Abgal/Apkallu/the Seven Sages
Jan 18, 2008 23:50:25 GMT -5
Post by us4-he2-gal2 on Jan 18, 2008 23:50:25 GMT -5
Thread Orientation: I am here attempting to add some notes and discussion to the topic of the Apkallu with hope's this will act as a supplement to Madness' wonderful survey of the scholarly disalog surrounding the Sacred tree. Fortunatly the Seven Sages represent a slightly less dense subject matter, although theres plenty to expand on..;]
An Overview of the Apkallu across Mesopotamia (vertically) as provided by Kenton Sparks:
"According to early Mesopotamian tradition, the proper order of all
things divine and human was depended upon the ME (a plural Sumerian
term, rendered parsu in Akkadian), those powers and properties of the
gods enabled civilized human life. Human success was achieved by
living in harmony with the pattern (Gis-Hur) determined by the ME,
and failure was the expected result in the absence of these divine
resources. In Mesopotamian tradition, these fundamental patterns for
civilization were transmitted from the gods to humanity when the god
Enki/Ea revealed his wisdom to pre-flood sages called the apkallu,
who were in turn succeeded by a series of post-flood scholars known
as ummanu. These primeval ummanu were then followed by a class of
human ummanu, so that, according to the Mesopotamian understanding,
the wisdom tradition followed a line from Enki, to the apkallu, to
the heroic ummanu, to the human ummanu of historical time (although
we should note that omen wisdom traditionally took a somewhat
different path, being revealed by the gods Samas and Adad to
Enmeduranki, an early king of Sippar [see Lambert 1967]. Even during
the historical period itself, it seems that the ummanu were
theologically committed to the idea that the gods were involved in
their work."
The Antediluvian Apkallu:
In his article and assessment "On the Antiquity of Sumerian Literature", W. W. Hallo writes that the Mesopotamians themselves were given to attempts at establishing the antiquity of their own literature and its surrounding lore, and the Seven Sages were a feature in these explanations. The author draws attention to a tablet published in 1962 by van Dijk which comes from the Seleucid period - what is unique about this tablet is that "for the first time, the names of all the seven sages are given in their full cuneiform version, and linked with, or even dated to, the seven antediluvian kings known from certain versions of the Sumerian King list."
Although I don't have van Dijk's article, Fortunately, Bel Murru had prepared at his site an illustration here where one can see the pairing of antediluvian king and sage. From this resource the names of the antediluvian apkallu are available as they are featured on the Uruk List:
Although the only text to explicitly name the early sages and to associate them each with an antediluvian king is from a fairly late tablet, the idea of seven sages that pre-dated the flood is attested in earlier periods. Hallo comments elsewhere "The antediluvian sages "were considered 'culture heros' bringing arts and civilization to Sumer, all seven were originally linked with Eridu as early as old Babylonian times, as is clear from the temple hymn for Ku'ara." The was the house of Asarluḫi, Ku'ara a town neighboring Eridu. The relevant lines from the Hymn read:
(etcsl t.4.80.1)
138-139: Kuara, your foundation and just banqueting hall, the lord who does not hold back his goods stands ready for admiration. The Seven Sages have enlarged it for you from the south to the uplands.
As the ePSD entry above indicates, apkallu is the Akkadian equivalent of the Sumerian abgal, so the Sumerian here for Seven Sages is "abgal 7-e". The Epic of Gilgamesh also makes reference to the seven sages when Gilgamesh at the end of his journey says "Walk on the city-wall. Examine it closely. Is it not made of the finest bricks, as though the seven sages before the flood laid its foundations?" In OB incantations, abgal sometimes refers to a sage at the court of Eridu, and FAOS 12 line 59 reads "I am Adapa, [sage of Eridu]" the word here translated sage is abgal. Most likely this line is an example of 'Priestly Legitimation' by which the priest establishes his prerogative to act on behalf of the deity and to mediate between divine and temporal domains (Following Cunningham 1997). But it is from later sources, particularly Neo-Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian sources, that most relevant details come.
The Importance of Antiquity:
That the Babylonians regarded Antiquity as the measure of authority when it comes to the wisdom tradition, becomes apparent in the repeated occurrence of the sages and the re-occuring reference to the secrets of the gods, or to the secrets of heaven and earth. Adapa, the first antediluvian sage and the sage of Eridu, is known to us from a later myth in which he is granted broad understanding but not eternal life by Ea. The myth of Adapa may have had a strong import to Neo-Assyrian kings, as the Annals of Ashurbanipal attest to; Within these texts, Ashurbanipal states "Marduk master of the gods, granted me as a gift a receptive mind (lit., wide-ear) and ample power of thought". This is a deliberate allusion to the granting of divine wisdom by Ea (the broad-eared) to Adapa." He further tells us that "the art (lit., work) of the Master Adapa I learned (lit., acquired), the hidden treasure of all scribal knowledge, the [signs] of heaven and earth." (My thanks here go to Daniel Sulliven.)
Additionally, Lambert has made a study of the legendary origins of the arts of the diviner, which interestingly, stretch back to Enmeduranki the 7th antediluvian king (or conceivable his sage, the two figures being somewhat confused.) Divine origin was central to the ancient view of omen literature, and In "Enmeduranki and Related Matters" (JCS 21) Lambert translates a late text which explains how the knowledge of divination craft, the craft of the bārû priest, was conferred on Enmeduranki by the gods Šamaš and Adad. Part of which reads:
1. Shamash in Ebabbara [appointed]
2. Enmeduranki [king of Sippar],
3. the beloved of Anu, Enlil [and Ea].
4. Shamash and Adad [brought him in] to their assembly,
5. Shamash and Adad [honored him],
6. Shamash and Adad [set him] on a large throne of gold,
7. They showed him how to observe oil on water, a mystery of Anu, [Enlil and Ea],
8. They gave him the tablet of the gods, the liver, a secret of
heaven and [underworld],
9. They put in his hand the cedar[-rod], beloved of the great gods.
Elsewhere Lambert treats tablets dealing with the qualifications of the potential bārû priest for not just anyone were admitted to what turns out to be a fairly exclusive position, one in which ancient secrets, ostensibly divinely ordained, assisted the practitioner in determining the will of the gods and ultimately in advising the King. Divination was thus a part of a knowledge elite, which Ulla-Koch Westenholz gives some sense of in his comment: "In a sense, all astrology, including the series Enuma Anu Enlil, was certainly considered a part of the secrets of the great gods. In general, these included divination and the scribal arts, tupsarrutu , as a whole, as when Assurbanipal claims to master the "art of wise Adapa, the hidden secret lore (nisirtu), the whole art of tupsarrutu.....The scholarly part of the scribal arts was therefore a jealously guarded secret. One could imagine that while divination in a general way was 'the gods secret' or 'mystery', the various commentary series, which were the key to understanding the divinatory series and the result of much work on them, were marked as the secret of the scholars by the Geheimwissen formula. Some such distinction is indeed found in colophon of ki 1904-10-9,94:26-30 )= Hunger, Kolophone no.519):"Reading of )what has to do with) the great gods is the secret lore of Heaven and Earth. Reading the commentary is the secret lore of the scholars."
Adapa is credited by the late scribes with authoring several cuneiform series, which lends a legitimation and authority to these works. Hallo in noting that several of the Sages names in the Uruk lists are formed with the Sign Ud (interpreted Enuma "when") is inclined to believe the names may actually in themselves by incipients, and refer in turn to other cuneiform series (for example the name of the 4th sage en-me-galam-ma is also the incipient for an OB hymn to Enki and Ur-Ninurta.) Finally Wiggermann (1992 p77) comments on this observation stating "The names of the antediluvian sages are almost certainly not as old as the names of the antediluvian kings: they seem to be derived partly from the titles of literary works."
In Relief and Figurine:
About the fish-garbed figure, B/W on pg. 82 state that it is an image that first occurred in the Kassite period, later passing into the art of the Neo-Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian periods. The figure appears by itself on temple and walls, or doorways or as a figurine it is buried under the floors of buildings and it is clearly a protective figure in these capacity - based on ritual texts surrounding the fashioning of these figurines the later are known to be apkallu. Sometimes on magical plaques the fish-garbed figure is depicted with a patient and in these cases is sometimes interpreted as an exorcist priest
B/W relay that the Griffin demon first appears in middle Assyrian seals, but became very popular in Neo-Assyrian art. In the Neo-Assyrian period , "figures of this type were explained as representatives of the Babylonian Seven Sages" and groups of seven were buried for protective purposes under houses and palaces (sometimes in conjunction with the fish apkallu.) Wiggermann 1992 p.75 adds that the Griffen demon is of Assyrian origin appearing much earlier there than in Babylonia - "In Babylonia from MB onwards, the apotropaic apkallu were viewed as partly man and partly carp; in the first millennium Babylonia takes over the bird apkallu, and Assyrian the fish-apkallu."
In Ritual:
We are fortunate to possess ritual instructions from the series šēp lemunutti ina bīt amēli parāsu, translated 'to block the entrance of an enemy into someone's house' . Among the relevant texts are ritual instructions that make it clear this goal is obtained by carefully crafting apotropaic ritual figurines and by burying them in strategic locations around the house to ensure the occupants are protected. Wiggermann has made a detailed study of these texts, and some details emerge: The figurines of the fish apkallu and bird Apkallu have some of their most prominent attestations in this Apotropaic function and the ritual instructions dictate that 7 bird apkallu were to be underneath the headboard of the bed, while 7 fish apkallu were to be buried underneath the threshold barring entrance to any hostile force. The Apkallu figurines were to be fashioned of clay and "all beings of clay (including the dogs and the apkallu) are called bīnūt apsê, "creature of the Apsû: (I 144): thus they are distinguished from the fro the bīnūt šamê. "the creatures of heaven", being the gods of tamarisk (l 143). The figures of clay are the şalmu sākip lemnūti ša Ea u Marduk, "the statues repelling the evil ones, of Ea and Marduk", stationed in the house "to expel the foot of evil."
The banduddû "bucket"
Wiggermann further details that The Apkallu in relief as well as in figurine sometimes carries the banduddû "bucket", in one hand. In rituals the bucket was filled with water, and it follows that "the exorcist imitates Marduk, who, on the advice of Ea, takes water from the "mouth of the twin rivers", casts his spell over it, and sprinkles it over the sick man." The effect of the sprinkling of holy water is the release (pţr) of the threatened man.
The mullilu "cone"
The most common item in the hands of the Bird Apkallu and the Fish Apkallu is the cone. The item is terms 'purification instrument' and the literal translation of mullilu is "cleaner." Wiggermann adds that the identity of the cone is still being debated: male inflorescence of the date-palm, or cone of a coniferous tree? (The Akkadian term millilu does not give a clue.)
Wiggermann draws some conclusions here, some if which bear on the reliefs featuring also the Sacred tree:
b) One Object, the cone, appears only when the figure in question carries a bucket in its left hand. The value of the cone must in some way be dependent on the value of the bucket.
c) The texts indicate that the bucket contained holy water effectuating "release." As was proposed before, the dependent cone "purifier" (mulillu) held in the right hand activated the holy water, it was a sprinckler (Klengel-Brandt, Rittig, CAD M/1 189a.).
d) The figures carrying buckets (and cones) are engaged in a purification ritual. As will be seen below, this accords well with their function of apkallu.
e) Figures carrying cones point their cone at the sacred tree, the king, the courtiers (stearns AfOB 15 64ff.). Figures standing in doorways and apparently pointing their cones at nothing, are perhaps best thought of as pointing their cones at passing visitors, just as weapons and the gestures of greeting are directed at the visitors, and not at the building.
f) The sacred tree benefits from the activities of the genii, the genii do not need the tree, cf. Stearns AfOB 15 70ff. It is not necessary to understand the meaning of the tree in order to understand the meaning of the figures with bucket and cone. For the tree we refer to Poroda AASOR 24 108ff., Madhloon Sumer 26 137ff, Stearns AfOB 15 70ff. Genge AcOR 33 321 ff., Hrouda BaM 3 41ff., Kolbe Reliefprogramme 83ff., Bliebtrue Flora 37ff., and passsim, Parker Essays Wilkinson 38.
-Who knew the Secrets of Heaven and Earth -
ePSD (32x: ED IIIb, Old Babylonian) wr. abgal2; abgal "sage; priest" Akk. apkallu
An Overview of the Apkallu across Mesopotamia (vertically) as provided by Kenton Sparks:
"According to early Mesopotamian tradition, the proper order of all
things divine and human was depended upon the ME (a plural Sumerian
term, rendered parsu in Akkadian), those powers and properties of the
gods enabled civilized human life. Human success was achieved by
living in harmony with the pattern (Gis-Hur) determined by the ME,
and failure was the expected result in the absence of these divine
resources. In Mesopotamian tradition, these fundamental patterns for
civilization were transmitted from the gods to humanity when the god
Enki/Ea revealed his wisdom to pre-flood sages called the apkallu,
who were in turn succeeded by a series of post-flood scholars known
as ummanu. These primeval ummanu were then followed by a class of
human ummanu, so that, according to the Mesopotamian understanding,
the wisdom tradition followed a line from Enki, to the apkallu, to
the heroic ummanu, to the human ummanu of historical time (although
we should note that omen wisdom traditionally took a somewhat
different path, being revealed by the gods Samas and Adad to
Enmeduranki, an early king of Sippar [see Lambert 1967]. Even during
the historical period itself, it seems that the ummanu were
theologically committed to the idea that the gods were involved in
their work."
The Antediluvian Apkallu:
In his article and assessment "On the Antiquity of Sumerian Literature", W. W. Hallo writes that the Mesopotamians themselves were given to attempts at establishing the antiquity of their own literature and its surrounding lore, and the Seven Sages were a feature in these explanations. The author draws attention to a tablet published in 1962 by van Dijk which comes from the Seleucid period - what is unique about this tablet is that "for the first time, the names of all the seven sages are given in their full cuneiform version, and linked with, or even dated to, the seven antediluvian kings known from certain versions of the Sumerian King list."
Although I don't have van Dijk's article, Fortunately, Bel Murru had prepared at his site an illustration here where one can see the pairing of antediluvian king and sage. From this resource the names of the antediluvian apkallu are available as they are featured on the Uruk List:
- Uanna-Adapa apkallu
- U'anduga apkallu
- Enmeduga apkallu
- En-megalamma apkallu
- An-enlilda apkallu
- En-mebulunga apkallu
[*En-menduranki apkallu
Although the only text to explicitly name the early sages and to associate them each with an antediluvian king is from a fairly late tablet, the idea of seven sages that pre-dated the flood is attested in earlier periods. Hallo comments elsewhere "The antediluvian sages "were considered 'culture heros' bringing arts and civilization to Sumer, all seven were originally linked with Eridu as early as old Babylonian times, as is clear from the temple hymn for Ku'ara." The was the house of Asarluḫi, Ku'ara a town neighboring Eridu. The relevant lines from the Hymn read:
(etcsl t.4.80.1)
138-139: Kuara, your foundation and just banqueting hall, the lord who does not hold back his goods stands ready for admiration. The Seven Sages have enlarged it for you from the south to the uplands.
As the ePSD entry above indicates, apkallu is the Akkadian equivalent of the Sumerian abgal, so the Sumerian here for Seven Sages is "abgal 7-e". The Epic of Gilgamesh also makes reference to the seven sages when Gilgamesh at the end of his journey says "Walk on the city-wall. Examine it closely. Is it not made of the finest bricks, as though the seven sages before the flood laid its foundations?" In OB incantations, abgal sometimes refers to a sage at the court of Eridu, and FAOS 12 line 59 reads "I am Adapa, [sage of Eridu]" the word here translated sage is abgal. Most likely this line is an example of 'Priestly Legitimation' by which the priest establishes his prerogative to act on behalf of the deity and to mediate between divine and temporal domains (Following Cunningham 1997). But it is from later sources, particularly Neo-Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian sources, that most relevant details come.
The Importance of Antiquity:
That the Babylonians regarded Antiquity as the measure of authority when it comes to the wisdom tradition, becomes apparent in the repeated occurrence of the sages and the re-occuring reference to the secrets of the gods, or to the secrets of heaven and earth. Adapa, the first antediluvian sage and the sage of Eridu, is known to us from a later myth in which he is granted broad understanding but not eternal life by Ea. The myth of Adapa may have had a strong import to Neo-Assyrian kings, as the Annals of Ashurbanipal attest to; Within these texts, Ashurbanipal states "Marduk master of the gods, granted me as a gift a receptive mind (lit., wide-ear) and ample power of thought". This is a deliberate allusion to the granting of divine wisdom by Ea (the broad-eared) to Adapa." He further tells us that "the art (lit., work) of the Master Adapa I learned (lit., acquired), the hidden treasure of all scribal knowledge, the [signs] of heaven and earth." (My thanks here go to Daniel Sulliven.)
Additionally, Lambert has made a study of the legendary origins of the arts of the diviner, which interestingly, stretch back to Enmeduranki the 7th antediluvian king (or conceivable his sage, the two figures being somewhat confused.) Divine origin was central to the ancient view of omen literature, and In "Enmeduranki and Related Matters" (JCS 21) Lambert translates a late text which explains how the knowledge of divination craft, the craft of the bārû priest, was conferred on Enmeduranki by the gods Šamaš and Adad. Part of which reads:
1. Shamash in Ebabbara [appointed]
2. Enmeduranki [king of Sippar],
3. the beloved of Anu, Enlil [and Ea].
4. Shamash and Adad [brought him in] to their assembly,
5. Shamash and Adad [honored him],
6. Shamash and Adad [set him] on a large throne of gold,
7. They showed him how to observe oil on water, a mystery of Anu, [Enlil and Ea],
8. They gave him the tablet of the gods, the liver, a secret of
heaven and [underworld],
9. They put in his hand the cedar[-rod], beloved of the great gods.
Elsewhere Lambert treats tablets dealing with the qualifications of the potential bārû priest for not just anyone were admitted to what turns out to be a fairly exclusive position, one in which ancient secrets, ostensibly divinely ordained, assisted the practitioner in determining the will of the gods and ultimately in advising the King. Divination was thus a part of a knowledge elite, which Ulla-Koch Westenholz gives some sense of in his comment: "In a sense, all astrology, including the series Enuma Anu Enlil, was certainly considered a part of the secrets of the great gods. In general, these included divination and the scribal arts, tupsarrutu , as a whole, as when Assurbanipal claims to master the "art of wise Adapa, the hidden secret lore (nisirtu), the whole art of tupsarrutu.....The scholarly part of the scribal arts was therefore a jealously guarded secret. One could imagine that while divination in a general way was 'the gods secret' or 'mystery', the various commentary series, which were the key to understanding the divinatory series and the result of much work on them, were marked as the secret of the scholars by the Geheimwissen formula. Some such distinction is indeed found in colophon of ki 1904-10-9,94:26-30 )= Hunger, Kolophone no.519):"Reading of )what has to do with) the great gods is the secret lore of Heaven and Earth. Reading the commentary is the secret lore of the scholars."
Adapa is credited by the late scribes with authoring several cuneiform series, which lends a legitimation and authority to these works. Hallo in noting that several of the Sages names in the Uruk lists are formed with the Sign Ud (interpreted Enuma "when") is inclined to believe the names may actually in themselves by incipients, and refer in turn to other cuneiform series (for example the name of the 4th sage en-me-galam-ma is also the incipient for an OB hymn to Enki and Ur-Ninurta.) Finally Wiggermann (1992 p77) comments on this observation stating "The names of the antediluvian sages are almost certainly not as old as the names of the antediluvian kings: they seem to be derived partly from the titles of literary works."
In Relief and Figurine:
Fishgarbed figure [fish apkallu]
About the fish-garbed figure, B/W on pg. 82 state that it is an image that first occurred in the Kassite period, later passing into the art of the Neo-Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian periods. The figure appears by itself on temple and walls, or doorways or as a figurine it is buried under the floors of buildings and it is clearly a protective figure in these capacity - based on ritual texts surrounding the fashioning of these figurines the later are known to be apkallu. Sometimes on magical plaques the fish-garbed figure is depicted with a patient and in these cases is sometimes interpreted as an exorcist priest
Griffin demon [bird apkallu]
B/W relay that the Griffin demon first appears in middle Assyrian seals, but became very popular in Neo-Assyrian art. In the Neo-Assyrian period , "figures of this type were explained as representatives of the Babylonian Seven Sages" and groups of seven were buried for protective purposes under houses and palaces (sometimes in conjunction with the fish apkallu.) Wiggermann 1992 p.75 adds that the Griffen demon is of Assyrian origin appearing much earlier there than in Babylonia - "In Babylonia from MB onwards, the apotropaic apkallu were viewed as partly man and partly carp; in the first millennium Babylonia takes over the bird apkallu, and Assyrian the fish-apkallu."
In Ritual:
We are fortunate to possess ritual instructions from the series šēp lemunutti ina bīt amēli parāsu, translated 'to block the entrance of an enemy into someone's house' . Among the relevant texts are ritual instructions that make it clear this goal is obtained by carefully crafting apotropaic ritual figurines and by burying them in strategic locations around the house to ensure the occupants are protected. Wiggermann has made a detailed study of these texts, and some details emerge: The figurines of the fish apkallu and bird Apkallu have some of their most prominent attestations in this Apotropaic function and the ritual instructions dictate that 7 bird apkallu were to be underneath the headboard of the bed, while 7 fish apkallu were to be buried underneath the threshold barring entrance to any hostile force. The Apkallu figurines were to be fashioned of clay and "all beings of clay (including the dogs and the apkallu) are called bīnūt apsê, "creature of the Apsû: (I 144): thus they are distinguished from the fro the bīnūt šamê. "the creatures of heaven", being the gods of tamarisk (l 143). The figures of clay are the şalmu sākip lemnūti ša Ea u Marduk, "the statues repelling the evil ones, of Ea and Marduk", stationed in the house "to expel the foot of evil."
The banduddû "bucket"
Wiggermann further details that The Apkallu in relief as well as in figurine sometimes carries the banduddû "bucket", in one hand. In rituals the bucket was filled with water, and it follows that "the exorcist imitates Marduk, who, on the advice of Ea, takes water from the "mouth of the twin rivers", casts his spell over it, and sprinkles it over the sick man." The effect of the sprinkling of holy water is the release (pţr) of the threatened man.
The mullilu "cone"
The most common item in the hands of the Bird Apkallu and the Fish Apkallu is the cone. The item is terms 'purification instrument' and the literal translation of mullilu is "cleaner." Wiggermann adds that the identity of the cone is still being debated: male inflorescence of the date-palm, or cone of a coniferous tree? (The Akkadian term millilu does not give a clue.)
Wiggermann draws some conclusions here, some if which bear on the reliefs featuring also the Sacred tree:
b) One Object, the cone, appears only when the figure in question carries a bucket in its left hand. The value of the cone must in some way be dependent on the value of the bucket.
c) The texts indicate that the bucket contained holy water effectuating "release." As was proposed before, the dependent cone "purifier" (mulillu) held in the right hand activated the holy water, it was a sprinckler (Klengel-Brandt, Rittig, CAD M/1 189a.).
d) The figures carrying buckets (and cones) are engaged in a purification ritual. As will be seen below, this accords well with their function of apkallu.
e) Figures carrying cones point their cone at the sacred tree, the king, the courtiers (stearns AfOB 15 64ff.). Figures standing in doorways and apparently pointing their cones at nothing, are perhaps best thought of as pointing their cones at passing visitors, just as weapons and the gestures of greeting are directed at the visitors, and not at the building.
f) The sacred tree benefits from the activities of the genii, the genii do not need the tree, cf. Stearns AfOB 15 70ff. It is not necessary to understand the meaning of the tree in order to understand the meaning of the figures with bucket and cone. For the tree we refer to Poroda AASOR 24 108ff., Madhloon Sumer 26 137ff, Stearns AfOB 15 70ff. Genge AcOR 33 321 ff., Hrouda BaM 3 41ff., Kolbe Reliefprogramme 83ff., Bliebtrue Flora 37ff., and passsim, Parker Essays Wilkinson 38.