This volume opens up new perspectives on Babylonian and Assyrian literature, through the lens of a pivotal passage in the Gilgamesh Flood story. It shows how, using a nine-line message where not all was as it seemed, the god Ea inveigled humans into building the Ark.
The volume argues that Ea used a ‘bitextual’ message: one which can be understood in different ways that sound the same. His message thus emerges as an ambivalent oracle in the tradition of ‘folktale prophecy’. The argument is supported by interlocking investigations of lexicography, divination, diet, figurines, social history, and religion. There are also extended discussions of Babylonian word play and ancient literary interpretation. Besides arguing for Ea’s duplicity, the book explores its implications – for narrative sophistication in Gilgamesh, for audiences and performance of the poem, and for the relation of the Gilgamesh Flood story to the versions in Atra-hasīs, the Hellenistic historian Berossos, and the Biblical Book of Genesis.
Ea’s Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story will interest Assyriologists, Hebrew Bible scholars and Classicists, but also students and researchers in all areas concerned with Gilgamesh, word-play, oracles, and traditions about the Flood.
Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
PART 1 – Preliminaries
1 Introduction
1.1 Bitextuality
1.2 The Gilgameš Flood story
1.3 Other Mesopotamian Flood stories
1.4 Ea’s message
1.4.1 The manuscripts
1.4.2 Synoptic transliteration
1.4.3 Composite text and translation
1.5 The problems
1.6 Previous studies
1.6.1 Recovering (most of) the text: George Smith (1872) to Paul Haupt (1883)
1.6.2 An "infamous lie"? Peter Jensen (1890) and dissenters
1.6.3 Glimmers of puns: Ungnad (1911) etc.
1.6.4 The ‘bitextual’ pun of Frank (1925)
1.6.5 Early reception of Frank’s idea
1.6.6 Thompson (1930)’s reading ina še-er
1.6.7 The golden age of Frank’s bitextual pun
1.6.8 Exit puns: Von Soden (1955) to Millard (1987)
1.6.9 Re-enter puns: Dalley (1989) and others
1.6.10 Re-exit puns: George (2010) to the present
1.6.11 Summary
1.7 Outline of the argument
1.7.1 Angles not pursued
1.8 Audiences, internal and external
2 ‘Interrogating’ Babylonian narrative poetry
2.1 Is ‘interrogation’ appropriate?
2.1.1 Is the poem too ‘naïve’?
2.1.2 Is ‘interrogation’ precluded by accretion?
2.2 Modelling ancient interpretations
2.2.1 The elusiveness of native meta-discussions
2.2.2 Did they simply ‘know it all’?
2.2.3 Differences between ancient and modern interests
2.2.4 Glimpses of ancient interpretation
2.2.4.1 Commentaries on narrative poems
2.2.4.2 Commentaries mentioning narrative poems
2.2.4.3 Other commentaries
2.2.4.4 The ‘Marduk Ordeal’
2.2.4.5 Colophons
2.2.4.6 Self-reflexive comments within poems
2.2.4.7 Adaptation
2.2.4.8 The ‘Catalogue of Texts and Authors’
2.2.4.9 A personal response to the Flood story?
2.2.5 Summary: modelling ancient interpretations
2.3 Summary: ‘interrogating’ Babylonian narrative poetry
3 ‘Identifying’ puns
3.1 Are they ‘really there’? – author intention vs audience reception
3.2 Disadvantages of the exclusive focus on authorial intention
3.2.1 Cases where authorial intention is clear
3.2.2 Obstacles to identifying authorial intention
3.2.3 Rigidity
3.3 Alternatives to the emphasis on authorial intention
3.3.1 ‘Ironclad’ vs ‘potential’ puns
3.3.2 A ‘high-potential’ bitextual pun in OB Atra–hasis
3.4 Puns and pronunciation
3.5 Summary
4 The high concentration of puns in the Gilgameš Flood story
PART 2 – Dissecting Ea’s message
5 The lines about the Flood hero
6 Raining ‘plenty’: ušaznanakkunuši nuhšam-ma
6.1 The positive sense
6.2 The negative sense
6.3 The subject of ušaznanakkunuši
6.3.1 Enlil as instigator of the Flood
6.3.2 Exit Šamaš
7 The birds: [hi¿ib] i¿¿urati
7.1 The restoration ‘hi-¿ib’
7.2 The positive sense
7.3 The negative sense
7.3.1 The verb vs the noun
7.3.2 ‘Cutting off’, literal and metaphorical
7.3.3 The spheres of use attested for ha¿abu
7.4 An Ur–Namma passage
7.5 Summary
8 The fish: puzur nuni
8.1 What is puzur?
8.2 The positive sense
8.2.1 The associations of ‘covering’
8.2.2 Fish as comestibles
8.3 The negative sense
8.3.1 Fish-like sages, Assyrian vs Babylonian
8.4 Summary
9 The harvest: [...] mešrâ eburam-ma
9.1 The positive sense
9.2 The negative sense
9.3 Summary
10 ‘Cakes at dawn’: ina šer(-)kukki
10.1 The positive sense
10.1.1 kukku ‘bread, cake’
10.2 The negative sense involving darkness
10.2.1 kukkû ‘darkness’
10.2.2 The relevance of darkness to Ea’s message
10.3 The negative sense involving incantations
10.3.1 The morphological problem
10.3.1.1 Case endings on manuscript W
10.3.1.2 Case endings on manuscript c
10.3.1.3 Why is the genitive ending absent?
10.3.2 šerkukku as a by-form of šerkugû
10.3.3 The meanings of šerkugû / šerkukku
10.4 Summary
11 ‘In the evening’: ina lilâti
11.1 The positive sense
11.2 The negative sense involving darkness
11.3 The negative sense involving líl-demonesses
11.4 Summary
12 The ‘rain of wheat’: šamût kibati
12.1 An incantation-like rhyme?
12.2 The positive sense
12.3 The negative sense of ‘a wheat-like rain’
12.4 Negative senses involving death
12.4.1 Killing wheat
12.4.2 Wheat stalks symbolising human lives
12.5 Summary
13 Recapitulation
13.1 The message’s various senses
13.2 How alike were the different versions pronounced?
13.3 Why multiple negative meanings?
13.4 The change of meaning with repetition
13.4.1 Did a rain of wheat actually happen?
13.4.2 Who utters 87-88 and 91?
13.4.3 How ‘fairly’ were the people of Šuruppak tricked?
14 Issues of textual history
14.1 When was the bitextual message created?
14.1.1 An Assyrian creation?
14.2 Questions of circulation and diffusion
14.3 How easily would readers have realised the ambiguity?
14.4 Questions of stability
15 Meaning and performance
PART 3 – Conspicuous silences in the Gilgameš Flood story
16 Outlining the problems
17 Does Atra–hasis ‘fill in the gaps’?
17.1 Epistemic competition
17.2 What does Gilgameš know about the Flood?
17.2.1 From the outset to Tablet IX
17.2.2 Tablet X
17.2.3 Tablet XI
17.3 Summary: does Atra–hasis ‘fill in the gaps’?
18 Communications between Ea and the Flood hero
18.1 The command to build the Ark
18.1.1 Text of the command
18.1.2 How did Ea choose the Flood Hero?
18.1.3 The puzzle of multiple addressees
18.1.4 Why demolish the house?
18.1.5 A link to a Sumerian poem
18.1.6 Summary
18.2 The Flood hero’s reply
18.2.1 What is he concerned about?
18.2.2 Who are ‘the city, the ummanu and the elders’?
18.2.2.1 The alu
18.2.2.2 The ummanu (or ummânu)
18.2.2.3 The šibutu
18.2.2.4 Mesopotamian ‘city assemblies’
18.2.2.4.1 The third millennium
18.2.2.4.2 The first half of the second millennium
18.2.2.4.3 The later second millennium
18.2.2.4.4 The first millennium
18.2.2.4.5 The Assyrian ‘City Hall’
18.2.2.5 Summary: ki lupul alu ummanu u šibutu
18.2.3 Was a dream involved?
18.3 Ea’s message – from Ea to the Flood hero
19 Communication between the Flood hero and the people of Šuruppak
19.1 How and to whom did the Flood hero relay Ea’s message?
19.2 How did the people of Šuruppak react to Ea’s message?
19.2.1 Cross-checking divinatory information
19.2.2 Scepticism about diviners
19.2.3 Summary: how did the people of Šuruppak react to Ea’s message?
19.3 What about the other gods?
19.4 How easily might the people have realised the message’s ambivalence?
19.5 What if they had understood?
19.6 Summary: the ‘chain of communications
20 Ea’s elusiveness
20.1 Ea’s long shadow over Gilgameš’s adventure
20.2 Ea and the other gods
20.2.1 Altruism or self-interest?
20.2.2 Ninurta’s accusation and Ea’s defence
20.2.3 The missing dream
20.2.4 Was the defence viable?
20.3 Ea and the people of Šuruppak
20.3.1 Why use a duplicitous message?
20.3.2 Did Ea intend for the message to be misunderstood?
20.3.3 Does a hard-to-spot message argue for a deliberate trick?
20.3.4 A trick to crown them all?
20.3.5 ‘Golden ages’ in Cuneiform
20.4 Summary: Ea’s elusiveness
21 The enigma of Uta–napišti
21.1 What was his status in Šuruppak?
21.1.1 According to other versions of the Babylonian Flood story
21.1.2 According to Gilgameš XI
21.2 How honest was he to Gilgameš?
21.3 Did he realise the message’s true import?
21.4 Tricking the boatman?
21.5 Summary: the enigma of Uta–napišti
22 Why the ‘gaps’?
22.1 Significant silences and performance
22.2 Reasons for silences on the part of Uta–napišti
22.3 Reasons for silences on the part of the Poet(s)
PART 4 – Other interconnections
23 Ea’s duplicity and Babylonian/Assyrian divination
23.1 Which forms of divine communication feature in the story?
23.2 Dreams and the importance of gender roles
23.3 The kukku in divination
23.3.1 In Šumma Izbu (malformed birth omens)
23.3.2 In extispicy (liver omens)
23.4 The gods, omens, and deceit
23.4.1 The oracle trompant
23.4.2 Characterisations of gods as mendacious
23.4.3 Characterisations of omens as ‘false’, etc.
23.4.4 Omens which are ambivalent or deceptive
23.4.5 Summary: Ea’s message and divine deceit
23.5 Summary: Ea’s duplicity and Babylonian divination
24 Beyond Cuneiform
24.1 Genesis
24.1.1 Issues of textual history
24.1.2 The question of influence
24.1.3 Beyond influence
24.1.3.1 Miscellaneous differences
24.1.3.2 Morality
24.2 Berossus
25 Conclusions
References
Index
Biography
Martin Worthington is Associate Professor in Middle Eastern Studies in the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
"Worthington’s Ea’s Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story is an outstanding book. It is extraordinarily well researched, superbly written, and thought provoking. The new approach brought forth by Worthington has tremendous potential for furthering the study of Mesopotamian literature. I cannot emphasize enough how engaging Worthington’s prose is, something which we do not see often in studies on the ancient Near East." - Alhena Gadotti, Journal of Near Eastern Studies
"Ea’s Duplicity is surely the most detailed, intense, penetrating, interesting, erudite, and imaginative critical engagement with a swatch of cuneiform literature thus far offered, so cast as to be accessible to any willing reader, even one straying in from outside the narrow pale of Assyriology. It will amply repay that reader’s no less intense engagement with the author’s steady flow of questions, compelling logic and exposition, and his vast treasury of information and association. No one who savors the arguments put forth so elegantly in this book will read the Flood Story again without thinking about what Worthington has to say about it." - Benjamin Foster, Journal of the American Oriental Society
"Worthington’s Ea’s Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story certainly considers nine lines from tablet XI of the best known epic from Mesopotamia, this passage forms the microcosmic core of a macrocosmic exploration of a world of Assyrian and Babylonian literature, prophecy, historiography, and ancient wisdom. Worthington unfurls new and hidden meanings in his passage from tablet XI, but to do so he takes a winding road, inviting the reader on a dizzying journey involving storm-demons, competing translations, species of ancient grains, and much more." - Review of Biblical Literature
"Worthington offers profitable insights into the Gilgamesh Flood Story[...] The complexities of his research will challenge and divide Assyriologists just as, as he claims, Uta-napishti may have been divisive to ancient audiences!" - Alan Millard, Strata
"[this book] is of primary use to scholars in Assyriology and Classical studies, and it will also be of interest to those studying the flood story in the Hebrew Bible ... meticulous... the author is to be commended for his mastery of Akkadian, Arabic, Hebrew, French, German and Italian." - Rebecca Huskey, Classical Journal
"In Martin Worthington’s study of Gilgamesh, the delight is in the details... [He] makes a compelling case that ancient scholars could and did produce interpretations that were as complex, detail-oriented, and individually varied as those of modern scholars... The book proceeds as a sequence of tightly reasoned, clearly formulated arguments, but its theme is the ultimate elusiveness of Ea, the god of wisdom and water; and as we are reminded in the book’s epigraph, a quotation from Thorkild Jacobsen: “the ways of water are devious”. It is this productive tension between form and content, between the solid and the fluid, that make Ea’s Duplicity such a delightful contribution to the scholarship on Gilgamesh." - Sophus Helle, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
