Two weeks ago I talked about the impressive scale and epicness of some of the ancient texts that have come down to us. But not every old document contains an Illiad, an Epic of Gilgamesh, or a Mahābhārata. And that is honestly a relief, as our understanding of human life in the distant past would suffer if we had only these kinds of texts at our disposal.¹ Luckily we do possess writings from those days that deal with smaller affairs. And these texts can have just as much of an impact on the modern reader as any epic. An especially poignant example is the subject of today: the Assyrian Elegy.² In this text, a deceased woman tells the story of her death and laments her existence in the hereafter. It is a beautiful composition which, though it was written in a time long since passed, still evokes all too familiar emotions with its musings on love, mortality, and the indifference of fate.

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Death in Ancient Mesopotamia

I know what you were thinking while reading this subheading… But no, I did not discover a long lost Agatha Christie novel!³ Instead, I want to briefly introduce the ideas about death in ancient Mesopotamia. Because part of our appreciation of the Assyrian Elegy depends on this knowledge. As with any human customs that existed in a large area and over a longer period of time, it is difficult to say anything meaningful about the ideas on death.⁴ Especially, since our sources are often skewed towards those persons who could write or otherwise moved in the upper echelons of ancient Mesopotamian society.⁵ But some throughlines can be discerned, and I will sketch those here.

The Mesopotamian ideas about what happens after you die, are markedly different from the most common views on this subject today.⁶ Instead of a heavenly abode or even a fiery pit, the Mesopotamian Netherworld appears to have been a dreary place which resided physically underground – and could thus be reached by accident! – in the proverbial bowels of the earth.⁷ One’s existence there is described by many Assyriologists as a bleak and unfulfilling facsimile of the lives lived in the world above.⁸ As is stated in an often quoted passage from the myth The Descent of Ištar to the Netherworld: “[t]he house where those who enter are deprived of light, where dust is their food, clay their bread. They see no light, they dwell in darkness […].”⁹ All and all, we can safely state that life after dead does not seem to be very appealing. And we can also find few prospects beyond this austere afterlife. Unlike the Ragnarök of Norse mythology, for instance, indications of an eschatology are far and few between.¹⁰ It has to be said, though, that not all our sources paint such a disparaging picture.¹¹ Significantly, as shown by Caitlín Barrett, some grave goods imply that alternative conceptions of the afterlife were in circulation.¹² In any case, if one was buried and mourned properly, one could make the arduous journey to this Netherworld and the existence that was waiting for them there.¹³

We don’t have much information on this journey, or even the Netherworld itself, before the so-called Ur III-period, which lasted from ca. 2110 to 2003 BCE.¹⁴ But when a more complete picture emerges in our sources, we see roughly two routes that connect the Netherworld with the abode of the living. There was, in the first place, the journey that the newly deceased had to undertake. And this was an undertaking, indeed! They had to cross a demon-infested wilderness, navigate the river of the dead – the Khubur or Ḫubur river, which was patrolled by a ferryman – and pass the seven gates that guarded the Netherworld.¹⁵ In addition, there was a different route, that could be utilized by demons, and was taken by babies about to be born and those fortunate dead who could visit their families periodically. This passage connected the rivers of the earth with the Netherworld through the Abzu or Apšu, that is the watery halls of the god of wisdom, which were thought to separate the worlds of the living and the death.¹⁶

Many of the emotions that are evoked by the Assyrian Elegy, I would argue, are connected to the ideas referenced therein, which concern this harshly envisioned Netherworld and the perils on the way thereto. And it is to that text and those emotions that we will turn now.

How the Assyrian Elegy Escaped Oblivion

The Assyrian Elegy had to travel a long and winding road to achieve its current recognition. The clay tablet on which it is inscribed was excavated in the 19^th century CE and brought to the British Museum in the United Kingdom in the 1850’s.¹⁷ It was found in the famous library of the 7^th century BCE Assyrian king Aššurbanipal, which stood in ancient Nineveh, modern Kuyunyik.¹⁸ When the text was studied, it was initially primarily appreciated for its linguistic peculiarities. This aspect was deemed so interesting that many early publications of the text even forego a proper translation!¹⁹ From the 1970’s onwards, this changed, and today there are many editions to which students of the Assyrian Elegy might turn.²⁰

Despite this accessibility, the Assyrian Elegy still presents something of an enigma. It does not, for instance, seem to fit established literary categories, like religious or folk poetry.²¹ As such, its goal and use elude us. And the medium on which the text was written does not offer many clues in this regard, as the clay tablet does not bear a title or references to its use.²² This is in contrast with other ancient texts from Mesopotamia, that were denoted or recognizable as, for example, usable in liturgies or stage performances.²³ And the aforementioned linguistic peculiarities remain, well, peculiar. The spelling of the Assyrian Elegy is uncommon. There are, for instance, unexpected vowels that follow words and that cannot be explained through ancient spelling conventions or grammatical necessity.²⁴ But these riddles, that are still left to scholars to solve, might be said to pale in comparison to the impact of the contents of the text.

Reading the Assyrian Elegy

As our appreciation of the Assyrian Elegy hinges on understanding the context wherein it was written, part of which we explored above, I will not offer an uninterrupted translation here.²⁵ Instead, I will present one stanza at a time and reveal the heartbreaking background, before moving on. My analysis here is largely adapted from a wonderful article on the topic, written by Andrew George, which I highly recommend.²⁶ But, without further ado, let’s start reading!

l. 1:“Why are you lost, like a boat midstream?
l. 2: Your trusses broken, your ropes severed?
l. 3: Why do you cross the river in the middle of the city, veiled in a shroud?”
l. 4: “How could I not to be lost, how could my ropes not be severed?”

The elegy opens with three questions, presumably asked by the husband of the deceased woman.²⁷ That the woman has died we are able to glean from line 3, wherein she is said to have crossed the river in the middle of the city and being clothed in a shroud – both images commonly associated with the harrowing journey to the hereafter.²⁸ Because the subterranean Netherworld was colloquially known as the Great City.²⁹ In line 4, the woman begins formulating her answer: how could she not be lost, considering her current predicament?

l. 5: “On the day that I was with child, how happy I was!
l. 6: Happy I was and happy was my husband!
l. 7: On the day of my pains, a shadow fell across my face,
l. 8: on the day my labor started, brightness faded from my eyes.”

And this predicament is cruel indeed. Because the woman was pregnant and her and her husband both rejoiced. But, presumably, when her labors began, something went terribly wrong. And their happiness turned to despair, when she found herself on the cusp of death.

l. 9: “With my hands opened, I prayed to Bēlet-Ilī:
l. 10: ‘Oh mother of those who give birth, spare my life!’
l. 11: But when Bēlet-Ilī heard me, she veiled her face:
l. 12: ‘[Who are] you and why do you keep praying to me?’ “

In her utter anguish, the woman tells, she implored Bēlet-Ilī to spare her life. Bēlet-Ilī is the Mesopotamian mother goddess who was thought to have fashioned humankind.³⁰ And in this capacity, as George argues, she might be held responsible for the care regarding those who suffer through the birthing process that she once created.³¹ The goddess, though, appears to be unable to intervene and seems to mourn this impotency. And this is understandable, because she may have given life to us, but it was understood that she was unable to stave off death.³²

l. 13: “[My spouse, who] loved me, raised his voice:
l. 14: ‘[… has robbed me] of my wife and comfort?
l. 15: […] through all eternity,
l. 16: [… for] ever in the place of ruin!’”

The woman’s account of her death now shifts from her prayers to the reaction of her husband.³³ As with the beginning of line 12, this part of the clay tablet on which the text was written is unfortunately very damaged. This is indicated, as is customary in Assyriology, by square brackets. The text within these brackets is therefore a modern restoration, while the presence of three dots indicates that even the most dedicated Assyriologists had to throw in the proverbial towel!³⁴ But the heartbreak shines through nonetheless. And it isn’t hard to empathize with the disbelief that the husband expresses. Would we not all feel this way when experiencing such a moment, in which we realize that the loss of a loved one is eternal?³⁵ Interestingly, George relates this expression of mourning to the most famous bereavement in ancient Near Eastern literature, the loss of Enkidu as experienced by his friend Gilgamesh.³⁶

l. 17: Passing through the city’s [streets, the woman’s shade] cried:
l. 18: “[Ah, in those] days, when I was with my husband.
l. 19: I lived with him, who was my lover.
l. 20: Then death slunk stealthily into my bedroom.”

The Elegy now shows us the deceased woman in the Netherworld proper, again referred to as a city. And from that grim place, she laments the life that she has lost. Especially poignant here is the description of how she was taken from the bedroom, a place normally associated with marital comfort.³⁷ But the real gut punch is saved for the ending of her lamentations from down in the Netherworld, which also concludes the text as a whole.

l. 21: “From my house he drove me forth,
l. 22: from my husband he cut me off.
l. 23: My feet were set in a land from which there is no return.”

Where up until now the Assyrian Elegy could be divided into stanzas of four lines each, in a sharp contrast the last stanza leaves us with a mere three lines. And the deafening silence of the absence of that fourth line communicates the lamentable and unalterable fate of the deceased woman probably as movingly as any words could have done.³⁸

Conclusion

A quote that is often brought up within the context of studying history, and which originated in the 1953 novel The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley, states: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”³⁹ But I’d wager that some things never change. And this would include the sadness felt with the passing of a loved one, as well as the mix of emotions experienced when one feels death draw near – whatever fate one believes waits thereafter.

It was not only the universal appeal of the Assyrian Elegy, though, that lead to the study of this one text out of the hundreds of thousands of text fragments from Mesopotamia that are currently known. The attention of scholars was also drawn by the way in which this text could be connected to other documents from antiquity and by the aforementioned linguistic peculiarities that could be found therein.⁴⁰ But especially the study of the latter matter can prove difficult because of all the damage to the clay tablet, as indicated by the parade of dots and brackets! One would therefore need a robust knowledge of the cuneiform script in which the text was written and the Akkadian language in which it was presumably composed, to be able to fill in the gaps. Next week, we will take our first steps on the road to acquiring such knowledge, when I discuss the cuneiform sign that became the current logo of Bildungblocks.

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References

1. Marc van de Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Inc, 2016), p. 3-6; Mario Liverani, The Ancient Near East: History, Society and Economy, Translated by Soraia Tabatabai (New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, 2014), p. 5.
2. Erica Reiner, Your Thwarts in Pieces, Your Mooring Rope Cut: Poetry from Babylonia and Assyria (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985), p. 85-93.
3. I refer here, of course, the 1936 novel Murder in Mesopotamia, see: Agatha Christie, Murder in Mesopotamia (New York: Harper Collins, 2016).
4. Jo Ann Scurlock, “Death and the Afterlife in Mesopotamian Thought”, in: Jack Sasson (ed.), Civilizations of the Ancient Near East (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1995), p. 1883; Dina Katz. “Beyond the Future: Mesopotamian Perceptions of the Very End”, in: Hilary Marlow, Karla Pollmann & Helen van Noorden (eds.) Eschatology in Antiquity: Forms and Functions (London: Routledge, 2021), p. 20.
5. This is, naturally, an oversimplification. For more nuance, see: Benjamin Foster, “Transmission of Knowledge.” In: Daniel C. Snell (ed.), A Companion to the Ancient Near East (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2020), p. 263-264; Helga Vogel, “Death and Burial”, in: Harriet Crawford (ed.), The Sumerian World (London: Routledge, 2017), p. 419-420.
6. Scurlock, “Death and the Afterlife in Mesopotamian Thought”, p. 1883.
7. Ibidem, p. 1886-7; Vogel, “Death and Burial”, p. 428. Though, as said, traditions may differ throughout space and time, see: Dina Katz, “Mesopotamia”, in: Sarah Iles Johnston, Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 478-479.
8. Scurlock, “Death and the Afterlife in Mesopotamian Thought”, p. 1886; Jerrold Cooper, “The Fate of Mankind: Death and Afterlife in Ancient Mesopotamia”, in: Hiroshi Obayashi (ed.), Death and Afterlife: Perspectives of World Religions (New York: Praeger, 1992), p. 25; Jean Bottéro, Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia, translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2001), p. 107-108.
9. The Descent of Ištar to the Netherworld, l. 7-9; Stephanie Dalley (ed.), Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 154.
10. Katz “Beyond the Future”, p. 19.
11. Vogel, “Death and Burial”, p. 426-429.
12. Caitlín Barrett, “Was Dust Their Food and Clay Their Bread? Grave Goods, the Mesopotamian Afterlife, and the Liminal Role of Inana/Ishtar”, Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 2007, 7 (1), p. 8-10.
13. Scurlock, “Death and the Afterlife in Mesopotamian Thought”, p. 1886.
14. Vogel, “Death and Burial”, p. 428; Van de Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East, p. 67.
15. Scurlock, “Death and the Afterlife in Mesopotamian Thought”, p. 1886; Hannes Galter, “Hubur”, in: Karel van der Toorn et al (eds.), Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (Leiden: Brill, 1999),  p. 430-431.
16. Scurlock, “Death and the Afterlife in Mesopotamian Thought”, p. 1886-1887; Jeremy Black & Anthony Green, Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992), p. 27, 75.
17. Andrew George, “The Assyrian Elegy: Form and Meaning”, in: Sarah Melville and Alice Slotsky (eds.), Opening the Tablet Box: Near Eastern Studies in Honor of Benjamin R. Foster (Leiden: Brill, 2010), p. 203.
18. Gert Prinsloo, “Suffering Bodies – Divine Absence: Towards a Spatial Reading of Ancient Near Eastern Laments with Reference to Psalm 13 and an Assyrian Elegy (K 890)”, Old Testament Essays 2013, 26 (3), p. 786; Van de Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East, p. 265.
19. George, “The Assyrian Elegy”, p. 203.
20. For the most important editions, see: Rainer Albertz, Persönliche Frömmigkeit und Offizielle Religion (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1978), p. 53-54; Reiner, Your Thwarts in Pieces, p. 85-93; Benjamin Foster, Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature (Bethesda: CDL press, 2005), p. 949. A clear copy of the cuneiform is provided in George, “The Assyrian Elegy”, p. 214.
21. Reiner, Your Thwarts in Pieces, p. 85.
22. Ibidem.
23. Jeremy Black & William Tait, “Archives and Libraries in the Ancient Near East”, in: Jack Sasson (ed.), Civilizations of the Ancient Near East (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1995), p. 2199.
24. Reiner, Your Thwarts in Pieces, 90-91.
25. My translation is largely based on Reiner’s, as cited in: Scurlock, “Death and the Afterlife in Mesopotamian Thought”, p. 1886. I supplement her translation with my own insights, as well as those offered by George, especially where the text is damaged. For the latter’s edition, see: George, “The Assyrian Elegy”, p. 203-216.
26. Ibidem.
27. Scurlock, “Death and the Afterlife in Mesopotamian Thought”, p. 1886. Andrew George is less sure of this, and thinks that it could also be the father or brother of the woman, see: George, “The Assyrian Elegy”, p. 208.
28. Ibidem, p. 207-208.
29. Walter Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011), p. 293.
30. Black & Green, Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, p. 132-133; Gwendolyn Leick, A Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Mythology (New York: Routledge, 1998), p. 64, 119-121.
31. George, “The Assyrian Elegy”, p. 209.
32. Ibidem.
33. Prinsloo, “Suffering Bodies – Divine Absence”, p. 789-790.
34. The three dots mark gaps in the text or an untranslatable word, see: Jean-Jacques Glassner, Mesopotamian Chronicles, edited by Benjamin Foster (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004), p. xvii.
35. George, “The Assyrian Elegy”, p. 210.
36. Ibidem.
37. Ibidem, p. 211.
38. Ibidem, p. 212-13.
39. Clifton Hood, In Pursuit of Privilege: A History of New York City’s Upper Class and the Making of a Metropolis (Chichester: Columbia University Press, 2016), p. ix.
40. For an example of the former, see: Prinsloo, “Suffering Bodies – Divine Absence”, p. 773–803.