Customer Reviews

Enuma Elish Vol 1 & 2: The Seven Tablets of Creation; The Babylonian and Assyrian Legends Concerning the Creation of the World and of Mankind

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One might think, looking at the 1999 publishing date and the publisher's description that King's translation is among the most recent and that it contains a significant recounting of an Assyrian legend of the Tower of Babel. If so, one will be sorely disapointed upon reading this book. This is a reprint of King's 1902 translation of the Enuma Elish, the Assyro-Babylonian creation myth. In the intervening years, many additional copies of the text have been discovered, filling in most of the gaps found in King's translation and correcting his tenative translations of lines that in his day were only partially known. If you are looking for a more complete more updated translation, you'd be much better served with Stephanie Dalley's 1989 work, Myths from Mesopotamia, where you'd also get translations of several other Akkadian language myths. As for the supposed Tower of Babel story. This figures only very briefly in this work and then, rather than recounting a tale, King refutes earlier claims that a tale fragment was a parallel to the Tower story. Further off-putting is the one page preface by Paul Tice, which spends more space endorsing the rather questionable theories of Zecharia Sitchin than it does addressing the contents of King's book.

This book is, however, not a complete waste of ink. More than half of the Enuma Elish that King worked with was complete and his translation is presented in parallel with a transliteration of the original Akkadian. The second volume of the book contains fragments of alternate versions of the tale. There are included additional scholarly essays by King on varying subjects related to the creation story including parallels with Genesis, astrological interpretations and Assyrian commentaries to the Enuma Elish. Some of these essays, are hampered by the lack of available knowledge at the time and for significant portions of them King must make speculations which are no longer justified.

Ninety-eight years ago, this must have been one of the more thorough, cutting-edge works on the subject, but so much more has been learned in the mean-time, that I would only recommend this work to those who already have more recent translations of the Enuma Elish.

The scholarship of Leonard W. King is superlative. Even in his own time, his genius in Mesopotamian studies was not fully appreciated. Like Sir E.A. Wallis Budge, his very successful effort to make archaeology and ancient languages accessible to the general public was and is treated with rehearsed snobbery by those who believe that saying "NO" indicates finer intelligence than a grateful "YES". The ENUMA ELISH translation of King has been unavailable for a long time, and it is thus an event of great importance that his work is now available again. I hope that a hard-bound edition will be forthcoming, but until then, the little paper edition of two volumes is a prize. I would recommend to the publishers that, in the next printing, they make the volumes the same size. At present, the second volume is slightly larger than the first, which detracts from private efforts to have the books bound in cloth.

It is very common today for critics to insist that older books are no longer valid. This is just as true in the humanities as in the hard sciences. A lot of extremely valuable material from former times is virtually lost due to this posture of picyune selection assumed by those posing as experts. For those of us who actually teach and write books, contact with a truly great and creative teacher is refreshing, indeed, inspirational. Leonard W. King is such a teacher. What has been added to Mesopotamian studies since his passing is of importance, but it does not replace his work, or make it the less significant.

The highpoint of the ancient Mesopotamian year was the New Year celebrations. It was a time of parties, games and the reading of epic stories. In Nineveh, an important epic was their creation story, which told the story of the creation of the universe, and the rise to preeminence of the god Marduk (Nineveh's patron deity).

Though lost for millennia, the seven cuneiform tablets containing the Assyrian creation myth were found in the ruins of Nineveh at the end of the nineteenth century, and were translated by L.W. King in 1902. Although translated so long ago, Mr. King's text is still easy to follow, and is a highly enjoyable read. Unfortunately, since there was only one set of tablets extant in 1902, and that set was damaged, there are holes in the narrative that do somewhat decrease the enjoyment of the story.

As a student of Sumerian literature, I must say that I found this Assyrian text quite interesting, showing how the stories changed and evolved as they were passed on to later generations and cultures. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in ancient Mesopotamia.