gLeN writes:
>Second, the prehistoric Sumerians are not the originators of anything.
Let's
>try to accept this once and for all. The Sumerian civilisation, both
>mythologically and agriculturally, is the result of the innovations
>affecting the _entire_ Middle-East.
I'm a bit confused. If the innovations appeared all throughout the Middle
East and if the prehistoric Sumerians never came up with anything new, then
why did civilization (i.e., the growth of cities) occur first in Sumeria?
Did originators and inventors come up with ideas, move to Sumeria, and only
*then* start to develop those ideas? Or did writing develop all by its
lonesome in Sumeria, thus leading to "historic" Sumerians who went on to
come up with a host of other innovations?
I'm not saying that the Sumerians (prehistoric or historic) were innately
more intelligent than the other tribes, or that they received their
information from gods or aliens (fish-headed or Sirian or whatever). I do
find it unlikely that writing would suddenly pop up without there having
been some other innovations first. At some time, there was a critical mass
of innovation and invention concentrated at one spot, which led to more
people, which then lead to more innovation and invention, which lead to more
people, and so on and so on until there was writing and there were cities
and there was civilization. In the Middle East, that spot happened to be
Sumer. In the Americas, it happened to be Mexico.
>but there is no rational basis for the assumption that the prehistoric
Sumerians
>were at the heart of anything and never will be.
I think it would help if we all defined the time frames we're talking about.
By "prehistoric Sumerian," I'm assuming you mean pre-writing. Is that before
4000 BCE?
Before the start of the cities, each tribe was probably more or less equal
in influence and size. Early IE and early Sumerians (c. 6000 BCE) were most
likely *all* peasants digging in the dirt. However, once the Sumerians
started cities, they had more influence.
As John noted:
>certainly from the time that they [IE myths]
>have come down to us all have Sumerian elements.
The Sumerians' myths and knowledge and starlore (derived from those
prehistoric Sumerians) spread widely because nobody else had anything to
match it, and those became, if not the heart, then at least a part of many
other tribes' myths and knowledge, too, even down to today, when we measure
time and circles in 60 seconds and 60 minutes, just as the Sumerians did.
How do we reconstruct the myths of the IE? What cultures do we draw from?
Do we look for similarities in Greek/Roman, Celtic, Norse, Slavic, and
Indian myths? Do we exclude all Sumerian myths? How about the Hebrew myths,
which were heavily influenced by contact with Sumerian peoples? Egyptian?
Do we exclude the Greek myths connected with the zodiac, knowing as we do
that the zodiac is Sumerian in origin?
Or do we need to know the very early IE myths? Is it enough to reconstruct
the myths of the IEs from a later period? How late?
About the "descent and return to the underworld a la Tammuz" consider this
on the difficulties of translation:
>From Deb Dale Jones' dissertation, She
> Spoke to Them with a Stormy Heart: The Politics of Reading Ancient (or
> other) Narrative, U of Minn, 1993.
>
> "In antiquity, this compostion (Inanna's Descent or The Desent of Inanna
> to the Underworld) was referred to by its opening phrase, an-gal-ta
> ki-gal-se (literally, 'from great-sky to great-earth") p. 1
>
> "Use of titles like 'Inanna's Descent,' 'Inanna's Descent to the
> Netherworld,' or especially 'Inanna's Descent to the Underworld' to
> refer in English to an-gal-ta ki-gal-se provides an arresting example of
> mistranslation at both the interlingual and intercultural levels. The
> Sumerian word used most frequently in an-gal-ta ki-gal-se for the realm
> of the dead is kur, a word which meant 'mountain, foreign lands.' The
> word used to describe Inanna's movement in going to this domain in the
> opening lines of an-gal-ta ki-gal-se" means "not 'to descend' per se,
> but vertical up or down motion (Thomsen 1984:302). The linguistic
> evidence thus suggests that the realm of the dead was not conceived of
> as under the earth at all, but rather that the dead went to a foreign
> country in the mountains. Calling the narrative 'Inanna's Descent'
> predisposes the audience to think of the realm of the dead as below the
> earth at the same time that it renders invisible an association between
> foreigners and the dead." p. 102
>
Janeen