In the shadow of the muses: a view of Akkadian literature.

• Author: Westenholz, Joan Goodnick

I do not know what "poetical" is. Is it honest in deed and word? Is it a true thing?

(As You Like It, III. iii. 17)

The muses personified the highest aspirations of the artistic and intellectual mind. The daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (memory) taught humans to sing of the blessed gods and of all things past. The singing of the Homeric lays is the epitome of Hellenic literature, reflecting an oral tradition in a heroic society. Akkadian literature, on the other hand, was born in a literate urban society, with no oral component in the written compositions inherited by future generations.(1) Thus, the very title of Before the Muses, a new anthology devoted to bringing Akkadian literature to a wider public, rightly forces us to meet this canon on its own terms rather than in relation to our system, based as it is upon classical definitions of literature.(2)

Little known and little appreciated, Akkadian literature has received scant attention from literary historians. Hopefully, these volumes will help fill this gap and it is a pleasure to welcome such a translation. Benjamin Foster has gathered in these two volumes 313 works of Akkadian literature, some of which have never been translated previously. The care and deliberation with which each text is presented is to be lauded. Happily, the temptation to combine different versions of a story into a coherent text has generally been withstood.(3) Some of the texts are truncated, due to their fragmentary state, while others could have been more fully translated; certainly those where the gist of the composition is lost (e.g., the love dialogue between Rim-Sin and Nanaya, II.11, "Love Lyrics of Rim-Sin").(4) These few shortcomings are balanced by Foster's refreshing and innovative renderings of many difficult texts.

In addition, Foster has provided a comprehensive, exhaustive, and up-to-date background to Akkadian literature. A clear and concise introduction for the general reader contains a short outline of the essential artistic devices used in the literature (pp. 13-19). The discussion of topoi, imagery, and the unities is particularly fascinating (pp. 26-32). However, since this edition will be used by the general public as well as scholars, it seems appropriate to review certain problems raised in the introduction and reflected in the choice of translations given in these volumes.

THE IDENTIFICATION OF LITERATURE

The subtitle of the general introduction (pp. 1-48) - "In Search of Akkadian Literature" - underlines the problem facing anyone dealing with this literature. Can we recover the conceptual. basis of Akkadian literature, lost after many centuries? With no Mesopotamian Ars Poetica at hand, is a modern conception of Mesopotamian literature valid?

Previous work on Akkadian literature is typified by the inclusive approaches of W. W. Hallo and J. Bottero.(5) In 1958 Hallo proposed the terms "archival," "monumental," and "canonical" to distinguish three major categories of cuneiform records. His "canonical" included all the text types that belonged to A. L. Oppenheim's "stream of tradition" - the lexical, grammatical, divinatory, scholarly, and literary texts. Hallo insisted that the systematic selection of literary works must include the "elevation" of non-literary works to literary status. Thus, the copying of existing archival or monumental texts transforms them into literature.(6) This approach finds echoes in the work of Foster, a student of Hallo. However, it should be noted that Foster also uses the expression, "literary and scholarly writings" (p. 6).

In her overview of Akkadian literature, E. Reiner differentiated between letters and documents of ephemeral worth - juridical, economic, and administrative--that are known from a single copy, and the stream of tradition texts of multiple exemplars, which generations of scholars in the academy copied.(7) She then divided the latter into texts that are literature in the narrow sense, and those that are scholarly and divinatory. As to "literature," Reiner followed a traditional Assyriological typology: myths and epics, autobiographies, naru-literature (including fictive royal inscriptions and fictive letters), propaganda literature, poetry (including hymns and prayers), love lyrics, laments, elegies, another poetry grouping involving secular and mantic compositions, wisdom literature (philosophical or didactic literature), humorous literature, and prose texts (including all royal inscriptions).(8) However, in her chapter on first-millennium literature in the Cambridge Ancient History, she uses the word "literature" in its maximalist definition to include divinatory, ritual, medical, and other scholarly texts, while referring to texts that are "literary in a more narrow sense."(9)

At present, the narrowest definition is provided by W. Rollig, who separates Akkadian literature from records of daily life.(10) He establishes ten main categories of literature: narrative works, including works of a mythological nature, epics, naru-literature, and autobiographies; hymns; prayers; laments; literary letters (especially letters to gods), royal letters, and fictive letters; dialogues; wisdom literature; mantic texts, among which he includes rituals (both descriptive and prescriptive, which seem out of place); burlesque, satire, or political propaganda; and miscellaneous, including prophecies and love lyrics.

The native literary catalogues - or, more correctly, library registers - show a mixed approach but chiefly reflect the maximalist view. Although the majority of texts are literary works, other categories included are practical and scholarly tomes relating to, e.g., astrology. However, in the accession list of confiscated works (1441 tablets and 69 writing boards), those that are literary in the narrow sense form a small proportion (10 tablets).(11)

In literary studies in general, "literature" usually refers to a particular central group of genres comprising the poetic, the dramatic, and some kinds of prose. Round this nucleus are grouped neighboring forms: essays, biographies, dialogues, history, and others, which are characterized as literature in potentia. Thus, a particular historical or philosophical work may come to be singled out as belonging to "literature."(12) This heralds the expansion of the definition of literature to include everything worth preserving in written form, whether or not it has artistic merit.(13) Thus, we arrive at Oppenheim's stream of tradition and the maximalist approach. Note, however, Foster's use of belles lettres (pp. 24, 62, and passim), reintroducing the old distinction between letters and humane letters.

Foster mentions three criteria for judging literature: form, content, and expression (p. 46). Does Akkadian literature have a particular form? This can be adjudged externally by type of material or document, or internally, by language. Externally, a composition can be seen to be a literary work by the way it is laid out on a tablet. Regarding internal standards, Foster suggests that texts can be defined by their linguistic differentiation, although "not all linguistically differentiated texts are literary" (p. 13). While Foster assumes a linguistic differentiation as the basis of his selection (not vernacular vs. spoken), these judgments as to the status (poetry or prose) of any particular composition are subjective. For instance, whereas Foster regards as poetry the legends of the Akkadian kings, M.-C. Ludwig applies the phrase "Gehobener Sprache" to Akkadian naru-literature,(14) and T. Longman believes that autobiography was the one genre of Akkadian literature which was written only in prose.(15)

Does Akkadian literature have a particular content? It is commonly accepted that content distinguished literary cuneiform texts from monumental building and votive inscriptions, on the one hand, and economic or archival texts on the other. Normally, content is one of the easiest gauges to use when deciding that a text is "literary": texts about processing and distribution of onions are archival while texts about gods and kings are literary. On the other hand, the Farmer's Almanac is literary while lists of offerings to the gods are archival.

Poetic expression is not easily quantified, although certain scholars have attempted to discuss...