Gonzalo Rubio

“Enlil and Namzitara” Reconsidered

Four decades ago, Miguel Civil (1977) published “the brief, but fortunately complete tale” (Civil 1977: 65) of “Enlil and Namzitara.” In that publication, Civil deployed all the virtues ascribed to him by Samuel Noah Kramer (1991): “a sharp eye and a photographic memory” that made him “a master at identifying” Sumerian literary fragments, “making ‘joins’ whenever possible, and assigning them to the right compositions;” a “special flair and talent for matters technological;” and “an affinity for, and attraction to, lexicographical problems and details” which made him “the unchallenged master” of Sumerian lexicography. To Kramer’s concluding encomium – “original, innovative, creative, extraordinarily productive, and (justifiably) self-confident” – one only need add warm, congenial, and extraordinarily generous. The initial publication of a Sumerian literary text is never the last word on that composition, and a number of scholars made small improvements to our understanding of “Namzitara” before it was re-edited together with the later bilingual version from Emar (published only after Civil’s first edition; see Civil 1989: 7) by Bendt Alster in 2005 (327–38).1 More recently Yoram Cohen (2010, 2013) and I (Cooper 2011) have returned to the composition, Cohen more interested in the wisdom aspects of the text, especially in its Late Bronze Syrian iteration,2 whereas I focused on the Old Babylonian version and its puns, as well as the interpretation of a recurring Sumerian phrase as nam-mu tar-ra “Bless me!” rather than nam mu-tar-ra “the one who determines destinies.” Wilfred Lambert (2013: 286–87) offered a different take on that phrase in his explication of our tale’s Enmešara episode, for which see below. Yet after all has been said and done, Miguel’s succinct description of the composition forty years ago remains absolutely on target: