Sumerian Mock Hymns – Explorations into a new literary genre
Dr. Jana Matuszak
Project duration: 2019-2023
Abstract
Based on critical editions of two hitherto unknown, and new translations of two known but poorly understood, Sumerian compositions from the Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000–1600 BCE), this project endeavours to present the first comprehensive treatment of these texts, whose genre is open to question. Previous scholarship – virtually non-existent as it is – has solely highlighted the texts’ derogative content, consisting of an abundance of verbal abuse directed at stereotypical evil, incompetent and morally depraved characters. Allegedly devoid of literary sophistication, they have been dismissed as half-baked exercises in invective. By shifting the focus to their formal resemblance to hymns, I argue that these texts are not mere collections of random insults but can better be described as parodies of hymns, or mock hymns. Since the texts do not only derive inspiration from hymns but also from incantations, they can be situated at the intersection of scholarly parody and apotropaic charm. The longest and most complex of the four, which is presented here for the first time, moreover contains intertextual allusions to practically all genres of Sumerian literature, ranging from proverbs to lamentations, from epics to love songs, and from lexical lists to prayers. The mock hymns hence reveal important new insights not only into the reception of traditional Sumerian literature but also into the production of new texts in the intellectual milieux of early 2nd millennium BCE Babylonia.
Long description
At the heart of this project lies a nearly completely preserved prism from the Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000–1600 BCE), which was published by Stephen Langdon in OECT 1 (1923) and has defied translation and interpretation ever since. While Langdon, noting the “insurmountable difficulties of language” (ibid. 16), interpreted the text as a “Hymn and Prayer to the Mother Goddess for Succor from Demons,” the identification of partial duplicates from the late 1950s onwards resulted both in new advances and fresh confusion. By the early 1990s there was no consensus about how many compositions the prism contained, but the few people who did comment on the text in occasional footnotes agreed that it was more than one, and that these had nothing to do with a hymn and prayer to the mother goddess. In Graham Cunningham’s (2007) revision of Miguel Civil’s Catalogue of Sumerian Literature, the prism and its four partial duplicates known at the time were finally registered as “*5.4.13 Diatribes against women;” the use of the plural reflecting the uncertainty about how many compositions were recorded on the prism, and how many texts of this type there may be in total.
The identification of six additional duplicates of the Oxford prism in recent years, which more than double the number of known manuscripts, provides an excellent basis for the preparation of the text’s editio princeps, which will be completed by the time Langdon’s publication of Ashm 1922-0169 celebrates its centenary. The recovery of the text and its complete translation also allows for a comprehensive reappraisal of the prism’s contents. It will be demonstrated that it does in fact contain only one composition, which will henceforth be quoted after its incipit, Ka hulu-a “The Evil Mouth”. Its hybrid nature, which caused previous scholars to posit more than one text, results from an exceptionally high amount of intertextual references to various compositions and genres of Sumerian literature. Based on a description of the text’s structure and formal features, I will argue that it is modelled on a hymn to the goddess Innana, but filled with entirely contrasting content: the goddess herself is only explicitly invoked in the last third of the text, while the first part addresses not a divinity worthy of praise, but a mortal worthy of insult.
Focusing less on the abusive content and more on the way it is presented, it can be shown that the overall song-like form – correctly recognised by Langdon – accommodated references to love songs, incantations, lexical lists, lamentations, prayers, as well as certain epics featuring the goddess Innana. One particular source can be identified as providing the inspiration for the first stanza and hence probably the text as a whole: the Early Dynastic Proverb Collection 1, a compilation of pithy Sumerian sayings from around 2,600 BCE, which by the early 2nd millennium was largely obscure and – as will be argued – subjected to a rather tendentious (re-)interpretation. The Evil Mouth can therefore be understood as the literary product of learned scribes working in early 2nd millennium BCE Babylonia. Though native speakers of Akkadian, they composed the text in relatively ‘academic’ Sumerian, which partly accounts for the still quite substantial difficulties of language deplored by Langdon. The deviations from classical Sumerian grammar, lexicon and syntax raise methodological concerns with regard to translation, which will be addressed in a separate chapter.
The second part widens the focus to encompass three other Sumerian compositions, one of them hitherto unknown, which stem from the same intellectual milieux and share certain characteristics with The Evil Mouth, Engardu the Fool, A Good Seed of a Dog and Woman Perfecting Evil. The first two were hitherto labelled ‘diatribes’ and dismissed as relatively random collections of insults – good for a laugh, but unsophisticated in literary form and not worthy of much scholarly attention. I argue that their abusive content has distracted scholars from their literary qualities, and that they can in fact all be described as parodies of hymns – or mock hymns. Rather than lavishing praise on important deities or exceptionally accomplished, deified kings, these texts heap insults on the most depraved specimen of ordinary human society. Despite their derogative content, they follow the structure and formal features of hymns closely. But are they just an elaborate literary joke?
The texts themselves contain meta-textual self-references that claim to exert a certain power over their addressees, which can similarly be found in incantations intended to dispel evil. I therefore study in how far the self-proclaimed ‘incantations,’ which do not conform in either form or content with real examples of that genre, could have possessed some quasi-magical functions. An unpublished manuscript of The Evil Mouth from Sippar, which I recently identified in the Archaeological Museums in Istanbul, may shed important light on the question of whether these texts were merely ‘bookish’ parodies produced during the process of scribal education or if they had a performative context in which they fulfilled larger societal functions. It is partly written unorthographically, which usually indicates that the scribe wanted to capture sound rather than meaning. This is mainly relevant for texts that were sung or recited in situations where the speech act was important and invested with power. The half-preserved tablet also places more emphasis on inter-divine and human-divine relations than the other manuscripts, opening the investigation for an analysis of the text’s potential cultic role.
The presentation and detailed analysis of what I propose to be the hitherto unknown ‘genre’ of Sumerian mock hymns will be complemented by critical editions of The Evil Mouth and Woman Perfecting Evil as well as new translations of Engardu the Fool and A Good Seed of a Dog.