First Known Literature

Sumerian Mythology: 

A Study of Spiritual and Literary Achievement in the Third Millennium B.C.

Samuel Noah Kramer

"No people has contributed more to the culture of mankind than the Sumerians, and yet it has been only in recent years that our knowledge of them has become at all accurate or extensive. [This book is] . . . our first authoritative sketch of the great myths of the Sumerians, their myths of origins, of creation, the nether world, and the deluge. The book . . . makes entrancing reading and for the general reader it opens up a whole new vista undreamed of before."

--Theophile J. Meek 

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First Known Divine Messenger

Myths of Enki, The Crafty God

Samuel Noah Kramer, John Maier

This ambitious and well-researched study brings together for the first time translations of the ancient literature concerning the Sumerian god Enki, one of four gods and goddesses who comprised the highest level of the Sumerian pantheon. The very existence of these writings, which date from the Third Millenium B.C., was unknown until about 100 years ago, when their cuneiform script was deciphered.

Since then, it has become apparent that Sumerian literature had a profound and enduring influence on both Biblical and classical Greek literature, and so on the literature of the western world as a whole.

Kramer, one of the world's leading sumerologists, has prepared these translations from among the scores of works he has published over the last fifty years; John Maier provides a full interpretive framework that places the translations in their broader comparative cultural context. This rare collection will be of interest to students and scholars in a wide range of disciplines from Near Eastern and Biblical Studies to Mythology and Comparative Literature.

link

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The Sumerians

The Sumerians, the pragmatic and gifted people who preceded the Semites in the land first known as Sumer and later as Babylonia, created what was probably the first high civilization in the history of man, spanning the fifth to the second millenniums B.C. This book is an unparalleled compendium of what is known about them.

Professor Kramer communicates his enthusiasm for his subject as he outlines the history of the Sumerian civilization and describes their cities, religion, literature, education, scientific achievements, social structure, and psychology. Finally, he considers the legacy of Sumer to the ancient and modern world.

"There are few scholars in the world qualified to write such a book, and certainly Kramer is one of them. . . . One of the most valuable features of this book is the quantity of texts and fragments which are published for the first time in a form available to the general reader. For the layman the book provides a readable and up-to-date introduction to a most fascinating culture. For the specialist it presents a synthesis with which he may not agree but from which he will nonetheless derive stimulation."—American Journal of Archaeology

"An uncontested authority on the civilization of Sumer, Professor Kramer writes with grace and urbanity."—Library Journal

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The Legacy

Description

This collection explores the spread of culture through literacy from Mesopotamia into Egypt, Palestine and Greece after a system of writing was developed. By gathering evidence from a vast range of material and literary sources from 3000 BC onwards, threads of influence and continuity are traced into the Middle Ages. The effect of recent rediscovery on European art is also explored.

Reviews

"Useful in pointing out the great reach of Mesopotamian culture...This book presents an enormous wealth of data from literature, art, religion and science. It also examines the various cultures- Judeo-Christian, Greek, Roman, Parthian, Sassanian, early Islamic and Indian- that were inheritors of the Mesopotamian legacy."

--Archaeology Odyssey

"The Legacy of Mesopotamia is a treasure chest of surprises....we are all in debt to Professor Dalley and her colleagues for providing us with so comprehensive and lucid a guide to the evidence and scholarship on cultural interaction between Mesopotamia and her neighbors."

--Ancient History Bulletin

Product Details 246 pages; 5 maps, 97 halftones & line illus.; ISBN13: 978-0-19-929158-8ISBN10: 0-19-929158-6

About the Author(s)

Stephanie Dalley, Shillito Fellow in Assyriology at the Oriental Institute; Senior Research Fellow, Somerville College, Oxford, A. T. Reyes, David Pingree, Professor of the History of Mathematics and Classics, Brown University, Alison Salvesen, teacher of Aramaic and Syriac, Oriental Institute, Oxford, and Henrietta McCall. Edited by Stephanie Dalley with drawings by Marion Cox

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