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Death and Nether World According to the Sumerian Literary Texts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Samuel Noah Kramer
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From the point of view of Sumerian cultural behaviour, the royal tombs excavated at Ur with such care and skill by Sir Leonard Woolley, were of epoch-making significance; they indicate with reasonable certainty that customarily the early rulers of Sumer were accompanied to the grave not only by some of their most precious personal possessions, but by a considerable human retinue as well. Needless to say, immediately upon this rather startling discovery the cuneiformists, and particularly the Sumerologists, began searching the documents for inscriptional verification of one sort or another, but without success. Moreover, in the past two decades, quite a number of Sumerian myths, epic tales, hymns, lamentations, and “historiographic” documents have become available, and it seemed not unreasonable to hope that one or another of these might shed light on the Sumerian burial customs relating to the royal tombs. But this hope, too, failed to materialise to any significant extent, which is not too surprising in view of the fact that the royal tombs date from about 2500 B.C., while the majority of our available literary documents were probably first composed about 2000 B.C. However, a number of the Sumerian literary works are concerned in one way or another with death and the Nether World, and the invitation to participate in the Woolley Festschrift offered an opportune moment to sift, collect, analyse and present the Sumerian ideas about death and “immortality,” in honour of the archaeologist who has done so much to make the long dead Sumerians “immortal.”

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 22 , Issue 1-2: Ur in Retrospect. In Memory of Sir C. Leonard Woolley , Spring-Autumn 1960 , pp. 59 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1960 

References

page 59 note 1 The early Sumerians must have believed therefore that their rulers would continue to live in the world beyond more or less as they lived on earth. It is hardly likely, however, that they thought this matter through very carefully or consistently. What was uppermost in the minds of those who planned and attended the elaborate and costly funeral arrangements—the king and his top officials, no doubt—was the ardent resolve to see to it that their beloved king, leader, and friend take with him to his grave all these personal goods, servants, and attendants which he had treasured most during his life-time. In short, as will be corroborated by the literary evidence discussed in this paper, we learn more about the living than the dead from the Sumerian funerary practices and beliefs.

page 59 note 2 For details see my Sumerian Literature: A General Survey prepared for the forthcoming Albright Festschrift.

page 59 note 3 For details see Gilgameš: Some New Sumerian Data, in Cahiers du Groupe François-Thureau-Dangin-1, pp. 59–68. The paper begins with an analysis of the newly available text of the first part of the Tummal document, which indicates that Gil-gameš was a younger contemporary of Mesannepadda, and continues with a revised sketch of the contents of the epic talcs “Gilgameš, Enkidu, and the Nether World,” “Gilgameš and the Land of the Living” (two versions), and “The Death of Gilgameš.”

page 60 note 4 Published in P.B.S. X2, 6, pl. xvii–xxiv; cf. now Castellino's, G. edition of the text in Z.A. LVII, 1–57 Google Scholar, which presents a fairly adequate translation under the circumstances, except for the attempted restorations of the lacunae which are more than questionable and at times seriously misleading.

page 60 note 5 Cf. col. ii, 33–4.

page 60 note 6 Cf. for the present Kramer, S. N., History Begins at Sumer (= H.B.S.), 228–32Google Scholar.

page 61 note 7 Cf. col. iii, 24–5 and 39–40.

page 61 note 8 The identification and study of the contents of this tablet came about in the course of a two months visit to the U.S.S.R. in the fall of 1957, as a guest of its Academy of Science. Almost half of my Soviet stay was spent in Moscow, and primarily in the Pushkin Museum, which has a cuneiform collection consisting of about 2,000 pieces. In the course of a cursory examination of this collection, made with the kind permission of the Pushkin Museum authorities, I noted a fairly well preserved fourcolumn tablet inscribed with a Sumerian literary text, catalogued G.1 2b 1725. On closer study, this text was seen to consist of two separate poems, each containing a funeral dirge as its outstanding feature. Since the funeral song or elegy is a literary genre not hitherto found among the numerous extant Sumerian literary compositions, I was naturally eager to make a careful study of this Pushkin Museum tablet, in order to publish an edition of its contents, consisting of a transliteration, translation and commentary. With the generous co-operation of the Pushkin Museum authorities, I therefore devoted a good part of my three-weeks' stay in Moscow to the preparation of a careful transcription of the Sumerian text. As for a full scholarly edition, I soon realized that this would take several months of concentrated effort, and would therefore have to be prepared at leisure in Philadelphia. The Pushkin Museum put at my disposal an excellent set of photographs of the tablet, and after a prolonged study of the text based on the transcription made in Moscow and on the photographs prepared by the Pushkin Museum, I prepared a small monograph which is to be published by the Soviet Academy of Science.

page 63 note 9 Kramer, S. N., Sumerian Mythology (= S.M.), 41–2Google Scholar are therefore to be corrected accordingly.

page 63 note 10 To be sure, it was evident from the poem “Gilgameš, Enkidu, and the Nether World,” that the dead were not all treated alike in the world below, and this may well justify the inference that there was a judgment of the dead. But the Pushkin Museum tablet is the first to my knowledge, which states this explicitly. Note, too, that according to this document, it is Utu who judges the deceased in the Nether World. It is true that, according to the Ur-Nammu document discussed above it is Gilgameš who seems to act as a judge in the Nether World (cf. col. iii, 16–7), but this probably refers to possible quarrels and “lawsuits” between the denizens of the lower regions, on the analogy of the role of a judge in the world above. Note, too, that there were also “seven judges” of the Nether World known as the Anunnaki (cf. “Inanna's Descent,” line 163, J.C.S., V, 8 Google Scholar), but these probably limited their judgment to unusual cases—involving deities. Utu's judgment of the dead, however, no doubt had to do with the deeds and misdeeds of the newly deceased and the punishment or reward which they merited, which seems to imply that the Nether World was not all wretchedly hellish (cf. above note 6).

page 63 note 11 Cf. for the present H.B.S., 195–9, and the comments in the paper mentioned in note 3 above. For the Semitic counterpart of the second half of the tablet, cf. Heidel, , The Gilgameš Epic, 94–102 Google Scholar, and Speiser, , A.N.E.T., 96–9Google Scholar.

page 63 note 12 This hole is hardly the ab-làl (cf. for a variant rendering of this term, Jacobsen, , J.C.S., XII, 187, note 78Google Scholar), through which Enkidu ascended to the earth, since the latter had to be first opened by Utu before it could be entered.

page 63 note 13 In his selection of these particular acts as tabus, our author is hardly attempting to be literal or exhaustive. Rather, he is expressing poetically and impressionistically the fundamental idea that anyone wishing to descend unharmed to the Nether World must act like the dead rather than the living, otherwise he will arouse the ire and envy of the departed spirits, and be prevented from returning to earth.

page 63 note 14 Just what is meant by “the outcry of the Nether World” which is further described as an outcry for the mother of Ninazu (that is, presumably for Ninlil who according to the myth “Enlil and Ninlil: Birth of the Moon-god,” followed Enlil to the Nether World and gave birth to Ninazu on the way) is far from clear. Note, too, that further on in the poem, when Gilgameš pleads with Enlil and Enki to bring up his servant to the earth, he says that it is the Nether World which seized him, not “the outcry” of the Nether World.

page 64 note 15 The Sumerian text reads š u b u r - a - n i k u r - t a m u - n i - e11 - d è, “His (that is Gilgameš's) servant ascended out of the Nether World”; note however, that ordinarily Enkidu is described as the a r a d not š u b u r of Gilgameš.

page 64 note 16 Cf. H.B.S., 199, and Heidel, , The Gilgameš Epic, 99–101 Google Scholar. The passage containing Gilgameš's questions about the fathers who have from one to seven sons, can now be restored almost entirely; tentatively translated the answers are as follows: (He who has one son) “weeps bitterly by the (clay) nails which had been built into his walls”; (he who has two sons) “sits on two bricks and eats bread”; (he who has three sons) “drinks water out of the water-skin of the young man” (cf. perhaps the lines 110 and 115—repeated in lines 120 and 125— of the myth “Inanna and Bilulu”, J.N.E.S., XII, 176 Google Scholar); (he who has four sons) “rejoices like him who yokes four asses”; (he who has five sons) “like a kindly scribe he is open-handed (literally “his arm has been opened”), he brings justice into the palace”; (he who has six sons) “his heart rejoices like him who yokes a plow”; (he who has seven sons) “as a companion of the gods he sits on a throne (and) listens to the music of the pipes.” Note especially, that here in the Nether World, our poet talks of “rejoicing, bringing justice into the palace, sitting in a throne and listening to music. It may be, however, that the poet is simply transferring his ideas of a “happy” father blessed with numerous sons on earth to the Nether World, without noting the inconsistency and bitter irony of his transposition.

page 64 note 17 Cf. Z.A., 18–9 and B.A.S.O.R., 94, 8. Note, too, that according to the last named text, Enki who is said to be in the Nether World is described as one of Enlil's fathers, a genealogical speculation which is still an enigma.

page 64 note 18 Cf. for the present S.M., 43–7, and H.B.S., 84–5.

page 64 note 19 To judge from the Sumerian literary documents as a whole, however, Enlil continued as the active leading deity of the Sumerian pantheon without interruption, and it is difficult to reconcile his banishment to the Nether World with this fact, at least for the present. However, Ninurta and Nergal are sometimes given the epithet “avenger of Enlil” (cf. e.g. Falkenstein, , Z.A., XLIX, 132–3Google Scholar) and this too points to the existence of myths according to which Enlil had gotten into serious difficulties, in spite of the fact that he was king of the gods.

page 64 note 20 For the possibility that Ninlil is the deity referred in “Gilgameš, Enkidu, and the Nether World” as the goddess who was lying naked and mourned in the Nether World, cf. H.B.S., 198, and note 14 above.

page 64 note 21 The word “descend” is not used in this myth, only such words as “come,” “follow,” “enter,” but this is probably without special significance.

page 64 note 22 Cf. last J.C.S., V, 1–17 Google Scholar. Since, the publication of this edition of the myth there has become available a number of additional tablets and fragments belonging to it (three from the Nippur collections of Istanbul and Jena—for the latter, cf. Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Friedrich-Schiller Universität Jena, V, 162, no. 48Google Scholar—four Ur pieces copied by C. J. Gadd who generously permitted me to study their contents; one piece, B.M. 17427, published by Figulla in C.T., XLII, pl. 3). As a result we now have a fairly good idea of the contents of the hitherto largely destroyed passage, lines 222–64, as well as of the missing passage following line 359 (the lines 375–84, however, are still unplaceable). The content of the first mentioned passage may be tentatively sketched as follows: the k u r g a r r û and the k a l a t u r r u are instructed by Enki to descend to the Nether World where Ereškigal, “the birth-giving mother” lies sick “because of her children,” and where naked and uncovered she keeps moaning “woe my inside” and “woe my outside”; they are to repeat sympathetically her cry and add: “from my ‘inside’ to your ‘inside’, from my ‘outside’ to your ‘outside’”; they will then be offered water of the river and grain of the field as a gift, but they must not accept them; instead they are to say “give us the corpse hanging from the nail”, and proceed to sprinkle upon it the “food of life” and the “water of life” which he (Enki) had entrusted to them, and thus revive Inanna. The k u r g a r r û and the k a l a t u r r u do exactly as bidden (cf. B.M. 17427, rev. 2) and Inanna revives and reascends to the earth above.

The contents of the passage following line 359 may be tentatively sketched as follows: Utu grants Dumuzi's prayer and changes him into a snake. Thus metamorphosed, Dumuzi carries his soul (his z i) to the house of Geštinanna. But the gallê do not give up their pursuit. They follow him to Geštinanna's house and torture her to tell them Dumuzi's whereabouts, but to no avail. They then proceed to Geštinanna's “holy stall” and sure enough, there they find Dumuzi. They tie him up hands and arms, and though the text breaks off at this point, we may surmise from the myth “The Death of Dumuzi” (see note 24) that they carry him off to the Nether World.

page 65 note 23 Note, however, that to judge from “Gilgameš, Enkidu, and the Nether World,” Enkidu seems to have left the Nether World without producing a substitute to take his place.

page 64 note 24 The death of Dumuzi following pursuit and capture by the gallê was a favourite theme of the Sumerian mythographers. In addition to “Inanna's Descent to the Nether World” where it takes up much of the second half of the poem, it forms the basic plot of at least two other compositions. The first is a work long known, but still unintelligible in large part, because much of it is written in the Emesal dialect; my sketch of its contents in J.C.S., IV, 207, note 50Google Scholar, should now to be modified to read as follows: The actual story begins with the statement that “in those days” the seven gallê entered the “holy stall” one after another and, as a result the stall is turned desolate (lines 28–41). The gallê then arouse the sleeping Dumuzi, telling him that they have come for him and he must arise and accompany them; that his flocks have been carried off, that he is to take off his crown, royal robe, sceptre, and sandals, and follow them (lines 42–53). Dumuzi thus is forced to leave his stall, never to return (lines 54–5). The passage (lines 56–67) is still obscure; line 61 probably states Dumuzi's determination to ask Utu for help, while line 67 indicates that his purpose is to escape from the gallê. In any case, according to lines 68–77, Dumuzi prays to Utu to turn him into a gazelle and Utu grants his request. There follows a consultation among the outwitted gallê, who are determined to continue their pursuit (lines 78–93). Dumuzi then seems to go to his mother Turtur and his wife Inanna, perhaps with a plea for help (lines 94–9). The composition closes with a passage (lines 100–109) whose meaning is still obscure, although the translation of the individual lines is relatively assured.

The second composition concerned with the theme of Dumuzi's capture by the gallê and his ensuing death, is a poem first discussed by Jacobsen, Thorkild in J.C.S., XII, 165–7Google Scholar (for tne dream-passage in the composition, cf. Jacobsen's, translation in Oppenheim, , Dreams and their Interpretation, 246 Google Scholar); since then I have identified 21 additional pieces (the majority are very small fragments) belonging to the poem, and as a result almost the entire text of approximately 240 lines can now be restored. As expected, however, the translation is far more difficult than the reconstruction of the Sumerian text, and the following condensed résumé of its contents is to be taken as a preliminary effort. The poignant and melancholy mood of the poem is established at the outset by its introductory first 14 lines, in which the poet tells us that Dumuzi saddened by the intuition of his imminent death, goes forth into the edin and cries out to it to set up a lament among the crabs and frogs, while his mother too is to “utter the word”. He then lies down in the ul and dreams a terrifying dream. Upon awakening he has his sister Geštinanna brought before him and she interprets the dream as betokening his death and the desolation of his stall. When she further informs him that it is the gallê who will bring about his death, he hides among the plants, large and small, and in the ditches of arali. But to no avail; the gallê catch up with him, tie up his hands and arms, and are all set to drag him down to the Nether World. Whereupon Dumuzi prays to Utu to turn him into a gazelle so that he can escape the gallê and carry off his soul to some (unknown) place described in one text as š u - m à (?) - NAMm u š e n - a - m u g (?) - a - ḫ u - u n and in a variant text as š u - b i-RI- l á - a -ŠÈ-RI- a -RI- e (?) -BUR(?). Utu grants his request and Dumuzi carries off his soul to the place he had chosen. But the gallê follow in hot pursuit and again catch up with him and put fetters on his hands and arms. Whereupon Dumuzi again addresses himself to Utu pleading with him to turn htm into a gazelle so that he might carry off his soul, this time to the house of u m m a - d b e - li - li (cf. line 73 of “Inanna and Bilulu”, J.N.E.S., XII, 174 Google Scholar, and my comment ibid., 187–8). Once again Utu grants his request, and Dumuzi carries off his soul to the house of Belili. But as soon as Belili leaves her house, the gallê reappear and put Dumuzi in fetters. Dumuzi now turns for the third time to Utu with the same plea; this time he will carry off his soul to the “holy stall” of his sister Geštinanna. Utu grants his request a third time, but to no avail. The gallê catch up with him a third time, turn the “holy stall” into a ruin and Dumuzi dies.

page 65 note 25 It will be noted that Dumuzi's soul remained immutable and indestructible in spite of the fact that his body was changed into a snake or a gazelle (cf. notes 22 and 24). It is not unreasonable to conclude, therefore, that it was not the body, but the soul of the dead, which continued to exist in the Nether World. Just how the poet and mythographer picture the soul is not known, they may have thought of it as having the form of the man's shadow. In any case, the soul could walk, talk, feel, weep, rejoice, etc.; that is, it could do practically everything the deceased did on earth, except perhaps have sexual intercourse and beget offspring, although even these acts may have been envisaged as possible by the author of the “Death of Gilgameš,” to judge from the fact that several of Gilgameš's wives were buried with him.

page 65 note 26 This indicates of course that many, if not most of the Sumerian ideas about the Nether World found in the literary texts, postdate Gilgameš and his times.