In Search of Sumer a Personal Account of the Early Years

Abstract

[On p. 452 of the Kramer Anniversary Volume (A OAT, 25), Gods, Heroes, Kings, and Sages: A Scholar's Journey into Time and Space is listed as Preparation. This volume never saw publication, and this is whY. Back in the middle 60's the publishing house of Charles Scribner's Sons developed a series wherein invited contributors were asked to weave within an autobiographical background accounts of their own research, the hurdles which they surmounted, the discoveries the)' made, and the impact theY had on their field of specialization. The whole was to be within modest proportions and to address an interested, but not necessarily academic, audience. Among those who were commissioned were the Nobel Laureate (1950) E. C. Kendall, the astronomer H. Shaplev,, the pharmacologist W. Weaver, the Egjptologist J. A. Wilson, and Samuel Kramer. Sam finished a 328 page manuscript and submitted it in the earl/ 70's. It was edited and waited publication. But after the publication of four volumes, by, the above mentioned authors, the series was terminated in 1972 and Sam s volume was left stranded. In these pages, I offer samplings from that manuscript. Rather than gleaning choice morsels from here and there, I have opted for presenting more or less in extenso the first quarter of the volume. However, I have occasionall/ pared down information which either depended on the non-published portions of the ms in order to acquire full meaning or contained illustrations which are well known from Sam's other writings. But I could not resist selecting a segment from the ms ' last pages since I think it conveys Sam s hopes for the future of cuneiform studies in one of the areas of the wvorld where Ancient Near Eastern literature originated. I do recognize that this method of honoring a scholar, by presenting him with a dais from which to address an audience, is uncommon nowadays. Nevertheless, I am hoping that Sam s own words regarding his first steps in Sumerologv, will be found interesting and, I dare sai, inspiring. They should, at the very? least, give us insight into the creative effort which has convinced manY that historyI does indeed begin in Sumer. The Editor]