Babylonian Literature

Assyro-Babylonian Literature, texts written in the Assyro-Babylonian language between the 3rd millennium bc and roughly the time of Jesus Christ. Most Assyro-Babylonian cuneiform tablets deal with science, economics, administrative policies (in the form of letters), and law, including one of the greatest of all legal documents, the Code of Hammurabi (see Hammurabi, Code of). A wide variety of purely literary genres, however, also exists. Among them are epics and myths; historical chronicles and royal annals; historical romances in poetic form; hymns and prayers, incantations and rituals, and texts dealing with magic and divination; collections of proverbs and precepts; disputations such as fanciful literary debates between animals, trees, or the like; and remarkable poetic narratives dealing with the problem of human misery.

Most of this body of literature is in the Babylonian dialect of the southern part of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). Those texts written in the Assyrian dialect of the north consist of historical inscriptions, business documents, oracles and rituals, and official letters; existing literary texts in Assyrian are copies or adaptations of Babylonian originals. The preservation of Assyro-Babylonian literature is, in fact, due to Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria, who sent scholars to Babylonia to copy old Assyro-Babylonian cuneiform tablets; thousands of these transcriptions (many now in the British Museum in London) were collected in his library at Nineveh.

The longest Babylonian epic poems are the Creation Epic and the Gilgamesh Epic. The former, consisting of seven tablets, deals with the struggle between cosmic order and primeval chaos. The secular Gilgamesh Epic, written about 2000 bc on 12 cuneiform tablets, concerns the hero's fruitless search for immortality. Masterfully woven together from an older series of separate Sumerian tales, this epic poem had great popular appeal in antiquity. It is of interest to modern biblical scholars because of its reference to a Noah-like character who survived a great flood. See Deluge.

The Epic of Zû tells of the theft of the Tablets of Destiny from the gods by the evil bird Zû and of their recovery by the warrior god Ninurta. The search for the “plant of birth” by the shepherd Etana, who ultimately founded the first dynasty after the deluge, is related in the Epic of Etana. Among other Babylonian epics and myths are The Descent of Ishtar to the Nether World; Atrahasis, which deals with human sin and its punishment through plagues and the deluge; and Nergal and Ereshkigal, concerning the marriage of the divinities who ruled the netherworld.

Other important works are The Babylonian Theodicy, a poetic dialogue about a Job-like “righteous sufferer”; a satirical dialogue, The Master and His Obliging Servant; and a recently discovered folktale, The Poor Man of Nippur, which seems to be the ancestor of one of the stories in the Arabian Nights.

Among significant historical romances in poetic form are The Cuthaean Legend, concerning the defeat of King Naram-Sin (reigned about 2255-2218 bc) of Akkad; The King of Battle, dealing with a military expedition to Anatolia led by Sargon I (reigned about 2335-2279 bc) of Akkad; and The Epic of Tukulti-Ninurta, describing the defeat of the Babylonians by the Assyrians.

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