Previously unknown Sumerian myth now deciphered
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Reported by Phys.org:
A recent study by Dr. Jana Matuszak, published in the academic journal Iraq, examines the mythical narrative contained in a tablet (Ni 12501) dating to the Early Dynastic IIIb period (ca. 2540–2350 BCE) from Nippur, Sumer.
Despite the tablet having been excavated in the 19th century, a comprehensive edition and analysis has thus far never been published.
This may in part be due to the tablet's fragmented nature, which provides as many answers as it does questions. Additionally, when it was chosen to adorn the dust jacket of a book by Samuel Noah Kramer in 1956, Kramer omitted its museum number, only providing it in a separate publication five years later.
Ni 12501 was created around 2400 BCE in ancient Sumer. "Around 2400 BCE, Sumer consisted of politically autonomous city states, though by the middle of the 24th century (ca. 2350 BCE), there were ultimately successful attempts at unifying them into a kingdom. City states usually had one urban center as well as smaller settlements in the periphery," explained Dr. Matuszak.
"Each city-state had one patron deity (who in turn had an entire family and staff). In the case of Nippur, this was Enlil. But cities had various temples dedicated to other deities as well.
"Despite their political autonomy, the city states generally shared similar political and administrative practices, a language, a writing system, and a belief system, with local differences: for example, there would have been different dialects of Sumerian, but they only occasionally shine through the standard orthography.
"Also, there's evidence for local panthea, but the big gods were venerated throughout Sumer… For Ni 12501, this means that it likely presents a Nippurite tradition, but if it was known outside of Nippur (for which we currently have no evidence), there's no reason to believe that people would have contested it in any way. Nippur and Adab were neighbors and their panthea were interlinked."
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