Ištar, Still Descending

[sovay]

When I wasn't looking, some miscreant did my throat over with a cheesegrater and stuffed my head with cork. In other words, I seem to be sick. (A word to the wise: never translate German archaeological articles with a head cold, while listening to Peter Pears' Winterreise in bitterly freezing January. That way lie very strange moods.) So here is a very small portion of Ištar's Descent to the Underworld and a rather fragmentary one at that—but to make up for the brevity and general presence of ellipses, I offer variant lines from the Aššur manuscript [bracketed]. Admittedly none of these lines contain the really impressive mistakes, like confusing the living and the dead in Ištar's threat in line 20, but useful lines to be supplied in a translation aren't so bad either.

I promise, more underworld next week . . .

atû pâšu īpušma iqabbi
izzakkara ana rabīti ^dIštar
izizī bēltī lā tanaddaši
lullik zikirki lušanni ana šarrati ^dEreškigal
ērumma atû izzakkara . . .
annītu mê ahātaki ^dIštar . . .
mukiltu ša keppê rabûti . . .
^dEreškigal annīta ina . . .
kīma nikis bīni ēriqu pānuša
kīma šapat kunini islima . . .

[atû pīšu ippušma iqabbi
izzaqara ana ^dBalate . . .
izizī bēltu lā . . .
qerbiš qa'î . . .
siqirki lušanna . . .
ērub atû iqtabi . . . ^dEreškigal
annû ahātki izzaz ina (bābi). . .
mukiltu ša keppê rabûti . . .
dālihat apsî mahar ^dEa . . .
^dEreškigal annīta ina šamîša
kī nikis bīni ēriqu pānuša
kīma šapat kunini islima šabātuša]

The gatekeeper spoke up and said,
he said to great Ištar:
"Stay, lady, do not throw it down,
let me go and repeat your name to the queen Ereškigal.
[Wait inside . . .]"
The gatekeeper went and said [to Ereškigal]:
"Your sister Ištar is here, [she is waiting at the gate,]
the holder of the great skipping-rope,
[who stirs up the sweetwater abyss before Ea]."
When Ereškigal [heard] these things,
her face turned green-pale like a cut tamarisk,
her [lips] turned dark like the rim of a basin.

(Lines 21—30 of Ištar's Descent to the Underworld, manuscript from Nineveh; 19—30, Aššur.)

Comments

[greyselke.livejournal.com]

many thanks for these Ishtar snippets, i am now excited to begin reading the poem sometime this semester. But for now, off to look at the first three lines of Hammurabi's code . . .

and i hope that you become unsick quickly! (bans hostile cheesegraters and corks from Sonya's presence)

[sovay]

(Best remove the sharp objects, too. It's been one of those weeks.)

Thanks! Have fun with Hammurabi. (Lots of awīlum šū iddâk. Occasionally some rittašu inakkisū too, I think.) Will you put your own translit and translation online? We'll have an Electronic Text Corpus of Akkadian Literature yet . . .

[kraada.livejournal.com]

Think about how much the Dead Linguists of Tomorrow will love you if you do . . . That is, linguists of dead languages . . . not linguists who happen to be dead . . . unless of course they happen to be zombie linguists of dead languages . . . :)