The Meaning of Sacred Names and Babylonian Scholarship

This book explores the remarkable ways by which Babylonian scholars in the second and first millennia BCE understood the names of their gods and goddesses and the places sacred to them in a wide spectrum of texts, ranging from explanatory lists to great religious works. Developing and expounding their religious thinking, these extraordinary scholars elucidated the meaning of sacred names, both obvious and hidden, by etymological and other means, using great erudition, sophistication and invention. Using a substantial text corpus, this study enlarges on the understanding of the ancients’ explanatory approach, which has been previously observed by modern scholars in individual works. The compositions examined here display scholarship that is erudite and highly inventive, making flexible associations in the search for meaning. Tantalising indications of the influence of the spoken word can perhaps be detected in this scholarly written tradition. While previous studies have focussed on the etymological approach of this form of scholarship, this book demonstrates that other, less common, speculative methods are also at work. The detailed classification of the scholars’ speculative methods may inform and provoke further analysis of Babylonian scholarship, a field which is not confined to the explanation of sacred names but has wider application, most particularly in the lexical corpus and the omen tradition and in commentary texts. It is a key tool in the quest for meaning which characterises Babylonian thought.

At the center of the analysis is the extensively annotated edition of the Gula Hymn, which is rich in scientific speculation. This literary text has first been identified by W.G. Lambert as a coherent composition; it combines the tablets KAR 109 +  KAR 343 published by E. Ebeling and the tablets K 232 + K 3371 + K 13776 of the British Museum's Kouyunjik Collection.

Preface and acknowledgements

Chapter 1 Introduction

    1.1 Names

    1.2 Babylonian speculative scholarship

    1.3 The Gula hymn

    1.4 Implications and conclusions

Chapter 2 Babylonian speculative scholarship 

    2.1 Intellectual background 

    2.2 Commentary texts 

    2.3 Sacred names and speculative scholarship 

    2.4 Ancient evidence

    2.5 Modern scholarship

    2.6 Text Corpus

Chapter 3 Speculative scholarship in the text corpus

    3.1 The speculative techniques 

    3.2 The speculative methods

Chapter 4 The Gula hymn

    4.1 The texts 

    4.2 The overlap 

    4.3 Overview of the Gula hymn

    4.4 The context of the Gula hymn

    4.5 Date of composition

Chapter 5 The Gula hymn: Critical edition

    5.1 The Manuscripts 

    5.2 Table of Manuscripts and earlier editions

    5.3 Introduction to the text of the Gula hymn 

    5.4 Transliteration and Translation of the Gula hymn

    5.5 Commentary

Chapter 6 Babylonian speculative scholarship in the Gula hymn

    6.1 Analysis: Speculative interpretation in the Gula hymn

    6.2 Encoded names 

    6.3 Overview: Speculative techniques and methods in the Gula hymn

Chapter 7 Implications and conclusions

    7.1 Babylonian speculative scholarship

    7.2 The Gula hymn 

    7.3 Babylonian speculative scholarship and Jewish scholarship

    7.4 The meaning of biblical names – Babylonian parallels?

    7.5 Conclusion

Appendix 1 Cuneiform copy of BM 34399

Appendix 2 Temples and shrines known only from the Gula hymn 

Bibliographical and other abbreviations

Bibliography

Index