Dissecting the diction of the famous Enuma Elish
L M Leteane | Friday August 19, 2016 15:18
What is astonishing, through, is that by comparing the epic with geological, astronomical and other data, it is possible to discern that it describes a cataclysmic event that brought about the Asteroid Belt – a ring of loose, shattered rock and ice circling the sun in a specific orbit where, evidently, a planet once stood. The Enuma Elish describes the event colourfully, as if a fight between two mighty ‘beings’ (a) ‘Marduk’ – in reality a gigantic comet that happened to wander into our solar system – and (b) ‘Tiamat’: in reality a watery planet that had a gigantic chunk ripped out of it by the awesome collision of these two celestial bodies…which piece was utterly shattered by the next orbital return of Marduk. Since the epic was acted out annually to celebrate the Babylonian New Year, it involved an on-stage narrator who maintains dramatic tension throughout.
As with many Sumerian epics, the Enuma-Elish epic gets its scholarly title from the opening line: e-nu-ma e-lish la na-bu-u sha-ma-mu (Eno ma-Eli, she laa, nabo, sha ma-Mu in my new Setswana-assisted transliteration of its text-corpus), and we noted that scholars interpret this as “When on high the heavens had not been named…” but which Setswana – a genuine protolanguage – interprets as “These ones (eno), the gods (ma-Eli), it is up there (she laa) with them (nabo), that [nemesis] of the people of Mu” (sha ma Mu). Now, in this article, I aim to show that nearly all the Akkadian diction (words) of the epic can be found in Bantu languages (Akkad succeeded the Sumerian civilization). In fact, only the proto-term laa (‘there’, as in French) might not be immediately understandable to someone who only knows Setswana-Sesotho-Sepedi. But laa as meaning ‘there’ is spoken in a few Bantu languages, including the extinction-threatened Sephuti language of Lesotho. As regards ‘she’ (‘se’ in modern Setswana), we find that Sepedi and various Setswana dialects are still partial to the use of sh instead of s, as in boshula instead of bosula. Lastly, we must note that Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian and Hebrew – perhaps the world’s oldest widely-read languages – tend to avoid vowels wherever they can.
The second line reads: shap-lish am-ma-tum shu-ma la zak-rat (sha-hapa le-sha-ma-dumo; shuma la zako-rata in my new transliteration) which scholars translate as “Below, the earth had not been called by name…”, but which, Setswana suggests, actually translates as “It struck (sha hapa) the Noisy One (le Sha-ma-Dumo), snorting/hissing away (shuma) at will (la sa-go-rata”, or, “It struck the Fame (tumo)-Seeking One; did (shoma) what it pleased [with her]”. Indeed, puns and play on words, I noticed in my research, was a great specialty of Sumerian-Akkadian scribes, as in shuma (hiss) and shoma (work). The latter term is still used in se-Pedi. The second line thus describes the initial collision of two mighty celestial bodies; it speaks not of ‘heaven and earth’.
The next line reads: Apsu-um-ma rish-tu-u za-ru-shu-un (Setswana transliteration: A poso o ma risha) tuu, u sa re shu, ono), widely translated as “But Apsu, the primeval, their progenitor…” but which I translate as “The Mistaken-One (a phoso), she leaves them (o ma lesha) be/in peace (tuu); she is still catching her breath (o sa re “shu!”), this one (ono)”. Last week I reminded my readers of the common l/r phoneme (sound-shift) that was the subject of many of my articles, thus risha/lesha. Other than that, all other words pose no problem to anyone who speaks Setswana.
The next line reads: mu-um-mu ti-amat mu-al-li-da-at gim-ri-shu-un, which I transliterate as “mumu mo-tia-mata mo a leta, ate ke merushu, ono”. The ‘official’ scholarly translation is: “Their waters as one they mingled”, but my own new translation goes: “In silence (mumu) the one mighty-in built (mo tia-mata), there she waited (moo a leta). But (ate), he was trouble (ke merushu), this [approaching] one” (ono). All words are quite understandable in Setswana, but it will be useful to further explain a few terms. Although mumu literally means ‘dumb’, it relates to ‘silence’ in the sense that a person who is unable to articulate words is typically silent (indeed, mumu relates to ‘mum’) or he just moves the lips and utters sounds (‘murmur’ or ‘mumble’, which also relate to mumu).
Ate (‘but’/ ‘on the contrary’) is still well-used in Sotho, whereas kante is the preferred term in Tswana. The morphemes in the latter proto- term are ka (‘with, through, by’) + ante (‘contravention, opposition’), thus suggesting ‘on the contrary’). Indeed, we can discern that ate is a mere hardening of ante. The term merusu is interesting. It comprises the phoneme u, (here pronounced oo as in ‘too’) which, we have seen in many previous articles, can sound-shift to ah (as in ‘but’). This would explain why it became raas in Dutch. Me-rusu means ‘tumultuous noise’ – as when fighting or engaging in revelry. It is raas in Indo-European, the source of ‘carousing’ – which literally means ‘noisy revelry’ – but, over time, came to mean ‘drunken revelry’. Other phonemes are lida (leta) which involve the d/t sound-shift, and gi (ke) which entails the g/k sound-shift, as well as the well-known s/z sound-shift.
In Bantu languages the i/u sound-shift is very common. In Setswana-Sesotho we have tlhabiwa and tlhajoa and in Kalanga we have tapiwa and tapuuwa. This would explain gi-merishu (instead of ke merusu) and u za ru shu instead of o sa re shu. When all the phonemes are accounted for (and all of them being well understood in linguistics), there is nothing to impede a complete understanding of my extract of the first four lines of this very famous Sumerian epic.
Comments to leteanelm@gmail.com