The Black Swamp: Winged Inanna

Part Three

This was the first part of the content that I encountered, which was also the part that Wilhelm partly deciphered before his communication with our friend from the museum. The erosion on the right side of this normally rectangular shaped tablet did not hinder much interpretation of the content. Wilhelm was eager to hear the whole story on this one as he was especially appealed by the mythology of Kish.

I, however, was so shocked simply by reading these cuneiforms that my mind went blank for quite a few seconds after I finished, as if I just experienced a car crash. If the part of Inanna asking Etana, a mortal, to copulate with her in heaven wasn't abnormal and out of context enough, the parts where gods made sacrifices undoubtedly made me question the very foundation of my knowledge on Mesopotamian mythology. The great heavenly gods do not make sacrifices, because sacrifice is but a means to reach them. Why would the gods need a sacrificial ritual to reach themselves?

And most profoundly troubling was the entity that was mentioned much more often than the gods in heaven: what is this uncanny "black swamp"? It contained an unmistakable determinative of "star", namely the "mul" sign in Sumerian, denoting that this is an object in the sky, likely hinting at an unknown star. But which star of all the constellations that we knew of should be named a "black swamp"?

With mixed feelings of uncertainty, self-doubt, and maybe even some deep-burrowed fear, I told the others about my finding and hoped that they would correct me, or better, deny my translation entirely and brand it as a terrible mistake made by an old scholar who was simply too tired from the trip and therefore unfit for intensive academic research.

Professor Saliz and Professor Berel, though equally confused by my translation, held onto the tablet, and started examining the text with additional care and curiosity. After a long hour in which I could not fully recall how I sat in idleness, I heard almost the same gasp from their mouths as from mine before.

As experts in old Sumerian language and Assyrian literature, Professor Saliz and Professor Berel provided more details and observations on this tablet which I failed to notice before. The cuneiform itself, we all agreed, was definitely no later than the Old Babylonian Period, if not older, since several usages of the cuneiform signs were indeed archaic and were not found in later tablets at all. But the text itself contained several anachronistic references that were otherwise unseen in this early time, including the "black swamp", which Professor Berel regarded as possibly the same word puzzle of the "black star" that appeared in a couple of New Assyrian astrological texts. Nevertheless, this explanation would not be very convincing, as he himself admitted, since the black star in New Assyrian texts were most likely just another name of Saturn, but this combination of cuneiforms of "star" as determinative and "black swamp" as nominative pointed unwaveringly to something else. This term "black swamp" rendered on this tablet in Sumerian seemed like something entirely different in its connotation. Moreover, there was almost a 700-year gap between the two time periods of Old Babylonian and New Assyrian. None of us were thereafter inclined to believe that this "black swamp" was mistakenly inscribed multiple times by the writer who was thinking about referring to Saturn in this context.

It would actually be easy for us all to admit that we were woefully ignorant of the shift of writing style or were illiterate in the art of New Assyrian astrology. Nevertheless, our pride and rational training forbade us to give up so easily and attribute our failure solely to incapability in our very own discipline. There must exist something about this text that was "unconventional" but not "wrong". And we just needed to find the right key to fit in its keyhole to solve this mystery. Regardless, we decided to try and improve the translation a little to see if we could identify something of novelty there. Although they mostly agreed to my translation, they both suggested some adjustments based on their own area of expertise. The revised version ran as follows: