Re: How do we know ... (was Yama's buffalo)

Janeen Grohsmeyer questioned Glen Gordon's

> >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.

Glen is doing a little bit of Sumerian Bashing here. Personally I am
with you here Janeen, as Samuel Noah Kramer wrote - "History Begins
in Sumer". They not only invented writing, astrology, civil
government, the wheel, jurisprudence, surveying, urban living and
much else besides. True, like all people they built on and developed
upon the start of other peoples, but their influence was to last for
centuries, on all peoples around. The very word "Eden" referring to
a wilderness garden is Sumerian in orgin.

> 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?

Yup! You got it!

> 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.

Cultural innovations tend to be made by people. Where populations
are high cultural innovations tend to accumulate too. Sumeria
pioneered urban living and so was the seed bed for the spread of a
host of cultural innovations, including a fully anthropomorphic
pantheon of Gods. Earlier divinities tended towards zoomorphism (the
horned bull, the bear, the stag, the ram, the wolf etc). It is
interesting watching the anthropomorphism spread - first to the
Middle East, then to Greece, Rome, and then to Celtic and Nordic
realms. I tend to feel PIE divinities were not yet fully
anthropomorphic, with strong links to shamanism (and via the Semitic -
to Totemism). It is interesting that the Egyptians managed to
maintain a pantheon of Zoomorphic divinities. Only the Semitic
imports - Ausar and Auset (Osiris and Isis) show a full
anthropomorphism, and even Osiris seems to have been totemic in
origin at least in part (as the Djed pillar God).

> >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?

Even pre 4,000 BCE the Uruk phase has been seen as totally Sumerian.
They seem to have been present since Ubaid times.

> 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.

Yes, cities quickly depleted the local region of necessary resources
to support their elevated carrying capacity. Forest clearance meant
journeys as far affield as Lebanon, stone from quarries in the
Zagros, Lapis Lasuli from Afghanistan, Gold from Yemen (ultimately
Nubia) and resins from as far south as Mozambique. This spread
Sumerian influence far and wide. As traders spread, the armies of
empire builders were quick to follow. Sargon spread Sumerian from
Oman to Anatolia and from Lebanon to Iran. Cuneiform scripts spread
to become the lingua franca of the Late Bronze Age.

> 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?

This is my concern with some of the fanciful reconstructionism that
has been going on the list of late. Roman myth copied Greek. Both
Celtic and Norse myths were transcribed by Christians who were
familiar with classic prototypes.

> 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

Thanks Janeen, it is a god corrective.

Regards

John