story of Atrahasis(B. Foster 2005 : 227 – 280 ). In this, the newly created human race is
so productive that the gods send a great flood to wipe it out. Frightened by what they
have done, and hungry for lack of human servants, the gods repent and vow never to
send another flood, but rather to keep human population in check by infertility, social
taboos on child-bearing, and regular mortality. A flood story is known in Sumerian,
but it is probably later in date than Atrahasisso composed by an Akkadian speaker in
scholastic Sumerian (Civil 1969 ; Black et al. 2004 : 212 – 215 ).SUMERIAN MYTHOLOGY AND GREATER MESOPOTAMIA
Sumerian writings contain little direct evidence for the influence of non-Sumerian
peoples upon Sumerian culture. When the mythological texts were set down, Sumerian
written culture was already centuries old, enjoyed high prestige, required a long
apprenticeship to master, and was more a body of knowledge for the educated than a
widely shared cultural property. Because of its clear tendency to glorify Sumerian
culture as superior to all others, Sumerian literature gives an impression of being
impervious to non-Sumerian influences and little interested in strange lands and
peoples. Although in an assessment of Sumerian culture as a whole, such an impression
would be seriously misleading, in Sumerian formal writing, the choice of themes,
settings, and characters prefers Sumerian cultural patterns, Sumerian settings, and
major Sumerian deities.
Interpretation of the rich legacy of Sumerian mythology in modern thought has
therefore taken many rewarding paths, but its placement and understanding within the
larger framework of Sumerian culture and history eludes us still.REFERENCES
Note: Citation of translations are from printed sources only. English translations of Sumerian texts
cited here can also be found on the website of the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature
(http://etcsl.ox.ac.uk/index.html).
Alster, B. ( 1972 a) Dumuzi’s Dream: Aspects of Oral Poetry in a Sumerian Myth, Mesopotamia 1.
Copenhagen: Akademisk.
Alster, B. ( 1972 b) Ninurta and the Turtle. Journal of Cuneiform Studies 24 : 120 – 125.
—— ( 1976 ) On the Earliest Sumerian Literary Tradition. Journal of Cuneiform Studies, 28 : 109 – 126.
Alster, B. and Westenholz, A. ( 1994 ) The Barton Cylinder. Acta Sumerologica, 16 : 15 – 46.
Black, J. ( 2007 ) Sumerian. In J. N. Postgate (ed.) Languages of Iraq, Ancient and Modern.London:
British School of Archaeology in Iraq.
Black, J. et al. ( 2004 ) The Literature of Ancient Sumer.Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bottéro, J. and Kramer, S. N. ( 1989 ) Lorsque les dieux faisaient l’homme, Mythologie mésopotamienne.
Paris: Editions Gallimard.
Cassirer, E. ( 1944 ) An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture.New Haven:
Yale University Press.
Civil, M. ( 1969 ) The Sumerian Flood Story. In W. Lambert and A. Millard (eds.), Atra-Hasis: The
Babylonian Story of the Flood, pp. 138 – 145. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
—— ( 1983 ) Enlil and Ninlil: The Marriage of Sud. Journal of the American Oriental Society 103 :
43 – 64.
Cooper, J. ( 1978 ) The Return of Ninurta to Nippur. Analecta Orientalia 52. Rome: Pontificium
Institutum Biblicum.
–– Benjamin R. Foster ––