Weapons of Words is based on a PhD dissertation submitted at the University of Oxford in 2014. Selena Wisnom explores the Mesopotamian poetic tradition, focusing on three major compositions: Anzû, Enūma eliš, and Erra and Išum. Besides an introduction, a conclusion and two indexes (words and sources), the book under review consists of seven main chapters which investigate the connections that can be identified in the Akkadian literature thanks to the perspective of intertextuality. The introduction presents a historiographical overview on the topic, as well as the methodological background at the base of study. The author gives the definition of “intertextuality” and “allusion” (that is, one specific intertextual connection), illustrating with concrete examples how new interpretations may emerge. Chapters 1 and 2 are devoted to the oldest composition under study, Anzû, and its relationships to other compositions, especially to Enūma eliš. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on Enūma eliš, whereas chapters 5, 6, and 7 deal with Erra and Išum, and how this latest Babylonian narrative is related to Anzû and Enūma eliš.
Anzû, Enūma Eliš and Erra and Išum are linked to each other, not only because they share common patterns (such as having a warrior as the main protagonist), images, twists and turns, but also they keep their own literary identity with new symbolic contents. Intertextual strategies highlight the competitive relationships at work in the literary creation, even on the diachronic level as writers take their inspirations into the stream of tradition from the Old Babylonian period to the first millennium bce. Because the intertextual approach is quite new in ancient Near Eastern studies, the author takes inspiration from Classics, where intertextuality has been studied almost from the very beginning. New critical techniques and methodologies are at the disposal of the author for the analysis of ancient cuneiform poetry.
Structural allusions highlight the intentionality of ancient writers to make specific points in the narration. The allusions are frequently competitive: for instance, protagonists may all be warriors, but they surpass those of earlier poems on which they are based. Poems themselves compete with each other as they are more sophisticated on the literary level, borrowing techniques and motifs. Allusive techniques include quotations, adaptations of specific lines, as well as shared images, structure, and characters. Quotations are rarely explicit; in ancient cuneiform literature, allusion is often an implicit quote developed in new articulations, bearing new meanings in the narrative. Allusions are not symptomatic of a lack of inventiveness; on the contrary, they illustrate how Babylonian scholars create new sense while they integrate their compositions in the stream of tradition, and their protagonist in the pantheon itself. For instance, the 50 names of Marduk at the end of the Enūma eliš are connected to the 50 destinies proclaimed by Ninurta to stones in Lugal-e. Although in Lugal-e the new names of the stones demarcate their reciprocal power, in Enūma eliš, the divine names enlarge the power of the Babylonian god. In each context, the number 50 evokes the great Sumerian god of Nippur, Enlil. Marduk is then equal to him and occupies his place as chief of the pantheon.
For the competitive aspect, the author explores the concept of hysteron proteron “the later one earlier”, defining a poem which positions itself earlier in time than a previous composition. This is the case for example with Enūma eliš. This Babylonian composition draws its literary inspiration from Anzû. But its narrative begins in the mythological time of the world's creation, an event that is not developed in Anzû which starts in the divine but already organized world. The hysteron proteron gives the audience the impression that Enūma eliš is a much older composition.
Before studying allusions from one source, the author clearly demonstrates that each old Babylonian source (such as lugal-e, Atra-Hasis, etc.) was still well known and widespread in the intellectual milieu of the first millennium bc. A derivative was then not irrational at all. Babylonian literature was a product of a highly trained intellectual elite that mastered the cuneiform writing system as well as Sumerian literature, which was still actively read and copied at that time. Chapter 7, probably the most original contribution of the volume, explores the possible connections between Erra and Išum and the Sumerian City Laments; the author's convincing arguments imply that these Sumerian compositions could have survived the Old Babylonian period despite a lack of exemplars. Lamenting over destroyed cities is also a widespread topic in Akkadian literature and has parallels in Biblical contexts (Stefan Sperl, “‘O city set up thy lament': poetic responses to the trauma of war”, in Hugh Kennedy (ed.), War and Poetry in the Middle East, London: I.B. Tauris, 2013, pp. 1–37).
The book under review focuses on Babylonian literature, but other disciplines could have been convoked, such as divinatory treaties which also played with literary allusions in the same manner (Glassner, Le devin historien, Boston, 2019). For instance, the death of Ibbi-Sîn, the last king of Ur, is a historical omen widely developed in the second and first millennia bce (Schaudig, Explaining Disaster. Tradition and Transformation of the “Catastrophe of Ibbi-Sîn” in Babylonian Literature, Münster, 2019). More than simply studying shared metaphors or quotations between Anzû, Enūma eliš and Erra and Išum, Selena Wisnom explores the scribal and scholarly milieu and the high degree of memorization involved in the scribal education. Weapons of Words is a major contribution to the study of Babylonian literature and its constitution. It invites us to consider the stream of tradition of the Mesopotamian literature, not as in a fixed and unalterable transmission, but as a dynamic and inventive process, ceaselessly renewing itself.
