Frequently, Sumerian cosmological
speculation found its way into the genre of entertaining instructional
disputations over the relative value of specific phenomena that figured prominently
in their world view, e.g., cereals versus sheep (the two foundations of
Sumerian economy), reeds versus trees (important building materials), hoes
versus plows (principal agricultural implements), or summer versus winter (the
two principal seasons of the region). Such disputations posit that the debate
between the two disputants date from the time of creation itself, or, as the
Sumerians preferred to express it, before anything existed. A prime example of
the genre is the disputation between “Ewe and What”:
When upon the Hill of Heaven and
Earth
An (“Heaven,” father of the gods) had spawned the divine Godlings,--
Since godly Wheat had not been spawned or created with them,
Nor had the yearn of the godly Weaver been fashioned in the Land,
Nor had the loom of the godly Weaver even pegged out,
For Ewe had not yet appeared, nor were the numerous lambs,
And there was as yet no goat, nor numerous kids--
The very names of Wheat, the holy blade, and of Ewe
Were yet unknown to the Godlings and the greater Divinities. . . .
The godly Weaver not having been born, no royal cap was worn;
Lord herald, the precious lord, had not been born;
Shakan (god of the wild animals) did not go out to the arid lands.
The people of those distant days
Knew not bread to eat,
They knew not cloth to wear;
They went about in the Land with naked limbs
Eating grass with their mouths like sheep,
And drinking water from the ditches.
at that time, at the birthplace of the Gods,
In their time, the Holy Hill, they (the gods) fashioned Ewe and
Wheat . . . COS 1:180)
The predications of nonexistence
here, as elsewhere in Mesopotamian literature, were intended to express the
inchoate conditions prior to the creation of the world with its ordered
society. The gods themselves have not been fully formed, certainly not
those patron gods thought to represent the effective power behind various
earthly phenomena. In the Sumerian view, creation consisted as much in
organizing the world and its denizens into a civilized society as in bringing
them into existence. More specifically, in ethnocentric fashion the Sumerians
saw their own society as the apex of creation: when the gods created the world
and organized humankind into various peoples, the gods placed the “black-headed
people” (the Sumerians’ self-designation) at the center of the world and gifted
them with a superior culture based on divine wisdom. (Bernard F. Batto, “The
Ancient Near Eastern Context of the Hebrew Ideas of Creation,” in Batto, In
the Beginning: Essays on Creation Motifs in the Ancient Near East and the Bible
[Siphrut Literature and Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures 9; Winona Lake,
Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2013], 25-26, emphasis added)
Further Reading
Blake T. Ostler, Out of Nothing: A History of Creation ex Nihilo in Early Christian
