The development of Akkadian literature

Listen to audio

While the end of the ^1stBabylonian dynasty is often portrayed as a phase of decline, with the emphasis on the decline of its political power and the fragility of its economic life, it has to be said that this is not the case from the point of view of literature in the broadest sense, even if this aspect of things has not always been presented as it shouldbe : the decline of Sumerian literature is generally emphasized, but the extraordinary development of literature in Akkadian, i.e. Babylonian, is not sufficiently highlighted.

We began by examining the learning of writing and the work of the " ordinary " scribes. The excavation of the house of Ur-Utu at Tell ed-Dēr led to the discovery ofa kind of basin where school tablets were found, which were published by M. Tanret. He proposed that these were the remains of the training received by Ur-Utu himself. According to the excavators' observations, the basin ceased to be used when the courtyard floor was last resurfaced, while Ur-Utu had been chief-lamentator for 14 years. How can we explain the fact that exercises dating back to his childhood were kept there ? It's unlikely. It seems more logical that the exercises were performed just before the courtyard was renovated. M. Tanret had concluded that Ur-Utu had only mastered the rudiments of cuneiform: in reality, he would have been capable of training students himself. The archives of the House of Ur-Utu have had another advantage: they have enabled us to better understand the work of scribes in its most concrete aspects. This is the paradox of the situation: professional scribes are still very little known. In 2004, M. Tanret published an in-depth study of a scribe named Šumum-liṣi, already attested by 23 texts and for whom the Ur-Utu archives provided 151 additional references. In all, 174 texts document him for 18 years, from the year 33 of Ammi-ditana to the year 18 of Ammi-ṣaduqa: this is a record case for the entire Paleo-Babylonian period. Šumum-liṣi worked extensively for Inanna-mansum and his son Ur-Utu, but without exclusivity. And vice versa: the two kalamahhûm preferred to use his services, but when he was unavailable, they turned to other scribes to write the contracts they needed.

The decline of Sumerian in texts written in the 17th^centuryrepresents a major change from a cultural point of view. This is not to say that Sumerian disappeared: it continued to be used in commemorative texts, such as the names of years studied by R. Pientka. It also retained an important place in the training of scribes, as shown by the case of Ipiq-Aya, recently studied by F. van Koppen. Nevertheless, the use of ideograms in late Paleo-Babylonian documents became increasingly deviant: scribes no longer understood Sumerian case markings, and shifted the construction to that of Akkadian. This shift from Sumerian to Akkadian can be seen in a number of different types of texts : we saw it with the Dur-Abi-ešuh trials. The same is true of royal hymns. Two such texts are known from the 17th^century. The first is a hymn to Marduk with intercession for Abi-ešuh, written in Sumerian. The second, a hymn to the goddess Ištar with intercession for Ammi-ditana, son and successor of Abi-ešuh, is written in Akkadian: such a difference is highly significant.

In contrast to the decline of Sumerian literature, Akkadian literature underwent a remarkable period of development in the 17th^century. This development can be seen, first and foremost, in the technical collections : it was at this time that real collections of omens were created, culminating in the great series of the first millennium. Hymns such as the one dedicated to the goddess Ištar (AO 6035), or the penitential psalm published by Nougayrol under the title " An ancient version of the "Suffering Just" "also date from this period , which he considered to be by thesame hand as the hymn to Ištar with intercession for Ammi-ditana. But above all, the development of narrative poetry led to the masterpiece of the Flood poem, which we call after its hero, Atram-hasis, the " Très- ", a sort of Babylonian Noah, to whom we have devoted a long development.

By taking into account the historical context, the study of literary texts can be firmly rooted in reality, something I believe is still too rarely the case. It's true that the vast majority of manuscripts have no known archaeological context, but advances in our knowledge are enabling us to put forward increasingly confident hypotheses: it is now possible not only to search for, but to find traces of the role played by refugees from the South in northern Babylonia in transmitting their traditions, even if this meant they had to abandon the Sumerian language almost completely.