BTI 1: Sumerian Creation Stories

 Volume 1 of Back to Iraq, appropriately, begins with creation stories, presenting four Sumerian creation myths in comprehensive detail. These tales include “Enki and Ninhursaga,” “The Birth of Man,” “The Eridu Genesis,” and “Enki and the World Order.” Perhaps most famously, these ancient narratives prefigure elements of the Book of Genesis. In them, we hear the Sumerian version of the flood story, and a Sumerian anecdote about a woman created from the rib of a man. But Sumer’s most celebrated creation stories have far more than Biblical odds and ends. They are, like so much from Sumer, goofy when we expect them to be grave, pornographic when we expect them to be pious, casually cruel, and then unexpectedly, deeply compassionate. In their varying accounts of how gods made the world, and subsequently celebrated and praised the world, they have a zest and joyousness about created reality that Iron Age cosmogony narratives like Genesis sometimes lack. Gross, funny, devout, and jubilant all at once, Sumer’s creation narratives have roots in bardic performances intended to delight and entertain, and even after 4,000 years, they still manage to do both.