Sumerian language written by and for people who learned it at school (Veldhuis 2004 :
67 ). In the eighteenth century BC, Sumerian and Akkadian were two languages of the
same literate cultural tradition. “Sumerian mythology” may therefore overemphasize
language, too readily identifying works in the Sumerian language with a hypothetical
Sumerian society, rather than situating them in a bilingual, even invented artificial
Sumero-Akkadian culture mastered by a small elite privileged to receive a formal
education. Nonetheless, most writers on Sumerian myths, following Kramer, take for
granted that they are authentic remains of an independent Sumerian culture.MYTH AND THOUGHT
In the rich body of modern writing on Mesopotamian myth, numerous typologies and
definitions can be found (Bottéro and Kramer 1989 : 95 – 104 ; Heimpel 1993 – 1997 :
538 – 540 ). In Mesopotamian studies of the mid-twentieth century, myth was sometimes
treated as indicative of an unscientific way of thinking, characteristic of contempora-
neous primitive peoples, and any ancient people who lived before the middle of the
first millennium BCanywhere outside of the Greek-speaking world (Cassirer 1944 ;
Frankfort et al. 1946 ). According to this view, the mythopoeic way of thinking makes
up stories to explain things rather than seeking abstract causes. Sumerian myths would
therefore be typical of primitive thought because they did not distinguish “man” from
“nature” and they explained natural phenomena, the creation and organization of the
universe, as well as developments in human subsistence and society, in story form,
proceeding from a known outcome to a posited beginning.
Regardless of how Sumerian myth is analyzed by modern thinkers, its main feature
is that story form. The stories often depict a long-ago situation, introduce a conflict,
and then give a resolution of it as thereafter valid. Myth is therefore imaginative and
reflective, rather than analytic or scientific. It makes recourse to a literary structure built
around a specific theme or motif, such as a heroic combat, but often with elements
added that are secondary to the main theme, such as intervention of the hero’s mother.
Mesopotamian myth is usually associated with religious beliefs and practice, tends to
be cast in a solemn and elevated style, and can be combined with praise and exaltation
of the divine. Yet it remains grounded in the concrete, relying on imagery derived from
human life, motivation, and experience transferred to the divine sphere (Bottéro and
Kramer 1989 : 95 – 104 ).
On a more mundane level, some Sumerian myths have been understood as histori-
cal allegories for actual political events of the late third millennium (Cooper 2001 ).
Reading myths in this way runs counter to an established academic agenda that
searches for mythic universals across many cultures (Diakonoff 1995 ) and another that
reads myth as allegory for aspects of nature as experienced in Mesopotamia (Jacobsen
1987 b). The alleged Sumerian mythologizing of political events is sometimes read in
more detail as an ethnically Sumerian reaction to the formation of the Akkadian state
(Cooper 2001 ). This, by its own accounts, brutally repressed and exploited the cities
of Sumer. Yet Sumerian praises of that state were composed by the daughter of its very
founder (Zgoll 1997 ). Because the Sumerian deities who appear in myths had their
major sanctuaries in different Sumerian cities, some stories about them could reflect
inter-city rivalries within Sumer, thus a more generalized historical allegory than
Sumerian reaction to the Akkadian Empire. Hence, in this sub-group of compositions,
–– Benjamin R. Foster ––