Месопотамская литература: от аккадского к клинописи (XXIII–VI вв. до н.э.)

Mesopotamian writings, 23rd–6th century BC

Akkadian literature is the ancient literature written in the Akkadian language (Assyrian and Babylonian dialects) in Mesopotamia (Assyria and Babylonia) during the period spanning the Middle Bronze Age to the Iron Age (roughly the 23rd to 6th centuries BC). Drawing on the traditions of Sumerian literature, the Babylonians compiled a substantial textual tradition of mythological narrative, legal texts, scientific works, letters and other literary forms.

Most of what we have from the Babylonians was inscribed in cuneiform with a metal stylus on tablets of clay, called laterculae coctiles by Pliny the Elder; papyrus seems to have been also employed, but it has perished.

A considerable amount of Babylonian literature was translated from Sumerian originals, and the language of religion and law long continued to be the old agglutinative language of Sumer. Vocabularies, grammars, and interlinear translations were compiled for the use of students, as well as commentaries on the older texts and explanations of obscure words and phrases. The characters of the syllabary were all arranged and named, and elaborate lists of them were drawn up.

The Assyrian dialect of Akkadian is particularly rich in royal inscriptions from the end of the 14th century BC onward, for example the epics of Adad nārārī, Tukulti Ninurta, and Šulmānu ašarēdu III and the annals which catalogued the campaigns of the neo Assyrian monarchs. The earliest historical royal epic is, however, that of Zimri Lim (c. 1710–1698 BC short) of Mari. Similar literature of the middle Babylonian period is rather poorly preserved with a fragmentary epic of the Kassite period, that of Adad šuma uṣur and of Nabû kudurrī uṣur I and Marduk. The chronicle traditional is first attested in the compositions of the early Iron Age which hark back to earlier times, such as the Chronicle of Early Kings, the Dynastic Chronicle, Chronicle P and the Assyrian Synchronistic History. A series of fifteen neo to late Babylonian Chronicles have been recovered which narrate the period spanning Nabû nasir (747–734 BC) to Seleucus III Ceraunus (243–223 BC) and were derived from the political events described in Babylonian astronomical diaries.

Exemplars of comical texts span the genres of burlesque to satire and include humorous love poems and riddles. “At the cleaners” is a tale of the dispute between an insolent scrubber and his client, a “sophomoric fop” who lectures the cleaner in ridiculous detail on how to launder his clothes, driving the exasperated cleaner to suggest that he lose no time in taking it to the river and doing it himself. The Dialogue of Pessimism was seen as a saturnalia by Böhl, where master and servant switch roles, and as a burlesque by Speiser, where a fatuous master mouthes clichés and a servant echoes him. Lambert considered it a musing of a mercurial adolescent with suicidal tendencies. The Aluzinnu (“trickster,” a jester, clown or buffoon) text, extant in five fragments from the neo Assyrian period concerns an individual, dābibu, ākil karṣi, “character assassin,” who made a living entertaining others with parodies, mimicry, and scatological songs. The Poor Man of Nippur provides a subversive narrative of the triumph of the underdog over his superior while Ninurta Pāqidāt's Dog Bite is a school text of a slapstick nature.

The earliest Akkadian laws are the “Old Assyrian Laws” relating to the conduct of the commercial court of a trading colony in Anatolia, c. 1900 BC. The Laws of Eshnunna were a collection of sixty laws named for the city of its provenance and dating to around 1770 BC. The Code of Ḫammu rapi, c. 1750 BC, was the longest of the Mesopotamian legal collections, extending to nearly three hundred individual laws and accompanied by a lengthy prologue and epilogue. The edict of Ammi Saduqa, c. 1646 BC, was the last issued by one of Ḫammu rapi’s successors. The Middle Assyrian Laws date to the fourteenth century BC, over a hundred laws are extant from Assur. The Middle Assyrian Palace Decrees, known as the “Harem Edicts,” from the reigns of Aššur uballiṭ I, c. 1360 BC, to Tukultī apil Ešarra I, c. 1076 BC, concern aspects of courtly etiquette and the severe penalties (flagellation, mutilation and execution) for flouting them. The Neo Babylonian Laws number just fifteen, c. 700 BC, probably from Sippar.

One of the most famous of these was the Epic of Gilgamesh, and arranged upon an astronomical principle. Each division contains the story of a single adventure in the career of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk. The whole story is a composite product, and it is probable that some of the stories are artificially attached to the central figure. Exemplars of omen text appear during the earliest periods of Akkadian literature but come to their maturity early in the first millennium with the formation of canonical versions. Notable among these is the Enuma Anu Enlil (astrological omens), Šumma ālu (terrestrial omens), Šumma izbu (anomalous births), Alamdimmû (physiognomic omens), and Iškar Zaqīqu (dream omens). It is among this genre, also, that the Sakikkū (SA. GIG) “Diagnostic Handbook” belongs. The practice of extispicy, divination through the entrails of animals, was perfected into a science over the millennia by the Babylonians and supporting texts were eventually gathered into a monumental handbook, the Bārûtu, extending over a hundred tablets and divided into ten chapters. Divination, however, extended into other fields with, for example, the old Babylonian libanomancy texts, concerning interpreting portents from incense smoke, being one and Bēl nadin šumi’s omen text on the flight paths of birds, composed during the reign of Kassite king Meli Šipak, being another exemplar. Incantations form an important part of this literary heritage, covering a range of rituals from the sacred, Maqlû, "burning" to counter witchcraft, Šurpu, “incineration” to counter curses, Namburbi, to preempt inauspicious omens, Utukkū Lemnūtu (actually bilingual), to exorcise “Evil Demons,” and Bīt rimki, or “bath house,” the purification and substitution ceremony, to the mundane, Šà. zi. ga, “the rising of the heart,” potency spells, and Zu buru dabbeda, “to seize the ‘locust tooth’,” a compendium of incantations against field pests.

A particularly rich genre of Akkadian texts was that represented by the moniker of “wisdom literature,” although there are differences in opinion concerning which works qualify for inclusion. One of the earliest exemplars was the Dialogue between a Man and His God from the late Old Babylonian period. Perhaps the most notable were the Poem of the Righteous Sufferer (Ludlul bēl nēmeqi) and the Babylonian Theodicy. Included in this group are a number of fables or contest literature, in varying states of preservation, such as the Tamarisk and the Palm, the Fable of the Willow, Nisaba and Wheat (kibtu), the Ox and the Horse (Inum Ištar šurbutum, “When exalted Ishtar”), the Fable of the Fox, and the Fable of the Riding donkey. W. G. Lambert and others include several popular sayings, and proverbs (both bilingual and Babylonian) together with the Lament of a Sufferer with a Prayer to Marduk, Counsels of Wisdom, Counsels of a Pessimist, and Advice to a Prince in this genre. “A Dialogue between Šūpê amēli and His Father” (Šimâ milka) is a piece of wisdom literature in the manner of a deathbed debate from the Akkadian hinterland.