The Uruk List of Kings and Sages is best known for its genealogy connecting human scholars to antediluvian sages. Since its publication in 1962, however, questions pertaining to the text's specific purpose within the context of Hellenistic Uruk have been neglected. This study seeks to understand two such questions: why is the most explicit scholarly genealogy written in the Hellenistic period?; and who is the last named person in the text? Seeking answers to these questions sheds new light on the text's purpose: it is an attempt by scholars to gain support for themselves and their novel cultic agenda. La réputation de la liste des Uruk de les rois et les sages est due à sa généalogie, qui crée un lien entre les savants humains et les sages antédiluviens. Par contre, depuis sa publication en 1962 on a négligé les questions qui ont affaire au but spécifique du texte dans le contexte de l'Uruk hellénistique. Cette étude cherche à comprendre deux questions dans ce domaine: pourquoi la généalogie la plus explicitement savante est-elle écrite pendant l'époque hellénistique?; et qui est la dernière personne nommée dans le texte? Chercher des réponses à ces questions illumine d'une nouvelle façon le but du texte; c'est une tentative par des savants de gagner du soutien pour leur programme original de culte ainsi que pour eux-mêmes.
In the final tablet of Ludlul bēl nēmeqi lines 42–53 Šubši-mešrê-Šakkan passes through twelve gates in or near the precincts of Marduk’s Esagila in Babylon. As the protagonist passes through these twelve gates he is symbolically rehabilitated and reintegrated into society, marking the end of his trials and the beginning of his Marduk-renewed life. One gate is named in each of the twelve lines. At each gate, identified in the first half of the line, the protagonist is granted something positive, which is described in the second half of the line. In the present study I argue that the author of Ludlul derived the substance of what the sufferer received at each gate—and therefore the textual substance of the second half of each of these poetic lines—from the names of the gates themselves via the same kinds of learned scribal interpretive methods used in commentary and explanatory texts. That is, the author of Ludlul connected the names of the gates and the descriptions of what the sufferer received at each by way of applied translations of the Sumerian gate names, sound plays on the words and syllables comprising the names of the gates (homonymy/etymology), graphic plays on the cuneiform signs with which the names are written (etymography), and in at least one case a mythological interpretation based on the gate’s name.
This article surveys scholarship and inquiry in ancient Mesopotamia from the middle of the second millennium BCE until the Common Era. After an overview of the source material, the article explores scribal authority, the organization of their textual materials, their interpretive practices, and epistemology. The conclusion offers thoughts about current debates and the trajectory of future studies.
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