The fifty names of Marduk in Enuma elis.

• Author: Seri, Andrea
• Position: Critical essay

Enumu elis is one of the few Akkadian texts that are relatively well known beyond the cryptic domain of the Assyriologist. The "popularity" of Enuma elis seems to relate, at least in part, to one of its most transparent themes, namely, the creation of the universe. An emphasis on the etiological aspect of the composition appears already in George Smith's translation entitled The Chaldean Account of Genesis published in 1876, only some twenty years after the official decipherment of cuneiform writing. In successive decades, other scholars adopted Smith's title, if slightly modified, and variants such as The Babylonian Genesis, The Poem of Creation, or The Epic of Creation are still frequent. (1)

Although early commentators concentrated on highlighting similarities and differences between the Mesopotamian and the Biblical accounts of Genesis, it became apparent relatively soon that the text served not only mythological motives but that it also had other religious, ideological, and political purposes (see Michalowski 1990: 383-84). The creation story was thus the means to convey, proclaim, and justify the enthronement of Marduk as Babylonia's main deity. The glorification of Marduk is so forceful that the poet has him take over Enlil's role as head of the pantheon. This was achieved progressively throughout the text, first by suggesting Marduk's righteous genealogy, then by presenting him as the hero who defeated Tiamat and fashioned the universe, and finally by granting Marduk fifty names. In this paper, I wish to address the structure of the section dealing with the fifty names and its function within the poem as a whole.

GOD LISTS AND THE FIFTY NAMES

The existance of certain affinities between Marduk's fifty names at the end of Enuma elis and those attested in fragments of god lists was pointed out as early as 1902. Thus, when Leonard W. King published The Seven Tablets of Creation, he incorporated fragments of god lists that he considered pertinent for the reconstruction, comparison, and understanding of Marduk's names. (2). And in the description of the contents of CT 25 (1909), King suggested once again that certain god lists included in the volume might help to restore the related broken lines of Enuma elis. Similarly, in his study of the fifty names of Marduk, Franz Bohl (1936) also referred to these connections, in particular to the list An: Anum. Years later, in his Yale doctoral thesis (1958), Richard Litke noticed that a passage of the big god-list An: Anum could be compared with the fifty names of Enuma elis. Litke rightly saw and briefly mentioned that Marduk's names in the second tablet of An: Anum resemble those of Enuma elis, although the arrangement is slightly different (Litke 1998: 89).

The connections between Enuma elis and An: Anum were finally brought into the spotlight in the 1980s, when Walther Sommerfeld (1982: 175) resorted to this god list to argue for a Kassite date of composition for Enuma elis. (3) His claim, however, prompted the response of Wilfred Lambert (1984: 3-4) in a review in which he defends the later date that he had proposed twenty years earlier, i.e., the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I (see Lambert 1964). Lambert maintains that rather than being borrowed from An: Anum, the list of names in Enuma elis "is incorporated in toto (with a little rearrangement at the beginning) from a triple-column god list" (Lambert 1984: 4). (4) Thus, Lambert writes, there are two god lists, "neither of which is demonstrably based on the other." It should be noted that both Sommerfeld and Lambert focused the discussion on dating Enuma elis. Other implications pertaining to the inclusion of a god list in a literary text have not been further explored. (5)

I shall leave the hypothetical date of composition aside and stress the fact that Marduk's multiple names were not the result of the composer's creative genius, but were taken from already existing god list(s). (6) In other words, the names were not conceived ad hoc to crown Marduk's heroic deeds in Enuma elis. This does not imply, however, that the last part of the sixth and the seventh tablets are a later addition missing from an alleged earlier version. On the contrary, the originality of this section resides precisely in the technique of ingeniously interweaving a rather dry string of names into a literary text. This builds on intertextuality, a device consistently used throughout the poem, as will be discussed later. Naturally, the choice of fifty names was not accidental, because fifty was Enlil's number. In the strict sense, the ancestors, in Enuma elis, actually grant Marduk fifty-two names. The last two, however, were not originally Marduk's: they are bel matati, Enlil's epithet, and Anu. These two extra names are simply final bonuses, and they do not follow the pattern of the preceding list. It is worth remembering, after all, that at the beginning of the section, the gods make clear their intention to bestow "fifty" names upon Marduk. (7) Since in ancient Mesopotamia divine names were traditionally compiled in lists, an examination of certain god lists closely related to the names in Enuma elis is now necessary.

THE GOD LIST AN: ANUM

The edition of An: Anum prepared by Litke ([1958] 1998) is a composite based on several manuscripts. It has the Yale text (YBC 2401) as a matrix because, unlike the other manuscripts, this contains the entire series. Marduk's names are recorded on the second tablet from lines 185 to 235; the current edition of Tablet II is based on eighteen copies. (8) In spite of the multiple extant sources, some of the names are completely missing; others preserve only certain signs and were restored from lists that do not seem to belong to the same tradition. (9) Although the exact number of names in An: Anum is, therefore, not immediately apparent, it is likely that there were some fifty-three and not fifty as in Enuma elis. For example, the name Zi-"-ukkin appeared twice in An: Anum. (10) It is first listed under Tu-tu in line 196, and again under (d) Sa-zu in line 204, but it is attested only once in Enuma elis. It is also evident that the preserved entries of An: Anun include names that do not appear in the literary text, for instance, (d)Mar-uru -gis tukul (1. 193) and (d)Mu-"-[ku] (1. 201).

An: Anum is a two-column list that has the god's name on the left and either a brief comment or the ditto sign on the right. Under Marduk's names the explanations in the second column are written in both Sumerian and Akkadian. In the preserved lines Asal-lu-hi is explained as dumu-sag [Eridu-ga-ke 4], "the first-born child of Eridu" (1. 185); Nam-ru is explained as Marduk sa meti, "Marduk of the dead" (1. 187); Mer-sa-kus-u has eziz u mustal, "angry but deliberative" (1. 192); and finally Mar-urutukul is followed by abub(gis)tukul (mes), "Flood of weapons" (1. 193). (11) The names in the left column are arranged according to meaningful groups, either classified by assonance or demarcated by the ditto sign, which is clear from the fully preserved lines. For instance, the first name for Marduk is Asalluhi. The ditto signs indicate that Nam-ti-la and Nam-ru are related to the Asalluhi group, and Asar-ri, Asar-alim, and Asar-alim-nun-na share the first sign (Asar = Asal). Under the second name, i.e., Marduk, the arrangement is by assonance: Marduk, Mer-sa-kus-su -(gis)tukul, Ma-ru-uk-ka, and Ma-ru-tu-uk-ka. The same general principle seems to rule the arrangement of the names in Enuma elis.

This shows that both An: Anum and Enuma elis share most of the deity's names and certain organizational principles. Nevertheless, the arrangement of names at the beginning of the two lists is different. Thus:

In the passage of An: Anum there are thus three groups: the Asalluhi cluster, the Marduk sequence arranged by assonance, and finally those names belonging to the Tutu group. In the Enuma elis section, however, there are four groups: the Marduk sequence similarly arranged by assonance, the name Lugaldimmerankia and its expansion Nari-lugaldimmerankia, the Asalluhi cluster, and finally the Tutu names.

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The begining of the Marduk section in An:Anum seems to be perfectly consistent with a certain hierachical view of the Mesopotamian patheon and with the ordering of this list in general. The deity's most common name, Marduk in...