Song of the hoe

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Late Mississippian
hoes, similar in appearance to the first Near Eastern hoes.
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The Song of the hoe or the Creation of the pickax is a Sumerian creation myth, written on clay tablets from the last century of the 3rd millennium BCE.[1]

Disputations

Seven debate topics are known from the Sumerian literature, falling in the category of disputations; some examples are: The Debate between sheep and grain; The Debate between bird and fish; the Debate between Winter and Summer; and The Dispute between Silver and Copper, etc.[2] These topics came some centuries after writing was established in Sumerian Mesopotamia. The debates are philosophical and address humanity's place in the world. Some of the debates may be from 2100 BC.[3] The song of the hoe stands alone in its own sub-category as a one-sided debate poem.[4]

Compilation

Three tablets of the myth are held by the

University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, catalogue of the Babylonian section (CBS), from their excavations at the temple library at Nippur. Tablets from this collection, numbers 8111, 13122, 13382 and 13864 were documented by Edward Chiera in "Sumerian Epics and Myths".[9] Samuel Noah Kramer included CBS tablets 8531, 10310, 10335, 29.16.23, 29.16.436. He also included translations from tablets in the Nippur collection of the Museum of the Ancient Orient in Istanbul, catalogue numbers 1117, 2337, 2473, 2742.[10][11][12] Other tablets were added from the "Ur excavations texts" in 1928 along with several others to bring it to its present form, which is virtually complete.[13] The latest composite text and translation was produced in 1996 by H. Behrens, B. Jagersma and Joachim Krecher.[14]

Story

The poem is composed of the frequent use of the word "al", which means

Duranki, the cosmic Nippur or 'Garden of the Gods
'.

"Not only did the lord make the world appear in its correct form, the lord who never changes the destinies which he determines – Enlil – who will make the human seed of the Land come forth from the earth – and not only did he hasten to separate heaven from earth, and hasten to separate earth from heaven, but, in order to make it possible for humans to grow in "where flesh came forth" [the name of a cosmic location], he first raised the axis of the world at

Dur-an-ki."[16]

The myth continues with a description of Enlil creating daylight with his hoe; he goes on to praise its construction and creation. Enlil's mighty hoe is said to be made of

E-ana also set about building.[16] The useful construction and agricultural uses of the hoe are summarized, along with its capabilities for use as a weapon and for burying the dead. Allusions are made to the scenes of Enkidu's ghost, and Urshanabi's ferry over the Hubur, in the Epic of Gilgamesh
:

"dead people are also brought up from the ground by the hoe. With the hoe, the hero honoured by

watercourses."[16]

Ninmena is suggested to create both the priestess and king.[17] The hymn ends with extensive praisings of the hoe, Enlil, and Nisaba:

"The hoe makes everything prosper; the hoe makes everything flourish. The hoe is good

cities. It builds the right kind of house; it cultivates the right kind of fields. It is you, hoe, that extend the good agricultural land!"[16]

Discussion

Modern society may have trouble comprehending the virtue of extolling a tool such as the lowly hoe, for the Sumerians the implement had brought

kur in a time when darkness covered an arid land, when heaven and earth were joined and the Enlil's universal laws, the me did not function.[1] Two of the major traditions of the Sumerian concept of the creation of man are discussed in the myth. The first is the creation of mankind from brick moulds or clay. This has notable similarities to the creation of man from the dust of the earth in the Book of Genesis in the Bible (Genesis 2:6–7). This activity has also been associated with creating clay figurines.[18] The second Sumerian tradition which compares men to plants, made to "break through the ground", an allusion to imagery of the fertility or mother goddess and giving an image of man being "planted" in the ground.[18] Wayne Horowitz notes that five Sumerian myths recount a creation scene with the separation of heaven and earth. He further notes the figurative imagery relaying the relationship between the creation of agricultural implements making a function for mankind and thereby its creation from the "seed of the land".[19] The myth was called the "Creation of the Pickax" by Samuel Noah Kramer, a name by which it is referred in older sources. In Sumerian literature, the hoe or pickaxe is used not only in creation of the Ekur but also described as the tool of its destruction in city-lament hymns such as the Lament for Ur, where it is torn apart with a storm and then pickaxes.[20]

The cosmological position of the hoe does not fit into Charles Long's categorization of cosmogenic myths. Creation has been suggested to have been the responsibility of different gods via different processes. Creation via a cosmological agricultural implement seems to occupy a unique place in the creation myth genre. The song was meant to be sung aloud with the repetition of the word hoe or "al" a total of forty five times in the text with common use of the two syllables together "al"/"ar". A cosmological link is suggested between the hoe's being and its doing; making everything prosper and flourish within a community. Gary Martin discusses the sociological benefits of singing songs to a hoe, to remind people that they wield the implement of Enlil and of creation. That they can participate in creativity and work well to preserve and improve society. He suggests that "perhaps by praising the simple tool of an extremely important group of laborers, and imbuing it with cosmological significance, those wielders of the hoe are themselves brought into a grand cosmological drama."[21]

See also

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 978-0-520-03703-8
    . Retrieved 10 June 2011.
  2. ISBN 978-0-226-45238-8
    . Retrieved 23 May 2011.
  3. ^ Sumerian literature
  4. ISBN 978-0-19-929633-0
    . Retrieved 10 June 2011.
  5. ^ British Museum. Dept. of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities. Cuneiform texts from Babylonian tablets in the British museum, 44, 10. The Trustees.
  6. ^ British Museum. Dept. of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities. Cuneiform texts from Babylonian tablets in the British museum, 58, 52. The Trustees.
  7. ^ Musée du Louvre. Département des antiquités orientales et de la céramique antique; Musée du Louvre. Département des antiquités orientales. Textes cunéiformes, 16, 72 & 92. Librairie orientaliste, Paul Geuthner.
  8. ^ Königliche Museen zu Berlin. Vorderasiatische Abteilung; Heinrich Zimmern; Otto Schroeder; H. H. Figulla; et al. (1966). Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmäler 24, 68. Louis D. Levine. Retrieved 4 June 2011.
  9. ^ Edward Chiera (1964). Sumerian epics and myths, 33, 34, 37 and 39. The University of Chicago Press. Retrieved 28 May 2011.
  10. ISBN 978-1-60506-049-1
    . Retrieved 10 June 2011.
  11. ^ Samuel Noah Kramer (1944). Sumerian literary texts from Nippur: in the Museum of the Ancient Orient at Istanbul. American Schools of Oriental Research. Retrieved 28 May 2011.
  12. ^ Muazzez Cig; Hatice Kizilyay (1969). Sumerian literary tablets and fragments in the archeological museum of Istanbul-I. Tarih Kurumu Basimevi. Retrieved 28 May 2011.
  13. ^ British museum and Pennsylvania University. University museum. Joint expedition to Mesopotamia; Pennsylvania University. University museum (1928). Ur excavations texts... 6/3 152, 6/3 168, 6/3 206. British museum. Retrieved 28 May 2011.
  14. ^ The song of the hoe - Bibliography - The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Oxford 1998-. Archived 2009-04-03 at the Wayback Machine
  15. ISBN 978-90-04-10618-5
    . Retrieved 10 June 2011.
  16. ^ a b c d ETCSL Translation Archived 2009-04-02 at the Wayback Machine
  17. ^ religious of the past. Brill Archive. pp. 140–. GGKEY:SDQ069KTBZ0. Retrieved 10 June 2011.
  18. ^
    ISBN 978-0-8276-0798-9
    . Retrieved 10 June 2011.
  19. ISBN 978-0-931464-99-7
    . Retrieved 10 June 2011.
  20. ISBN 978-88-7653-346-4
    . Retrieved 10 June 2011.
  21. ^ Martin, Gary (2005). "The Cosmological Hoe" (PDF). University of Washington. Archived from the original (PDF) on May 9, 2009.

Further reading

  • Civil, Miguel., "Review of CT 44", Journal of Near Eastern Studies 28, 70-72: 70, 1969.
  • Civil, Miguel., The Farmer's Instructions. A Sumerian Agricultural Manual. (Aula Orientalis Supplementa, 5) Editorial Ausa: Sabadell, 1994.
  • Edzard, Dietz Otto., "U 7804 // UET VI/1 26: "Gedicht von der Hacke"", in George, A. R. (ed.), and Finkel, I. L., Wisdom, Gods and Literature: Studies in Assyriology in Honour of W. G. Lambert, Eisenbrauns: Winona Lake, 131-135, 2000.
  • Farber, Gertrud., ""Das Lied von der Hacke", ein literarischer Spass?", in Klengel, Horst and, Renger, Johannes (eds.), Landwirtschaft im Alten Orient: ausgewählte Vorträge der XLI. Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale Berlin., 4.-8.7.1994 (Berliner Beiträge zum Vorderen Orient, 18), Dietrich Reimer Verlag: Berlin, 369-373, 1999.
  • Farber, Gertrud., "Sumerian Canonical Compositions. A. Divine Focus. 1. Myths: The Song of the Hoe (1.157)", in Hallo, William W. (ed.), The Context of Scripture, I: Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World. Brill: Leiden/New York/Köln, 511-513, 1997.
  • Jacobsen, Thorkild., "Sumerian Mythology, a Review Article", Journal of Near Eastern Studies 5, 128-152: 134, 1946.
  • Kramer, Samuel Noah., Sumerian Mythology. The American Philosophical Society: Philadelphia, 51-53, 1944.
  • Pettinato, Giovanni., Das altorientalische Menschenbild und die sumerischen und akkadischen Schöpfungsmythen. Winter: Heidelberg, 82-85, 1971.
  • Wilcke, Claus., "Hacke - B. Philologisch", in Reallexikon der Assyriologie 4, 33-38: 36-38, 1972.

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