Praises of the Beneficient Kings

Praise of King Uruk-agina 1-20

Praise of King Gudea

Praise of King Ur-Nammu 21-40

Praise of King Schulgi 41-100

The Lament for Sumerr and Urimm 101-160

Lug-albanda in the Mountain Cave 161-200

Introduction

Our oldest written records come from the civilization of Sumer, which arose in around the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is now southern Iraq. The chief cities such as Uruk, Nippur, Ur, and Lagash play a prominent role in the history of the region, being built and destroyed many times over, as wars developed between the city states and between them and the surrounding tribes.

The Uruk period, 3,750-3150 BC, saw the emergence of warrior kings, magnificent temples, intensive agriculture by means of irrigation, and the first pictographic writing in 3300 BC. The early kings gained mythical status, most notably in the case of Lugualbanda and Gilgamesh, whose myths have survived.

Pictographic writing evolved into the cueiform script, made with a reed pressed into soft clay. As clay lasts far longer than vegetable materials, Sumerian cuneiform documents dating as far back as 3100 BC have been found.

A flourishing cuneiform literature in the Sumerian language developed, reaching its peak in the centuries around 2000 BC. The Sumerian language is not part of the Indo-European group and was replaced in the second millenium by Semitic languages as tribes from the Western deserts and elsewhere moved into the fertile crescent and conquered the area, giving rise to the civilizations of Babylon and Assyria.

Some insight into Sumerian values can be gained from praise poems written for kings. While the kings may not always live up to this praise they show the type of achievments that they wished to be remembered by. The ones used here to provide characteristic extracts praise King Urukagina (or, Uruinimagina, circa 2350 BC) and King Gudea (2141-2122 BC), who ruled from Lagash, and the kings Ur-Nammu (2112-2095 BC) and Shulgi/Culgi (2094-2047 BC), who ruled from Ur.

King Urukagina appears as a social reformer, getting rid of gross abuses of power that had taken hold in Lagash. He ruled for only eight years, after which the abuses must have returned, because Gudea, a few centuries later, instituted similar reforms. Gudea was also an energetic builder of temples, the most elaborate being at Girsu. The surviving text describing its construction provides insight into the richness of his city state and the dispersed regions from which Sumer acquired resources. As he is not recorded as a constant warrior, many of these materials were probably acquired in trading.

King Ur-Nammu is famous for the Ziggurats he built, predecessors perhaps of the pyramids of Egypt, but without a tomb chamber. He also actively developed canals and irrigation systems and promulgated the earliest written legal code that has been discovered (an alternative view is that it was set down by his son Shulgi). The fragment found shows some humaness in the Summerian king, in that did not adhere to the eye-for-an-eye type of retribution found in the later law code of the Semitic king, Hammurabi. For his son, Shulgi we have a very elaborate praise poem, showing him taking pride in leadership, good government, public works (canals, irrigation, gardens, lodges), fairness, humanity, writing skills, ability with languages, and musicianship.

The splendid cities of these kings were continually destroyed, either by other city states or by invaders. Laments for the fall of cities against the onslaught of attackers, often described as a storm, show recognition of the horrors of war and of the great loss that occurs when a civilization collapses. It also gives us a sense of the level of civilization achieved at Sumer.

The lament for the downfall of Sumer and Urim (2004 BC) records the disastrous fall of the gifted Third Dynasty of Sumer. The attack was from the people of Elam and Sua, who invaded Sumer from mountainous regions to the north. Ur itself fell after a long and bloody siege, which is described within the lament.

Epics like that of 'Lug-albanda in the Mountain Cave', show compassion towards the sick and give insight into individual resourcefulness, as well as proving some understanding of how related myths of resurrection may have arisen later. The myth of Gilgamesh is described in the writing of the Babylonian scribe Sin-leq-unnini.

The extracts below cover these various topics. In these extracts, Enlil is the chief god of Sumer; and Utu is the sun, or the sun god.

Introduction by Rex Pay

Praises of the Beneficient Kings CHAPTER ONE

Divisions 1-20

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