The God Who Does

(Biblical studies)

If you try to picture the God of the Tanakh (the Old Testament to Christians), chances are you’ll picture someone like the God of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, zooming in on his cloud of heavenly host, reaching out to zap Adam with the spark of life. Jehovah is a god on the move: creating the earth, destroying the earth, parting seas, sending plagues and smiting the wicked.

“Gods of ancient Greece,” though, evokes the Elgin marbles, Winged Victory and red figure vases; ox-eyed Hera, charm-fashioner Aphrodite, Zeus who hurls thunder, Artemis of the golden distaff. While in the Bible humans yearn for God’s presence, it’s better to stay far from the Olympians. Mortals are liable to be turned into a tree or burst into flames. Every romance results in conception and every interaction ends catastrophe.

But somehow ancient Greece feels familiar; the modes of thought, the values, the motivations, even the clichés: you’ll stumble across “one swallow does not make a summer” reading Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics (I.1098a18).  It’s actually jarring to realize these same guys are out there fighting with spears and sacrificing cows.

To really study the Tanakh is to find yourself a stranger in a strange land, among birthrights, dietary laws, circumcision, family idols, camels, narrative discontinuity, and a surprising amount of straight-up lying. It’s also the story of nomads, a people on the move: we cover 400 years of slavery in just a few verses, but the Jews wander through hundreds of pages in the desert. How many other books have so many maps just to keep track of the main characters?

The Hebrew language reflects this primacy of action: adjectives and adverbs are minimal, and verb tenses are few: something is either done or not. But there are many shades of action active, passive, intensive, causative, reflexive, and character is often revealed in action--for example, pious Abraham serving his heavenly guests.

You’d think an action-defined God would be the one closest to our action-oriented hearts, but I think the “Make no graven image” rule actually distances God from us highly visual humans. We always want something we can see: a saint, some lambs, a baby in a manger.  Even in the temple, we have a grumpy Moses looking down from his stained glass window. It’s a paradox that we are made in the image of a God who doesn’t have an image.  As the poet said, "just wanna see his face."

Praise for King Shulgi

Sumerian King Shulgi of the Ur III dynasty ruled for 48 years (2029 BCE–1982 BCE), completed the Great Ziggurat, waged wars, repaired roads, built the first hotel / rest area, standardized weights and measures, and was a long distance runner in his spare time.

Reconstructed ziggurat

But Shulgi never summited.  His name has survived largely through copies of compositions and hymns made by schoolboys studying to be scribes. From "A History of the Ancient Near East" (Mieroop): "Remarkable is the lack of interest in this period by later Mesopotamians when compared to how the Akkadian kings were remembered." (Think Sargon.) Like Horatius at the Bridge and the Light Brigade, Shulgi's fame is as a school exercise.

I asked noted American historian and friend of the blog, Dr. Dave Nichols, for an analogy. He writes:

“James Garfield was not only a Civil War hero, but could supposedly write Latin with one hand while writing Greek with the other (according to Joe Queenan, who may have been exaggerating). And yet he is primarily known as the president who served for just a few months before being shot by a frustrated office-seeker (and then dying a few months later because doctors couldn't find the bullet). Or he is confused with a cartoon cat. Sounds like your Shulgi analogue to me.”


May my Hymn to King Shulgi be pleasing!

Inventor of rest stops, impeccable scribe¹,

Like a mes² tree in bloom, you're hard to describe.

Swift as a cheetah³, you built ziggurats,

Defending your land so that Ur bigger-got.

Most notable king, of legend Nestorian⁴,

Gush-liking ruler, the summus Sumerians.

1. From Self-Praise of Shulgi: "…the fair goddess Nanibgal, the goddess Nisaba, provided me amply with knowledge and comprehension. I am an experienced scribe who does not neglect a thing."
2. "You are a sweet sight, like a fertile mes tree laden with colorful fruit."
3. "When I sprang up, muscular as a cheetah, galloping like a thoroughbred ass at full gallop..."
4. King Nestor was a prolix giver of advice in the Odyssey and most ashur-edly a bore.
"Gush-liking" I leave to you, dear readers, to solve.

On the Beginning of Writing in Mesopotamia

It’s hard to imagine life without reading and writing.  Speech is fine as far as it goes, but it’s essentially non-persistent and short-range: the need to communicate over time and space can’t be filled by speech.  

If you ever were, or knew, a teenage girl, you have seen the true manifestation of an insatiable need for communication. This need is now filled largely by writing, in the form of texting, Facebook, emails and whatever else has been invented lately that I’m too old to know about.

Historically, however, teenage girls were unlikely to be those with the resources for inventing writing in a largely pre-literate world.  Instead it was the poets, stirred by the divine breath of the gods themselves, stretching the wings of song...not!  It was rich guys and their accountants.  Surprised? 

"The oldest signs in the system seem to be imitations of clay tokens of diverse forms, used as counters in an accounting procedure throughout the Near East from the 9th millennium B.C. to the 2nd; each type of counter presumably represented an individual type of goods, and therefore an individual word."

-Introduction to Akkadian, Fourth edition, Caplice and Snell.

This wasn’t so much about communication (yet) as counting. However, where clay tokens were, taxes, tax bills, and letters about taxes soon followed.  And since you’re writing, it was natural enough to ask after the guys over in Accounts Payable in the Ashur office.  And by the way, are you avoiding my calls?

            A letter:

“Speak to Bibiya

            Thus (speaks) Gimil-Marduk,

May Shamash and Marduk keep you alive forever for my sake.

I wrote concerning your well-being: send me (news about) your well-being.

I came to Babylon, but did not see you; I became very upset.

Send me news of your traveling that I may rejoice…

Be well forever for my sake.”

-Saison de Fouilles a Sippar, Vincent Schiel, pg. 131.

Sadly, (S)he’s Just Not That Into You won’t be written for another four thousand years.  Let’s hope Gimul-Marduk figured it out.



To the left is a clay tablet from the British museum from 1850BCE.  You can also see the envelope and read the story here.

(Very) Old Friends

In beginning my travels in Akkadian, I’m happy to see my old friends the nominative, genitive and accusative cases in my grammar book.  The dual is/are there too.

Some words familiar from Hebrew:

• Abum, father, Hebrew abba.  Abra-ham means the father of nations.
• Ummum, mother, Heb. im, ima
• Sissû , horse, Heb. sus
• Bītum, house, Heb. bayit; from this word dervice synagogue names like “Beth Am,” House of the People.
• Alpum, ox. Aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, is derived from a symbol of an ox’s head, meaning strength.  

There is another nifty word, “mimation” which is the suffixing of a letter m.

I always find it comforting to read translation exercises like, “The army of the king was in the city,” and “the wife’s wool is in the house.” The simple declaratives speak to countless generations of scholars, brows knit, with ink (or clay) stained fingers. As we dutifully ponder the mysteries of case-gender-number, it’s hard not to wonder why the wife was so absent-minded and where she meant to take that wool in the first place.  

The Seven Kings of Rome - Ab Urbe Condita

Romulus founded the city of Rome,

Numa strengthened religion at home,

Tullus with Alba was hostilely warring,

Ancus, bridge builder, especially boring,

Tarquinius came from out of town,

Servius came from way low down,

Tarquin was the last of the kings

Tullia drove him to horrible things.

By A. Student & E. Bennett

On Learning Akkadian

Assyrian king from
the British Museum

For the past year or so, I've been trying to learn Biblical Hebrew. It's definitely worth the effort to be able to read the Bible in the original. Having mastered reading backwards and the aleph-bet, what is more natural than to want to learn Akkadian too?

Akkadian is the language of ancient Mesopotamia and the earliest-attested language of the Semitic family. Evidence of Akkadian is found in names as early as the 26^th century BCE.  It probably dropped out of spoken use around in the mid first millennium BCE, being replaced by Aramaic. It was still used as a written language until the first century CE. 

Classics students who rejoice in having read all of Sappho, or dodging the lost books of Livy, might be dismayed to learn that there are hundreds of thousands of extant Akkadian texts to be read.  Unlike papyrus,  baked clay is nearly indestructible. On the bright side, if you’re worried about the meaning of a mongoose running under the king’s chariot, you’re in luck.

Important Mongoose Update:  You'll have to go here: http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa10/corpus and go to page 2 to learn about A Mongoose Under the King's Chariot.  Thank you to the brilliant and talented Jennifer Nicole Roman!