MYTH-401 Lessons

As students enter the Mythology classroom this fine day, they are greeted not with a sarcophagus, but with a rather striking change on the west wall of the room. Instead of the collage of tapestries and framed pictures, a wall of solid rock has taken its place. While normally a wall of solid rock wouldn’t feel out of place in a millennia-old castle, this one is rather particularly decorated. On it are rows upon rows of cuneiform, interspersed with some two dimensional figures carved alongside. Most students are still staring at its impressive contents when class begins.

Yes, as you know, I do have a particular fondness for the written word -- particularly in its most ancient forms. As those of you who have taken Ancient Runes with me might suspect, there is not only history, but power locked deep within some of these scripts. Sadly, this cuneiform is not magical in the strictest sense, but it was important, which is something we shall cover later on in the class. For now, it’s enough to announce that we have officially ended our discussion of ancient Egyptian mythology and we will be moving onto a new civilization, namely the Sumerians. 

The Start of Sumeria
If you are taking Ancient Studies this year, you will learn a bit more about Sumer, a kingdom also known as Sumeria, that was part of famous and very ancient Mesopotamia. Interestingly, Sumer itself is actually one of the oldest civilizations recorded, having been first settled somewhere between 5500 and 4000 BCE. It is, of course, quite tricky to confirm or decipher information from that long ago, let alone find any surviving records, but this range of years is largely agreed upon. It may not seem a particularly impressive feat to get scholars to agree on a range with a wide, gaping hole of 1,500 years in between it, but I assure you that this is actually an accomplishment. In any case, this entire range -- or any date inside it -- is considered a factually correct date of emergence for this culture. Regardless of the ambiguity of its start date, however, we know more about its end, which came about at the end of the Third Dynasty of Ur, around 2004 BCE.

The reason for why Sumer was settled earlier than most of the rest of the world was simply for its climate; plants were abundant in this area and agriculture was easy, meaning humans could settle there knowing that they could grow food year-round. 

During this civilization’s beginnings, throughout the “Jemdet Nasr period” (otherwise indicated as the period in Mesopotamia prior to 3000 BCE, and prior to the dynastic system in the area), cities in Sumer were ruled by a priest-king who was assisted by a council of elders. This period was marked by naturalistic pottery and, most importantly, the beginnings of cuneiform, which would go on to be used for many millennia by many civilizations. These two facts lead to a very organized and, by the standards of the time, advanced culture. They had trade, rationing, and stable agriculture, all of which helped the success of their population. These systems changed and evolved, of course, particularly in the period after the major flood that separates this period from the Early Dynastic period. Overall, the various cities became more united, creating a more stable society. 

You’ll notice we’re talking in very broad strokes and not going into the small details of this civilization, and that’s because there’s not much of those to be found.  However, there are enough records to paint some kind of a picture of the area, which is liberally sprinkled with historic firsts. In historians’ eyes, Sumeria is the “land of firsts.” Or, at least of recorded firsts. Obviously, recording anything during the prehistoric period and even shortly after ranges from impossible to spotty at best. Take, for example, the fact that Sumeria is possibly considered the place where the first samples of writing were recorded. Now, cuneiform was developed somewhere around 3000 BCE, and possibly earlier. However, as the ancient Egyptians were also developing their own script at this time, the title for the exact “first” is hotly contested, and will likely always remain that way. The reason for this is that the line between a proto-script and an actual writing system is quite blurred, so it is not always clear when writing officially began for either of those civilizations, at least not specific enough to call it one way or the other. Many people generally hedge towards the ancient Egyptians as the first, though the Sumerians have quite a lot of evidence as well. 

A Land of Firsts
Moving away from the language debate, the Sumerians were also among the first civilizations to map the stars into constellations, and observe the movements of the five planets visible to the naked eye. While they mostly used them for dictating the planting calendar, they were also the first to record and study a solar eclipse. Their contributions and constellations were studied and modified by other, later civilizations, such as the Babylonians, and some of these adapted constellations are still in use in the zodiac today, like Gemini and Leo. 

Separating ourselves from magical practices, they also had some impressive mundane accomplishments as well. As far as inventions and technology, they also boasted the invention of the wheel1 and the abacus. As you might have guessed, there are some caveats here as well. It bears mentioning that some acredit the invention of the wheel to some earlier, all-magical societies. However, it is widely agreed that regardless of when it was discovered the first time, it died out before its use became popular for one reason or another, and the Sumerian’s discovery was independent of the previous one, and also lasted the ages. 

In terms of their people and culture, the Sumerians spoke a language that was unrelated to and unlike any other language of the time. Some magilinguists (witches and wizards like myself whose profession is to study ancient magical methods of communication) suspect that this language may have formed the basis for spellwork, despite our usual assumption that Latin forms the basis for magic use.¹ They also loved music, both for pleasure and for worship, and lyres, which they invented, were a common, popular instrument. 

As magic use was still in its relative infancy during the Early Dynastic period of Sumer, we can only guess the other types of magic that the Sumerians may have practiced. We talked about a few fields previously, but there is some additional evidence to consider as well. We know that they formed their cities around temples, or ziggurats, each of which was devoted to one of their gods. These temples were fashionable for quite some time, used by the Babylonians and Assyrians as well, who were also of ancient Mesopotamia. Because of this fanfare dedicated to the gods, and the similarities to other cultures who were more well-documented, we logically suspect that these temples were used to practice some form of divination.

We also know that the Sumerians had a strong love for mathematics. They had their own system of counting, a sexagismal system, or one based on the unit 60, rather than 10 like ours. We suspect that, because of their fascination with numbers, they may have learned the basics of arithmancy, but at this time there is no proof that magic users of the time used it in any formal manner.

The Earliest Creation Myth
Due to my insistence on repeating it roughly every five minutes, it should be fairly obvious to anyone that is not sleeping, that recordings as old as those from the Sumeria are incredibly hard to find, let alone interpret. This applies not only to studying cold, hard facts, such as the start date of the civilization, but doubly so to nebulous things, like their own personal mythology and religious beliefs. While there are fragments of stories and myths from this time period, we know only pieces of what they believed. In truth, the creation myth you are about to read is based mostly off of one single (heavily fragmented) text that was found in Nippur. There are no other real references to this creation. Instead, more confusingly, there are three other completely different creation myths also each based off of one lonely text. Not a lot to work with. We have chosen this one as it comes from a source with more related myths, making it a slightly more robust mythology, even if it’s only by comparison. Also, importantly, it is the oldest myth of the four, making it one of the earliest creation myths recorded (if not the earliest creation myth). Scholars have attempted to patch together a story that closely resembles the original myth, which goes roughly as follows.

In the beginning, only the primordial sea existed. Her name was Nammu and she was the mother who gave birth to heaven and earth. From Nammu rose An, the sky god, and Ki, the earth goddess. From the sky and the earth came the god of air and agriculture, Enlil. Enlil then raised An in the air, forever separating earth from the sky. Then the god Enlil brought forth all the things man would need to survive, namely agriculture and the pick-axe. Almost as an afterthought, Enlil then brought forth a number of other gods and goddesses in an unknown manner. It is these gods and goddesses that form the Sumerian pantheon.

Quite a short myth, all things considered. But there are still a few things we can parse out. I know we’ve noted the very common theme of separating the earth and the sky after they have procreated, as well as birth from nothingness. However, this doesn’t necessarily so much speak to the idea of multiple civilizations basing their mythologies off of each other, so much as logical necessity. The earth and the sky are not one currently, so they would have to be separated in order for creation myths to make sense. As with many cultures, there is little we can really tell about their civilizations, their values, and, most importantly, their magic use from this initial myth, but it does set the stage for the rest of their myths well, which we will study next class.

Also, it bears mentioning, most will notice some similarities to certain other myths we have discussed this year, though I won’t do the mental heavy lifting for you and will instead allow you to draw your own conclusions. Separately, it is also important to note that this myth, along with most of the other Sumerian myths, is tied to agriculture as it was the source of their civilization’s existence.

Closing
I believe that suitably wraps up our discussion for the day. As mentioned, during our next class, we will examine both the Sumerian pantheon as well as some other, more telling Sumerian myths more closely, which will allow us to discuss how Sumerian beliefs and society impacted their magical development and practices.

But before that, your assignments today are threefold. First, there will be a short quiz on today’s materials. Your midterm assignments will follow: a test and an essay. The midterms will cover material from lessons one through four of this year. Be sure to take your time on both parts of the midterm as there will be no retakes. As always, you should contact me or any of the PAs if you have any questions or need assistance.

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Footnotes:

1. Obviously, magic existed before the Latin language did, so the idea that all spellcasting in history came from Latin is impossible. I won’t be getting into the details of the various theories surrounding this question, not only because ninety percent of you would fall asleep, but also because the proper treatment of this topic deserves weeks to discuss and appreciate fully.

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Sources:

Cotterell, Arthur & Storm, Rachel. 1999. The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology. Hermes House Anness Publishing Ltd. New York.

Grimal, Pierre. Ed. 1989. Larousse World Mythology. Gallery Books, New York.

http://history-world.org/sumeria.htm

http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/sumerianmyth.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_religion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sumer

Original lesson written by Liria Morgan
Additional portions by Professor Venita Wessex
Image credits here, here, and here