Introduction
The more recent study of Mesopotamian literature has been prudent in following the course charted by Landsberger’s celebrated, now almost century-old doctrine of a “conceptual autonomy” in Assyriology’s broader approach to Mesopotamian civilization, proceeding to reconstruct and analyze literary texts according to their own parameters.Footnote 1 In so doing, this undertaking has not only moved away from the sorts of questions that had earlier striven to integrate Mesopotamia into a broader Geistesgeschichte;Footnote 2 it has also eschewed – not once with demonstrable, good reason – taking cues from external traditions in assessing more specific matters of interpretation, even on those occasions when parallels with said traditions are undeniable.Footnote 3 Yet even sound doctrine requires ongoing review, as the long history of thought has shown. A reasonable question with respect to the subject at hand involves the certainty of tradeoffs: what is the price of excluding external perspectives from considerations of Mesopotamian literature? Would such a price be only tangential to our understanding of this literature, limited to a better appreciation of Mesopotamia’s legacy in external, later traditions? Or might such perspectives also hold keys to concerns inherent in and even central to the very literature itself?
The present paper attempts to weigh in on these matters by way of a case study, involving Standard Babylonian Nergal and Ereškigal and the so-called Jacob Cycle (Gen 25-35) in the Hebrew Bible.Footnote 4 In fact this comparison, which might initially appear to take up traditions unrelated to one another, is not entirely new. A connection between these – specifically, between the recurring, axial “stairway” (simmiltu) reaching heavens in the Mesopotamian story and a counterpart heavens-bound “stairway” (sullām) that appears to Jacob in his famous dream (Gen 28) – has been observed for some time, although what accounts for it, it is submitted below, has not been convincingly explained. The proper account of which, it is further argued, exposes a considerably broader parallel between the Mesopotamian and Biblical stories that bears common interrelated motifs and themes, which even appear motivated by comparable theological and historical concerns. This parallel is examined below. And so this paper asks: can Mesopotamia’s Nergal and Ereškigal be fairly and meaningfully informed by an appeal to an external tradition, the Biblical Jacob Cycle, in a way that plainly violates modern Assyriological dogma?
Mesopotamia’s simmilat šamāmī and the Bible’s heavens-bound sullām
The idea of a Biblical connection to Nergal and Ereškigal ironically has roots in a 1933 lexicographic note by none other than Landsberger himself, even though he could not have known at that time about the story’s simmilat šamāmī.Footnote 5 More precisely, with the SB version in which the mytheme occurs not yet unearthed, Landsberger’s concern was more rudimentary, simply identifying Akk. simmiltu, “ladder, staircase, stairway,” by way of what he asserted were its West Semitic loans, including Heb. sullām, via metathesis. (It is hard to imagine, however, that the image of “Jacob’s Ladder” was overlooked by him, considering that sullām in the Bible is a hapax [Gen 28:12] and given his reference to Sippar’s “Stufenturm,” the é-kun4-an-kug-ga, at the note’s end.Footnote 6 ) It was not long after Gurney’s publication and edition of the SB version from Huzirina,Footnote 7 with its repeated mention of the simmilat šamāmī (S i 16, [53], [56]; [iv 26]; v 14, 42; vi 18), that a parallel with Gen 28’s memorable image was noted. This came initially in a note by Millard, who, however, explained the common image of a celestial “ladder” only functionally, without its Babylonian “form” necessarily being an influence on the Biblical.Footnote 8 Another brief word appeared some twenty years later in Hutter’s monograph on Nergal and Ereškigal.Footnote 9 Although he did not elaborate on the issue, it appears that for Hutter, who followed Landsberger on Heb. sullām, the stairway imagery in the Babylonian myth and in the Biblical story were not coincidental but rather linked somehow, with differences between them explicable by their different cultural settings.Footnote 10 More recently, Parpola, among others, observed this “striking parallel,” though he said little more about it.Footnote 11
In terms of the nature of the lexemes’ relationship, many have accepted Landsberger’s idea,Footnote 12 while others, troubled by the words’ different genders and radical sequences, have expressed disagreement or reservation, preferring to take these either as wholly unrelated or merely as cognates.Footnote 13 A more prudent, less theoretical approach to the question was put forth by Hurowitz, who, though he did not stand firmly on a particular side (seemingly he favored the cognates option), contended that in the specific literary contexts at issue the terms undoubtably “function identically” and – one assumes intentionally – “act as synonyms.”Footnote 14 What appears below, inter alia, seeks to clarify this position, with which the present writer concurs.
Babylon in Bethel?
Indeed, the setting for Hurowitz’s reflection, a 2006 article titled “Babylon in Bethel: New Light on Jacob’s Dream,” represents an important development in scholarly attempts to explain the Mesopotamian-Biblical parallel (see, however, below).Footnote 15 In that article Hurowitz summarized previous work that had found Babylonian elements in the story in Genesis 28, both on its own and in connection to the Tower of Babel story in Gen 11 (esp. vv. 4, 9). At the center of things stood the mythical sullām, or “stairway,” with its head reaching heaven (rōšô maggî a ʿ haššamaymâ), which to many recalled actual Babylonian temples and their imposing ziggurats. Though there was considerably more than that.
In Gen 28, Jacob, awed by his dream, declares (v. 17) that “this place” (hāmmāqôm hazzeh) – that is, Bethel – is, per its name, bêt ʾĕlōhîm, “the house of God,” further defining the very spot in which his vision was received as šaʿar haššāmāyim, “the gate of heavens.” These words, especially in conjunction with the suggestion in Gen 11 that the planned tower’s top should reach the heavens (rôšô baššamayim), had reminded some of the name of Marduk’s famous Babylon temple, Esagil (“House whose Top is High”). Furthermore, the gate of heavens of Gen 28 appeared to provide a parallel to the native popular etymology of Babylon, bāb ilim/ilī, “the gate of the god/gods.” This possibility found support in the well-known nod to this etymology in the Tower of Babel story (11:9), with Bābel (Babylon) owing its name to the deity’s “confusing” (< bālal) of human language, an overturning of Babylon’s thinking about its language as the source of world order and harmony.Footnote 17
It was in this context that Hurowitz situated the parallel to the sullām of Gen 28 met in Nergal and Ereškigal. As in the Biblical story, the Mesopotamian cosmic simmiltu also connects heavens and “earth” (erṣetu) and also tells of divine messengers (also Nergal and perhaps Ereškigal) ascending and descending (elû/warādu [NE v 14, 42; vi 18]) this stairway, in the precise manner (ʿōlîm wǝyōrdîm [v. 12]) of the Biblical “angels” (= divine messengers). A summary of these points appears in Table 1.Footnote 18
Posited connections between Genesis 11 + 28 and BabylonFootnote 16
All this was already suggestive to Hurowitz of a case of a historical connection, a borrowing – albeit one with notable differences. One prominent example for him related to the way in which the Biblical “Ladder” rests at its bottom on the “ground,” Heb. ʾereṣ, with mention of neither a bottom gate nor a deity to justify the word’s rendering as “netherworld,” in the manner of the erṣetu of Nergal and Ereškigal. This last point was understandable, he continued, in that in Gen 28 the image was necessarily altered, with the bottom half of the “Ladder” lopped off, conceptually speaking. As such, the story presented a fine example of a Biblical (partial) demythologization of a Mesopotamian mytheme, owing to “a theological aversion to Sheol, denying it as a venue of divine human contact,”Footnote 19 with the Bible’s divine messengers having no business below the visible earth.
But how was this historical connection to be explained? For Hurowitz a precious clue hid in a find unearthed from the Babylon of the real world: the extensive Nabopolasar inscription describing his rebuilding of Imgur-Enlil, the city’s inner wall.Footnote 20 That remarkable text is, as suggested by several of its students, rich in allusions to earlier traditions of various sorts, including imagery or ideas met in some of Mesopotamia’s “canonical” writings, including Lugale, Enūma eliš, and Tintir.Footnote 21 A highpoint of which occurs in the highly poetic second column, in which the text’s focus turns to the wall itself, offering in the words of George “an exposition of the wall’s place in cosmology and theology”:Footnote 22
(For) Imgur-Enlil – the great wall of Babylon, the original boundary-post that has been manifest from olden days, the solid border as old as time, the lofty mountain peak that rivals heavens, the mighty shield that locks the entrance to the enemy lands, the wide enclosure of the Igigi, the broad courtyard (kisallu palkâ) of the Anunnaki, the step up to heaven, the stairway down to the netherworld (mēlīt šamāmī simmilat Ganṣir), the station of Lugalirra and Meslamtaea, the outdoor shrine of the great queen, Ištar, the emplacement of the bow of Dagan, the hero, the camp enclosure of Ninurta, the warrior, the temple of the divine protection of Anu and Enlil, the place of the skillful designs of Ea, lord of Eridu, the fortified ground of the great gods, whose foundations the Igigi and the Anunnaki had (originally) installed with the joy of their hearts, (whose work) they had carried out skillfully and (which) they had raised to its top … (ii 8-25).
Of interest presently is the passage’s hailing of the wall, with its imposing height and deep foundation, as the mēlīt šamāmī simmilat Ganṣir, “the step up to heaven, the stairway to the Ganṣir (= the netherworld; l. 15).” Al-Rawi, who first published and edited the text,Footnote 23 had already noted that this and the preceding kisallu palkâ (ii 14-15) recall Nergal and Ereškigal, in the case of the latter Ereškigal’s “broad courtyard,” there rendered palkû kisallu ([S i 27; iii 48 // U iv 3b; vi 29]) and in the former the simmilat šamāmī, an outstanding image in the story and the central artery of its depicted cosmos, the bond of the above and below. What may be said of this image’s constituents? If taken on their own, these are not unique: attestations of simmiltus with figurative senses are well known;Footnote 24 while the Akkadian mention of Ganṣir, once unparalleled, has since been found elsewhere, including in Sennacherib’s “Tablet of Destinies,” which is dignified as “the link (markas) of the canopy of Anu and Ganṣir (B 5).”Footnote 25 But in its reference to Babylon’s actual topography or in historical inscriptions more broadly, this image remains exceptional. Not that this renders its sense ambiguous: for Nabopolassar, who alludes perhaps to Enūma eliš when speaking of himself as “the one who grasps the hoe of the Igigi/the one who carries the corvée basket of the Anunnaki (ṣābit alle ša Igīgī, zābil tupšikku ša Anunnakī [iii 7-8]),”Footnote 26 the Imgur-Enlil stands in, from a cosmological perspective, for Babylon itself.
Here for Hurowitz was the motivation for Jacob’s “Ladder.” More specifically, the story in Genesis 28 was explicable to him in terms of the sorts of theological competitions between rival cities in which one city usurps the claims of another, often more established counterpart, as in the cases of Babylon or Ashur vis-à-vis Nippur.Footnote 27 Read this way, the Biblical story amounts to a theo-political response to Babylon, one that upends that city’s claim as the markasu of heavens and earth, the ultimate conduit to the divine realm. Hurowitz proceeded to contemplate settings for when such a claim could have been made. Although he did not come down in favor of one possibility explicitly, it appears as if his preferred option centers on the Neo-Babylonian period, when Babylon ruled the world and projected to it its monumentality and cosmic incomparability – an image with which all consequently had to contend.Footnote 28
One can appreciate this line of thought, especially given the described connections with the Tower of Babel. But problems remain nonetheless. It seems unlikely, for one, that the Bible would so easily confer such honor at any time to a cult-site that, home to one of Jeroboam’s bulls, was synonymous for it with illegitimacy.Footnote 29 Further, if the mention of the cosmic stairway in the Imgur-Enlil inscription is indeed unique or simply not standard in Babylonian rhetoric or other writings,Footnote 30 then it bears asking how it could have gotten to Judean ears; this brief mytheme is, after all, hardly the equal of the Esagil and its Etemenanki, grand edifices renowned in both real-life and textual representation. There is also no reason why an alleged theo-political dispute could not date from after Babylon’s demise, with Bethel as a stand-in for an Israel that views itself as a sort of “Second Babylon” or, more modestly, the culmination of a translatio studii. Furthermore, there are things left unaccounted for by Hurowitz’s proposed parallel, most notably the dream’s prominent ascending and descending divine messengers. Finally, there exist additional factors to be considered in the appearance of Bethel in Gen 28. One that has seemingly been overlooked relates to the twofold mention (vv. 2, 5) of Bethuel, the paterfamilas from Haran, just prior to the depiction of the dream.Footnote 31 The similarity in names cannot be coincidental. It may be that the choice of Bethel also owes something to the sorts of paronomastic considerations prevalent in ancient Near Eastern divination, oneiromancy included.Footnote 32
There remains, however, a bigger problem still. Hurowitz’s analysis had isolated the passage relating Jacob’s dream from its context, spotlighting Bethel when assuming for the story a polemic raison d’être common today. Left unaddressed, however, was the important matter about the motivation for Jacob’s vision, especially with respect to its timing. The crux of the problem is actually simple: does a reading of the text in the manner Hurowitz proposed adequately explain this precious episode in Jacob’s character development? Or is it more likely that its motivation owes primarily to factors internal to the plot and more psychological in dimension, in keeping with those anxieties that typically lurk behind dreams – modern, but also Patriarchal? It shall be seen that the latter option not only offers a preferred explanation for this Mesopotamian-Biblical parallel but in turn also enables new insights into Mesopotamian literature, specifically Nergal and Ereškigal, even advising on a major crux in that story.
For this a summary of the Jacob Cycle is in order, with an eye on the dream sequence within the broader narrative. The unforgettable story is thankfully well-known and thus will not be treated in great detail, nor with respect to its corresponding secondary literature. A brief recap of Nergal and Ereškigal is also offered below, also taking note of the heavenly stairway in the story’s unfolding.Footnote 33
Overviews of the Jacob Cycle (Gen 25-35) and Nergal and Ereškigal
The Biblical story begins with the report of the exceptional birth of the twins, Esau and Jacob (25:19-26), which depicts an innate drive by the younger to take the place of his elder sibling. This drive is manifest years later, the twins now young adults, in two reported acts of trickery by Jacob. The first instance involves Esau’s birthright (25:31-33), while the second, concerning Isaac’s blessing, finds Jacob, whose physique has been altered, passing himself to his near-blind father as his twin and even answering to his elder brother’s name (27). The parents, partly for fear of Esau’s reprisal, send Jacob off to the family’s ancestral home at Haran (27:42-28:4). He sets out and at evening time reaches a liminal space on the way, where he spends the night and dreams of the stairway and has a vision of Yahweh. To judge from the deity’s promise to him, Jacob is evidently anxious about future entanglements abroad and, consequently, of his inability to return home (28:12-17; cf. 30:43). The following morning he vows eternal devotion to the deity if he is to return home safely (28:18-22). Thereafter he proceeds to Haran, where he meets his cousin, Rachel, along with her father, Laban (29:1-15). Laban is reported to have two daughters (29:16-17): the aforementioned Rachel, alluring in her beauty, and her older sister, Leah, with eyes described as rakkôt, something seemingly more grievous than the “fair” of some modern renderings.Footnote 34 Jacob asks for Rachel’s hand and volunteers to serve Laban for seven years, to which the latter agrees (29:18-20). When the time arrives, Laban holds a banquet, and later at night brings Leah to Jacob (29:21-22). The union is consummated, although only the next morning does Jacob recognize the identity of his wife (29:22-25). Responding to Jacob’s protests, Laban, seemingly aware of Jacob’s earlier scams, explains the local standards (29:26). Jacob must first fulfil the week’s marital obligations for Leah and thereafter may spend another seven years in exchange for Rachel (29:27). This he does, although he remains there for an additional six years after that, during which time many children are born (27:28-30:24; 31:41). Upon further trickery on Jacob’s part (30:37-42) things sour, with Laban and his sons expressing dismay at Jacob’s ill-gotten wealth (Gen 31:1-2). Following divine guidance Jacob escapes along with his family, with Rachel stealing the idols of the family’s dead (31:3-19, 34-35). Laban pursues and catches up to Jacob and establishes a treaty demarcating their respective territories (31:44-54). Jacob now turns back to the matter of his brother. On his way back he confronts divine messengers with whom he mediates his future meeting with Esau (32:2-22). Having demanded a safe entry back into the land, he wrestles with and overcomes one, who in turn bestows Jacob with a second name, Israel, and also maims his leg (32:25-32).
In the case of Nergal and Ereškigal things begin with a heavenly banquet, in the course of which one god, Nergal, lands into trouble by flouting local standards (S ii 6-11). As a result, he is sent off to the distant netherworld home of Ereškigal, who is also his cousin and, in time, his wife. Although advised by Ea against entanglements of different sorts and especially a sexual union with Ereškigal that – it is implied – would land him there permanently (S ii 36-48; ll. 36-42 // U ii 11-15), Nergal ultimately cannot resist her allure (S iv 4-15). The time he spends with her, seemingly known there by another name (discussed below), all but traps him in her land forever (iii 48-iv 20; ll. iii 48-63 // U iv 3-16). Before seven days are up, however, he escapes by way of deceit, returning home via the heavenly stairway (iv 21-26). An attempt to fetch him fails owing to an act of trickery that renders him bald, squinting, and crooked, and initially unrecognizable (S iv 31-32; cf. v 39, 42). Eventually Nergal is forced to return – again the stairway is recalled (S vi 18) – down to the netherworld, with the dead that Ereškigal had threatened to release thus remaining in their proper home. This time the couple’s union is fully consummated, and Nergal’s fate changed irrevocably (S vi 34-49). Still this development, which topples the netherworld’s ancien régime, is not without hostilities, and for Ereškigal perhaps some misgivings as well (S vi 28-33; cf. MB Nergal and Ereškigal r. 39, 42-43). For its part, the heavenly stairway appears in the case of several other journeys in the story by the messengers of the heavens and netherworld (S i 16, [53], [56]; v 13, 42), and it may be assumed in the case of additional journeys by Nergal and Ereškigal. Its place in the narrative, between the two realms, reflects its established place in Mesopotamia’s cosmology.Footnote 35
Nergal and Ereškigal and the Jacob Cycle: Specific and Broad Parallels
The foregoing paves the way for a simpler and more compelling motive for the occurrence and significance of the stairway in Jacob’s dramatic vision, especially as it relates to its timing. The key to which is to be found in an appreciation of the respective protagonists’ main concern: the possibility of their return from their respective journeys. In the Biblical case, Jacob, like Nergal, must leave his home and head to a land that, although home to his future spouses, is nonetheless foreign and understandably foreboding. It is only a small wonder, then, that his roadside dream recalls the iconic, cosmic stairway, which in Nergal and Ereškigal provides the very path that connects Nergal’s home and its antipode. In this respect Yahweh’s promise in the dream to return Jacob to his homeland (wahăšībōtîkā ʾel hāʾădāmâ hazzō(ʾ)t [Gen 28:15]) reads almost as a pointed rejection of an idea of a “land of no return,” Kurnugi (< kur nu-gi4; [// erṣet lā târi]), the common appellation for the Mesopotamian netherworld, which indeed recurs in Nergal and Ereškigal.
But the recognition of the parallel of the stairways also highlights a number of additional similarities between the two stories. These include trickery and pretense of various sorts, involving, among others, bodily deformations and disguises, substitutions of persons and names (Jacob/Esau, Rachel/Leah, Jacob/Israel, Nergal/Erra; discussed below), consummations of marriage or sexual union, along with other similarities, from the reassignments of the protagonists’ birthright or fate to the displacements of the dead or their idols by their female counterparts. A major correspondence that intersects with many of the others and is discussed in greater detail below concerns the role and significance of twins (or siblings) in both stories. And there are possibilities of other parallels still, for instance in the enumeration of different types of wood from which Nergal prepares a throne and Jacob rods for sheep-breeding purposes, which in both cases are intended for trickery while the two are in their respective foreign lands.
Needless to say, there is also a good deal that differs between the stories. By no means do they align squarely, such that, on the basis of the evidence presented, no claim is made here of the Bible’s direct knowledge of Nergal and Ereškigal, not to speak of the relationship as a case of intertextuality. It may well be that what is discussed here owes partly to other versions of the story, whether known directly or via intermediaries.Footnote 36 And it is certainly the case that other traditions, some Mesopotamian in origin, provided ingredients to the broad Jacob Cycle.Footnote 37 Nor should it be ruled out that common folklore motifs may stand behind some of the parallels in the stories. A cursory glance at the standard indices makes it plain that many of the topics of the parallels touched on above – including banquets, divine and human twins, substitution of lovers or their identities, hairiness or hairlessness, and other bodily deformities – are among the more common elements and themes in folklore recorded worldwide.Footnote 38
At the same time, what is laid out here goes considerably further beyond the parallel of an isolated mytheme, which in any case, as discussed, is otherwise unknown in the Bible. The many parallels pointed to above cast strong doubt on the likelihood that the Mesopotamian image of a heavenly stairway represents an isolated event in the Jacob Cycle. Indeed, in the light of the preceding discussion, the explanation of this occurrence as derivative of or owing to Neo-Babylonian imperial rhetoric, already problematic for the reasons enumerated above, is to be rejected. The occasion of the stairway in that context, as Al-Rawi and others recognized,Footnote 39 reflects some familiarity with Nergal and Ereškigal. The present case bears further witness to the resonance of this story in the first millennium theological imagination.Footnote 40
To sum up, it is posited that the broad parallel discussed here intimates a familiarity on the part of the Jacob Cycle with the story of Nergal and Ereškigal. That Mesopotamian story appears to have contributed to the framework of the Biblical one, although with important differences, many explicable by the tales’ very different cultural settings and assumptions, as Hutter and Hurowitz recognized in the case of the respective stairways. The most significant difference involves the fates of the stories’ respective protagonists. In contrast with Nergal, who, notwithstanding his takeover of the netherworld, must remain in his wife’s distant land for eternity, Jacob is redeemed from his long exile, providing thereby a lively episode in the Biblical “salvation history” (Heilsgeschichte). To that end, the author of the Jacob Cycle appears to have appealed to a familiar myth with a fitting plot, reconstituting ideas from it in the formation of his narrative, and even embedding its most iconic motif within the broader whole so as to provide a story within a story. If so, one is afforded an extraordinary instance of Biblical thinking about contemporary Mesopotamian mythology. On this occasion the Bible seems cognizant of the foreignness and antiquity of its Erzählungsstoff, which in a unique instance it borrows almost forthrightly, but then reinterprets what it incorporates in a way that advances its own theology – or, in Freudian terms, spells out its wish fulfilment.
It goes without saying that these matters demand further, detailed investigation through which the parallel may be better appreciated or modified. The prospects of such analysis seem especially intriguing with respect to the Jacob Cycle, which may benefit from another perspective on its sources and formation, though this cannot be taken up here. The following turns in the other direction, so as to assess the significance of what has been discussed for specific challenges in Nergal and Ereškigal and also for the broader question raised at this study’s outset.
Biblical Light on Nergal and Ereškigal
Can the preceding discussion indeed improve our understanding of Nergal and Ereškigal, and not merely by pointing to a new occasion of the preservation of Mesopotamian traditions in writings external to this world? As the following suggests, the broader parallel posited above proves instructive for at least one significant crux interpretum in the text: the reference to Nergal (otherwise dU.GUR) as Erra (d èr-ra) on a number of occasions, with others implied beneath ditto markers and others still undoubtedly lost in the text’s breaks (e.g., S iv 11-15; vi 18, 36-40; cited below). Two such instances appear in the following passages, which recount Namtar’s identifying Nergal at the gate to the netherworld and Ereškigal’s recognition of Erra’s escape from it, respectively:
Namtar went and looked at Erra (d èr-ra) [through the si]de of the door,
Namtar’s face turned pale as a cut-down tamarisk,
His lips went dark as the rim of a vat. (S iii 20-22)
Erra (d èr-ra), (my) paramour, my desire,
(Though) I was unsated with his delights, he went away from me!
Erra (d èr-ra), (my) paramour, my desire,
(Though) I was unsated with his delights, he went away from me! (S iv 54-57 // U v 7b-9b)
That these occurrences should not be dismissed as inconsequential occasions of poetic license might already find support at the text-critical level, specifically in the LB Uruk manuscript, which refers three times to the singular god (dingir šâšu) desired by Ereškigal in the plural (dingir.meš):
Go, Namtar, and bring that god (dingir.meš šâšu [UFootnote 41 ]) before me!
Namtar went and brought in the god (dingir.meš), Erra (d èr-ra). (U iii 11’-12’ // S iii 40-<41>)
Namtar opened his mouth, addressing (his) words to Ereškigal,
“Send me to Anu, your father, so that I may seize that god (dingir šâšu [S] // dingir.meš šâšu [U])
And fetch (him) to you!” (U v 10-11b // S iv 58-60)
It may be posited that these writings are not meaningful, but rather that they simply constitute examples of unexpected but ultimately insignificant additions of the meš plural marker in logographic writings in Akkadian, a feature increasingly common in later manuscripts.Footnote 42 In the present instance, however, there may be more to the issue, since these plural markers appear in very specific places in the text, all relating to the clear pattern that emerges with respect to the Nergal/Erra name alternation that is discussed below.Footnote 43 And from a historical perspective things are more interesting when it comes to Nergal and the question of divine plurality. As is well known, in addition to Nergal’s alternative designation as Erra, the duo of Lugalirra and Meslamtea, the twin gods of plagues and the netherworld, are identified with this deity already in the early OB period.Footnote 44 Expressions of this background to Nergal’s dual aspect are not few. The occurrence of the name Ilān-šemeā (“O twin gods, hear!”), the father of a future king of Uruk (ANam, early OB period), in a short dedicatory inscription to Nergal, may well offer an early attestation of this identification.Footnote 45 Later evidence provides support for this interpretation. The reference to “both Nergals” (digi.du.meš ki-lal-le-e) in an Eanna-archive letter from Udannu, near Uruk, has been taken as referring to twin statues, hypostases of Nergal.Footnote 46 The clearest indication of Nergal’s plural aspect surely appears in that deity’s later writing as dMAŠ.MAŠ, inspired by dmaš.tab.ba (“Twins”), a reference to the pairing of Lugalirra and Meslamtea.Footnote 47 In light of all this the possibility cannot be excluded that the references to Nergal with the plural marker in the Uruk manuscript reflect a scribe’s interest in this deeper theological issue, perhaps by way of a familiar orthographic feature.Footnote 48
Whatever the case, as noted, a clear pattern may be discerned with respect to the Nergal/Erra name alternation in Nergal and Ereškigal: with the exception of one instance, every occurrence takes place in the netherworld.Footnote 49 One can be more precise, in fact, since these are limited to either perceptions of Nergal there by Ereškigal or Namtar or to representations of these encounters; cf., by contrast, S iv 15; S vi 18 below:Footnote 50
One day, a second day they lay, [Queen Ereškigal and Erra,]
A third day, a fourth day, [they lay, (Queen Ereškigal and Erra)],
[A fifth] day, a six day, [they lay, (Queen Ereškigal and Erra)],
[but when the seventh] day [arrived],
Nergal (dU.GUR) [became worried ?] about not being [in heaven]. (S iv 11-14, 15)
Nergal ([dU.]GUR) [went down] the long stairway of heaven,
…
One day, a second day they lay, Queen/Ereškigal and Erra ([d è]r-ra)
A third day they lay, [a fourth day] (they lay, Queen Ereškigal and Erra)
A fifth day (they lay, Queen Ereškigal and Erra)
A sixth day (they lay, Queen Ereškigal and Erra)
[A seventh day] (they lay, Queen Ereškigal and Erra) (S vi 18, 36-40)
As such, references by Ereškigal and Namtar to Nergal merely as “that god” in two passages cited above (S iii 40-<41>) // U iii 11’-12’; S iv 58-60 // U v 10-11b) likely relate the Nergal/Erra name substitutions. These were probably intended to convey a sense of indeterminacy about Ereškigal’s suitor, as others have surmised.Footnote 51
In other words, it seems clear that Nergal and Ereškigal purposely contrasts the ignorance of Nergal’s essence on the part of the actors in the netherworld with what it reveals to its readers. But what exactly is at issue here and what purpose does all this serve? The matter had proven difficult to grasp earlier on,Footnote 52 though this was ameliorated by the recognition of the setting of the name-substitution pattern. For von Weiher, who first took note of it, the issue appears to be a semantic sleight of hand by which the author somehow sidesteps the suggestion of obliviousness on the part of the goddess while granting the reader the knowledge of her visitor’s full identity.Footnote 53 Similarly, for Hutter this owes to the poet’s avoidance of invoking the deity’s “real name” before his takeover of the netherworld.Footnote 54 Yet it was inconceivable to both that Ereškigal should not have known her lover’s name given their passionate affair.
The story of the wedding-night consummation at Haran, with the consequent surprise awaiting Jacob the following morning, says otherwise and proves instructive for the case at hand. Indeed, a reading similar to it is proposed for the case in Nergal and Ereškigal, according to which the queen of the netherworld is indeed duped by her heavenly visitor and thus is unaware of his true nature.Footnote 55 That this paints the netherworld’s queen in highly anthropomorphic terms constitutes no problem. This is entirely in keeping with Ereškigal’s human-like portrayal elsewhere in the story, including the depiction of her bodily allure (S ii 45-47; iii 60-61 // U iv 14-15), tears running down her cheeks (S iv 53 // U v 7), and her seizure by her hair (S vi 32; cf. MB Nergal and Ereškigal, r. 36); the text even offers a virtual gloss for such anthropomorphism when pertaining to matters of the couple’s passion: ša zikar u sinniš, “in the manner of a (human) male and female” (S ii 48; iii 63; iv 8). In this light the name alternation initially may not appear to amount to much; it could be posited that this is merely another case of Nergal and Ereškigal’s penchant for the melodramatic. But things assume a greater significance when taken as another example of the aforementioned trickery pervasive throughout the story, a trickery that, precisely as in the Jacob Cycle, turns on duality and two-facedness, substitution and misrepresentation. Examples of such episodes include the ersatz goods for the throne prepared for the Netherworld (S ii 32-34 // U ii 8’-9’; discussed below); Ea’s disfiguring of Nergal (S iv 31-32; v 38-39 // 41-42), and above all the overall substitution of Ereškigal by Nergal as the netherworld’s ruler. It becomes apparent, then, that the Nergal/Erra name alternation should not be construed as a minor curiosity, peripheral to the story’s chief concerns, but rather as a part and parcel of its main theme and interests. How, if at all, this relates to the deeper theological matters remains to be ascertained.
Deeper Parallels
The last point is deserving of further consideration. Might an appreciation of the issue of the Nergal/Erra substitution lead to additional parallels, including those standing behind the narrative? The following discussion presents two cases that seem to point in this direction. These, it is suggested, appear to speak to theological reflection and even historical developments in the background of Nergal and Ereškigal.
The first involves the intriguing brief passage from early in the text in which a proposal by Nergal, relating seemingly to his descent to the netherworld, rouses Ea’s creativeness:
[…] ⸢…⸣ one deity/divinity ([…]⸢x⸣ mala ? DINGIR? ⸢x⸣Footnote 56 ) I shall twine in two (⸢ana ?⸣ šinīšu eṣṣipšu)
Ea, hearing this, conceived a plan in his mind (zikra itta⸢mi⸣Footnote 57 ana libbīšu)
[He had/I shall have] made a chisel, an axe, and a saw. (S ii 20-22)Footnote 58
(Instructions for the cutting of trees for and preparation of the throne) (S ii 23-35; 25-35 // U ii 1’-10’)
Of interest presently is l. 20 and the sense of Nergal’s pronouncement therein, though this is unfortunately made difficult by the line’s preservation (also what precedes). And yet some clues in it and what follows offer important help.
The reading of eṣēpu in l. 20 and its understanding as denoting a doubling (ana šinīšu) of something on Nergal’s part is universally shared. Also unambiguous is the wording of l. 21, which echoes the phrase zikra banû met in Ištar’s Descent l. 91 and SB Gilgameš I 96.Footnote 59 In those cases, as here, this language anticipates Ea’s conception of new creations demanded by exigent circumstances, with the created life-forms, Aṣûšu-namir and Enkidu, each in his own way an alternative or counterpart to Ištar and Gilgameš and the challenges they had raised.Footnote 60 The first conception of humans in Atraḫasīs as mortal substitutes for the gods, though not said to be a zikru, surely represents another, significant variation of this theme. By comparison to all those instances of his genius, in Nergal and Ereškigal Ea’s call for the creation of tools and instructions leading to the throne’s construction (S ii 22-35; 25ff. // U ii 1’-10’) might appear to break this pattern. It bears recalling, however, that thrones, as divine statues, were themselves “born” (walādu) and considered alive, while in the present instance the stress on Nergal’s use of substandard or even improper (meḫertu; 3x) materials in the throne’s construction (S ii 32-34 // U ii 8’-9’) suggests that it, too, was intended in some bogus way.Footnote 61
In this light it stands to reason that a proposal by Nergal to double himself or his divinity in l. 20 anticipates well the story’s introduction of his alter ego, Erra, in the netherworld.Footnote 62 But what exactly does his statement connote and how might it square with the Nergal/Erra name alternations? In the opinion of Chiodi, who also recognized the significance of these alternations, Nergal’s words imply a mystery by which the deity is simultaneously two and one, single in nature, double in person.Footnote 63 Though a hypostatic union of this sort is based on a false sense of both dmaš.tab.ba and the Great Twins as Nergal and Erra,Footnote 64 and the idea finds little support elsewhere. One wonders, moreover, whether a total lack of differentiation between Erra and Nergal would not defeat the purpose of the former being the substitute for the latter, especially given the noted similarity between this passage and the others describing Ea’s creations of different surrogates. Still, the possibility that Nergal’s words reflect a conception of Erra as his twin should not be discounted entirely, especially given the spelling dMAŠ.MAŠ and the additional evidence of thinking about this deity’s plurality noted above.
A helpful perspective on this problem may be gained by another consideration of the Jacob Cycle, in which the motif of twins (Jacob and Esau) or a twin-like pairing of sisters (Rachel and Leah) not only figures centrally but also finds one twin or sister passed off as the other.Footnote 65 In those cases, the recourse to this motif is hardly intended to stress the twins’ or sisters’ sameness. Rather, the author of the Jacob Cycle turns to it to accentuate sibling differences and the unexpected – though, in keeping with that well-known Biblical theme, typical – preference for the younger child.
It goes without saying that this Biblical perspective must not be imposed onto the crux in Nergal and Ereškigal in any facile way. One cannot assume, based on Rebecca’s and Laban’s trickeries in the Jacob Cycle, that Ea had altered Nergal’s appearance for his netherworld journey, as he would do later, upon Nergal’s return to heaven (S iv 31-32). It is conceivable that any subterfuge on Nergal’s part would have consisted merely of the non-disclosure or misrepresentation of his name.Footnote 66 Even if so, the Biblical parallel would still prove valuable for the Mesopotamian counterpart, providing an analogue for such deception and how its mechanics were elsewhere imagined (cf. Gen 27:1, 22-24).Footnote 67 More importantly, however, the parallel exposes the complexity inherent in Nergal’s proposal. Indeed, the possibility that his words to Ea were meant to foreshadow or highlight a basic tension between notions about this deity’s plurality on the one hand and his primary versus secondary aspects on the other should not be overlooked.
A reconsideration of the twins motif in the Jacob Cycle can potentially offer something else for a parallel idea in Nergal and Ereškigal. For as has long been contended, the Biblical story, for all its artistry, appears also to refer to historical developments in Israel’s past, most notably in the political relations between a nascent Judean polity and its ostensibly more established Edomite “sibling” (cf. Gen 25:23). It seems reasonable to wonder in this light whether something similar might stand behind the posited twins of Nergal and Ereškigal. Of course, the idea that that story refers to historical developments in Mesopotamia is not new. The point has been made with respect to the central etiology the story provides, that of the eclipse of Ereškigal and her southern, Enigi origins by the northern, Kuthean Nergal, which common opinion holds took place sometime in the early second millennium.Footnote 68 The finding of a twins motif in Nergal and Ereškigal would almost certainly furnish a second such case, relating to Erra’s merging with Nergal, which appears to reflect this period as well, as intimated in Weidner God List iii 15-16, Code of Hammurabi ii 69, and other textual evidence.Footnote 69 This, if correct, would further suspicions that the story has roots in or at least memories of earlier days, regardless of the challenges presented by its extant versions.Footnote 70
A Concluding Thought
Much raised by the foregoing discussion must unfortunately await future settings. An obvious avenue for such exploration would involve the significance of this paper’s findings for the composition of the Jacob Cycle. One would also do well to examine this material with respect to the idea of demythologization, which was only touched on above. Though what has been presented here appears to point to a complex effort undertaken by the Jacob Cycle to whitewash or otherwise reconfigure mythic elements from the tradition it borrows, so as to render these in a manner acceptable for the historiography of the Patriarchal narratives. This is the implication of the findings of more standard approaches to mythic ideas on the one hand, witnessed for example in the termination of the stairway on the visible earth, and the embedding of that entire image within a dream in which mythic imagery may be tolerated, on the other. Quite possibly such examination would also offer significant insights into Biblical thinking about Mesopotamian myth.
Yet Mesopotamia and its mythology may also gain in the process. It remains to be determined whether and how this posited Mesopotamian-Biblical parallel, especially when considered alongside other cases of the Bible’s building on Mesopotamia’s myths, may call into further question the very conceptions of myth in that world. Still, one begins to sense that, as in recent considerations of the place of Mesopotamian thinking in conceptions of early science, so here the imagined “Big Ditch” separating two intellectual forms from one another and “us” from “them” will prove overblown.Footnote 71 This seems to be an inevitable conclusion of finding the same motifs and themes in parallel traditions to account for comparable historical problems, with one tradition, however, fully mythic and the other epic in its form. Indeed, in thinking about these matters, it should be remembered that the assumptions, interests, and worldviews of those authors responsible for the Biblical corpus ran inestimably closer to their counterparts in Mesopotamia than to the thinking of present-day students about this otherwise “dead” civilization.Footnote 72
