Ea’s Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story

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-hasis, 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 Ref

Martin Worthington is Associate Professor in Middle Eastern Studies in the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.