Title:
Akkadian Tablet Translations: The Epic of Atrahasis 3/6

Description:
Translated by: Dr. Stephanie Dalley, a former teacher of the Akkadian language at the Universities of Edinburgh and Oxford and is now Shillito Fellow in Assyriolology at the Oriental Institute, Oxford and a Senior Research Fellow of Somerville College. She also has worked on various excavations in the Middle East and has published cuneiform tablets found there by the British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq. http://www.orinst.ox.ac.uk/html/staff/?member=dalley ATRAHASIS Atrahasis the wise man, who built an ark and saved mankind from destruction, is a figure of immense prestige and antiquity to whom various literary and religious traditions were attached. He was known by a variety of names and epithets which were translated into different languages, sometimes with reinter­preted meanings, sometimes abbreviated, and in this way his fame spread over huge distances through a span of some five thousand years. In Mesopotamian literature he was the survivor of the Flood, together with his wife, and was granted a form of immortality by the great gods. The story of the Flood was one of the most popular tales of ancient times, and is found in several ancient languages, reworked to suit different areas and cultures so that different settings and details are found in each version. The specific information which follows helps to illustrate how widely diffused the man and the story became in the ancient world. ATRAHASIS IN HISTORY According to one version of the Sumerian king list, in the years just before the Flood swept over the earth, Ubara-Tutu (who is named as the father of Atrahasis in Gilgamesh) was king of Shuruppak, modern Tell Fara in central southern Mesopotamia, where some of the earliest writings known in the whole world have been unearthed. According to a different version of the Sumerian king list, Atrahasis, called there by his Sumerian name Ziusudra, himself ruled the city Shuruppak, preceded by his father who was named like the city, Shuruppak and who was presumably regarded as the eponymous ancestor of the citizens there. A wisdom composition known as The Instructions of Shuruppak is now attested on clay tablets from the Early Dynastic period in the early third millennium bc, and contains sage advice given by Shuruppak to his son Ziusudra. Thus Atrahasis was a notable figure at the dawn of history, and literary tradition was attached to him at an extremely early period. THE NAMES OF ATRAHASIS 'Extra-wise' is the meaning of his name in Atrahasis; he is Ut-napishtim and Uta-na'ishtim in Gilgamesh, a name which can mean 'He found life'. Sumerian Ziusudra is an approximate translation of Akkadian Ut-napishtim together with his epithet, in which the element sudra corresponds to Atrahasis' epithet ruau, 'the far-distant'. The name used by Berossus2 for the survivor of the Flood is Xisuthros, probably a phonetic rendering of Ziusudra. Prometheus, Deucalion's father, may possibly be an approximate Greek translation of Atrahasis, and it is just pos­sible that an abbreviation of (Uta)-na'ish(tim) was pronounced 'Noah' in Palestine from very early times. Atrahasis is also found as the name or epithet of a man who features in a Hittite story about Kumarbi. It has been suggested that the name Ulysses, used by the Romans for Odysseus, comes from the Hittite ullu(ya)s, as a translation of Atrahasis' epithet 'the far-distant', and that the names Odysseus and Outis may be based on a pronunciation of the logogram for Ut-napishtim, which is UD. ZI.3 The name or epithet Atrahasis is used for the skilful god of craftsmanship Kothar-wa-hasis in Ugaritic mythology, and is abbreviated to Chousor in the Greek account of Syrian origins related by Philo of Byblos. A similar abbreviation is used in the name of the Islamic sage Al-khidr (also called al-Khadir), who guarded the Fountain of Life, and gave water from it to King Sakhr (meaning 'rock') who thus became immortal. This episode is related, in one of the Arabian Nights, to the Gilgamesh of Islamic narrative, Buluqiya, who, having travelled through many lands, lost his faithful adviser Affan in a fruitless attempt to obtain the ring of Suleiman, with which he might travel to the Fountain of Life and drink the water of immortality. The name Al-Khidr here bears a new etymology, 'the green one'. Al-khidr as a holy man of Islam is buried at Baniyas on the Golan Heights, where a tributary of the Jordan river gushes out of a rock. In all these appellations it is impossible to distinguish a 'real' name from an epithet. Peace

Author:
2013andBeyonD

Tags:
Atrahasis, Sumerian, Tablet, Translations,