Customer Reviews

The Literature of Ancient Sumer

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It seems like every bookstore has at least one book that contains the "Epic of Gilgamesh" or a book that describes and discusses it. On superficial reading most of these books seem to say or imply that the Gilgamesh epic is the world's oldest literary work, and that its text comes from ancient Sumer. Of course, although the text of the Gilgamesh epic is most often found written in Sumerian, the epic in its entirety is Akkadian, transcribed by student scribes whose education included as a requisite the ability to read and copy texts in Sumerian. From the 11 books of the epic, we have only five relatively brief segments preserved from the time of the Sumerian culture itself, and they are noticeably altered in the texts transcribed by Akkkadian scribes. When I read the Sumerian versions of these five, their style and poetic effect struck me as superior to what the Akkadians transcribed, so I wanted to know what else, if anything, has survived intact from Sumerian literature.

This book gives the perfect answer to my wish. I doubt that it will ever be a best-seller, but for anyone who, like me, is interested in how writing came to be used for literature as well as for accounting and for royal edicts and boasts, this is a wonderful book. It provides about 20% of all the Sumerian literature that has been recovered so far, in English translations that preserve the spirit, although not the prosody, of the Sumerian originals. And it gives pointers to where to find alternate versions, additional literature, the Sumerian originals, and scholarly discussion of them. The sheer diversity of what's presented here greatly increases my respect for the Sumerians who composed as written poetry material which had previously existed (if at all) as oral poems or folk tales. The range of subjects and of styles surprises me; it shouldn't, because the Sumerians were of course as much distinctive individuals as we are, and wrote just as distinctively from one another.

I commend this book not only to readers who are interested in Sumer, but also to readers who care about the origins of literary works and literary style, whether romantic or heroic.

NOTE: Although it isn't clearly labeled, this is an Oxford publication similar to the typical Oxford's Classics collection, for those interested.

This is a great collection of Sumerian writing. The collection contains all of the most important short pieces in the surviving corpus. Each and every piece has a great introduction outlining and providing historical background. The collaboration of editors/translators did not disable the piece; effort and terminology was consistent throughout. The introduction is great.

What I did not like about this book was the use of semi-end notes (at the end of each piece), and the fact that the poetry was rendered without meter. The editors/translators made it clear that they had no intention to recall the inspiration of the original poetry. For more poetic verses, check out Jacobsen's 'The Harps That Once...'

In my class on Mesopotamian religion, I always looked forward to reading selections from this book. The stories are the oldest of the old, Sumerian, but the translations were excellent. There is also an excellent 40-page introduction to Sumerian literature. Unfortunately, these stories come from clay tablets that lay buried in the ground for 3000 to 4000 years so that not infrequently there are indecipherable sections or breaks, sometimes as much as 30-50 lines. But if you are interested in the material, you've just got to get used to it. This shortcoming just makes the fully intact sections all the more amazing to be able to read.

The short introductions to each story were also excellent, as was the glossary at the end of the book. Most of the stories are 3-8 pages long so that there are perhaps 40-50 stories in this edition. The Sumerians regarded their gods as more human like so it is more fun to read the Sumerian myths as opposed to the Akkadian myths which tend to have a more religious tone to them, getting more so that way as time passes.

I'm not sure why they had to charge $45 for this book, perhaps because it is probably mostly used as required reading in universities. For this reason, I will not give it a five star rating (...though it really is)

This seems to be the best available recent introduction to Sumerian literature, but it's seriously flawed. Kramer's work doesn't benefit from recent scholarship, but this work suffers from current ideology. Sometimes this is merely annoying, when the editors use "B.C.E." rather than the traditional "B.C.," or waste time discussing an example of modern poetry. Sometimes it's critical, however: Their modernity seems to prevent them from explaining what is (or isn't) known about the rules of Sumerian versification [location 159]. Ideology is also explicitly used as an excuse for dodging the most interesting question in the origins of civilization: Where did the ancestors of the Sumerian-speaking people come from? [location 631]


About the Kindle Edition:
Like most Kindle editions, this hasn't been checked by a human. Basic functionality is incorrect, e.g., the table of contents links are slightly wrong: The very first leaf node, for instance, for "The literature of ancient Sumer," actually brings you to the previous page, "Introduction." No-one even checked the beginning of the book: The second page contains merely a repetition of the title, which may make sense in a dead-tree edition, but not an electronic one.
Sometimes the behavior was even worse. I had repeated trouble and delays in navigation, which eventually crashed the book-reader application and deleted all my notes.
Casual sloppiness abounds, though most of my examples were lost in the crash. I found one more example in the table of contents: a footer ("VII CONTENTS") appears in the middle of a page [location 32].
The illustrations weren't checked either. The very first, "Map of Sumer," is both smaller than necessary, and unreadable.

I found the book to be a very good introduction into the subject matter. It was written, in my opinion, as a primer in that each translation is preceeded by a dialogue of what the ancient author may be attempting to say.

The book does not seem to assume complete understanding of the writtings, but does offer various options as to what certain words/thought processes may have been.

Another fortunate atribution which very much adds to the readibility is the humor used through out.

For me, this was a wonderful first start into a more down to earth study of ancient sumer than my initial readings from Zecharia Sitchin (Pun intended!)... which I also very much enjoyed!

And while we speak of less than earthly matters, I have only given 4 stars because I have nothing to use as a comparrison, and maybe that very few things are perfect!

Thanks for the great read!

My next read on the subject is "The Harps That Once..." by Thorkild Jacobsen.