mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ 
For complete access to all the files of this collection
	see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php 
==========================================================
[LINK] 

Literary and other historical sources

The picture offered by the literary tradition of Mesopotamia is
clearer but not necessarily historically relevant. The Sumerian king
list has long been the greatest focus of interest. This is a literary
composition, dating from Old Babylonian times, that describes kingship
(nam-lugal in Sumerian) in Mesopotamia from primeval times to the end
of the 1st dynasty of Isin. According to the theory--or rather the
ideology--of this work, there was officially only one kingship in
Mesopotamia, which was vested in one particular city at any one time;
hence the change in dynasties brought with it the change of the seat
of kingship:

Kish-Uruk-Ur-Awan-Kish-Hamazi-Uruk-Ur-
Adab-Mari-Kish-Akshak-Kish-Uruk-Akkad- Uruk-Gutians-Uruk-Ur-Isin.

The king list gives as coming in succession several dynasties that now
are known to have ruled simultaneously. It is a welcome aid to
chronology and history, but, so far as the regnal years are concerned,
it loses its value for the time before the dynasty of Akkad, for here
the lengths of reign of single rulers are given as more than 100 and
sometimes even several hundred years. One group of versions of the
king list has adopted the tradition of the Sumerian Flood story,
according to which Kish was the first seat of kingship after the
Flood, whereas five dynasties of primeval kings ruled before the Flood
in Eridu, Bad-tibira, Larak, Sippar, and Shuruppak. These kings all
allegedly ruled for multiples of 3,600 years (the maximum being 64,800
or, according to one variant, 72,000 years). The tradition of the
Sumerian king list is still echoed in Berosus.

It is also instructive to observe what the Sumerian king list does not
mention. The list lacks all mention of a dynasty as important as the
1st dynasty of Lagash (from King Ur-Nanshe to UruKAgina) and appears
to retain no memory of the archaic florescence of Uruk at the
beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. Besides the peaceful pursuits
reflected in art and writing, the art also provides the first
information about violent contacts: cylinder seals of the Uruk Level
IV depict fettered men lying or squatting on the ground, being beaten
with sticks or otherwise maltreated by standing figures. They may
represent the execution of prisoners of war. It is not known from
where these captives came or what form "war" would have taken or how
early organized battles were fought. Nevertheless, this does give the
first, albeit indirect, evidence for the wars that are henceforth one
of the most characteristic phenomena in the history of Mesopotamia.

Just as with the rule of man over man, with the rule of higher powers
over man it is difficult to make any statements about the earliest
attested forms of religion or about the deities and their names
without running the risk of anachronism. Excluding prehistoric
figurines, which provide no evidence for determining whether men or
anthropomorphic gods are represented, the earliest testimony is
supplied by certain symbols that later became the cuneiform signs for
gods' names: the "gatepost with streamers" for Inanna, goddess of love
and war, and the "ringed post" for the moon god Nanna. A scene on a
cylinder seal--[a shrine with an Inanna symbol and a "man" in a
boat]--could be an abbreviated illustration of a procession of gods or
of a cultic journey by ship. The constant association of the "gatepost
with streamers" with sheep and of the "ringed post" with cattle may
possibly reflect the area of responsibility of each deity. The
Sumerologist Thorkild Jacobsen sees in the pantheon a reflex of the
various economies and modes of life in ancient Mesopotamia: fishermen
and marsh dwellers, date palm cultivators, cowherds, shepherds, and
farmers all have their special groups of gods.

Both Sumerian and non-Sumerian languages can be detected in the divine
names and place-names. Since the pronunciation of the names is known
only from 2000 BC or later, conclusions about their linguistic
affinity are not without problems. Several names, for example, have
been reinterpreted in Sumerian by popular etymology. It would be
particularly important to isolate the Subarian components (related to
Hurrian), whose significance was probably greater than has hitherto
been assumed. For the south Mesopotamian city HA.A (the noncommittal
transliteration of the signs) there is a pronunciation gloss
"shubari," and non-Sumerian incantations are known in the language of
HA.A that have turned out to be "Subarian."

There have always been in Mesopotamia speakers of Semitic
languages.This element is easier to detect in ancient Mesopotamia, but
whether people began to participate in city civilization in the 4th
millennium BC or only during the 3rd is unknown. Over the last 4,000
years, Semites (Amorites, Canaanites, Aramaeans, and Arabs) have been
partly nomadic, ranging the Arabian fringes of the Fertile Crescent,
and partly settled; and the transition to settled life can be observed
in a constant, though uneven, rhythm. There are, therefore, good
grounds for assuming that the Akkadians (and other pre-Akkadian
Semitic tribes not known by name) also originally led a nomadic life
to a greater or lesser degree. Nevertheless, they can only have been
herders of domesticated sheep and goats, which require changes of
pasturage according to the time of year and can never stray more than
a day's march from the watering places. The traditional nomadic life
of the Bedouin makes its appearance only with the domestication of the
camel at the turn of the 2nd to 1st millennium BC.

The question arises as to how quickly writing spread and by whom it
was adopted in about 3000 BC or shortly thereafter. At Kish, in
northern Babylonia, almost 120 miles northwest of Uruk, a stone tablet
has been found with the same repertoire of archaic signs as those
found at Uruk itself. This fact demonstrates that intellectual
contacts existed between northern and southern Babylonia. The
dispersion of writing in an unaltered form presupposes the existence
of schools in various cities that worked according to the same
principles and adhered to one and the same canonical repertoire of
signs. It would be wrong to assume that Sumerian was spoken throughout
the area in which writing had been adopted. Moreover, the use of
cuneiform for a non-Sumerian language can be demonstrated with
certainty from the 27th century BC.

Back to the History page

Home