Read Ebook: Sumerian Liturgies and Psalms by Langdon Stephen

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INTRODUCTION.

When our studies shall have reached the stage which renders appropriate the collection of these texts into a special corpus they will receive their due valuation in the history of religion. That they are of prime importance is universally accepted.

From the point of view of the history of religion I would assign the liturgical texts to the second group in order of importance. Surprisingly few fragments from the long canonical daily prayer services have been found. In fact, about all of the perfected liturgies such as we know the Sumerian temples to have possessed belong to the cults of deified kings. In the entire religious literature of Nippur, not one approximately complete canonical prayer service has survived. Only fragments bear witness to their existence in the public song services of the great temples in Nippur. A small tablet published in part two of this volume carries a few lines of the titular or theological litany of a canonical or musically completed prayer book as they finally emerged from the liturgical schools throughout Sumer. Long liturgical services were evolved in the temples at Nippur as we know from a few fragments of large five column tablets. The completed composite liturgies or canonical breviaries as they finally received form throughout Sumer in the Isin period were made by selecting old songs of lament and praise and re-editing them so as to develop theological ideas. Characteristic of these final song services is the titular litany as the penultimate song and a final song as an intercession. A considerable number of such perfected services exist in the Berlin collection. These were obtained apparently from Sippar. The writer has made special efforts to reconstruct the Sumerian canonical series as they existed in the age of Isin and the first Babylonian dynasty. On the basis of tablets not excavated at Nippur but belonging partly to the University Museum and partly to the Berlin collection the writer restored the greater part of an Enlil liturgy in part 2, pp. 155-167. In the present and final part of this volume another Enlil liturgy has been largely reconstructed on pages 290-306. From these two partially reconstructed song services the reader will obtain an approximate idea of the elaborate liturgical worship of the late Sumerian period. These were adopted by the Babylonians and Assyrians as canonical and were employed in interlinear editions by these Semitic peoples. Naturally the liturgical remains of the Babylonian and Assyrian breviaries are much more numerous and on the basis of these the writer was able in previous volumes to identify and reconstruct a large number of the Sumerian canonical musical services. But a large measure of success has not yet attended his efforts to reconstruct the original unilingual liturgies commonly written on one huge tablet of ten columns. Obviously the priestly schools of the great religious center at Nippur possessed these perfected prayer books but their great size was fatal to their preservation. It must be admitted that the Nippur collection has contributed almost nothing from the great canonical Sumerian liturgies which surely existed there.

Undoubtedly the most important liturgical tablet which pertains to the ordinary cults in the Nippur collection is discussed on pages 279-285. The breviary, which probably belongs to the cult of the moon-god, derives importance from its great length, its theological ideas, especially the mention of the messengers which attend the Logos or Word of Enlil, and its musical principles. Here each song has an antiphon which is unusual in precanonical prayer books of the ordinary cults. Students of the history of liturgies will be also particularly interested in the unique breviary compiled from eight songs of prostration, a lamentation for the ancient city of Ke? with theological references. This song service was popular at Nippur, for remains of at least two copies have been found in the collection. A translation is given on pages 311-323.

Nearly all the existing prayer services in the cults of the deified kings of Ur and Isin are now published and translated. The student will observe that they are all of the compiled type but that there is in most cases much musical arrangement and striving for combined effect. A few, and especially the Ishme-Dagan liturgy published as No. 1 of this part, reveal theological speculation and an effort to give the institution of god-man worship its proper place in their religion. The hymns of these cults comparatively so richly represented in this volume will be among the most interesting groups of religious texts supplied by the excavations at Nippur.

OXFORD, July 9, 1919.

LAMENTATION OF ISHME-DAGAN OVER NIPPUR. 13856

"Her population like cattle of the fields within her have perished. Helas my land I sigh."

So reads a line from the second melody.

Lines of similar character occur repeatedly in the laments of the mother goddess as she weeps for her people in the standard liturgies. In other words, the cult of the deified kings issues here into its logical result. The god man created to live and die for his people usurps the sphere of the earth mother herself. And like her he is intimately associated with the fortunes of mankind, of nature and all living creatures. The great gods and the hosts of their attendants rule over man and the various phases of the universe from afar. But the mother goddess is the incarnation of fruitful nature, the mother of man whose joys and sorrows she feels. So also in this remarkable liturgy the deified son of the great gods lives among men, becomes their patron and divine companion.

The tablet contained originally about fifty lines in each column, or 200 in all. About one-third of the first column is gone. The first melody contained at least fifty lines and ended somewhere shortly after the first line of Col. II of the obverse. It began by relating how Enlil had ordered the glory of Nippur, and then had become angered against his city, sending upon it desolation at the hands of an invader. When we take up the first lines of Obv. II we are well into the second melody which represents Ishme-Dagan mourning for fathers and mothers who had been separated from their children; for brothers who had been scattered afar; for the cruel reign of the savage conqueror who now rules where the dark-headed people had formerly dwelled in peace.

At about the middle of Obv. II begins the third melody which consists of 38 lines extending to Rev. I 19. In this section the psalmist ponders upon the injustice of his city's fate, and looks for the time when her woes will cease, and Enlil will be reconciled.

The fourth section begins at line 24 of Rev. I and ended near the bottom of this column which is now broken away. Here Ishme-Dagan joins with the psalmists weeping for Nippur.

After sections 2 and 3 follows the antiphon of one or two lines. The ends of sections 1 and 4 are lost but we may suppose that antiphons stood here also. Section 5 does not have an antiphon. Since section 6 ended the liturgy it is not likely that an antiphon stood there.

OBVERSE. COL. I

COL. II

REVERSE, COL. I

REVERSE II

LITURGY OF ISHME-DAGAN. 11005

... ...

REVERSE I

COL. I

COL. II

.... ....

PSALM TO ENLIL CONTAINING A LONG INTERCESSION BY THE MOTHER GODDESS. 15204

...

LAMENTATION ON THE PILLAGE OF LAGASH BY THE ELAMITES. 2154

... ...

LAMENTATION TO INNINI ON THE SORROWS OF ERECH. 13859

This well preserved single column tablet is published by POEBEL in PBS. V 26. The composition reflects the standard theological ideas found in the canonical psalms and liturgies. The mother goddess Innini is represented as a divine mother wailing for the misery of her city and her people. The calamity consists in the pillage of the city and its holy places by a foreign invader, who is repeatedly compared to an ox. Like the ordinary psalms of public service the singers abruptly introduce the goddess speaking in the first person as in lines 16; 18-20; 33-4. But the lamentation does not have refrains and at the end the style approaches nearly that of a prayer. The tablet also bears no liturgical note at the end. For these reasons and because of the general impression which the lines leave with the present interpreter, he classifies this text as the product of a scholastic liturgist of the Ur or Isin period whose work was not incorporated into the corpus of the official breviary.

OBVERSE

LITURGICAL HYMN TO SIN. 8097

.... ....

REVERSE

LAMENTATION ON THE DESTRUCTION OF UR. 7080

The historical event referred to in this liturgy is undoubtedly the destruction of Ur in the time of Ibi-Sin, last of the kings of the Ur dynasty. This calamity left many traces in the temple songs of Sumer, and the Sumerian prayer books of Nippur contain other lamentations on the fall of Ur, written perhaps during the Isin period. The writer has already published a single column tablet which rehearses the same catastrophe, mentioning Ibi-Sin himself and naming the Elamites as his captors.

OBVERSE IV

LITURGICAL HYMNS OF THE TAMMUZ CULT. 3656

HYMNS OF THE TAMMUZ CULT

REVERSE

OBVERSE II

REVERSE IV

REVERSE V

About twenty-four lines completed this column and ended the liturgy. The void is to be completed by part of the titular litany, SBP. 160, 19-164, 38, and by a short intercession similar to the fragmentary intercession at the end of KL. No. 8. It is possible that the eleventh and last section on Tablet Virolleaud was retained as the final melody of this later redaction.

REVERSE OF TABLET VIROLLEAUD

OBVERSE 1

...

REVERSE II

...

LITURGY OF THE CULT OF KES

So far as the text of this important liturgy in eight melodies can be established, it leads to the inference that, like all other Sumerian choral compositions, the subject is the rehearsal of sorrows which befell a city and its temple. Here the glories of Ke?, its temple and its gods are recorded in choral song, and the woes of this city are referred to as symbolic of all human misfortunes. The name of the temple has not been preserved in the text. But we know from other liturgies that the temple in Ke? bore the name Ur?abba. The queen of the temple Ur?abba is called the mother of Negun, also a title of Ninurta in Elam. The close connection between the goddess of Ke? and Ninlil is again revealed, for Negun is the son of Ninlil in the theological lists, CT. 24, 26, 112. Therefore at Ke? we have a reflection of the Innini-Tammuz cult or the worship of mother and son, mother goddess Ninlil or Ninharsag, and Igidu or Negun.

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