The historian and the Sumerian Gods.

• Position: Thorkild Jacobsen speech - Transcript

Ladies and Gentlemen.

It seems that the English wit Max Beerbohm, the inventor of Zuleika Dobson, once said that there is always something a bit absurd about history. What exactly he had in mind with that remark, I do not pretend to know. But clearly, the farther away from the historian in time and place lie the events he studies, the more odd and unfamiliar will seem the way his sources present them.

For the student of ancient Sumerian history who studies events that lie back in the third millennium B.C., this feeling of absurdity can be quite pronounced. The evidence comes out of a very different world, one in which people tended to understand what happened to them as caused by supernatural agencies, gods, and demons, rather than as the outcome of rational causes. And since history, by definition, excludes all supernatural agencies, the historian of ancient Sumer thus finds himself faced with an obvious problem, real enough to want looking into, the problem the historian has with the Sumerian gods.

It will seem natural to begin our probing by turning to the philosophy of history for enlightenment, and since here Collingwood is the only one who has dealt directly with ancient Sumerian data, we may look at his by now classical study, The Idea of History, to see what he has to say.

Collingwood chooses for discussion a Sumerian inscription written around the middle of the third millennium B.C., known as "The Cone of Entemena." It deals with a boundary dispute between two Sumerian city-states, Lagash with its god Ningirsu, and Umma, with its god Shara. It begins as follows:

The god Enlil, king of all lands, father of all gods,

determined by his just ruling the territorial borderline

for the god Ningirsu and the god Shara.

Mesalim, king of Kishi, checked at the bidding of his

personal god Ishtaran the tautness of the measuring line

and set up stelae at the spot indicated.

Ush, ruler of Umma acted arrogantly, he tore out

those stelae and carried them into the plain of Lagash.

Enlil's warrior, Ningirsu, did at his just command

battle with the Ummeans and threw at Enlil's command

the throw-net down upon them and ranged their burial

mounds in the plain in that spot.

Collingwood, evaluating this, did not think that any of it qualified as history. He wrote, "the facts recorded are not certain actions on the part of human beings, it is certain actions on the part of gods." So, he concluded, "the writer was not writing history, he was writing religion."

According to this assessment, with which one can but concur, history deals with the actions of men, and while valid objections have been raised to Collingwood's general theory of history, especially by W. H. Walsh, W. H. Dray, and Anthony Russel, this particular point is not affected.

While Entemena's account as a whole must thus be dismissed by historians, this is not necessarily true of its parts. Collingwood continues his assessment, saying: "From our point of view it can be used as historical evidence since a modem historian with his eye fixed on human res gestae can interpret it as evidence concerning actions done by Mesilim and Ush and their subjects."

You will note that Collingwood carefully avoids any suggestion that the historian should simply shear Entemena's account of all references to gods and their doings. If the historian did that, he would find that he had sheared off all causal connections between the events recorded. As the ancients experienced and recorded things, the gods were the very nodes of the causal network that gave events coherence and meaning; so, if we remove the gods we will have Mesalim checking a measurement and erecting stelae, but where he did the checking, and why he did it, would be lost, leaving his action isolated and unmotivated. Similarly with Ush, why he would carry stelae into Lagash territory, and whether that was a good thing or a bad thing would no longer be indicated. Clearly, no history can be based on disjointed, incoherent fragments like these. So the references to gods and their actions cannot be simply ignored.

If thus, on the one hand, the actual existence of the gods mentioned cannot very well be accepted by the modern historian, and yet their presence as essential links in the narratives that have come down to him is undeniable, what should the attitude of the historian be? First of all, I think he should draw distinctions. While the gods as supernatural forces have no place in history, the ancients' beliefs about them is a purely human matter and so a historical datum to be dealt with as such.

"To be dealt with as such," means obviously, asking how far they are to be trusted, that is, how deeply committed to them the ancients were, how confidently one can accept their beliefs as true causes of their actions. Here some of what we find in the sources is instructive.

The ruler Gudea of Lagash, for example, was told in a dream to build a new temple for the god Ningirsu. To make quite sure he had understood it right he traveled to the south of his realm to have a goddess, who resided there and who was skilled in interpreting dreams, explain it to him. Next, on her advice, he sought a new dream for which he had a war chariot made as a gift to the god, and for which he frequented the old temple day and night until he finally obtained the hoped for dream-encounter with the god in which he was told what he needed to know. Even then he was not satisfied but tested the validity of his experience by way of a liver omen which turned out propitious. All in all, a great deal of trouble to go to, but understandable in a man deeply anxious to do the right thing. Someone less concerned would surely have acted on less elaborate preparations.

That, in the eyes of the ancients, Gudea acted wisely can be seen from a fictional composition called "The Cursing of Akkade." It tells how king Naram-sin of Akkade wanted to rebuild the temple of Enlil in Nippur but was unable to obtain the god's consent; the omens said no. For seven years the king sat in sack and ashes hoping for a favorable reply, and each year the answer was no. At last Naram-sin lost patience and began the demolition preparatory to rebuilding the temple. Enlil's wrath at being disobeyed proved terrible. In boundless anger he called down barbaric mountaineers from the eastern mountains to devastate the country and utterly destroy Akkade.

In actual life, a similar situation faced Amar-Suen of the Third Dynasty of Ur. He too wanted to rebuild a temple for the god Enki and was rebuffed by unfavorable omens for seven years, until he finally succeeded in obtaining a favorable one.

How very seriously the ancients took liver omina may be seen also from the fact that the last king of Ur, Ibbi-sin, not only referred to a favorable liver omen in his diplomatic correspondence but actually described the liver involved in minute detail. Clay models of sheep livers that had foretokened major historical events were made and handbooks with interpretation proliferated in later times.

Since the historian can thus fairly confidently accept that the ancients believed certain things about their gods and acted on these beliefs, it is also worth his notice that these beliefs were not mere isolated oddities but that they formed parts of a coherent whole, a distinct "mode" of experiencing things and events, one which may suitably be called the theocratic mode of experiencing.

This mode is very old. It underlies Sumerian religion. The sky above, if experienced in this mode, was encountered as the god An, whose name is the everyday word for sky, an. The wind, from the high mountains similarly was experienced as the god En-lil, "lord wind," and the foothills, hursag, was a goddess, Nin-hursag, "Lady Foothills."

To get an inkling, at least, of what such experience was like, one may consider a prayer by Gudea to the god Ningirsu, in which he seeks to be enlightened about the god's essential nature so that he can suit to it the temple he is to build. To grasp fully what the prayer says one must realize that Ningirsu was the yearly flood of the River Tigris personified.

Each year when the winter snows begin to melt in the high mountains of Iran they pour down through the foothills in numerous mountain streams to swell the Tigris. This was experienced theocratically as the deflowering of the virgin foothills, Nin-hursag, "Lady Foothills," by the great mountains, Kur-gal, farther back, the waters of the flood being his semen. Kur-gal, whose other name was Enlil, is thus Ningirsu's father. Ningirsu's mother is Nin-hursag, "Lady Foothills," and the reddish-brown color of the flood waters which comes from the clay picked up by the water in passing through the foothills is seen as due to blood from his deflowering.

The flood to which all this refers, the god Ningirsu himself, is awesome indeed. I have seen the Tigris at Baghdad filling the wide valley in which it flows, rising to a height of more than that of a four story house--a sight not easily forgotten.

When the river is not in flood it looks very different. It then flows as a narrow stream in the middle of a dry valley with steep sides, and this narrow stream in the center of the wide bed the Sumerians called the "heart" of the river. Theocratically experienced it was also the god's "heart" and stood for his governing will, his essential nature. For Gudea the...