Sumerian Gods and their Representations.

• Author: BLACK, J.A.
• Position: Review

Sumerian Gods and their Representations. Edited by I. L. FINKEL and M. J. GELLER. Cuneiform Monographs, vol. 7. Groningen: STYX PUBLICATIONS, 1997. Pp. ix + 249, illus., maps. HFI 150.

While the majority of ancient Mesopotamian deities existed, under dual names, in both the Akkadian-language and the Sumerian-language traditions, with similar or identical characteristics, it is salutary and useful to focus on the earlier phases, which are, typically, "Sumerian." In this volume are collected thirteen papers delivered at a symposium held at the British Museum on 7th April 1994, in memory of Thorkild Jacobsen, who died in 1993. The editors have provided full indices (of words and, in particular, of gods, demons and temples) and a brief introduction (together with a dramatic photograph of the youthful Jacobsen in Iraq, as a frontispiece), but essentially the papers speak for themselves. It is a credit to the inspiration of Jacobsen that the occasion and the choice of subject called forth a collection both so varied and so relatively coherent, since such is not always the case with conference proceedings.

Enki, Martu, Nanaya, and Nanna are the deities who happen to receive treatments at length, but the volume covers many other divinities and areas of the Sumerian mental world.

W. G. Lambert, in "Sumerian gods: Combining the evidence of texts and art," has a judicious overview of the problems (pp. 1-3). "The general conclusion is that the identification of figures in 'Sumerian' art is not beyond hope, but most of the relevant sources are of later date, and have to be handled ... from comprehensive knowledge of both texts and art" (p. 8).

J. S. Cooper's stimulating reflections on "Gendered sexuality in Sumerian love poetry" invite us to consider whether the authentic voices of female poets can be detected. Some of the songs are very likely to be elaborations of actual women's songs; and Inana and Dumuzi may well have been the paradigmatic couple of secular love poetry (p. 97). Despite their generally chaste tone, it is not quite true that the poems "never mention the Sumerian word for intercourse" (p. 94), if we can count e-ne su[sub3]-ud ga-da-e in Sefati, Love Songs in Sumerian literature, DI H obv. 20.

Jacob Klein, in "The god Martu in Sumerian literature," provides a new edition of The Marriage of Martu together with informative notes on other literary sources for the god. Klein sees the poem as human folklore rather than myth, against the...