The Ark Before Noah
Page 34
2. other symbols for numbers … Numbers evolved right alongside writing and quickly reached a remarkable level of sophistication, as clearly explained in Nissen, Damerow and Englund 1993.
3. The eye sees … Interesting here are two rare specimens of cuneiform writing in ink where the Assyrian scribe accurately imitates the cuneiform signs as they look in clay when written with a stylus, but using a brush and ink; a photograph is given in Reade 1986: 217; see, for the implications, Finkel forthcoming (a).
4. destroy … this verb has sometimes been translated ‘flee’, but the idea is that the boat is made out of the house materials.
5. spiky … The Dutch word for cuneiform is Spijkerschrift which seems to me to convey incidentally much of the nature of cuneiform writing – if not some of its devotees – ‘having spikes’, ‘being ill-tempered’ or ‘characterised by violent or aggressive methods’.
Notes to Chapter 3: Words and People
1. the city, Ur … During the last invasion of Iraq, a high-flown American official, interviewed on the radio about damage to archaeological sites on which military installations had been imposed, referred to this city as ‘Umm’, evidently confusing one convention for ‘I can’t think what to say’ with another.
2. the library at Alexandria … For the likelihood that the Alexandrian library was influenced by that at Nineveh see Goldstein 2010.
3. Arlo Guthrie … The quotation is from the original full recording of Alice’s Restaurant, a work that cannot be beaten.
4. allow us to eavesdrop … A good collection of letters from this point of view, all translated into English, is Oppenheim 1967.
5. Assyrian political treaty … The whole text, from the reign of King Esarhaddon (680–669 BC), is translated in Parpola and Watanabe 1998 as no. 6; these are lines 643–5.
6. Shuruppak … The long-running work of wisdom literature known to us as the Instructions of Shuruppak was handed down by a famous father, himself son of Ubar-Tutu, supposedly the last king to rule before the Flood; see Alster 2005: 63.
7. classic of Babylonian wisdom literature … The Dialogue of Pessimism, as translated in Lambert 1960: 147.
8. could even read inscriptions … This is the colophon that was added to many of Assurbanipal’s library copies, making unambiguously clear the king’s personal literary abilities; translation after Livingstone 2007: 100–101.
9. needed even less … Recent works such as Charpin 2010; Wilcke 2000 and Veldhuis 2001 are good on this important subject.
10. hard it is to write religious history … A. L. Oppenheim wrote in his influential book Ancient Mesopotamia that a history of Mesopotamian religion could never be written, which was all that was needed to goad his Harvard opposite T. Jacobsen into producing one called Treasures of Darkness. While a mass of documentary evidence relevant to cuneiform religion has since become available with detailed studies of specific rituals, aspects of temple administration or the history of individual gods, there has been no subsequent attempt at an overview.
11. for the whole universe … This translation of the Sumerian is the work of Piotr Michalowski, quoted from his article about Sumerian liver divination, Michalowski 2006: 247–8.
12. but not always … Invaluable here is Civil’s 1975 overview of what can be learned from cuneiform dictionaries.
13. one unique discussion … See Oppenheim 1974. This remarkable text seems hardly to have been appreciated for what it is.
14. drawings on clay … See the examples in Finkel 2011.
15. Greeks learning Babylonian … For lots about the remarkable ‘Graeco-Babyloniaca’ tablets see Geller 1997 and Westenholz 2007.
16. human diseases … Discussed in Geller 2001/2002; the tablet of game rules is explicated in Finkel 2008.
17. have got away with quite a lot … A good example is the so-called Greek invention of the gnomon or sun-dial, the construction of which is fully explained on a cuneiform tablet in the British Museum which was once in a library at Babylon. It is widely attributed to Anaximander but even Herodotus knew better; Pingree 1998: 130.
Notes to Chapter 4: Recounting the Flood
1. Many scholars … The following interesting books, written long in advance of internet resources, have been concerned with this material: Frazer 1918; Riem 1925; Gaster 1969: 82–131; Westermann 1984: 384–406; Bailey 1989 and Cohn 1996. See also Dundes (ed.) 1988.
2. the biblical Flood itself … The main writings then were Peake 1930; Parrot 1955; Mallowan 1964; Raikes 1966.
3. versatile pen … Woolley 1954, 1982; Watelin 1934: 40–44; Moorey 1978.
4. in their footsteps … It is with such matters that the internet is beyond challenge. I have looked at Anderson 2001; Wilson 2001.
5. if not beyond … For echoes of post-cuneiform Gilgamesh see George 2003, Vol. 1: 54–70.
6. Atrahasis Epic … Lambert and Millard 1969 is the first serious treatment; a fine translation with useful references is Foster 1993, Vol. 1: 158–201; important also are George and al-Rawi 1996, and the tablet published in Spar and Lambert 2005, referred to on p. 220 above.
7. have been excavated … The tablet is CBS 10673, translated in Civil 1969: 142–5; discussed in Alster 2005: 32–3.
8. the god Enki … The tablet is MS 3026, known to me only in photograph.
9. kings who lived before the Flood … For more details, see Lambert and Millard 1969: 17–21; Alster 2005: 32.
10. a corking opera … Mesopotamian mythology has, in fact, provided inspiration to composers such as George Rochberg, who wrote the song-cycle Songs of Inanna and Dumuzi for contralto and piano based on Sumerian poems. Similar influence on literature has been examined in Foster 2008 and Ziolkowski 2011.
11. fractious baby … Useful quietening spells for this purpose are collected and translated in Farber 1989.
12. Ipiq-Aya … His story is told in van Koppen 2011.
13. I will try out the join … The fragment C1 is BM 78942+; C2 is MAH 16064. Translations: Lambert and Millard 1969: 88–93 [source C]; Foster 1993: 177–9.)
14. how to accomplish it … The tablet is MS 5108, translated in George 2009: 22.
15. the same lines … See Chapter 13, this page.
16. from other versions … The tablet is Aleppo Museum RS 22.421, translated in Lambert and Millard 1969: 132–3 (source H); Foster 1993, Vol. 1: 185.
17. University Museum, Philadelphia … The tablet is CBS 13532, translated in Lambert and Millard 1969: 126–7 (source I); Foster 1993, Vol. 1: 184.
18. described in Chapter 3 … The tablet is BM 98977+, translated in Lambert and Millard 1969: 122–3 (source U); Foster 1993, Vol. 1: 184.
19. Daily Telegraph newspaper … The tablet is DT 42, translated in Lambert and Millard 1969: 129 (source W); Foster 1993, Vol. 1: 194.
20. Penguin Classic … Originally a slim, composite translation in Sandars 1960, which has been in every way replaced by George 1999.
21. something of an afterthought … Translated in George 2003, Vol. 1: 704–9, which renders previous editions superfluous.
22. Berossus according to … These two passages are quoted after Lambert and Millard 1969: 134–7. For a long time scholars had to be content with Cory 1832; later this was replaced by Jacoby 1958. An interesting study of Berossus is Gmirkin 2006, with whose conclusions I cannot agree; see Drows 1975; see now also De Breucker 2011. Geller 2012 has a highly original suggestion about the Berossus work, that it was first written in Aramaic, not Greek.
23. from the Koran … Koranic translations into English given here are those of Haleem 2004
Notes to Chapter 6: Flood Warning
1. a message dream … Mesopotamian dreams make very interesting reading in Oppenheim 1956; otherwise Butler 1998 and Zgoll 2006.
2. Tablet of Sins … For this fragmentary but suggestive story see Finkel 1983a.
3. We are to conceive … Lambert and Millard 1969: 11–12.
4. wetland marshes of southern Iraq … Fulanain 1927; Salim 1962; Thes
iger 1964, Young 1977 – with Nik Wheeler’s excellent photographs – and Ochsenschlager 2004.
Notes to Chapter 7: The Question of Shape
5. No one had ever thought of that … Florentina Badanalova has recorded an oral Bulgarian tradition in which ‘Noah the cooper was told to build a barrel rather than an Ark, where he and his family and all the animals were to live while the Flood covered the Earth for years instead of days’; Badalanova Geller 2009: 10–11.
6. and probably German … For a history of European model Noah’s Arks of painted wood see Kaysel 1992.
7. A circle within a square … This Old Babylonian diagram of a circle within a tight-fitting square exemplifies how a circle might be said to possess equal length and breadth. It comes from a Babylonian teacher’s geometrical textbook with drawings that is always on exhibition in the British Museum and tends to engender a shudder in visitors when they realise that it is ‘something to do with maths.’ A scribal tour de force, it is of about the same date as the Ark Tablet, and gives a sequence of about forty problem questions, each illuminated by a diagram. These show squares within squares, with circles, triangles and other divisions within them, and grow progressively more complex as the student works down the tablet, laboriously calculating the areas of the varous subdivided sections. To try all the classroom problems yourself consult Robson 1999: 208–217; Robson 2008: 47–50. Some of the most complex shapes in the textbook have no counterpart in our geometry and we have no convenient names for them in English although the Babylonians did (Kilmer 1990). On translating lines 6–9 of the Ark Tablet for the first time I thought at once of this particular diagram.
8. a hand reaching down … According to one Jewish tradition God showed Noah with his finger how to make the Ark; another states that all the necessary information was included in the book called Sefer Razi’el, a copy of which was given to Noah by the angel Raphael.
9. Draw the design on the ground … Miguel Civil told me of an unpublished Old Babylonian Sumerian Schooldays story that he had been working on which explains how the boys were taught cuneiform signs. They are drawn on a large scale in freshly swept sand in the courtyard for the pupils to copy down on their tablets before the signs got trodden on. Thus the lack of a blackboard was neatly circumvented by the black-headed people, as the Sumerians called themselves.
10. Jeffrey Tigay … See Tigay 2002, and, for much useful textual information on the Atrahasis side, Shehata 2001.
11. coracles from India … For coracles of the world, consult Badge 2009; Hornell 1938 and Hornell 1946.
12. standard works on ancient Mesopotamian boats … For example, Salonen 1939; Potts 1997; Carter 2012 and Zarins 2008.
13. Legend of Sargon … This legend has been well known since the nineteenth century, when George Smith and William Fox Talbot (pioneer Assyriologist and pioneer photographer) squabbled about the translation; the most recent treatment since Lewis 1980 is Westenholz 1997: 36–49.
14. I think we can conclude … Since making this brilliant discovery I discovered from Carter 2012: 370 that M. Weszeli had already made the same point in 2009: 168.
15. a direct textual parallel … Compare the final words of the Ark Tablet, ‘Caulk the frame of her door!’
16. the smallest specimen ever made … Chesney 1853: 640.
17. reed boats … skin-covered coracles … Like the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary the historian A. K. Grayson (Grayson 1996), translated this passage as ‘reed rafts’ and ‘rafts (made of inflated) goatskins’, but both interpretations are incorrect. Giant rafts were made of wood lashed together resting hovercraft-like on inflated animal-skin balloons but this is not what is meant by Shalmaneser’s archivist. The Babylonian word for raft, only attested in the plural, is *ḫallimu; ancient Mesopotamian rafts are often called by their modern Turkish name kelek in the literature. For notes by someone who knew about Iraqi rafts see Chesney 1850: 634–7.
18. which way was up … Hornell 1938: 106 is rather sceptical concerning the reliability of the Herodotus account but Badge 2009: 172–3 defends his testimony with parallel practices from elsewhere, and I think does so rightly.
19. Tigris barcarii … The observation that these men, listed in the Notitia Dignitatum, were guffa specialists is that of Reade 1999: 287 (see Holder 1982: 123).
20. boat called a ṭubbû … Quoted after Chicago Assyrian Dictionary Ṭ 115, where the Babylonian tablet in which this otherwise unknown word occurs, here given in photograph, has recently been referred to (BM 32873); ṭubbû thus parallels tēvāh in another way, attested to twice in only one document!
21. conceivably even ultimately ancestral … The origins of the word tub earlier than in Europe of the fourteenth century AD are lost to scholarly enquiry.
22. A remarkable kind of boat … This and the following quotations are from Chesney 1853: 636–9.
23. Patai writes … See Patai 1998: 5.
Notes to Chapter 8: Building the Arks
1. what a shipyard would do … See Potts 1997: 126.
2. abbreviation, the sign PI … This is not quite the same as our writing ‘p’ in ‘20p’, even though ‘p for parsiktu’ is a good way to remember the word.
3. These types of wood … For such matters see Powell 1992.
4. the cosmic Apsû … See Horowitz 1998: 334–47.
5. Bitumen is thus applied … For modern Iraqi boat-building bitumen practice see Ochsenschlager 1992: 52.
6. some scrappy records … Leemans 1960.
7. a tool called girmadû … This term is borrowed from Sumerian giš.gìr-má-dù, where giš is the determinative for ‘wood’, gìr means ‘foot’ and má means ‘boat’, although dù is a verb with many possible meanings. Its Sumerian origin is reflected in the mixed Sumerian and Akkadian-style spelling gi-ir-MÁ.DÙ.MEŠ in Gilgamesh XI: 79. Since it is a roller for applying a waterproof coating, the sign DÙ probably stands for the homonym DU8, which means ‘to seal’, or ‘to caulk’.
Notes to Chapter 9: Life on Board
1. category of ‘clean’ … Foster 1993, Vol. 1: 178–9 sees Atra-hasīs as slaughtering these clean and fat animals but sacrifices were hardly needed to smooth the way for an activity carried out on direct divine orders.
2. two by two … Anyone who stumbles across the early study of our Middle Babylonian Nippur, Hilprecht 1910: 49, 56–7, will find he has gratuitously restored the expression ‘two of everything’, but without any single part of any of the needed signs being preserved on the document!
3. I loaded aboard it … This much-reiterated and possibly tension-building phrase in Gilgamesh XI may well be an indication of oral literary technique but grates now in printed context in much the same way as when politicians repeat a phrase like ‘and the next thing we are going to do is …’ five or six times while they think up a string of impressive-sounding promises. It is tantalising that we cannot know whether Old Babylonian Atrahasis 30–31, which begins in the same way as Gilgamesh XI 82–3, also concerned material wealth. I like to think that it did not.
4. occurred to me … I later discovered, of course, that others have already done such things with the ark narrative, such as Parrot 1955: 15–22 (which is a first-rate book), Bailey 1989, Chapter 6, and especially Westermann 1984, but not reaching the same conclusions.
5. The statistics … as retrievable from the internet.
6. Sumerian UR = Akkadian, kalbu, ‘dog’ … Words sometimes function differently between Sumerian and Akkadian; ‘lioness’, in Akkadian, is a specific noun, nēštum; in Sumerian ‘lioness’ is written with three cuneiform signs that etymologically mean ‘female exalted dog’, although the combination means ‘lioness’ not ‘female exalted dog’. The etymology disappears into the word. To compare the order and content of the Mesopotamian ‘living-things’ lists in Urra = hubullu – which certainly aimed at completeness – with later classificatory systems would be very interesting.
7. what the entries would have been … This translation depends on decades and mounta
ins of philology by many valiant cuneiformists. The original tablets are available in the series Materials for the Sumerian Lexicon (MSL 8/1 and 8/2) and brilliantly accessible (in German) in Landsberger 1934; the English translations of all the words given here follow the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary. Older cuneiform sources exist than have been used here, as well as ancient explanations of the entries.
8. the right nuance … Foster 1993, Vol. 1: 179 translates this, ‘While one was eating and another was drinking.’
9. at least one was a vet … There was veterinary as well as human medicine in ancient Mesopotamia, especially dedicated to horses. An ancient catalogue of cuneiform medical works now in the Oriental Institute Collection in Chicago puts horses and women in the same category!
10. laden with ripe meanings … In addition to the discussion in George 2003, Vol. 1: 510–12, see George 2010.
Notes to Chapter 10: Babylon and Bible Floods
1. not the first time … See Smith 1875: 207–22; Smith 1876: 283–9; Driver 1909; Bailey 1989: 14–22; Best 1999; George 2003, Vol. 1: 512–19. Westermann 1984: 384–458, on this whole thing, is a tour de force and absolutely fascinating.
2. most powerful writing … Read it all at your leisure in George 1999: 88–99 or George 2003, Vol. 1: 709–13.
3. whole literary episode … See George 2003, Vol. 1: 516–18.
4. the great flies … According to Ann Kilmer, the wings of these flies might have some translucent connection with the rainbow image (Kilmer 1997: 175–80).
Notes to Chapter 11: The Judaean Experience
1. deriving from a shared ancestor … This view has been promoted more than once by W. G. Lambert, who considers the story as common Middle Eastern property; see most recently Lambert 1994. Millard 1994 is careful on the subject. Finds of Gilgamesh tablets in 2nd millenium BC Middle Eastern sites such as Megiddo in Israel reflect the spread of cuneiform by Mesopotanian teachers as described on this page above, not widespread familiarity with the full Gilgamesh Epic.