Going slightly mad at home in the Covid-19 lockdown, I embarked on this joyful project, with the super-talented mezzo-soprano Phoebe Haines and brilliant young Sumerologist Daniel Sánchez Muñoz, to make a fun musical reinterpretation of an ancient Sumerian ‘diatribe’ – basically a list of highly entertaining insults, inscribed in cuneiform script on a clay tablet, some time in the second millennium BCE (Old Babylonian period). The text is known by its incipit, ‘Engardu the fool’ = Oxford Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL) 5.4.11, ‘Diatribe Against Engar-dug‘; bibliography here). Nothing in this composition is supposed to emulate ancient Mesopotamian music (although the repetitiveness of the setting is a nod to oral cultures in general), but setting the Sumerian text demanded so much collaborative research, that I felt it merited inclusion in my ‘Very Early music’ blog. If nothing else, it’s an interesting illustration of an extreme end of the scale of approaches to musically interpreting ancient evidence – the point at which ‘artistic license’ entirely outweighs any concern for historicity in musical representation of an ancient text!

It uses a lot of musical imagery in its wonderfully colourful array of insults and accusations, so we decided to present it as a ‘battle’ between two opera-singing Twitter trolls and a singer called Engardu. There’s no evidence that the original text was composed by musicians, but proficiency in music, or lack thereof, seemed to be quite a common signifier of general status and accomplishment in Mesopotamian literature. Famously, in the royal praise poem of Šulgi (ETCSL 2.4.2.02, ‘Šulgi B‘), among many music-related boasts, the author claims: ‘Even if they bring to me, as one might to a skilled musician, a musical instrument that I have not heard before, when I strike it up I make its true sound known; I am able to handle it just like something that has been in my hands before. Tuning, stringing, unstringing and fastening are not beyond my skills. I do not make the reed pipe sound like a rustic pipe, and on my own initiative I can wail a šumunša or make a lament as well as anyone who does it regularly.’

As is almost always the case with cuneiform tablets, there are broken sections and obscure signs in this composite document, so it isn’t possible to set the complete text. My strategy for dealing with the lacunae in this case was to pick out a few particularly entertaining fragments of the text and set them as discrete phrases, rather than trying to fill in blanks, or find a musical device to represent the gaps. I was saving my favourite line of the text for the climax of the piece, but somehow ran out of time… So another longer version of this piece, including the wonderful phrase ‘dog not producing sound of the harp but emitting a battle cry’ (Sumerian: ur gu₃ de₂ ^ŋešza₃-mi₂-a nu-ŋal₂ gu₃–^«ŋeš»kiri₆ de₂-de₂) will show up when I find some funding!

Below are transliterations and slightly more ‘standard’ translations of my chosen excerpts from the text, prepared by Daniel Sánchez Muñoz (who is a specialist in Sumerian music vocabulary). Daniel also kindly idiot-proofed my attempt to write the text in cuneiform font and normalized the text (i.e. converted the syllabic transliteration into an approximation of how the spoken language would have sounded):

𒁹𒀳𒄭 ^mengar-du – the unfortunate person this diatribe is addressed to! Daniel notes that this name means ‘good (du₁₀) farmer (engar)’. The name suggests that the urbanite scribe who probably authored the text is satirising the language and manners of a farmer (urban, literate disdain for the rural, non-writing classes is quite common in Mesopotamian literature).

𒍢𒍝𒈜𒂊𒉈 zi₂-za nar-e-ne – ‘croaker among singers’
Daniel notes that ‘ziza’ is a difficult word to translate. It literally means ‘closed (za) jaw (zi₂ in the most recent transliteration system, ze₂ in the former one)’. Daniel tends to think that it describes someone struggling to move his mouth correctly, which is pretty hard to translate! Dahlia Shehata has provided some comments which further illuminate this phrase. For more information, follow the link to her publication in the bibliography.

𒈬 𒉿𒅋𒈜𒂊𒉈 mu pe-el₂ nar-e-ne – ‘disgraced reputation among singers’

𒇽𒆤𒇲 lu₂ lil₂-la₂ – ‘fool’, ‘foolish person’ or ‘idiot’

𒇽𒉿𒂖𒇲 lu2 pe-el-la2 –’fallen person’ or ‘disgraced person’

𒉎𒋢𒌒 ni₂-su-ub – ‘ecstatic’ Daniel notes that the meaning of this word is clearer in light of the Akkadian maḫḫûm (‘ecstatic’, but also ‘insane’ or ‘possessed’). It is a word with ritual associations, which I’ve tried to evoke in my translation ‘off your nut’, which is a (probably now very out of date) reference to rave culture.

𒇽𒁶𒈠𒉡𒊷 lu₂ dim₂?-ma nu-ša₆ – ‘person who does not make sense/cannot reason’

𒄑𒇥 is-ḫab₂ – ‘cheat’ or ‘rogue’

𒇽𒂡𒉡𒍪 lu izim nu-zu!(KU) – ‘person who does not know the festivals’

𒂄𒇻𒄷𒌝𒋫𒋤𒄴 šaḫ₂ lu-ḫu-um-ta su₃-a – ‘covered with pig mud’

𒄖𒁺𒆟 gu-du keše₂ – ‘blocked butt’ Daniel notes that his translation of this phrase follows Jana Matuszak (view the publication here, or see the bibliography).

𒆲𒅗𒁉𒂠𒊒𒁀 kuŋ₂ ka-bi-še₃ šub-ba – ‘a tail stuck in its own mouth’

For more information on this text, see Daniel’s bibliography.