Welcome back to The Hut of Andre! This week, we will be exploring the origins of literature in Ancient Egypt, land of pyramids and pharaohs.
These inscriptions are the first of a set of texts known as The Pyramid Texts, which represent the oldest funerary literature found to date. These texts were carved in hieroglyphs on the chamber walls and coffins of pyramids to help the deceased pharaoh to go to the afterlife. These were written from 2353-2107 BCE and have provided us with most of the things we know about the lives of the pharaohs in ancient Egypt and their role in society back then.
Ten texts have been found to date, six about pharaohs and other four to some of their wives. The inscriptions on the pyramids were devised as spells and rituals and they certainly give that sense when reading them. They sound like incantations and spells from a fantasy movie about witches, where some priest or sorcerer is reading them out loud, just like in the Mommy movies.
Reading the text left me with more questions than answers. The text is hard to understand without the background information on egyptian mythology and their culture. Thankfully, I used “The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts” by James P. Allen as my main source of information for the text. This book is filled with background information and notes on the texts that made it easier to understand.
However, still more research was needed and therefore I fell on this rabbit hole on Ancient Egypt, the resources are so broad and the texts so mystical that one week was not enough to cover it all. Different to the Sumerian texts we have studied to date, these texts cover a much broader spectrum. They were intended as funerary texts but they are filled with diamonds of information hidden between countless lines of convoluted spells and stories.
On top of that, these texts are not from the same date. Chronologically, we should be reading texts around the 2500 BCE. This means we should read the oldest one first, the inscriptions on the Pyramid of Unis (also spelled Unas or Wenis). Rather than reading all the pyramid texts together, we should read them after having covered texts from the period around 2500 BCE.
Therefore, I will spend a further week researching on the topic to be able to discuss the texts on the Pyramid of Unis and then continue with the Code of Urukagina from Sumer and the Palermo Stone from Egypt. I know, change of plans! But I feel we need to cover these topics properly rather than just keep bashing out senseless weekly posts. Quality over quantity.
Welcome back to The Hut of Andre! This week we are picking up where we last left on the Stories of the World series.
Our last post studied one of the two oldest pieces of literature ever found, The Instructions of Shuruppak. This week we will dive into the other text, the Kesh Temple Hymn.
Just like The Instructions of Shuruppak, the Kesh Temple Hymn was written around 2500 BCE in Sumer and it speaks about the creation of the temple of Kesh (Kec) and praises the goddess Nintud. However, the Kesh Temple Hymn is of a completely different nature to that of The Instructions of Shuruppak. When properly read, this text sounds majestic and transmits a sense of spirituality that connects to one’s deepest self. Just reading it gives the sensation that although written in the same period, the Kesh Temple Hymn does not belong to the same literary category.
What made these people start writing about religion? Was writing seen as something holy in Sumer? How come this liturgy still sounds like something we would hear on Sunday mass?
All of these we will discuss in this week’s post.
Setting Religion in Stone
We all know that before the invention of writing religion was passed down to generations orally. At some point in time, this started to change, and religious marks and texts began to appear. First as symbols and signs on temples to mark which deity they related to. Then as time passed, writings of panegyric character started to appear, which would glorify cities, temples, gods and events.
Inscribed brick: dedicatory inscription of Adad-shuma-usur to Enlil, chief Sumerian God, ca. 1216–1187 B.C.
The reasons why sacred writings appeared are not confirmed. One possibility is that it was to preserve religious teachings. The argument is that oral transmission lent itself to error since it relied on human memory. Writing down the religion meant that the message was recorded with perfection for perpetuity.
While that option is plausible, I believe this came after these texts started to appear. Oral transmission may be flawed, but writing does not come without its caveats. Documents can be forged or lost. Relying on writing for the communication of theology had the risk of diminishing the memory of such ideas. If these texts were to be lost, there was no way to recover the lost information (like it happened with the library of Alexandria). So while it is probably true that with time religion was written to be better preserved, there must have been a different reason for the appearance of religious texts.
A more probable cause is that it was something that carried out divine powers. Similar to some magical token or rune. To me, this explains better the progression from holy pictograms that were put at temples to represent their god/goddess to the writing of hymns that praised a particular city or hero. Similar to how churches have holy icons that represent Jesus and its specific patron, or how mosques have Quranic verses and Islamic calligraphy on their prayer halls.
The Kesh Temple Hymn is the perfect example of this, proving that these religious writings not only were believed to carry some divinity, but also that writing was considered something holy and divine by the Sumerians. This panegyric characteristics have led many to believe that this was a way of giving importance to a specific city in the Sumerian civilisation. Similar to the sanctification of a site in Christianity. So its written form would be sacred, like the bible, and was probably kept within the temples.
Writing as a divine gift
Religion has been tied to writing, at least, since the inception of literature. The Instructions of Shuruppak allowed us to investigate the beginnings of writing as a tool for accounting, ruling and trading. While currently this is the most accepted theory, it has not always been this way. Up to the 19th century, the creation of writing was always connected to some divinity. Daniel Defoe (writer of “Robinson Crusoe”) states how writing was given to humans by God in his book “An essay upon literature: or, An enquiry into the antiquity and original of letters”
And this was not only in Abrahamic religions. We can see throughout time and cultures the description of writing as a divine gift. The Romans attributed the creation of writing to the God Mercury, the Roman version of the Greek God Hermes (the messenger of the Gods) who many related to the Egyptian God of writing Thoth. In Asia, the Chinese attributed the creation of writing to Fu Xi, and the Indians also connected the creation of writing to the divine. In the American continent, the Mayans credited the invention of writing to the God Itzamná. On their side, the Sumerians believed that writing was given to them by the goddess Nisaba. Yes, remember that scribe named Nisaba who supposedly wrote The Instructions of Shuruppak? It turns out I was wrong. She was not a woman, but a goddess instead.
Sculpture of Moses with Tablets of the Law
The Ibis-headed God Thoth shown recording the results of the weighing of the scribe Hunefer’s heart on the scale of Maat against the feather of truth, by the jackal-headed God Anubis.
From this, one cannot but wonder how did they all reach that conclusion. How come most past civilisations believed a divine power gave humans writing, while we know that is most probably not true? The theories to explain how link came to be are varied and, to date, none have been able to be confirmed. These theories can be boiled down to two groups: those who believe it was as a means of oppression and those who think it was an attempt to explain something unknown. There is as well a third group of people who consider the stories to be true. Either because or religion or because they entertain the idea that some superior being brought it to us. This last group we will on later posts when we know more about Sumerian mythology.
Modern sceptics believe that these stories come from priest and rulers, trying to increase their power and control over people. By connecting writing to the gods they established their respect, people would see them as holy, since they could understand and transmit the message of the gods to them. It would not have been the only time that humans connected themselves to the divine to strengthen their position.
Less dramatic theories suggest that this happened because the inception and development of writing were just not well documented. It was something that slowly developed, so people were not able to pinpoint its invention to a specific person or time. Similar to mathematics. This hypothesis argues that by the time writing really had a significant impact on people’s lives, nobody probably remembered how it had all begun. Believing no human could not have possibly invented it out of thin air, they connected it to divine providence.
While both theories are exciting possibilities, I believe the truth lies somewhere in the middle. We already know that writing was something that only the ruling elites could do. Thus, it is a perfect possibility that they would have benefited from linking writing to some divine power. However, for people to believe them, enough time should have passed for the population to forget how it started. Considering that, rather than a eureka moment, writing developed slowly over hundreds if not thousands of years, we can then understand how people, and even the ruling elite, could forget. So yes, rulers and priests could have very possibly created this theory for the inception of writing to gain more power over their subjects, but the fact that their population and even themselves had forgotten the truth of the events allowed this to happen.
The Kesh Temple Hymn – Praising the gods
The Kesh Temple Hymn, also known as The Liturgy to Nintud, is as we said, the oldest religious literary example found to date. The text is a eulogy both to the temple of Kesh and the goddess Nintud and containing 145 lines and separated in eight sections.
The first section starts with the creation of Kesh by the god Enlil (the chief deity of the Sumerian Pantheon). He comes out of the pantheon and lifts his look upon the lands. As this happens, the lands raise themselves, all corners of heaven turn green like a garden and the Temple appears over the lands. This is something straight out of a fantasy movie. One cannot help but be fascinated when reading this. The ability of the text to convey the message and transport the reader straight into the story is astonishing.
“The princely one, the princely one came forth from the house. Enlil, the princely one, came forth from the house. The princely one came forth royally from the house. Enlil lifted his glance over all the lands, and the lands raised themselves to Enlil. The four corners of heaven became green for Enlil like a garden. Kec was positioned there for him with head uplifted, and as Kec lifted its head among all the lands, Enlil spoke the praises of Kec.”
The Kesh Temple Hymn
The story continues to describe how Nisaba (our good old’ Nisaba goddess of writing and wisdom) writes the story as it happens and describes the Temple. We understand from this that Nisaba is recording the events on a clay tablet, which reinforces the divinity of writing and the religious scriptures. Some authors point the similarities or the relationship between Enlil and Nisaba and the one between Yahweh and Moses. The description of the temple is superb, it gives a majestic representation of the temple, which reached “as high as the hills, embracing the heavens, growing as high as E-kur, lifting its head among the mountains!” and was rooted in Abzu (cosmic underground waters) which probably tries to represent that it reaches the underworld.
“Growing as high as the hills, embracing the heavens, growing as high as E-kur, lifting its head among the mountains! Rooted in the abzu, verdant like the mountains!”
The Kesh Temple Hymn
The section finishes praising the goddess Nintud (the Sumerian mother goddess and one of the creators of humankind) as well as Kesh and Nintud’s hero son Acgi. This line is how all other sections of the hymn finish, the reason why the text is also called Liturgy to Nintud.
“Will anyone else bring forth something as great as Kec? Will any other mother ever give birth to someone as great as its hero Acgi? Who has ever seen anyone as great as its lady Nintud?”
The Kesh Temple Hymn
The following two sections go on describing the Anunnaki as lords of the temple, as well as the size of the temple using Sumerian metric scales “car” and “bur”. I was not able to find the meaning of “car”. On the other hand, “bur” is recorded as a measurement of area, that was done by counting the number of bricks that fitted in the area. So using the the dimensions of the smallest sumerian bricks at the time I could calculate that the area of “5 bur” described in the hymn would be approximately 175 hectares. That is more than three times the base area of the pyramid of Giza!
Partially reconstructed facade and the access staircase of the Ziggurat of Ur. The actual remains of the Neo-Babylonian structure can be seen at the top.
Virtual reconstruction of the Ziggurat of Ur-Nammu. This temple is thought to have been built in 2200 BCE and shows a representation of what the Kesh Temple could have looked like structurally.
The hymn then spends the next two sections focusing on the temple’s interior, exterior and gives a description of who is within it and what rituals they do. It starts by with the heroes going inside the temple to perform the “oracle rites” and herds of sheep and cattle gathered for sacrifice. Again we see in Sumer, practices that will be carried out by cultures across time even to date such as the importance of oracles in giving wise counsel and the sacrificial offerings to gods to win their favour.
As the hymn focuses on the interior of the temple, Nintud (AKA Ninhursaja) is described as sitting “like a great dragon”, Cul-pa-ed (Nintud’s spouse) as being the lord of the house and their hero son, Acgi, consuming the contents of vessels. That clearly shows that the Kesh Temple is dedicated to the goddess Nintud and her family.
“House Kec, given birth by a lion, whose interior the hero has embellished (?)! The heroes make their way straight into its interior. Ninhursaja sits within like a great dragon. Nintud the great mother assists at births there. Cul-pa-ed the ruler acts as lord. Acgi the hero consumes the contents of the vessels (?). Urumac, the great herald of the plains, dwells there too. Stags are gathered at the house in herds.”
The Kesh Temple Hymn
The sixth section talks about the temple’s exterior appearance. The Kesh temple is described as having a lion reclining on his paws at the entrance, a wild bull on its bolt and Laḫmu deities supporting its terrace, probably in the shape of half-columns. In the seventh section, the hymn describes the songs played and the instruments used at the temple. It shows religion and music have a deep link, as the author Laurence de Rosen stated: “Since the dawn of time, music has been our medium of communication with its divinity/divinities.” The hymn also gives us an insight into the instruments used at the time. It is fascinating to see that they used wind, percussion and string instruments. Categories that did not change for five millennia, until the appearance of electronic instruments. The music described in the hymn is solemn and spiritual, close to the sort of music you may have heard on a Viking ritual.
“The bull’s horn is made to growl; the drumsticks are made to thud. The singer cries out to the ala drum; the grand sweet tigi is played for him.”
The Kesh Temple Hymn
The final section, or eighth house, ends with a warning and invocation to approach the temple. This admonition is repeated four times and with it, the text ends. Many authors say this sort of ambivalence about approaching temples has influenced Christianity and Judaism. However, I do not know enough to confirm that and so, this last section is the most obscure and mystic to me. It leaves me questioning its intention and why it is there. I guess it is something we will learn more of as we keep digging into Sumerian and Semitic texts.
“Draw near, man, to the city, to the city — but do not draw near! Draw near, man, to the house Kec, to the city — but do not draw near! Draw near, man, to its hero Acgi — but do not draw near! Draw near, man, to its lady Nintud — but do not draw near! Praise be to well-built Kec, O Acgi! Praise be to cherished Kec and Nintud!”
The Kesh Temple Hymn
Conclusion
This hymn was a new experience. Just as much as The Instructions of Shuruppak surprised me by the relevance of its teachings, the hymn’s capability to transmit this sense of divinity shocked me. Just in the first section, the solemnity of the hymn can be seen. Its repetitions, exclamations, praises and metaphors make the effect of the text go beyond just the story. The reader can imagine this hymn being recited in ancient Sumerian out loud in a temple, with the growl of horns, beats of drums and notes from the “tigi” and be overcome with the sensation of spirituality it transmits, even though we would not understand what it says. Five thousand years after its inception, we recognise the feeling these people felt when listening to these hymns and see, once again, that our connection to them is not so distant.
The other fact which does not go unnoticed is the ability of the liturgy to transport us to the events. The metaphors and descriptions allow the reader to imagine the temple and its creation in all its majestic splendour. We tend to think of writing as an essential tool for literature, but the reality is that the written works we study are just the mere reflection of an oral art developed since the start of times, oral literature.
Having read The Instructions of Shuruppak and the Kesh Temple Hymn has opened my mind and set a base to understanding the texts we will study in future posts. We have come to better understand the relationship between writing and cultures, how literature came to be, what forms it took and what function and power it had for the people of the most ancient civilisation known to mankind. We keep seeing, just as in our last post, that our deepest cultural roots come from the Mesopotamian people of the Bronze Age and before.
Our next steps will take us through the next item on our chronological list: “The Pyramid Texts” from Egypt. We will be able to compare these texts to what we already know from Sumer and study the literature of this other ancient civilisation which has interested our modern world for more than one hundred years.
See you next week!
Bibliography
Biggs, R. D., and J. N. Postgate. “Inscriptions from Abu Salabikh”, Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.
Black, J.A., Cunningham, G., Robson, E., and Zólyomi, G.. “The Kesh Temple Hymn”, The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Oxford 1998.
Welcome to Stories of the World, by Andre Stuhldreher-Barroso.
In this, my first ever blog, I will aim to review the best literary works of human civilisation, in order! How did this crazy idea come about you ask? This idea came to me after I finished reading The Iliad, but the story starts a bit before that.
The first time I got exposed to the story of The Iliad and The Odyssey was through the 2004 movie “Troy”. I have watched this movie more times than I can remember, one of those movies you always watch when it comes on the TV. I highly recommend this movie, even after having read the book. But beware that it is an adaptation, so approach it as that. Many storylines and characters are changed drastically compared to the book versions.
I never had an interest in reading The Iliad after that, it sounded like one of those old and dry reads like Don Quijote or TheBible. I had watched the movie, and it was a great movie, so why would I want to waste time reading these books? I thought that because I had tried to read those books (Don Quijote and the Bible) and I had not even managed to get past 50 pages before losing all interest. Nevertheless, two or three years ago I gave it a try, and I downloaded a free version on my kindle. Guess what, again, I did not get very far before dropping it. How come everyone says these are some of the greatest pieces of literature in history? They were so boring!!
I had read some other literary works of art such as “Cien años de soledad” and “Crónica de una muerte anunciada” from Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and those certainly were a joy to read. I thought these others are probably just the typical purist/nerd books that do not have anything in special and people only read to say they had done so. I saw no difference between them and a dictionary. How wrong was I…
Fast forward two years, and I put down the compromise of start reading more books, and one year later, after reading all the books in Spanish in my library (not the biggest library in the world bear in mind) I went to the English ones. What order to read them? I thought. Then the idea of reading them by chronological order appeared.
And there it was, sitting on the window in my parent’s house living room, with the shinning sun hitting its golden cover, almost calling for me, like I was meant to pick it up and read it. The Iliad, translation by Stephen Mitchel. I reached across and I picked it up. A hardcover, good start, I love hardcover books. I opened it and did what I do with all my books, stuck its pages against my nose and smelled it. This is how I tell if a book is going to be good or not, good books always get printed in quality paper, and quality paper always smells good (not an exact science, but we all have our weird rules). I decided it was good, it certainly smelled awesome. It was almost fated. I had not even bought this book, it was just one of the several books my father finds on the planes he works on. They get lost and never find their owner again, so he brings them home. At my home at least they get read and kept in good condition.
And so, I started reading. The first thing was the introductory notes, and those were the real game-changer. Stephen Mitchel opened my eyes with these notes, he made me understand what was so interesting about this book. Its descriptiveness, and the fact it was written almost five thousand years ago, but you could still relate to much of the story. Stephen Mitchel also made me understand why I had not liked any of those other old texts I had read before. It all comes down to picking up the right translation. He translates The Iliad in this fresh manner, getting rid of unnecessary lines that were added into the text just to make the poem read well. He manages to give the same story, with the same descriptiveness, feel and depth, but with a much leaner text. This is what produces greater satisfaction when reading it compared to other translations. At least for me, and I believe for many of the non-academic readers. So this is my recommendation: if you do not like a translation you are reading, try another one. Usually leaner translations are better for reading. You will have to find others for listening to if that is what you are looking for. Something I will do in the future for sure, hear The Iliad as what it was written as, a poem read aloud.
The Iliad was such an eye-opener to the fascinating world of literature, that I decided to take it one step further (crazy idea coming up). I thought, why just read the books in my library in order? Why not read the biggest works of literature since the beginning of it all? I wanted to really gain an understanding of the evolution of written stories, understand how humanity had evolved from the first texts to the more modern written works. And while doing so, why not documenting so other people can join my journey? And so, The Hut of Andre was born, and within it, Tales of the World.
If this is something that interests you, join in! Subscribe and you will receive updates of the texts I read and my thoughts. If you want to read the books as well as I do and discuss what we find, then great! If you like the idea but do not feel like reading all these long texts, then great as well!! The idea is that through this blog you get a summary of the tales and learn from what we have learnt.
The aim is to make this a weekly thing. So each week I will at least read and post an entry of a chapter, or a book if the book is small enough.
The first text I will touch is a piece of Sumerian wisdom literature: “The Instructions of Shuruppak”. It is by some accounts the oldest literature work found to date, together with the “Kesh Temple Hymn”, which we will read after. I think we will all enjoy it and learn something from it.
The Hut of Andre 