A praise-poem to Shulgi: the pleading layer

L M Leteane | Friday August 26, 2016 14:57

Now, Shulgi, king of the Ur III Dynasty of Sumer, ascended Ur’s throne in 2096 BC (my Harmonized Timeline) after the tragic death of Ur-Nammu, his father, during battle.

An intriguing aspect of his reign was that he claimed, in his memoirs, to have made love to the great goddess Inanna (Ishtar to the Canaanites, Artemis to the Greeks). 

   Perhaps wishing to avoid the fate of his father, Shulgi chose the way of diplomacy, but was later given almost totally to pleasure. When the gods admonished him to desist from this illicit affair with a goddess, Shulgi (called ‘Culgi’ in A praise poem to Shulgi) wrote one of the greatest pieces of double-speak I have ever seen, appearing to plead with the gods to bear with him on the one hand…but with the very same diction displaying derision and defiance. This, along with his loss of focus on matters of State during what was a very sensitive period, eventually cost him life at the hands of the gods.

Of course, conventional historians dismiss his purported liaison with Inanna as ‘myth’ blended with proper history, but Shulgi’s own words will show that he was not making love to a mere figment of his imagination, but instead confirms ‘gods’ as an elite set of real, flesh-and-blood entities of advanced technology who dominated the lives of ordinary people for millennia, lording even over kings.

And Shulgi’s reign, I will briefly show, intertwined with the sensitive and eventful time of the biblical Abraham, when tension between certain gods was high. Indeed, 2055 BC, there was a god-sponsored Elamite (Iranian) incursion into Canaan (present-day Israel), during which the invaders managed to subdue the Canaanite cities and exact homage from them.

In 2048 BC, Shulgi was slain as defiant and ineffectual, and Amar-Sin, his son became king. Abraham (born 2123 BC) was indeed 75 years at this time when he was told to move from Harran to Negev in Canaan to guard certain assets of the gods there. In the fourteenth year (2041 BC) since the Elamite incursion, Abraham being 82 years old at the time and having lived 7 years away from Harran (75 + 7 = 82), a great War of the Kings (Genesis 14) took place in which Amar-Sin (Amra-pa-El: ‘Beloved of Su-en/El’) took part on the side of the Elamites and Abraham played a great role in this War.

Now, in the Sumerian text A praise-poem to Shulgi (which I prefer to call Ode to Inana), Shulgi is apparently pleading with the gods to be lenient on him for his illicit affair with Inanna. Indeed, almost every line in the nearly 100 lines of the text ends with the salutation me-en (gods). I will extract only the first four lines from this poem to exhibit how Setswana is the sole transliteration key that unlocks its true meaning. But to show that Inanna was at the centre of it all, I will begin by bringing in line 15 of the poem which reads thus: cul-gi hi-li-a pad-da inana-me-en, conventionally translated as: “I am Culgi, who has been chosen by Inana for his attractiveness”.  The translation is not bad but, with the help of Setswana, should read: Culgi, he ile a pata Inana, me-ene (“Culgi has on occasion liaised with Inana, (my) lords”).

With this clarified, we can now launch into the first, contrite-seeming layer of the text, written as if pleading with the gods for nurturing and understanding. Line one reads thus: “Lugal, me-en, cag-ta ur saj, me-en”. Orthodox translations say: “King, was a hero already in the womb; I am a respected one”, but I have reconfigured it to Lugal, me-ene, ka go ta ur saj, me-ene ([A] king [I am], my gods, by coming to [the throne of ] Ur [already] wise, my lords).  This is Shulgi showing that he is a worthy King of Ur, but there is another layer in which is addressing the gods only: Lo a gala, me-ene, ka go ta Ur saj, me-ene (you shine, my lords, by having come to Earth already wise, my lords). Gala is now galalela in Setswana and saj relates to the proto-term ‘sage’ which has the original connotation of sak (dry), meaning “not wet [behind the ears]”. ‘Ur’ is a play on both the city and Earth as a whole. The Sumerian term LU.GAL is literally ‘Great One’, and means ‘king’.

Line two reads thus: cul-gi-me-en ba-tu-ud-de-en-na-ta nita kalag-ga-me-en, conventionally translated as “I, Culgi, was born to be a mighty man”, but which I transliterate as: Culgi, me-ene ba thute ena, ta, ne ta kalaga, me-ene (Culgi, my Lords. may they teach him; come, you will increase, my Lords’) in which he is positing himself as someone willing to be instructed by the gods. Indeed, another take is: Culgi, me-ene ba thute ena tsa nnete ea kalaga, me-ene. Ta, I have noticed, can mean like our modern Setswana tsa. Kalaga (Gal-aga) is a term based on gal (greatness), as afore-explained.

Line three reads: pirij igi huc ucumgal-e tud-da-me-en, conventionally translated as “I am a fierce-looking lion, begotten by a dragon”, but which I reconfigure as phiri, je, e ke ha kuku-m’galo e thuta, me-ene (secrets, like these, as when the Great Bird teaches, my Lords). Culgi/Shulgi, here, is positing that he would like to learn those secrets as traditionally imparted by Thoth (whose symbol is the Ibis, a great bird).

Line four concludes thus: lugal an ub-da 4-ba-me-en, conventionally translated as “I am the king of the Four Regions”, but which I first reconfigure as Lugal u noo ba da 4 ba me-ene (I became [king] of the Four of (that belong to) the gods).  In those days, the gods had divided their areas of rule into four great regions: Mesopotamia (1), Egypt (2), Indo-Europe (3) and Canaan (4). All this sounds like a king grovelling and kotowing to the gods, but next week we reveal a rather irreverent layer to all this.

Comments to leteanelm@gmail.com