Mesopotamian Myths Retold as Children's Literature

Introduction: The Origins of Mythological Storytelling

The oral tradition of storytelling has existed perhaps since the times when human beings began to gather in groups around fires, long before the dawn of what we would now call civilization. Eventually these stories became the mythology of their cultures and were written down, in one form or another, for posterity. One of the earliest renditions of this literature can be found in the clay tablets from the Mesopotamian civilization retelling the tale of Gilgamesh.

The first known and recorded epic would appear to be the legend of Gilgamesh, sung to the harp by Sumerians and recorded in clay some 3,000 years before Christ. It exalts the wondrous exploits of Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, and celebrates his friendship with Enkidu. It probes the mysteries of life and whatever lies beyond it. (Saxby 2004:254)

While it is true that in many cases parts of the clay tablets are still lost and the full text of much of the myth is not directly known, it has been pieced together from other sources. We know, for instance, that Gilgamesh was the "semi-legendary King of Uruk and hero of the Akkadian Gilgamesh Epic, which was based on myths that had existed for centuries in Sumer." (Cotterell 1986:27)

In the edubba ("tablehouse"), or school, the ancient works — epics, omen literature, prayers, and the wisdom corpus — were copied diligently by scribes who were themselves organized in a kind of guild system and deeply imbued with the idea of tradition. The schools were associated with temple and palace and served the purposes of those institutions. (Murphy 1981:10) These clay tablets were produced by Sumerian and Babylonian scribes.

The ancient land of Mesopotamia was situated between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and was the site of many different cultures, such as the Assyrian Empire in the north and the Babylonian kingdom in the south. The two most well-known capitals of these were Nineveh, belonging to the former, and Babylon, belonging to the latter. Both have been the subject of myth, fact, and fiction over the succeeding centuries. (Thomas 2008:899)

Mesopotamia was an area where many different ethnic groups and cultures mingled. This original melting pot blended and re-imagined many traditions while a subconscious force also shaped these divergent cultures into a "common mold:"

…in a kind of ever-renewing synthesis, into which was absorbed, to a large extent, the heritage of more ancient cultures, at once assimilated and modified. Thus we may speak of Sumerian, Amorite, Babylonian, or Assyrian historiographies. Furthermore, wherever a temple or palace was built, intellectual activity flourished; schools grew up in all cities where the literate strove to cultivate their particular skills. (Glassner 2005:3)

Many scholars believe that the influence of Mesopotamian mythology is predominant in Western culture and has shaped not only that mythology but the parables of many religions as well. Perhaps, as Jung might say, these stories represent archetypal allegories that resonate with all cultures, and it is natural to adopt them as meaningful interpretations of deeper philosophical significance.

Jung, whose theory has been criticized for demanding a vast knowledge of myth, did not perceive the unconscious as an instinctual and libidinal battleground, although he posited a "primitive psyche" in the child that functions in dreams and fantasies comparable to the physical evolution of mankind in the embryo. (Bosmajian 1999:103)

Consider the simple Mesopotamian proverb: "The tallest man cannot reach heaven; the widest man cannot cover the mountain (or earth)." This single sentence espouses themes found throughout many mythological literatures that express the limitations of human existence. (Greenspahn 1994:33) The Tower of Babel comes to mind — a structure reaching toward heaven that was ultimately unsuccessful, reflecting the limitations of corporeal existence as compared to that of God.

For the Bible, the line between the human and the divine may not be breached — at least not by humans, who must stay in their place and wait for God to make His presence known. Presented in poetry and in prose, this concept was often communicated using the language of an ancient Mesopotamian proverb, which provided the imagery with which Biblical authors expressed this profound conviction of Israelite theology. (Greenspahn 1994:41)

No less significant are the tales of human creation and destruction presented in the various forms of the Great Flood mythology, which appears in almost all cultural mythologies in one form or another with strikingly similar narrative. For instance, "Hunab, or Hunab Ku, 'the single god,' the remote creator deity in Maya belief, renewed the world after the three deluges which poured from the mouth of the sky serpent." (Cotterell 1986:212) There are also the Aztec Creation Legends, which tell that the "first earth" with its inhabitants was destroyed by a great flood caused by Atonatiuh, the water sun. (Sykes 1993:23) Furthermore, Nu'u — the Hawaiian Noah — escaped a great flood in a large vessel with a house on top. "Having landed at the summit of a mountain on Hawaii and sacrificed kava, pig, and coconuts to heaven, the god Kane descended on a rainbow." (Cotterell 1986:285)

There is also a tendency in many cultures to posit several cycles of creation, not just one, as in the example of the "first earth" in the Aztec legend cited above. This has several effects: it creates an impression of order springing from chaos, suggests that everything in creation proceeds in a preordained way, and makes it possible to locate the present moment within that order. This periodization can be a source of comfort — knowing where one stands in the scheme of things. (Collins 1998:64)

Children's Literature: History and Theory

The tale of the Great Flood has also been a favorite in children's literature, perhaps because of the many animals featured in the story and the heroic effort to save them. This will be discussed in further detail later in this paper, as the example story presented here is the tale of the Great Flood as retold from the versions that have survived from ancient Iraq, written in both Sumerian and Akkadian (see Appendix I).

While these Mesopotamian myths and tales have been transferred into Western culture through transliterations into other stories, the original — and perhaps even more poetic — narratives have largely been lost. It is the concern of this paper that this should no longer be the case, and that these wonderful stories and allegories find their way back into the twenty-first century through children's literature. While Greek and Roman mythology still holds a foothold in this genre, Mesopotamian parables do not. Even Beowulf has conquered a new generation of moviegoers, but Gilgamesh remains more alien to most. It should be noted, however, that a Mesopotamian deity did make an appearance in a quite popular book turned film, The Exorcist: "The demon, identified in the novel as Pazuzu, was a genuine character in Mesopotamian mythology: a demon associated with the wind." (Cull 2000:46)

In order to understand the importance of these lost texts in the realm of children's literature, an exploration of the genre is in order. Children's stories have taken many forms over time, ranging from instructional tomes to fantastic allegories — the latter generally more popular than the former. For the purposes of this study, however, the literary content of children's literature is the main focus: its narrative import, its allegorical representations, and its broader cultural inferences.

Initially the definition seems simple: "The definition of 'children's literature' lies at the heart of its endeavor: it is a category of books the existence of which absolutely depends on supposed relationships with a particular reading audience: children." (Lesnik-Oberstein 1999:15) Yet this is certainly the adult categorization of the genre and not the full meaning behind the literature. "The evolution of the word 'books' to 'literature' reveals the increasing sacralization of discourse on reading for children. For a good long time, 'children's books' seemed like a suitable phrase to describe the genre." (Lundin 2004:142) As Lundin also points out, sometime in the 1950s the genre actually changed from "children's books" to "children's literature." She attributes this shift to two key works: Meigs's Critical History of American Children's Literature and Lillian Smith's The Unreluctant Years: A Critical Approach to Children's Literature. "Both texts highlight the genre as part of literature." (Lundin 2004:143)

The children's illustrator and writer F. J. Harvey Darton delineated the split between instructive books for children and children's literature proper. He stated that by children's literature he meant "printed works produced ostensibly to give children spontaneous pleasure and not primarily to teach them, nor solely to make them good, nor to keep them profitably quiet." (Darton 1932/1982:1) Here the quest is for the capture and promotion of children's imagination through stories and fables that please as well as enlighten — with the additional benefit that once a child learns to love reading, he or she will read many more things with greater enthusiasm.

The children's literature genres developed in Mesopotamia and in Egypt over a roughly 1,500-year period — proverbs, fables, animal stories, debates, myths, instructions (wisdom literature), adventure and magic tales, school stories, hymns and poems — and passed down to the Hebrews and the Greeks. The Old Testament owes much to both Mesopotamian and Egyptian literature. (Adams 2004:230)

Children's literature is nothing new to either civilized or pre-civilized cultures, and has always held a level of importance in all societies. There is also a genre known as Wisdom Literature, which includes fables, stories, and tales of mythology. As far as this writer is concerned, children's literature belongs within this category as well. By using allegorical representations of myths and legends, stories become lessons in how to live life. This is another reason that the mythology of Mesopotamia is important — it conveys a broader array of creativity than is often recognized. In fact, many scholars believe that literature from this region is far more diverse than commonly appreciated: "Sumerian wisdom, which has come to be translated and understood only in recent times, contains far more genres than those found in Israel." (Murphy 1981:9)

Another important aspect of children's literature is narrative. Since children's literature is intimately involved with storytelling, narrative is a key element. "Narrative theory is highly relevant to the study of children's literature. One of the profound characteristics of children's literature is the discrepancy between the cognitive level of the sender (adult) and the implied addressee (child)." (Nikolajeva 2004:166) In order for a child to absorb a story, the narrative must be compelling and imaginative, giving both pleasure and arousing curiosity about outcome.

Allegory is certainly another critical area of not only children's literature but of all literature-based mythologies. Allegory creates tales that resonate on deep and fundamental levels and is critical in expressing adult concepts in terms children can understand. Allegory represents "a separate philosophy or sequence of events, for the primary (though not exclusive) purpose of highlighting or inculcating a doctrine or system of belief. An abstract idea or conception organizes and determines the narrative." (Bell 2005:13)

Some prominent examples throughout literature include Everyman, The Faerie Queen, and Pilgrim's Progress. In John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the hero named "Christian" must travel through the dangers of Vanity Fair and the Slough of Despond in order to reach the Celestial City. The allegorical symbolism is almost too overt, verging on didacticism rather than pure allegory.

Mesopotamian myth is especially rich in such allegories and is a relevant source for children's literature on many levels. As noted previously, it has a clear archetypal connection to many biblical stories and may indeed be the origin of several of them. This is especially true of the Epic of Gilgamesh — "the twelve ancient Mesopotamian tablets that make up the epic of Gilgamesh, one of the world's most magnificent poems, among the oldest of writings, and the prototype literary creation that informed Biblical and ancient Greek literatures, among others." (Helbig and Perkins 1997:103) This creates a familiar relevance that both children and adults can relate to. The allegorical riches in Mesopotamian literature are ripe for the creation of children's stories. The writer John Gardner spent eighteen months studying the Epic of Gilgamesh and found that the myths were quite apt at setting the fate of the individual as inextricably linked to the gods whose whims turn the universe — a central theme of "Mesopotamian psychology." (Morris 1982:39) This is especially relevant to children, whose entire universe is almost always under someone else's control, whether parents, teachers, or other authorities.

This transforms into the concept of luck as being sent down from the gods. In fact, there are four words for "soul" in the Mesopotamian language, and "they all have luck as an important shade of their range of meanings, and they all have some relationship to the world of demons and the dead. To experience a lucky stroke, to escape a danger, to have an easy and complete success, is expressed in Akkadian by saying that such a person has a 'spirit'." (Oppenheim 1964:200) There are also many oracles and signs that have great allegorical relevance and play richly on the child's imagination.

While Western culture most commonly associates the Great Flood story with Noah and the Ark, there have been countless versions of it predating the biblical account, as well as many others that arose independently across diverse cultures and lands. The following discussion compares various flood legends against the main points of the biblical version.

Analysis of these traditions reveals that the Assyrian account has a near-complete match with the biblical story. Most researchers now believe that all the flood myths of West Asia are Mesopotamian in origin. They appear at the end of eras — periodic creations and destructions of the world that occur in most cultures' mythologies. Hindu mythology has its Kalpas, and Sumerian mythology also has eras lasting 241,200 years. This periodic rebirth and destruction of civilization was also found in the Mayan civilization:

The Great Flood Across World Cultures

The first world was inhabited by dwarfs, the builders of the great ruined cities; in the second lived the dzolob, or "offenders," an obscure race; the third world saw the Maya themselves; the present one, peopled by a mixture of tribes, will also end with a flood. This alternation of destruction and renewal is a reflection of the duality in Maya religion. Chac, the rain god, tended the new shoots of the tree, while the god of death, Ah Puch, sought to nip off the seed leaves. (Cotterell 1986:212)

The kings of these mythological ages are also reminiscent of the monarchs who existed prior to the biblical deluge. There was also a version of the Gilgamesh flood that predates even those traditions, although it has been largely lost to time:

According to the fragments preserved, when the gods decided to drown mankind, the water god Enki warned the pious and god-fearing Ziusudra, King of Sippar, who built a boat in order to escape the seven-day flood. Later, Ziusudra acquired "life like a god." In Akkadian literature there are two versions of the flood story. (Cotterell 1986:39)

In the Gilgamesh Epic, Utanapishtim is the hero, while in another myth the survivor of the flood is Atrahasis. During the seventh century BC, in Assyrian Mesopotamia, the Atrahasis myth was used as an incantation at childbirth. This also translates into Christian symbolism, where deliverance from the flood came to signify baptism and Noah's ark itself became the symbol of the Church. (Cotterell 1986)

The Epic of Gilgamesh was only fairly recently rediscovered in 1876, when the Assyriologist George Smith successfully deciphered the Chaldean account of the Great Flood from a fragment among the cuneiform tablets accumulating in the British Museum's Kuyunjik Collection. The epic was originally recorded on twelve large tablets totaling 3,600 lines and stored in the great library of King Assurbanipal (ca. 668–627 BC) in Nineveh. Owing to the tablets' sometimes poor state of preservation, only about half of the whole story is known, although understanding has been aided by various minor fragments found elsewhere. (Masako 1995:241) Over time, these various fragments have taken on the shape of what may be the original archetypal flood story.

While strikingly similar to the biblical account, there are also notable differences worth examining. The names are obviously different, but the time frames diverge as well. The flood in the Gilgamesh epic lasts only seven days, while the biblical flood lasts forty days. A sparrow is sent out to find dry land rather than a dove. The most striking difference is that the Noah figure, Utnapishtim, in the Gilgamesh version becomes immortal along with his wife as a divine reward for preserving life, whereas Noah becomes the last of a long-lived line of ancestors — living over six hundred years — but does not live forever.

The mountains where the boats came to rest are also different, yet curiously linked. In the Gilgamesh epic, Mount Nimush is the resting place of the ark after the flood, while in the biblical version, Mount Ararat is the traditional spot. Both Mount Nimush and Mount Ararat are part of the same volcanic mountain chain. Mount Nimush is believed to be what is known today as Pir Omar Gudrun in the Kurdish region of northeastern Iraq, while Mount Ararat lies further north along the same volcanic chain in Turkey. The actual locations for both mountains remain somewhat in debate. Original cuneiform glyphs were translated as Mount Nisir, but more recent scholarship has proposed Mount Nimush or Nimir as the actual word.

The promise never to destroy mankind by flood again also appears in both legends. In Noah's version, a rainbow appears after the waters recede as God's promise. In the Gilgamesh tradition, Enlil's fury prompts Ea to declare: "From now on, Enlil, whenever the raised voices of the people vex you, you must send a lion, a wolf, or even a war to kill some of them — but never again a great flood to kill them all!"

Another intriguing point is that both flood stories may derive from an actual historical event. New evidence suggests there may have been a catastrophic inundation when the Mediterranean Sea overflowed its boundaries and flooded the region. "The freshwater Black Sea was inundated almost overnight 7,500 years ago by a catastrophic flood of Mediterranean saltwater." ("Noah's Flood in the" 2000) The authors of Noah's Flood in the Black Sea, William Ryan and Walter Pitman, both geologists at Columbia University, claim that the freshwater Black Sea was initially created by melting glacial ice. This same process raised sea levels worldwide, causing the Mediterranean to breach the natural dam located at what is now the Bosporus, pouring saltwater into the Black Sea and causing an apocalyptic deluge that submerged thousands of miles of dry land and possibly destroyed thousands of people and hundreds of thousands of animal and plant species.

There is an intriguing verse in the epic that may relate to this merging of waters:

Zinsudra heard the voice of Ea. "What shall I tell my people?" Zinsudra listened well as Ea spoke. "Tell them that the almighty god Enlil and Ea, the god of fresh water and wisdom, disagree. You and your people must go to the Abzu, the magical place where the waters of the earth and the wisdom of the world flow together."

This "flowing together" and the marked representation of the "god of fresh water" certainly take on new significance should the hypothesis of Ryan and Pitman prove correct. This of course raises the question: if there was an actual historic event that could be called the Great Flood, could there also be a real historical personage behind Noah or Utnapishtim?

Furthermore, the intention of the authors of such tales may have been to use history as a vehicle for philosophical or theological meaning, giving them license to take certain liberties in the telling. As Glassner observes of the Akkadian Myth of Erra:

…it is certainly a myth, since the actors are divine and the themes developed are those of Mesopotamian mythology. The content, however, belongs to history, since it refers to events occurring between 1100 and 850. We thus see an astonishing interaction between myth and history, the facts wrested from the time of the gods and projected directly into historical time. The author was not interested in producing a chronicle of past centuries, of which, however, he had a profound knowledge; his aim was to make a theology of them. (Glassner 2005:26)

In the oral tradition of storytelling, the handing down of ever-evolving tales always has some origin in historical fact. It is difficult to predict how the engine of human imagination will retain or transform details as stories migrate from one culture to another.

The intention in the Gilgamesh epic is to explore the meaning of human existence — and more precisely, death. After the death of his companion Enkidu, Gilgamesh embarks on a quest for eternal life. The story of the flood is told as a reminder of the gift granted to Utnapishtim and his wife: "Gilgamesh, grief-stricken, decided that what he wanted was not fame and glory but eternal life. Knowing that Utnapishtim, king of the city of Shuruppak before the Great Flood, had been granted immortality by the gods and still lived at the farthest end of the earth, Gilgamesh set out alone toward the west in search of eternal life… Wandering in the wilderness, beset by wild animals and hunger, he at last reached Mt. Mashu." (Masako 1995)

The impetus for this project stemmed from the desire to write down and retell the stories from ancient Mesopotamia that survived in oral tradition for centuries. There was a personal interest involved, as this writer's husband is British-Iraqi and has a friend who is a translator who could have assisted. Originally the project was to include a research trip to the Middle East to collect these stories first-hand from storytellers in the region. However, due to unforeseen circumstances that trip was not possible. Several resources were available, though, where the oral traditions of Mesopotamia and other regions have been studied and recorded. The Enheduanna Society's ZIPZANG mission was one such resource. ZIPZANG is the Sumerian word for "breath," and the society has catalogued numerous oral stories on their website. (ZIPZANG 2010)