Lord of the Abzu || Hymn to Enki

Hymn in G# minor, arranged for strings, oud, duduk, music box, gongs, choir and voice. The Sumerian lyrics in “Lord of the Abzu” were, by quite a large margin, the most challenging to produce. Linguists classify Sumerian as a “language isolate,” meaning that it has no clear relationship to any other known language, past or present. The surviving record of Sumerian consists almost entirely of cuneiform texts written on clay tablets. This means it is not possible to start with modern-day languages and work backwards. The starting point is the original cuneiform. The lyrics are taken from the Sumerian poem “Enki and the World Order.” The poem is a kind of hymn to the god Enki, who brought order and civilization to the world. I tried to find the original cuneiform tablets to use as source material but was unable to. It may be that the tablets are locked away in a museum somewhere. It’s also possible that the poem does not survive on a single tablet but was reconstructed from multiple sources. Here are the first four lines represented in Unicode cuneiform signs, as generated by AI: 𒀭𒊭𒈪𒄄 𒈤 𒀀𒊺𒁺𒆠𒂵 𒁺𒁀 𒄑𒍣𒋗𒁉 𒀀𒈾 𒆠𒀀 𒆪𒇻𒆷 𒀭𒂗𒆤 𒈗 𒀊𒍣𒆠𒁉𒀀 𒀊𒍣 𒀀𒉣𒁺𒆠𒈬𒌅𒋛 𒉆𒂷𒇴 𒈬𒁕𒀭 I don’t know how closely this AI-generated sign sequence corresponds to the original text or to the signs on surviving tablets. The next step was to transliterate the cuneiform into a Latin alphabet: ušumgal maḫ eridug-ga gub-ba ĝissu-bi an ki-a dul-la en-ki lugal abzu-ke₄ abzu eridug-ĝu₁₀-še₃ nam-galam mu-de₆ I have more confidence in this version because it can be checked against the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, a major scholarly project at the University of Oxford. The subscripted numerals designate different sign values. The hyphens do not separate syllables. They are a scholarly way of showing how the signs and grammatical elements have been grouped together, meaning we’re still quite some distance from establishing how the words would have been pronounced. That requires a separate step where we turn the scholarly transliteration into an English “performance spelling”: Oo-shum-gal mah Eh-ree-doog-ga goob-ba / The great dragon stands in Eridu Gish-shoo-bee an kee-ah dool-la/ His shadow covers heaven and earth. En-kee loo-gal Ab-zoo-keh / Enki, Lord of the Abzu, Ab-zoo Eh-ree-doog-goo-sheh / King of the deep and hidden waters. While I have some confidence in the English translation, I’m less certain about the pronunciation. For pronunciation, scholars often rely on Akkadian cuneiform. Akkadian-speaking peoples—including Babylonians and Assyrians—lived alongside the Sumerians in Mesopotamia for many centuries and eventually adopted the Sumerian cuneiform writing system for their own Semitic language. Akkadian scribes sometimes used the syllabic values of cuneiform signs to represent sounds, providing clues to how Sumerian words and names were pronounced. Ancient scribes also compiled bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian glossaries, sometimes adding information about pronunciation and interpretation. In addition, Sumerian names and words were passed into Akkadian usage; “Enki” and “Eridu” are examples from the song. #sumerians #enki #abzû #just intonation