The Infancy of Man in a Sumerian Legend

Abstract

IN 1933 Professor B. Landsberger contributed to a volume' in honour of the seventieth birthday of Freiherr M. von Oppenheim an article which placed in an entirely new light what had, until then, been considered an example, virtually unique, of a musical notation accompanying an Assyrian bilingual poem which related the culminating incident in the genesis of the world, the creation of mankind. He there demonstrated that the syllables accompanying the text, for the greater part meaning nothing and assumed to represent notes of music, occur also in othet places, dissociated from the poem, and sometimes furnished with Akkadian translations of their significance, as though they represented the Sumerian column of an ordinary syllabary. Unwelcome as it may be to give up so attractive a notion, the musical explanation is hereby made almost impossible of acceptance; but this leaves us with the problem of finding a better one. In the article already quoted, Professor Landsberger, as well as pointing out other examples of this strange collection of syllables, studied their structure, the meanings assigned to some of the groups, and the use made of them in the regular series of syllabaries, but came to the conclusion that the compilation must be regarded as a work of ancient literary artifice, the method and purpose of which at present escape us. In particular, there is the'question why this curious accompaniment stands beside the lines of a particular poem, and that not only in a single example (which might have been an individual freak) but in copies found both at Asshur and Nineveh. These are alike not only in the text and arrangement but in bearing colophons which allude expressly to the esoteric nature of their contents. The purpose with which I write these lines does not include an attempt to answer this question fully, but a suggestion will be made, with the utmost reserve, concerning'the matter of the poem and its possible relation with the enigmatic syllables. This can, however, be preceded by a single observation about which there will be far less uncertainty. It was noticed by Professor Landsberger (p. I77 of his article) that the fragment of a tablet in the British Museum, numbered 80-7-I9, i84, belonged to and probably joined another, K. 4I752?Sm. 57, which bears a portion of the text in question. That join having now been made, it follows, as he has pointed out, that this text was numbered as the second tablet of a series, the third of which began with a line partly preserved as a catchline on the reconstituted fragment. This line reads: