Tag: Sumerian literature

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Felix Müller

Title:  The Exaltation of Innana-Ištar in Egi maḫ ušu nira: Edition and Myth Analysis including related Sumerian and Akkadian Sources

University: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Supervisor: Enrique Jiménez, Annette Zgoll

Abstract: 

The bilingual composition Egi maḫ ušu nira “Exalted princess, who alone is mighty” (modern Exaltation of Innana/Ištar) is preserved on Assyrian and Babylonian tablets from the 1stmillennium BC, mostly from Neo-Assyrian Nineveh and Seleucid Uruk.  In a largely laudatory form, the hymn narrates the elevation of Innana-Ištar to the head of the Mesopotamian pantheon by decision of the gods Anu, Enlil and Ea. 

A primary purpose of this work is to give an updated edition of the composition, a desideratum since the last authoritative edition of the text by Hruška (1969, ArOr 37, 473–522) is already 55 years old and the number of preserved manuscripts has already more than doubled (2024). Originally, the complete work consisted of at least five tablets, of which Hruška (1969) could restore the entire tablet III and around a half of tablet IV. The new edition includes additional pieces of these two tablets as well as fragments of tablet I and unplaced fragments. Especially the first half of tablet IV can now be almost reconstructed. In addition, the work will offer a historical contextualization of all known manuscripts and discuss linguistic problems regarding the late bilingual transmission of the text. 

In addition to the philological treatment of the composition, a first general interpretation of the text is offered, including an analysis of the myths it contains, for which the methodology of Hylistics (cf. Zgoll, C. 2020, Mythological Studies 2, 9–82; Zgoll, A. / Cuperly / Cöster-Gilbert 2023, Hylistic Narratology, 285–350) is used to a substantial extent. This allows the identification and reconstruction of myths incorporated in the text. A special focus will be placed on examining the divine names that Innana-Ištar receives in the composition.

Keywords: Ištar, myth, edition, philology, Neo-Assyrian, Seleucid

Contact: felix.mueller@uni-goettingen.de

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Christie Carr

Title: Conceptualising the Erotic: Metaphor in the Sumerian “Love Songs”

University: University of Oxford

Supervisor: Jacob Dahl

Abstract:

My thesis analyses the metaphor of the Old Babylonian Sumerian “Love Songs”. Using an approach borrowed from cognitive linguistics, I will analyse the corpus using Conceptual Metaphor Theory. The theory mainly states that we understand abstract concepts through mappings from embodied experiences. The extensive metaphor in the Sumerian “Love Songs” give one of the fullest and extended representations of sexual domains of experience from the ancient Mesopotamian world, particularly desire, pleasure, and the erotic. Using modern approaches to metaphor, I hope to create a pragmatic and useful approach to the pervasive but sometimes obscure metaphor in Old Babylonian Sumerian literary texts. By analysing metaphor across the defined parameters of the erotic literary texts known as the Sumerian “Love Songs”, I will display the creativity and interaction that occurs with the creation and comprehension of certain metaphor, and also demonstrate that the analysis of figurative language can be used as tool for accessing culturally constructed domains of experience. The aim is to understand how desire, pleasure, allure, and the gendered human body were conceptualised at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC.

Keywords: Old Babylonian, Sumerian literature, metaphor

Contact: christie.carr@wolfson.ox.ac.uk