How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)

How to Read “Gilgamesh” (2019)
newyorker.com

More writings survive in Akkadian than from the classical Latin world.

The entire output in Latin from c. 400 BC - 300 AD pales in comparison to what we've dug up out of burned royal libraries. This surprised me to learn, though it shouldn't be when you consider the durability of clay vs. papyrus and other paper-like materials.

And unlike Latin, we know almost none of it. It's completely alien to us culturally. The civilization that gave rise to it was so completely supplanted and forgotten about, no one recognized the writing system when finally back dug up. Which was less than 200 years ago. Being able to competently read Mesopotamian texts is less than a century old. And there are only a few hundred really competent Assyriologists in the world.

This means that the vast majority of texts, stockpiled by the crates in the tens of thousands in museums and archives, have still not yet been read by anyone -- in more than 3000 - 4000 years. If you want to read some new (in a relative sense) classical literature, Akkadian is one of your few hopes.

Not that most of those tablets rival Gilgamesh -- most are shipping receipts, tax records, legal contracts and court decisions. Though honestly even though can be captivating in their own way. Consider the picture of life we get from a man in Sippar 3400 years ago just from his records and letters. His house was excavated with all his claywork in situ, giving an insight into his life we often lack even with the ancient Romans and ancient Chinese:

> "After a forty-one-year career, at the end of 1643 (Aṣ 4), Inana-mansum handed over his role as chief dirge singer, head of the ain temple of Sippar-Amnanum, to his son Ur-Utu and donated a number of fields and house plots to him (for a full account of this section, see Janssen 1992). The fact that Ur-Utu was already receiving (part of) his inheritance provoked the jealousy of his three brothers, who also claimed their shares. Inana-mansum refused to give them anything during his lifetime, infuriating them even more. [...] Kubburum (the only son who was completely adopted) was the most vehement concerning the inheritance, no doubt because he felt his position to be least assured. He managed to persuade his ‘brothers’ (since they had received nothing from their father either) to manipulate their father into giving them their shares and to litigate against Inana-mansum’s wife for the property she had received from him. [...] A supplementary difficulty for the mother was that she had lost the sealed document stipulating the gift. Officials came to Ur-Utu’s house, where his mother was living, examined the property deeds, and concluded that she had indeed rightfully received the gift from her husband. [...] Finally, after years of dispute and lawsuits, all was well that ended well: Ur-Utu became chief dirge singer and received a large part of his inheritance at the same time, while his father was still living. The brothers protested and lost but finally got their share of the inheritance after their father died.

-- from (2011) Michel Tanret, Learned, Rich, Famous, and Unhappy: Ur-Utu of Sippar, The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture

As you can see while much has changed in the years between, much has not. And it's all coming alive again right now in the previous and this generation, for the first time in millennia.

I've dabbled a little in Akkadian languages but gave up because the time commitment seemed too massive.

I still wish my school didn't have a foreign language requirement at all, but I feel like this pitch would have converted more people scrolling through that alphabetical section of the course catalog.