| 词条 | Sumerian creation myth |
| 释义 |
The earliest record of a Sumerian creation myth, called The Eridu Genesis by historian Thorkild Jacobsen,[1] is found on a single fragmentary tablet excavated in Nippur. It is written in the Sumerian language and dated to around 1600 BC.[1] Other Sumerian creation myths from around this date are called the Barton Cylinder, the Debate between sheep and grain and the Debate between Winter and Summer, also found at Nippur.[2] SummaryThe beginning of the tablet is lost, but at the point of the story where the surviving portion begins, it describes how the gods An, Enlil, Enki and Ninhursanga created the Sumerians and comfortable conditions for the animals to live and procreate. Kingship then descends from heaven, and the first cities are founded: Eridu, Bad-tibira, Larak, Sippar, and Shuruppak. After a missing section in the tablet, we learn that the gods have decided not to save mankind from an impending flood. Zi-ud-sura, the king and gudug priest, learns of this. In the later Akkadian version recorded in the Atra-Hasis Epic, Ea, or Enki in Sumerian, the god of the waters, warns the hero (Atrahasis in this case) and gives him instructions for building an ark. This is missing in the Sumerian fragment, but a mention of Enki taking counsel with himself suggests that this is Enki's role in the Sumerian version as well. {{anchor|Sumerian flood myth}}Flood mythAfter a missing section in the tablet, we learn that the gods have decided to send a flood to destroy mankind. The god Enki (lord of the underworld sea of fresh water and Sumerian equivalent of Babylonian god Ea) warns Ziusudra, the ruler of Shuruppak, to build a large boat (the passage describing the directions for the boat is also lost). When the tablet resumes, it is describing the flood. A terrible storm raged for seven days and nights. "The huge boat had been tossed about on the great waters." Then Utu (Sun) appears and Ziusudra opens a window, prostrates himself, and sacrifices an ox and a sheep. After another break, the text resumes, the flood is apparently over, and Ziusudra is prostrating himself before An (Sky) and Enlil (Lordbreath), who give him "breath eternal" for "preserving the animals and the seed of mankind". The remainder of the poem is lost.[3] The Epic of Ziusudra adds an element at lines 258–261 not found in other versions, that after the river flood{{sfn|Lambert|Millard|1999|p=97}} "king Ziusudra ... they caused to dwell in the land of the country of Dilmun, the place where the sun rises". In this version of the story, Ziusudra's boat floats down the Euphrates river into the Persian Gulf (rather than up onto a mountain, or up-stream to Kish).{{sfn|Best|1999|pp=30–31}} The Sumerian word KUR in line 140 of the Gilgamesh flood myth was interpreted to mean "mountain" in Akkadian, although in Sumerian, KUR did not mean "mountain" but rather "land", especially a foreign country. LegacyA Sumerian document known as the Instructions of Shuruppak, dated by Kramer to about 2600 BC, refers in a later version to Ziusudra. Kramer stated "Ziusudra had become a venerable figure in literary tradition by the middle of the third millennium B.C.".{{sfn|Kramer|1967|loc= p.16, col.2}} Other flood myths with many similarities to the Sumerian story are the story of the Dravida king Manu in the Matsya Purana, the Utnapishtim episode in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Genesis flood narrative found in the Bible. The ancient Greeks have two similar myths from a later date: The Deucalion and Zeus' flooding of the world in Book I of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Ziusudra and XisuthrosZi-ud-sura is known to us from the following sources:
In both of the late-dated king lists cited above, the name Zi-ud-sura was inserted immediately before a flood event included in all versions of the Sumerian king list, apparently creating a connection between the ancient Flood myth and a historic flood mentioned in the king list. However, no other king list mentions Zi-ud-sura. See also{{Portal|Literature|Ancient Near East|Mythology}}
Notes1. ^1 {{cite book|author1=Thorkild Jacobsen|editor1-last=Hess|editor1-first=Richard S.|editor2-last=Tsumuro|editor2-first=David Toshio|title=I Studied Inscriptions from Before the Flood: Ancient Near Eastern Literary and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis|date=1994|publisher=Eisenbraun's|isbn=978-0931464881|page=129|url=https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=g5MGVP6gAPkC&pg=PA129&dq=Eridu+Genesis.+Nippur&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAGoVChMI4ImL2PiCxwIVhNWACh01nwD6#v=onepage&q=Eridu%20Genesis.%20Nippur&f=false|accessdate=30 July 2015}} 2. ^{{cite book|author=Ewa Wasilewska|title=Creation stories of the Middle East|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sMj1tyho3CoC&pg=PA146|accessdate=23 May 2011|year=2000|publisher=Jessica Kingsley Publishers|isbn=978-1-85302-681-2|pages=146–}} 3. ^Black, J.A., Cunningham, G., Fluckiger-Hawker, E, Robson, E., and Zólyomi, G. (1998) The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. Oxford. 4. ^http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.8.1.3# Translation of versions of The Death of Gilgamesh 5. ^http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.5.2.5# Translation of The Poem of Early Rulers 6. ^George, A. R. (2003) The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts. Oxford University Press 7. ^http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.5.6.1# Translation of The Instructions of Shuruppak 8. ^Speculated by Samuel Noah Kramer as deriving from sources from as early as 2500 BC, Kramer concluded that "Ziusudra had become a venerable figure in literary tradition by the middle of the third millennium B.C." , (Samuel Noah Kramer "Reflections on the Mesopotamian Flood," Expedition, 9, 4, (summer 1967), pp 12-18.) External links
5 : Mesopotamian mythology|Sumerian literature|Creation myths|Flood myths|Clay tablets |
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