Re: Why so little info about Sumerians?
- From: Joe Bernstein <joe@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 17:24:23 +0000 (UTC)
In article <dngfap$17d$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, I wrote:
> That said, there *is*, as one way to point you toward the academic
> world of things Sumerian, a website where nearly all known Sumerian
> belles lettres are offered in translation. It's challenging reading
> - you might do better, first, to locate Thorkild Jacobsen's <The Harps
> That Once...>, which is an easier introduction. But if that whets
> your appetite for any of what the Sumerians wrote, this website is
> where you can find most of the rest:
>
> <http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/>
Things had already changed when I wrote that.
I was out of town for the weekend; waiting for me when I got back
was a review from the wonderful Bryn Mawr Classical Review of
<The Literature of Ancient Sumer>. Jeremy Black, Graham Cunningham,
Eleanor Robson, and Gabor Zolyomi. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2004. The edition reviewed would be the hardcover (63 British pounds!)
so unless you want to spend a lot, you won't need the ISBN and page
count (but they're 0-19-926311-6 and 372+64 of introduction, just in
case). I haven't checked whether Oxford has done a paperback yet,
but it looks like one would be a reasonable expectation - I'm
*guessing* this is their complement to Stephanie Dalley's <Myths from
Mesopotamia>, which selects from one area of Akkadian literature -
and it might already have come out. Oxford paperbacks run pretty
pricey, but not above $20 or so in the continental US, last I checked.
The BMCR review is online at
<http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2006/2006-01-27.html>.
Briefly, it says that the translations are more readable than
Jacobsen's (wasn't my take on that website, but I haven't put that
much time into reading it yet), but what really makes the book
valuable is *tons* of introductions to make the sheer strangeness
of Sumerian literature less forbidding. (This is also a big part
of why Benjamin Foster's <Before the Muses>, a Big Book of Akkadian
Literature, is so valuable. Besides the fact that he includes many
genres Dalley doesn't...) The whole review contains a few other
references, though it isn't really a portal to All Things Sumerian.
The review does not make it clear whether the book includes *all*
the translations at the website, but my guess would be that it
doesn't. The review *does* make it clear that I originally
remembered right that Jeremy Black - founder of the website as
well as lead author of the book - has died, and I was wrong to
refer to him in the present tense a few days ago.
Joe Bernstein
--
Joe Bernstein, writer joe@xxxxxxxxxxx
<http://www.panix.com/~josephb/> "She suited my mood, Sarah Mondleigh
did - it was like having a kitten in the room, like a vote for unreason."
<Glass Mountain>, Cynthia Voigt
.
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