Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T01:58:17.652Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Notes on the Old Assyrian Sargon legend

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Joan Goodnick Westenholz
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

I would like to express my thanks to Bendt Alster and Takayoshi Oshima for giving me the opportunity to add a few comments on their article. Within the limits of these pages, I will restrict myself to certain general subjects and one theme in the Old Assyrian Sargon Legend.

As Alster and Oshima suggest above, the Old Assyrian Sargon Legend is obviously a written improvisation. However, improvisation has little to do with whether the text is to be taken in a serious (Hecker, Dercksen) or trivial (“humorous”) manner (Van De Mieroop, Foster, Cavigneaux, Alster and Oshima) nor does it relate to accuracy (see Alster and Oshima, fn. 17). Rather, it relates to the mode of composition: whether or not a fixed text was followed, whether or not there was a written model (see Alster and Oshima, fn. 17). In my opinion, this text is a written “improvised” composition based on oral traditions (see also Alster and Oshima, pp. 2 and fn. 8, 6 and 8, Cavigneaux 2005: 596). In this period, orality and literacy existed alongside each other. This written composition may have developed from an oral set of thematic scenes, the building blocks of traditional oral literature. The episodic structure of the narrative reflects such a concatenation of scenes. These oral building blocks could be varied at will according to the needs of the moment, modified to suit the new purposes and new places. It can be deduced that such legends were known orally from internal evidence — the words placed in the mouth of Sargon in this Old Assyrian composition, “Why should I enlarge (upon this theme) in an inscription? Where do (peoples) noi know me (a-«a»)-nu-um lá i-tí-a-ni, suggested reading of Aage Westenholz), that I am the King, that I conquered the Upper and Lower Lands?” (ll. 63–5). In this writer's opinion, these lines indicate that the author implies that Sargon's fame is so well known that it does not need to be written down.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 69 , 2007 , pp. 21 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Supplemental Bibliographic References

Allred, Lance Burris. 2006. Cooks and Kitchens: Centralized Food Production in Late Third Millennium Mesopotamia, Ph.D. diss. Johns Hopkins University.Google Scholar
Biebuyck, Daniel P. 1978. “The African Heroic Epic”, in Oinas, Felix J. (ed.), Heroic Epic and Saga, Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 336–67.Google Scholar
Birot, Maurice. 1980. “Fragment de rituel de Mari relatif au kispum”, in Alster, Bendt (ed.), Death in Mesopotamia, Papers read at the XXVIe Rencontre assyriologique internationale (Mesopotamia 8), Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 139–50.Google Scholar
Brault, Gerard J. 1978. “The French Chansons de Geste”, in Oinas, Felix J. (ed.), Heroic Epic and Saga, Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 193–215.Google Scholar
Ó Coileáin, Sean. 1978. “Irish Saga Literature”, in Oinas, Felix J. (ed.), Heroic Epic and Saga, Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 172–92.Google Scholar
Van Driel, G. 1993. “Bones and the Mesopotamian State? Animal Husbandry in an Urban Context”, Bibliotheca Orientalis 50: 545–63.Google Scholar
Durand, Jean-Marie. 1988. Textes administratifs des salles 134 et 160 du palais de Mari (ARMT XXI), Paris: Librairie orientaliste Paul Geuthner.Google Scholar
Durand, Jean-Marie. 2000. Les documents épistolaires du palais de Mari, Tome III, Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf.Google Scholar
Durand, Jean-Marie and Guichard, Michaël. 1997. “Les rituels de Mari”, Florilegium marianum III, 19–78.Google Scholar
Dr.Epstein, Rabbi I. 1938. The Babylonian Talmud. London: The Soncino Press.Google Scholar
Foley, J. De Lavan. 1981. “Feasts and Anti-Feasts in Beowulf and the Odyssey”, in Foley, John M. (ed.), Oral Traditional Literature, A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord, Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers Inc., 235–61.Google Scholar
Foley, John M. 1981. “The Oral Theory in Context”, in Foley, John M. (ed.). Oral Traditional Literature, A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord, Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers Inc., 27–122.Google Scholar
Foster, Benjamin. 1990. “Naram-Sin in Martu and Magan”, Annual Review of the Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia Project 8: 25–44.Google Scholar
George, Andrew R. 2003. The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic. Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gilan, Amir. 2000. Sargon in Anatolia, The “King of Battle” in a Hittite Context. MA thesis. Institut für Altorientalistik, Freie Universität, Berlin.Google Scholar
Hallo, William W. 2001. “Carcasses for the Capital”, in van Soldt, W. H., Editor-in-Charge, Dercksen, J. G., Kouwenberg, N. J. C. and Krispijn, Th. J. H., Associate Editors. Studies Presented to Klaas R. Veenhof on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Uitgaven van het Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul 89), Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 161–72.Google Scholar
Hanaway, William L. Jr. 1978. “The Iranian Epics”, in Oinas, Felix J. (ed.), Heroic Epic and Saga, Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 76–98.Google Scholar
Herman, David, Jahn, Manfred and Ryan, Marie-Laure (eds.). 2005. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kehati, Rabbi Pinhas. 1996. Tractate Makhshirin, Translated by Wengrov, Rabbi Nahum, Jerusalem: Maor Wallach Press.Google Scholar
Lafont, Bertrand. 1985. “Le ṣâbum du roi de Mari au temps de Yasmah-Addu”, in Durand, J.-M. and Kupper, J.-R. (eds.), Miscellanea Babylonica, Mélanges offerts à Maurice Birot, Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 161–9.Google Scholar
Lord, Albert B. 1960. The Singer of Tales, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Metzler, Kai Alexander. 2002. Tempora in altbabylonischen literarischen Texten (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 279), Münster: Ugarit-Verlag.Google Scholar
Michalowski, Piotr. 1994. “The Drinking Gods: Alcohol in Mesopotamian Ritual and Mythology”, in Milano, L. (ed.), Drinking in Ancient Societies: History and Culture of Drinks in the Ancient Near East. Papers of a Symposium Held in Rome, May 17–19 1990 (History of the Ancient Near East, Studies VI), Padua: Sargon srl, 27–44.Google Scholar
Milano, Lucio. 1998. “Aspects of Meat Consumption in Mesopotamia and the Food Paradigm of the Poor Man of Nippur”, State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 12, 111–27.Google Scholar
Neusner, Jacob. 1977. The Tosefta, Translated from the Hebrew, Sixth Division, Tohorot (The Order of Purities), New York: Ktav Publishing House Inc.Google Scholar
Neusner, Jacob. 1981. The Tosefta, Translated from the Hebrew, Second Division, Moed (The Order of Appointed Times), New York: Ktav Publishing House Inc.Google Scholar
Oinas, Felix J. 1978. “The Balto-Finnic Epics”, in Oinas, Felix J. (ed.), Heroic Epic and Saga, Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 286–309.Google Scholar
Oppenheim, A. Leo. 1967. Letters From Mesopotamia, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Otten, Heinrich. 1958. Hethitische Totenrituale. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russo, Joseph. 1992. “Oral Theory: Its Development in Homeric Studies and Applicability to Other Literatures”, in Vogelzang, M. E. and Vanstiphout, H. (eds.) Mesopotamian Epic Literature: Oral or Aural?, Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 7–21.Google Scholar
Sasson, Jack M. 2005. “Comparative Observations on the Near Eastern Epic Traditions”, in Foley, J. M. (ed.), A Companion to Ancient Epic, Maiden/Oxford: Blackwells, 215–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westenholz, Aage and Westenholz, Joan Goodnick. 2006. Cuneiform Inscriptions in the Collection of the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem, The Old Babylonian Texts (Cuneiform Monographs 33), Leiden/Boston: Brill/Styx Publications.Google Scholar