal. As Ea is the Semitic name usually applied to Enki, it is probable that in our text Urudu-e is Enki.

The passage that mentions Urudue says that he spoke with a deity called Da-uru. In CT. XXIV, i, 13 Da-uru is given as one of the names of Anu. When it is said in our text that

1 Cf. PAUL MICHATZ, Die Gotlerlisten der Serie An ilu A-na-um, Breslau, 1909, p. 19.

Urudue spoke with Dauru, it is but another way of saying that Enki addressed Anu.

As among all early peoples the presence of the temple, the abode of deity, was thought to afford protection to the land (col. vii, 5 ff.). This idea persisted in Israel down to the time of Isaiah or later, (cf. Isa. xxxi, 4, 5).

In col. xii, 3, the name of a deity is expressed by nigin, the ideogram for double enclosure, or grand total. CT. XXIV,1 8, Qb gives the Sumerian name of this deity as Ishkharanigginakku, and the Semitic as the goddess Ishtar.

This goddess who is said by her ideogram to sum up the totality of deity, is said to be the possessor of & pi-pi, i. e. the pi-pi-tree or pi-pi-plant. This plant is mentioned in K jib, iii, 21, a tablet published by Kiichler,¹ where the writing is *am pi-pi. It was a plant believed to have medicinal properties, since in the tablet published by Kiichler it is an ingredient of a medical prescription.

Another interesting statement is found in col. xv, 8 if., where the phrase mes-lam-ta-e, or as formerly read sid-lam-ta-e, follows the name of Ninurta or Nin-ib. This phrase is in later texts connected with the name of

Nergal, and later still, with the planet Mars.² The phrase means, 'the hero who comes forth from lam', or 'the prince who comes forth from lam'. The only known meanings of lam are 'sprout', 'to bear fruit', and ninsabu, perhaps, 'be blown away' from the stem nasabu, 'to blow', a meaning applicable to the falling petals of a flower, or to the pollen of a fruit-bearing plant. The sign lam itself probably originated in the picture of a ploughshare, thus suggesting growth and fruitfulness. When this phrase describes

1 Beitrdge {ur Kenntniss der assyriscb-babylonischen Medium, l.eipsig, 1904.
2 Cf. JASTROW, Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens, 64, 185, II, 18, II, 628 f.

Ninurta as 'the hero who comes forth from lam', what does it mean? May the meaning not be suggested by two seals published by Ward on which a god is represented as a walking tree?¹ In each case a human form takes the place of the treetrunk, the head is surmounted by the horns that are emblematical of deity, and from the body the branches of a tree grow. Probably we see in these figures the picture of the 'hero who came forth from vegetation' (lam}. It is this hero who comes forth day an night from vegetation, as our text says, who protects the increase of the cattle. This deity is declared to be Ninurta or Ninib, rather than Nergal. It thus becomes probable that the deity referred to under the name Mes-lam-ta-e in the time of Dungi,² of the dynasty of Ur, was Ninib rather than Nergal.

In conclusion it should be noted how closely sickness is associated in the text with the work of demons. In col. x, 18, according to one interpretation,³ a demon is adjured not to fly to the darkness of the city, the light of the city, or the people of the city. The Babylonian view that sickness was demoniacal possession was so all-pervading that its primitive character does not need demonstration. The evidence of this text on the point is, accordingly, what we might expect.

1 Cf. WARD, Seal Cylinders of Western Asia, Nos. 374, 378.
2 CT, V, 12217 and IX. 35389.
3 The rendering given in the text seems more probable, but the passage is difficult.

THE GENIUS OF THE FEW

Christian and Barbara Joy O'Brien © 1985

1999: Dianthus Publishing and The Patrick Foundation

Notes relating to

TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION

The above-given translation from this reverse-cut Sumerian cylinder (predating 2500 BC) was made by George Aaron Barton for the Philadelphia University Museum and Yale University Press in 1918.

The Sumerian text (as translated) amounts to 268 lines of cuneiform through 19 columns of inscription. Of these 268 lines (as numbered for translation purposes) 226 are transcribed in whole or in part, with 42 obliterated lines unresolved.

In The Genius of the Few (page 40), it is explained, however, that there are actually 320 lines of inscription on this cylinder. A further analysis of all columns by Christian O'Brien in the 1980s resolved some of the previous partial-line results and moved many more cuneiform lines into translation.

From columns I-VIII (1-8), three hitherto uninterpreted addresses by Ninkharsag were now evident. From columns IX-XV (9-15) was information concerning Enlil's great house (the E-gal) at Kharsag. And, from columns XVI-XIX (16-19), were additional details concerning the 'sickness' with which Enlil and his brother Enki were stricken.

By adding in the supplementary translations (as given below), O'Brien brought the overall 320 lines to a point of 82.5% completion.

Ninkharsag's addresses the Assembly at Kharsag:

The Great House of Enlil, set high upon a rock:

Fears for Ninurta (the son of Enlil and Ninkharsag) as sickness
strikes and rages through the settlement: No. 1

OLDEST RELIGIOUS TEXT FROM BABYLONIA

- Kharsag I -

MISCELLANEOUS BABYLONIAN INSCRIPTIONS

YALE ORIENTAL SERIES

No. 4 ENLIL AND NINLIL - Kharsag II -

This tablet, though fragmentary, as the copies show, contains a more complete text of a myth, a portion of which was published by Pinches in 1911 in PSBA, XXXIII, 85 ff. The text of Dr. Pinches contained an Akkadian translation, the Philadelphia text is in Sumerian only. The myth concerns the irrigation of Nippur and the establishment of its prosperity, the first line of Dr. Pinches text read 'At Duranki, their city they dwelt' instead of At their Nippur(?) they dwelt.' A colophon at the end of his tablet states that it was 'First tablet, At Duranki, their city. Not finished.' In reality his text covers only parts of columns i and ii of our tablet. The two texts in general agree closely, though there are minor variations here and there. The myth itself is of great interest. It represents the courtship and marriage of Enlil and Ninlil {Ninkharsag}. He was a young hero, she a handmaid. She was standing on the bank of a canal, when he saw her, ran to her, and kissed her. Her heart was captivated, she yielded to him, and from their marital union fertilizing rain was born. The story is not unlike that of the union between Enki and Nintu in the Epic of Paradise published by Langdon.¹ The idea of creation by birth from the marital union of deities appears to have been particularly popular at Nippur.

1 PBS, X, No. i. For the interpretation cf. JASTROW, AJSL, XXX HI, 112, also BARTON, in Am, Journal of Tbeol., XXI, 576 ff.

The creation of men occurred in this way according to the myth published below as No. 8. After the creation of irrigating waters and the settling of some marital differences between the god and goddess, they proceeded to Nippur accompanied by fifty great gods and seven gods of fate, they cast out the poisonous plants and gave intelligence to the inhabitants. For these and other blessings our text ascribes praise to Enlil and Ninlil.

TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION

[from Sumerian transcript]

8 lines missing

17 lines missing

No. 4

No. 4 ENLIL AND NINLIL - Kharsag II -

MISCELLANEOUS BABYLONIAN INSCRIPTIONS

YALE ORIENTAL SERIES

No. 7 HYMN TO IBI-SIN - Kharsag III -

This fragment of a hymn to Ibi-Sin is a portion of a large, finely written six-column tablet. Unfortunately it is so broken that in only a portion of columns ii and v are there complete lines. These portions are herewith translated. In line 5 of col. v he is addressed as lugal-mu, 'My king.' It is probable that the hymn belonged to the same series as No. 3 the hymn to Dungi. Ibi-Sin was an inglorious king. Under his rule the extended empire built up by Dungi gradually dwindled and was finally overthrown, but the tradition that he was a god, inherited, perhaps, from the great Dungi, persisted, and loyal courtiers and priests in the language translated below addressed him as the source of all blessings, and with servile adulation lauded him as a god. The hymn must, one is compelled to think, have been composed during his lifetime, for there was nothing in his career that could, so far as we know, induce later generations, in a city like Nippur, to address him in such language. He was the last of his dynasty, and fawning priests and courtiers were soon compelled to make their peace with a conqueror to whom his memory was hateful. The hymn supplies a powerful argument for emperor worship in Ur during the lifetime of the monarch.

TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION

[from Sumerian transcript]

8 lines missing

No. 7

HYMN TO IBI-SIN - Kharsag III -

MISCELLANEOUS BABYLONIAN INSCRIPTIONS

YALE ORIENTAL SERIES

No. 8 CREATION MYTH - Kharsag IV -

This important text was found by the writer among some then uncatalogued tablets that had just been unpacked. It belongs to the cycle of myths of which No. 4 above is an excellent example. It is also in some respects parallel to the myth published by Langdon in PBS, Vol. X, No. i, called by him a "Sumerian Epic of Paradise," etc. Takku (read by Langdon Tagtug) is one of the deities who figures in this new myth.

Like the myth published by Langdon, this one begins with an elaborate statement of the non-existence of many things once upon a time. Most interesting is its statement that mankind was brought forth from the physical union of a god and goddess.

TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION

[from Sumerian transcript]

Obverse

Reverse

No. 8

No. 8 CREATION MYTH - Kharsag IV -

MISCELLANEOUS BABYLONIAN INSCRIPTIONS

YALE ORIENTAL SERIES

No. 11 LITURGY TO NINTUD - Kharsag V -

This text contains a 'fragment' of the text that Dr. Langdon has named the "Liturgy to Nintud on the Creation of Man and Woman," a designation which the writer is inclined to believe will have to be abandoned, when the whole text is known. A fragmentary form of the text is preserved on a prism in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. It was published by Langdon in his Babylonian Liturgies, Paris, 1913, plates LXV-LXVIII, and translated on pages 86 if. Three other fragments of the same text have also previously been published: one by Radau as No. 8 of his "Miscellaneous Texts" in the Hilprecht Anniversary Volume (1909), and translated by Langdon on p. 19 of his Sumerian Epic of Paradise, the Flood, and the Fall of Man, (1915); another by Langdon in BE, XXXI, (1914), pi. 22; and a third by Langdon in his Sumerian Liturgical Texts, 1917, pi. LXI. Of these three, the first and third are in the University Museum in Philadelphia, the second in the Imperial Ottoman Museum at Constantinople. Unfortunately, even with the addition of the new material here presented, it is impossible to reconstruct the whole text of the work. The Ashmolean prism has suffered greatly from disintegration, and the other texts so far recovered are mere fragments. The text of this composition was divided into sections. At the end of each section there was a colophon giving the number of the section. The Ashmolean prism contained eight such sections. The new

tablet which is published herewith was the second of three tablets on which the text was written in nine sections, three on each tablet. Our tablet contained sections four, five, and six. Section five corresponds to section four of the Ashmolean text and the text of BE. XXXI; section six, to section five of those texts. Section four, accordingly (the first section of our tablet), is a section previously unknown. The text of sections five and six of our tablet is much broken, but as these sections overlap sections in BE, XXXI and the Ashmolean prism, the lines of which are also fragmentary, the three sources supplement one another in a very satisfactory way, and make it possible to restore several incomplete lines. The nature and purpose of the composition are still obscure. Langdon (Babylonian Liturgies, 86) says : 'The occasion which gave rise to the compostion appears to have been the coronation of a patesi king of Kesh." The evidence for this view is far from convincing. Kesh is mentioned in some broken lines, where it is impossible to make out the meaning, but so is Surippak. Several sections later a patesiat is also mentioned in a broken line. Apparently the text celebrated the primitive (or very early) conditions in some town; possibly the founding and growth of the town, but beyond this we can confidently affirm nothing. We must await the recovery of the whole text.

So far as the writer can see, there is no allusion in the text to the creation of man. True, allusion is several times made to the goddess Nintu, the mother of mankind. The sign lu which Langdon renders "man" the present writer renders "which"; cf. OBW, 289.* Langdon renders "Like Enkkar may man bear a form"; the present writer: "Like Enkkar verily was the form which it bore." As Enkhar was a

place, it seems clear that the comparison refers to a place and not to a man. Men do not resemble places! The reading gis = 'man' in Babylonian Liturgies, LXVII, 22 (the line is numbered 19 in his translation on p. 91 !) is confessedly uncertain. It is partially erased and the other copy which contains the line omits it. If gil really stood in the text, it could with greater probability be rendered "tree" rather than "man." In the writer's judgment, therefore, the nature of the text is still an enigma.

TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION

[from Sumerian transcript]

Obverse

Reverse

No. 11

LITURGY TO NINTUD

- Kharsag V -