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A New Manuscript of Ninĝišzida’s Journey to the Netherworld

A Sumerian Myth in its Scribal and Literary Context
  • Uri Gabbay EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: August 20, 2020
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Abstract

The article presents an edition of a new manuscript of the Old Babylonian Sumerian myth Ninĝišzida’s Journey to the Netherworld from the Louvre museum. The article deals with the complex literary transmission of this composition, known in different versions with much variation. The myth, lamentful in tone, and including Emesal vocabulary and litanies, is compared to the corpus of Emesal prayers, especially the laments over Damu. The myth is also examined in light of an Old Babylonian Akkadian myth on Ninĝišzida’s descent to the netherworld.

Acknowledgements

The tablet AO 8118 edited in this article is published by kind permission of the Louvre Museum. I would like to thank Mr. Mahmoud Alassi for his kind assistance during my visit to the Louvre for collation of the tablet in October 2017. I would like to thank Prof. Nathan Wasserman and Dr. Klaus Wagensonner for sending me photographs of the tablet, which I used for my initial study of it. I thank Prof. Konrad Volk for sending me his preliminary transliteration and photographs of MS 3177, and Prof. Paul Delnero for providing me photographs of VAT 611+ (VS 2, 26), both cited in this article. The tablet treated in Appendix 2 below belongs to a private collection and the photos of the tablet were provided to me via the owner. An earlier version of this paper was read in a joint workshop of the Hebrew University and the University of Geneva held in Geneva in September 2018. I thank Prof. Nathan Wasserman, Prof. Catherine Mittermayer, and an anonymous reviewer for reading and commenting on an earlier version of this article.

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Published Online: 2020-08-20
Published in Print: 2020-08-05

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