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List of contents
Preface; Acknowledgments; Copyright credits; Abbreviations; Conventions PART I – Preliminaries; 1 Introduction; 2 ‘Interrogating’ Babylonian narrative poetry; 3 ‘Identifying’ puns; 4 The high concentration of puns in the Gilgameš Flood story; PART II – Dissecting Ea’s message; 5 The lines about the Flood hero; 6 Raining ‘plenty’: ušaznanakkunūši nuhšam-ma; 7 The birds: [hiṣib] iṣṣūrāti; 8 The fish: puzur nūnī; 9 The harvest: [...] mešrâ ebūram-ma; 10 ‘Cakes at dawn’: ina šēr(-)kukkī; 11 ‘In the evening’: ina līlâti; 12 The ‘rain of wheat’: šamût kibāti; 13 Recapitulation; 14 Issues of textual history; 15 Meaning and performance; PART III – Conspicuous silences in the Gilgameš Flood story; 16 Outlining the problems; 17 Does Atra–hasīs ‘fill in the gaps’?; 18 Communications between Ea and the Flood hero; 19 Communication between the Flood hero and the people of Šuruppak; 20 Ea’s elusiveness; 21 The enigma of Uta–napišti; 22 Why the ‘gaps’?; PART IV – Other interconnections; 23 Ea’s duplicity and Babylonian/Assyrian divination; 24 Beyond Cuneiform; 25 Conclusions; References; Alphabetical index; Index locurum
About the author
Martin Worthington is Associate Professor in Middle Eastern Studies in the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
Summary
This volume opens up new perspectives on Babylonian and Assyrian literature, through the lens of a pivotal passage in the Gilgamesh Flood story. It shows how, using a nine-line message where not all was as it seemed, the god Ea inveigled humans into building the Ark.
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"Worthington’s Ea’s Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story is an outstanding book. It is extraordinarily well researched, superbly written, and thought provoking. The new approach brought forth by Worthington has tremendous potential for furthering the study of Mesopotamian literature. I cannot emphasize enough how engaging Worthington’s prose is, something which we do not see often in studies on the ancient Near East." - Alhena Gadotti, Journal of Near Eastern Studies
"Worthington’s Ea’s Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story certainly considers nine lines from tablet XI of the best known epic from Mesopotamia, this passage forms the microcosmic core of a macrocosmic exploration of a world of Assyrian and Babylonian literature, prophecy, historiography, and ancient wisdom. Worthington unfurls new and hidden meanings in his passage from tablet XI, but to do so he takes a winding road, inviting the reader on a dizzying journey involving storm-demons, competing translations, species of ancient grains, and much more." - Review of Biblical Literature
"Worthington offers profitable insights into the Gilgamesh Flood Story[...] The complexities of his research will challenge and divide Assyriologists just as, as he claims, Uta-napishti may have been divisive to ancient audiences!" - Alan Millard,Strata
"The strongest points made in this book seem to this reviewer to relate to omens and oracles, which were such a dominant aspect of life throughout the time when cuneiform versions of the Flood story were current. Puns and word-play are certainly one of the skills found in the composition of omens. MW has ingeniously searched for them, and displays an admirable breadth of knowledge." - Stephanie Dalley, Bibliotheca Orientalis
"[this book] is of primary use to scholars in Assyriology and Classical studies, and it will also be of interest to those studying the flood story in the Hebrew Bible ... meticulous... the author is to be commended for his mastery of Akkadian, Arabic, Hebrew, French, German and Italian." - Rebecca Huskey,Classical Journal
