BTI 2: The Enmerkar Cycle

 Volume 2 of Back to Iraq covers two long, related tales about Enmerkar, the first King of Uruk. These tales, together, are one of the three Sumerian sagas frequently called “epic literature.” In them, the lowland king of Mesopotamian Uruk squares off against his rival in the highlands of what is today southwestern Iran – a man alternately called “The Lord of Aratta,” or “Ensuhkeshdanna.” The feud between these two regions – Uruk and Aratta – seems to have been something like a Trojan War story to later generations of Sumerian writers. In it, flatland Sumer, rich in crops, needs the minerals and trade goods of highland Aratta, and the same is the case the other way around. However, the regions are rivals, as well as commercial partners, and as the Enmerkar cycle unfolds, Enmerkar and Ensuhkeshdanna first clash in a battle of wits, and then vie for supremacy once again, as their court wizards engage in a duel to the death. A fascinating swirl of strange and familiar, the Enmerkar cycle is one of Earth’s first surviving epic narratives, and the second episode of Back to Iraq retells the whole thing, as well as the history behind it.