CLA/WLIT 196
Ancient Lyric Poetry

Midterm Essay Topics


1. Author and Audience

The modern concept of "author" has limited validity in relation to ancient Near Eastern texts. There are indeed some cases where a poem is attributed to an individual, for instance some Sumerian divine hymns are attributed to Enheduanna, the daughter of Sargon who was priestess of Ningal in Ur; the bible attributes some genuinely ancient songs to figures like Moses, Miriam, Deborah, etc. In no case however can we be confident that these were the true authors. In the Hittite-Hattic Myth of Illuyankas we are told the name of the priest who committed the poems to the tablet; but it is clear that he was not himself the author of the poems, which are presented as traditional. On the other hand, it is clear in many cases that someone must have written a given poem, even if it draws heavily on traditional style and content. For instance, the royal praise hymns are in the first person singular, giving the impression that he wrote the poem, although in most or all cases he did not. How do we define "author" in this case?

As to audience, we must take into account the following. What is the genre of a poem (royal praise, temple hymn, divine hymn, etc.)? What sort of audience was present in the performance context? How does the fact that literacy was very limited among both general populace and aristocracy come into play? For instance, what  is the function of a poem which was inscribed on a public monument? What divergences may there be between the surface text and underlying messages (see speech-act)?

There is a good discussion of these things in J. Black, Reading Sumerian Poetry (Part One; Part Two)


2. Poetics of Ritual, Ritual Poetics

Here is a nice concise definition of ritual: “[ritual is ]the symbolic dimension of human behavior encoded in a prescribed order of performances, consisting both of things said and of things done, legomena and dromena. A cult is a set of rituals comprising the worship of one deity” (J. G. Westenholz, "The Clergy of Nippur, the Priestess of Enlil")

Ritual practice affects ancient poems in several ways. First one must consider any ritual contexts in which the poem may have been performed (dedication of a temple, Sacred Marriage rite, etc.), and how this might alter our reading of the poem; this gets in to issues of author, audience, reception, intention, and so on (see speech-act).
In some cases there is no internal evidence (that is, information within the poem) about any performance context, ritual or otherwise. In others, like the Hittite texts of Hattic origin (Telepinus, Illuyankas), the text itself contains both the poem and information about the ritual in which it was involved. With the Hattic poems known from the Hittite capital (Kingship in Heaven and Song of Ullikummi = Kumarbi Cycle), any original ritual context may have been lost when these poems were imported to the Hittite world, transforming them into purely literary works. In the Gudea Cylinders, there appear to be 'fragments' of ritual material, as in the allusion to the ritual procedures of making bricks. The Tale of Aqhat begins with a relatively detailed description or ecphrasis of the ritual performed by Danel to enhance his fertility (it also involves a form of incubation). Sometimes ritual seems to leave a fainter impression, as with the frequent use of the number seven as a structuring device even where the context is not overtly ritualistic (seven is well-attested in ritual actions).


3. Speech-Act

See definitions and examples here.


4. Quellenforschung

German: "The search for sources". This is the philological endeavour of determining the various sources which lie behind a given text. Traditionally it refers to the written sources which a given ancient author may have drawn upon; in this sense it is most applicable to the study of Greek and Latin texts. For the Ancient Near East, where there is virtually no information about authors—and indeed the very notion of "author" may not be applicable—Quellenforschung becomes somewhat different. The sources of the Sumerian King List, for instance, probably included oral epic and actual king lists. Some poems seem to incorporate fragments of ritual language or procedure. The biblical prose account of the exodus—itself a complex of sources according to the Documentary Hypothesis—also incorporates the ancient "Song of Moses and Miriam". The poems Kingship in Heaven and Song of Ullikumm show Mesopotamian gods and theogonic motifs incorporated in a Hurrian mythological environment.