Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography

Wayne Horowitz

Second Printing, with Corrections and Addenda

Eisenbrauns

Winona Lake, Indiana

2011

© Copyright 1998, 2011 by Eisenbrauns.

All rights reserved.

Second printing, with corrections and addenda, 2011.

Paperback ISBN 978-1-57506-215-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Horowitz, Wayne, 1957–

Mesopotamian cosmic geography / Wayne Horowitz.

p. cm.—(Mesopotamian civilizations; 8)

Includes bibliographic references (p. ) and index.

ISBN 0-931464-99-4 (cloth: alk. paper)

1. Cosmology, Babylonian. 2. Cosmology, Sumerian. 3. Akkadian language—Texts. 4. Sumerian language—Texts. I. Title. II. Series.

B147.C68H67 1998

113′.0935—dc21	98-17770
	CIP

Mesopotamian Civilizations

General Editor

Jerrold S. Cooper, Johns Hopkins University

Editorial Board

Walter Farber, University of Chicago Jean-Pierre Grégoire, C.N.R.S. Piotr Michalowski, University of Michigan Simo Parpola, University of Helsinki	Marvin Powell, Northern Illinois University Jack Sasson, University of North Carolina Piotr Steinkeller, Harvard University Marten Stol, Free University of Amsterdam
Irene Winter, Harvard University

Contents

Preface

Preface to the Second Printing

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations and Conventions

Introduction

Part I: Sources for Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography

1. The Levels of the Universe: KAR 307 30–38 and AO 8196 iv 20–22

2. “The Babylonian Map of the World”

3. The Flights of Etana and the Eagle into the Heavens

4. The Sargon Geography

5. Gilgamesh and the Distant Reaches of the Earth’s Surface

6. Cosmic Geography in Accounts of Creation

7. The Geography of the Sky: The “Astrolabes,” Mul-Apin, and Related Texts

8. BagM. Beih. 2 no. 98 and the Compass Points

9. “Seven Heavens and Seven Earths”

Part II: The Regions of the Universe

10. Names for Heaven

11. The Geography of the Heavens

12. Names for Earth

13. The Geography of Earth

Appendixes

Indexes

Subject Index

Ancient Texts and Modern Editions

Sumerian and Akkadian Terms

Stars

Plates

Addenda to the First Printing

Preface

Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography represents the main part of my first decade of study as an Assyriologist. The book began its life as a Ph.D. thesis of the same name under the supervision of Professor W. G. Lambert of the University of Birmingham. After completion of the Ph.D. thesis in 1986, I continued to collect materials relevant to the study of Mesopotamian views of cosmography with the intention of revising the thesis as a book in the early 1990s. The book Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography presents this revised, more mature examination of the topic.

Wayne Horowitz

Kfar Adumim

February, 1994

Preface to the Second Printing

In the introduction to the first edition of Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (MCG), I opened with the sentence: “This study collects and presents the available evidence in Sumerian and Akkadian texts for Mesopotamian ideas of the physical structure of the universe and its constituent parts.” Today, in 2010, this statement is ...