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Our Assessment:
B+ : a fine edition of a significant work, with very good supporting material See our review for fuller assessment.
(* review of a different translation and edition) From the Reviews: - Return to top of the page - The complete review's Review:
Enuma Elish is an almost complete 1095- (or 1096; both figures are mentioned here ...) line Akkadian poem, recorded on seven Tablets; it is the second-longest surviving Akkadian poem, after Gilgamesh.
[As a footnote in the Introduction helpfully explains: "Assyriologists distinguish between ‘tablets’, which are the physical manuscripts on which the story survives, and ‘Tablets’, which are the subdivisions of the story that were written on one tablet each, corresponding to the songs of a classical epic or the episodes of a modern TV series"]
Readers have long been quite well-served by editions offering a translation of the text and supporting material, including several that include -- as this one does -- a transcription of the Akkadian text.
[As is explained here: "A transcription of an Akkadian text renders it as a sequence of words, while a transliteration renders it as a sequence of cuneiform signs, and it is the former convention that has been adopted here: readers who wish to read a transliteration of the text, including a synoptic overview of the differences between the preserved manuscripts, are advised to consult the eBL website".
While the cuneiform text is of interest as well, the transcription -- in recognizable-glyph form -- give readers a much better idea of the sound of the poems.]
This edition presents a new translation of the text, as well as an Introduction and then thirteen essays addressing various aspects of it and its history and influence, over three sections: 'The History of the Epic', 'Major Themes', and 'Poetics and hermeneutics'.
When heaven on high had not been named(The poem's opening words are: enūma eliš -- literally: 'when on high' or 'when above' --, which is then also the commonly-used title.) Several generations of gods arise, with powerful Ea turning on Apsû: He bound Apsû and killed him,And: Ea rested calmly within his chamber,There: "the expert of experts, the sage of the gods, the Lord, was conceived" -- Marduk --, and it's clear that: "he was mighty from the start". Taunted that she did not come to Apsû's assistance, Tiamat looks to avenge him, creating eleven fearsome gods to take down Ea (and Marduk). Ea looks to challenge Tiamat but quickly turns tail, admitting: "Tiamat's doings are beyond me". Eventually, Marduk is called upon to take on Tiamat and her band -- with the acknowledgement that he is: "the most important among the great gods", and that they are willing to give him: "kingship over the entire world, all of it". Unsurprisingly -- but quite dramatically -- Marduk is successful -- and upon this triumph builds the world as we know it (or at least as they knew it back then), literally constructing heaven and earth out of Tiamat's remains: "he let the Euphrates and Tigris flow from her eyes" and: "He heaped her breasts into lofty mountains", for example. Then Babylon, and its centerpiece, the Esagil -- a temple for Marduk --, are constructed -- a huge undertaking, with them needing a whole year just preparing the bricks for it ..... When all is completed, the gods join in for a grand banquet, whose highpoint is the giving of the fifty names to Marduk. The epic is not entirely easy to follow, not least because of the shifting natures of Apsû and Tiamat, as well as the powers and relationships between various gods. Nevertheless, the basics are clear enough, and there are genuinely gripping parts. Translator Sophus Helle notes in the Introduction that: "Enuma Elish is one of the most stylistically impressive poems in Akkadian" -- and that: "even by the standards of Standard Babylonian poetry, Enuma Elish is exceedingly fond of rare words". The latter point may escape most readers, but the facing-page transcription does at least give some impression of how, as Helle also notes: "The text brims with wordplay". Footnotes also point to some of this, as in: The opening words of this and the preceding line form a neat symmetry: ikmīšū-ma, ‘he bound him’, and īkimšū-ma, ‘he took from him’. This line also contains a key pun on the words šīmāti, ‘destinies’, and lā simatīšu, ‘not his right’.Or when another pun: "on mālakšu, ‘his advance’, which suggests malakšu, ‘his king’" is pointed out to readers. And, while having the cuneiform text proper might also be of some interest (or at least aesthetic appeal), the transcription at least opens up a bit more of the text to readers. (Those looking to delve more deeply into the original text can do so easily at the remarkable eBL site, where their version of this text uses the same Adrian C. Heinrich transcription (and offers a slightly different English translation facing it).) The thirteen essays that go along with the text and translation cover a wide range of subjects and provide considerable welcome added insight into the work, its history, and its impact. Beginning with Enrique Jiménez's essay on the dating of the work -- difficult to do, because there's so little useful external evidence as to its possible dates --, the first section deals with historical aspects of the work, including essays on the cuneiform reception and then 'Enuma Elish outside the cuneiform tradition', as well as Gina Konstantopoulos on 'Monstrous mothers and metal bands: Enuma Elish today' which, yes, as well as noting some classical compositions inspired by the work points out that: "The other, far more prominent musical reception of Enuma Elish is in the metal genre". The second section considers 'Major Themes', such as Johannes Haubold considering 'Divine rhetoric: Enuma Elish on communication and emotion', in which he notes: Like other cosmogonies, Enuma Elish describes how order emerged from chaos. Its treatment of communication mirrors this arc: we begin with a chaotic burst of noise (I 21-4) that culminates in a first moment of communicative breakdown. By contrast, the poem ends with an extended passage of harmonious unisono speech in which the gods acclaim their newly minted king (VI 121–VII 136).(He also offers the interesting titbit that: "According to my calculations, the total is 587 of 1096 lines (53.5 per cent) devoted to character speech".) Haubold also notes, for example: As order emerges from chaos over the course of the text, dysfunctional forms of communication such as ‘shouting’ (šasû) and ‘plotting’ (kapādu) give way to the proper exercise of ‘counsel’ (milku) among characters who accept their place in society, contain their emotions, and know to distinguish good from evil. Within this arc, the early tablets of Enuma Elish introduce both the ideal of communication through counsel and some of the pathologies that threaten communicative breakdown, chief among them unchecked emotions. As the narrative progresses, the importance of calming those emotions emerges ever more clearly.Meanwhile, Karen Sonik looks at 'Gender, motherhood, and power in Enuma Elish' -- noting also that the work is: "today read primarily as a political narrative rather than a creation myth". A final section covers 'Poetics and hermeneutics', with, for example translator Helle writing on 'The shape of water: Content and form in Enuma Elish', noting that: Enuma Elish depicts the world as a fundamentally fluid matter that was bound by Marduk into shapes that then acquired their identity in language, meaning that language, according to the epic, carves out specificity from an originally shapeless state. But because the epic is itself made of language, it does not chart this transition neutrally: it is actively invested in the world of words, and I will argue that the epic recreates in its own poetic form the shift from liquid to language, participating in the creation of order out of water.More manageable in size (and price) than Lambert's landmark Babylonian Creation Myths, this volume is an excellent overview-edition of the text, presenting the (transcribed) original as well as a solid translation, and a very good variety of essays dealing with many different aspects of the work. The essays are academic, but approachable enough for the lay-reader, and offer some very interesting observations and information. This is also the first volume in a new series, 'The Library of Babylonian Literature' -- which is generously also being made available open-access -- and it's a very good start. - M.A.Orthofer, 22 May 2025 - Return to top of the page - Enuma Elish:
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© 2025 the complete review
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