A praise-poem to Shulgi: the salacious layer
L M Leteane | Friday September 9, 2016 14:45
The first layer we explored was ‘the pleading layer’ in which Shulgi, a properly historical king of the Ur III Dynasty of Sumer, was pleading with the gods to bear with him for his ‘illicit’ sexual affair with the great goddess Inanna (‘Ishtar’ to the Canaanites, ‘Artemis’ to the Greeks). We had duly noted that, in contrast to the conventional scholarly view that ‘gods’ were imaginary beings who never really existed, Shulgi’s own words showed that he had not made love to a mere figment of his imagination, but to a real-live ‘goddess’; a member of an elite set of real, flesh-and-blood entities of advanced technology who dominated the lives of ordinary people for millennia, ruling even over kings. Indeed, his plea, properly translated, was addressed to me-ene (‘gods’). Ene, or EN, means ‘Lord’…but literally ‘he himself’; i.e. ‘the main man himself’. Thus, the Sumerian god EN.KI’s name, or epithet, meant ‘Lord of Earth’.
A second layer of meaning we unpacked in the second article was what I called ‘the defiant layer’. Here, Shulgi cleverly uses the very same diction to subtly express unrepentant defiance to the gods; indicating that he will continue his unapproved liaison with Inanna. This week, we discern the most irreverent layer of the ‘poem’…what I call ‘the salacious layer’. Though A praise poem to Shulgi contains at least 102 lines of text (a few lines are lost as unreadable), in the past two articles I extracted only the first four lines from this poem and then used Setswana to unlock their true meaning as a particular layer of the poem. Now, it is important to note that the ‘funny’-looking text that I typically begin with is taken directly from Sumerian. In other words, you will find this same text as-is in all the Sumerian text-corpuses compiled by highly reputed scholars. It is not my own invention. All I do is to show that these ‘funny’-looking syllables, properly transliterated, are nothing but Setswana; that I can string them into a more coherent sentence readily understandable to an ordinary Motswana. Please note that I said ‘transliterated’, not ‘translated’: Sumerian is already Setswana-like (compare the ‘scholarly’ syllables with those of modern Setswana), so I cannot translate ‘Setswana into Setswana’. The only translation I am doing is into English.
Scholars have strung the syllables of the first line of the poem thus: Lugal, me-en, cag-ta ur saj, me-en. To make better sense for the modern Motswana, I took the same order of syllables and separated them in a way a modern Motswana can better understand. Thus, on the ‘pleading’ layer, this transliterated to: Lugal, me-ene, ka go ta ur saj, me-ene (“King [I am], my gods, by coming to [the throne of] Ur [already] wise, my lords”. The defiant layer read as: Lugal, me-ene, kake ga ta gore “sa je”, me-ene (“[A] king, my lords, cannot be one who does not eat, my lords”). ‘Eat’, I explained, is actually a vulgar term that means ‘have sex (with)’, so Shulgi was subtly telling the gods that a king is supposed to ‘eat’…and that’s it!
Line Two, in scholarly terms, reads thus: cul-gi-me-en ba-tu-ud-de-en-na-ta nita kalag-ga-me-ene, and in the ‘pleading’ layer it transliterated to: Culgi, me-ene ba thute ena tsa nnete‘a kalaga, me-ene (“May the gods teach Culgi the truths of greatness, my lords”), while the ‘defiant’ layer transliterated to: Culgi me-ene ba thole; ene ne a ta nitakala a’ me-ene (“Regarding Culgi, the gods must keep quiet; he shall not become (ni a ta) the rubbish of the gods”), and we looked at various plays on words here. Line Three reads: pirij igi huc ucumgal-e tud-da-me-en, which transliterates, on the ‘pleading layer’, to: (di)phiri, je, e ke ha kuku-m’galo e thuta, me-ene (“…secrets of this...just as when the Great Bird (Thoth) teaches, my Lords”), but which, on the ‘defiant’ layer, reads: (se)phiri e je, e ke ho kokomala e a thuta, me-ene (“secretly he [Culgi] eats; as if just sitting idle instructs anyone, my lords”). Here, Culgi is saying that he will rather ‘eat’ secretly than sit idly by, because that does not add to experience.
Line Four concluded thus: lugal an ub-da 4-ba-me-en, which, on the contrite layer, I transliterated as: Lugal u noo ba da 4 ba me-ene. This means: “[I the] King came to be one of the Great Four [rulers] appointed by the gods”, but on the defiant layer reads: Lugal u noo ba da; 4 ba me-ene (“The king has eaten them; four of the gods”). Now, what can be more irreverent than even the ‘defiant layer’? First line: Lo a gala mme; ene o a kakata hore: se a ja me-ene (“In truth you salivate [while] he really knocks [them] hard; he eats the goddesses”). Line Two” Culgi, mme ene, ba(n)tu e je, ene; ta, ne taa gala ha, me-ene (“Culgi, in any case, the goddesses he eats; come (and see); you will salivate here, you gods”. Ba-ntu (Ba-tu), in old parlance, strictly meant ‘gods’. Line Three: Phiri e, e je; e je ho kuku-m’galo; e a thotha me-ene (“This here wolf, it eats; it eats of the Great Cake; it has bagged goddesses”). The one word requiring further explanation is kuku (cake). Though now used in Setswana as a borrowed term, it still carries the naughty connotation of ‘a woman’s private part’. The ‘Great Cake’ obviously referred to Inanna, the topmost goddess in the Pantheon of Twelve. Line Four: Lo a gala: ono a ba ja: 4…pa! ‘a me-ene. ([Yes], you salivate; this one (Culgi)…he ate them…bang! Four of the gods!” It was most probably this last, most irreverent and salacious layer that, once deciphered by the gods, led to the execution of King Shulgi in 2048 BC!
Comments to leteanelm@gmail.com