Ancient Texts
Sumer and Babylon: Ancient texts
Ancient Texts pages that draw on Sumer and Babylon, each with the sources shown. Start with Adapa, Anu (An), Anunnaki, Apkallu (the seven sages).
People · Sumer and BabylonAdapaA wise man was offered the bread and water of eternal life in heaven and refused, on his own god's advice. The best copy of his story was dug up in Egypt, in the royal archive of Akhenaten; scholars still debate whether Ea's advice was an honest mistake or a deliberate trick. What really happened in that hall?Gods · Sumer and BabylonAnu (An)The star-shaped cuneiform sign that spelled the sky god's name was written before every god's name, so his symbol became the mark of divinity itself. Yet Anu mostly stays in his distant heaven while younger gods act; Etana and Adapa both tried to reach that heaven. Why would the father of the gods stay so remote?Beings · Sumer and BabylonAnunnakiIn one Sumerian poem, the gods who rule the cosmos sit as seven underworld judges who can turn a goddess into a corpse with a single look. The name probably means "offspring of An," yet modern writers made it famous as a name for astronauts. What do the real texts say about these gods?Beings · Sumer and BabylonApkallu (the seven sages)Seven semi-divine sages, sent by Enki before the Flood to teach humans civilization, were carved as fish-men and eagle-headed spirits. The seventh, Utuabzu, is said to have ascended to heaven, much like Enoch, the seventh patriarch in Genesis; scholars debate whether that is literary borrowing. Who were these sages, really?Texts · Sumer and BabylonAtrahasisAccording to the Babylonian epic Atrahasis, the first humans were made partly from the flesh and blood of a god who was killed because he had intelligence. Overworked junior gods had gone on strike, and humans were the fix; then people grew too noisy, and the Flood followed. What went wrong with the plan?People · Sumer and BabylonBerossusBefore the Flood, ten kings ruled for 432,000 years, according to a Babylonian priest who wrote in Greek around 290 BCE. His flood hero was also ordered to bury written records of all things at Sippar and dig them up afterward; the book itself is lost. So how do we know any of this?Gods · Sumer and BabylonEnki (Ea)Enki saves humanity from the Flood without technically breaking his oath: bound to secrecy, he tells the plan to a wall while the hero listens on the other side. The Sumerian god of fresh water also designs the first humans, and in another story gives away civilization while drunk. Who walked off with it?Gods · Sumer and BabylonEnlilThe king of the gods grew so annoyed by the noise of multiplying humans that he sent plague, then drought, then the Flood. Yet in one Sumerian myth the other gods arrest Enlil himself and expel him from his own city for ritual impurity. Why did the most powerful god in Sumer end up exiled?Texts · Sumer and BabylonEnuma ElishThe Babylonian creation poem ends by handing its hero fifty different names, each a title with its own meaning, including Nibiru. Before that come a war among the gods, a sea-monster split to make the sky, and humans made from a rebel god's blood. Why does a creation story finish with a list of names?Places · Sumer and BabylonEriduArchaeologists found eighteen temples stacked in the same spot at Eridu, each rebuilt on top of the last for roughly three thousand years, starting around 5400 BCE. The Sumerians said it was the oldest city in the world, where kingship first descended from heaven. How much of the legend does the digging support?People · Sumer and BabylonEtanaA shepherd king with no son rides an eagle toward heaven, and the epic describes the earth shrinking stage by stage until it disappears. That was written more than 3,500 years before anyone could see Earth from altitude, though scholars say it needs only imagination and mountain views; then his nerve fails. Why was he flying at all?People · Sumer and BabylonGilgameshAmong the Dead Sea Scrolls, Gilgamesh turns up as one of the giants born to the fallen Watchers. That is odd for a king of Uruk who was, in his own epic, two-thirds divine and one-third human, and probably a real ruler; historians say the scrolls borrowed his name for effect. Why would giants need it?Beings · Sumer and BabylonHumbabaBabylonian fortune-tellers made clay masks of Humbaba whose faces were formed from a single coiled intestine. In the epics he guards the Cedar Forest: his roar is the flood, his mouth is fire, his breath is death; Gilgamesh and Enkidu killed him against the will of the gods. Why strike down a god's own guard?Beings · Sumer and BabylonIgigiThe oldest strike in literature was a strike by gods; after thousands of years digging rivers and heaping up mountains, the junior gods of Babylon burned their tools and surrounded their boss's house at night. The epic Atrahasis says humankind was created to take over the work. How does a god settle a labor dispute?Gods · Sumer and BabylonInannaTo revive Inanna in the underworld, Enki makes two small beings from the dirt under his fingernails. She is also the goddess who, the story says, stole more than a hundred divine powers, the me behind kingship, priesthood and music, and sailed them home to Uruk in the Boat of Heaven. How did she get away with it?Gods · Sumer and BabylonMardukWhen enemies captured Marduk's statue and carried it abroad, Babylonian writers explained the loss as the god choosing to go on a journey. He began as the minor god of a minor city; in the epic Enuma Elish he splits the sea-monster Tiamat in two and earns fifty names. How does a small-town god become king?Objects · Sumer and Babylon; modern speculationNibiruIn Babylon, Nibiru was a name of the god Marduk, who "upheld the paths" of the stars. In modern lore, it is a hidden planet that would knock the solar system off course; the 3,600-year orbit people quote comes from a number unit, say Assyriologists. What did the Babylonians actually point at in the sky?Gods · Sumer and BabylonNinurtaAfter defeating an army of living stones, the warrior god Ninurta holds a trial of rocks, pronouncing a different fate on each kind of stone for how it behaved in the war. His weapon can talk, too; scholars read the myth as floods, mountains and irrigation dressed up as battle. What does a verdict on stones sound like?Beings · Sumer and BabylonOannesAccording to the priest Berossus, a creature with a fish's body and a second, human head under the fish's head rose from the sea in the first year of the world. It taught writing and law by day, ate nothing among people, and slept in the sea each night; Berossus survives only secondhand. What else was quoted?Objects · Sumer and BabylonSharurIn a Sumerian epic from around 2100 BCE, a mace talks. Sharur brings its god news of a monster, flies over the mountains to scout the enemy, returns to brief him, and gives tactical advice, about four thousand years before anyone built a scout drone; scholars call it a personified divine weapon. What does a weapon say mid-battle?Places · Sumer and BabylonShuruppakA city that legend names as home of the Flood hero turned out to have a real flood deposit under it. Shuruppak also produced the Instructions of Shuruppak, among the oldest literary texts in the world, framed as a father's advice to his son Ziusudra. What does a flood layer actually prove?Texts · Sumer and BabylonSumerian King ListThe first eight kings in this cuneiform list reign for a combined 241,200 years, and one is credited with 43,200 years alone; kingship, it says, "descended from heaven" at Eridu, and later "the flood swept over." Historians read the numbers as symbols and the list as propaganda. Propaganda for whom?Beings · Sumer and BabylonTiamatIn the Babylonian creation epic, the Tigris and Euphrates flow out of the eyes of a dead goddess; Tiamat is the primeval salt sea and mother of the first gods. She prepares for war, gives birth to eleven kinds of monsters, and then her split body becomes the sky and the earth. Who won?People · Sumer and BabylonUtnapishtimWhen the Babylonian flood hero makes his offering after the storm, the starving gods gather over it "like flies," because with humanity drowned no one had been feeding them. When George Smith read the tale in London in 1872, it caused a sensation for matching Genesis. Why was this one man given eternal life?People · Sumer and BabylonZiusudra (Xisuthrus)The oldest known flood story survives on a single broken clay tablet from Nippur, written around 1600 BCE. Its hero, a king and priest, learns the gods' plan from a voice beside a wall, survives the storm, and is moved to Dilmun, a real trading land in the Persian Gulf, to live forever. What do the missing lines say?
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