Table Of ContentPUBLICATIONS OF THE
FOUNDATION FOR FINNISH ASSYRIOLOGICAL RESEARCH
NO. 1
STATE ARCHIVES OF ASSYRIA CUNEIFORM TEXTS
VOLUME VI
State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts (SAACT) is a series of text editions presenting
central pieces of Mesopotamian literature both in cuneiform and in transliteration, with
complete glossaries, name indexes and sign lists generated electronically from the
transliterations. The goal of the series is to eventually make the entire library of
Assurbanipal available in this format.
© 2010 by the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, Helsinki
and the Foundation for Finnish Assyriological Research
All Rights Reserved
Published with the support of the
Foundation for
Finnish Assyriological Research
Set in Times
Typography and layout by Teemu Lipasti and Robert Whiting
Typesetting by Robert Whiting
Cuneiform fonts by Laura Kataja and Robert Whiting
The Assyrian Royal Seal emblem drawn by Dominique Collon from original
Seventh Century B.C. impressions (BM 84672 and 84677) in the British Museum
Cover: The Burney Relief (ME 2003-7-18,1), Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum
Printed in the USA and distributed by Eisenbrauns
Winona Lake, Indiana 46590, USA
www .eisenbrauns .com
ISBN-13 978-952-10-1333-1 (Volume 6)
ISBN-10 952-10-1333-8 (Volume 6)
ISSN 1455-2345 (SAACT)
STATE ARCHIVES OF ASSYRIA
CUNEIFORM TEXTS
VOLUME VI
The Neo-Assyrian Myth of
ISTAR’S DESCENT AND
RESURRECTION
INTRODUCTION, CUNEIFORM TEXT, AND TRANSLITERATION
WITH A TRANSLATION, GLOSSARY, AND EXTENSIVE COMMENTARY
By
Pirjo Lapinkivi
THE NEO-ASSYRIAN TEXT CORPUS PROJECT
2010
A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S
This critical edition of the “Descent of Istar Jo the Netherworld” has been a
baby waiting to be born for a long period of time. First of all, although it was
one of the most significant religious and literary texts of ancient Mesopota-
mia, it has not received proper attention in the modern scholarly world. There
has not been a critical edition of the Assyrian version of the myth despite its
importance and value. Because of the obvious lack for the field of Assyrio-
logy and because of my own interest in the figure of the multi-faceted goddess
Istar, I decided to fill the gap and attempt to provide an edition that could be
used by scholars, students and anyone interested in the myth.
Second, the work for the edition started quite a few years ago as a continu-
ation of my dissertation “The Sumerian Sacred Marriage in the Light of
Comparative Evidence” (published as SAAS 15). I worked as a post-doctoral
researcher at the University of Helsinki, in the Institute for Asian and African
Studies, until the spring of 2007 when;I decided to move to another field of
work and left the edition unfinished at that time. Ever since, the edition has
been on my mind, but in a latent state, until now when the time to have it born
has come. For this final step I am forever grateful to Prof. Simo Parpola and
Dr. Robert M. Whiting who have provided me with all the assistance needed
to have the book completed and published.
Financially, I am indebted to the Oskar Oflund Foundation, the Ella and
Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation, and the Emil Aaltonen Foundation. Their
grants enabled full-time work on preparing this edition of Istar’s journey to
the Netherworld and her resurrection while I was working at the University
of Helsinki.
I am grateful to the Foundation for Finnish Assyriological Research for
making the publication of this work possible.
Vantaa, December 2009 Pirjo Lapinkivi
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.............................................................................................. v
INTRODUCTION , ix
Manuscripts................................................................................................................. xi
Previous Work on Istar’s Descent........................................................................ xii
Abbreviations and Symbols................................................................................... xiv
Bibliography.............................................................................................................. xvii
CUNEIFORM TEXT........................................................................................................ 1
TRANSLITERATION...................................................................................................... 9
TEXT SCORE..................................................................................................................... 15
MIDDLE ASSYRIAN VERSION (Transliteration and Translation)................... 23
TRANSCRIPTION ....................................................................................................... 25
TRANSLATION................................................................................................................. 29
CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS 35
Grammatical Commentary................... 95
GLOSSARY AND INDICES 101
Logograms and Their Readings 101
Glossary ................................................................................................................... 103
Index of Names......................................................................................................... 108
SIGN LIST........................................................................................................................... 109
IN T R O D U C T IO N
The “Descent of Istar to the Netherworld” is certainly one of the best known
and most widely read Mesopotamian myths. It has come down to us almost
complete in its classical Neo-Assyrian version, and translations of it are
available in numerous anthologies of Mesopotamian literature (for many
years also on the Internet). The myth itself has been discussed or touched
upon in innumerable connections, and reading it in cuneiform is a self-evident
must for every aspiring Assyriologist.
Against this background, it is both surprising and deplorable that no
full-scale critical edition of this important myth has ever been produced.
Apart from Peter Jensen’s editio princeps from 1901, Rykle Borger’s score
transliteration in BAL2 (1979), 95-104, is the only scholarly edition of the
text available to students. This state of affairs is all the more deplorable since,
despite all the attention that the myth has received, the text still presents many
textual and interpretive problems that have not been satisfactorily resolved.
Thus, for example, the unfilled lacunae in Borger’s transliteration, particu-
larly those at the beginnings and ends of lines 128-134, still present a serious
obstacle to the understanding of the end of the myth.
Moreover, although the myth has also been studied in depth from intertex-
tual and intercultural perspectives, the available comparative evidence (both
Mesopotamian and non-Mesopotamian) has never been collected into a line-
by-line commentary that would facilitate the understanding of its religious
and philosophical dimensions. Without such a commentary, the key com-
parative evidence will necessarily remain beyond the ken of the casual
student of the myth, who is thus forced to approach it largely from his or her
own (more or less subjective) perspective only.
The present volume is an attempt to provide a critical edition that can not
only be profitably used in teaching but will also satisfy the needs of more
serious students of the text. In addition to the cuneiform text, it contains 1) a
new composite transliteration of the NA version based on all available
manuscripts, 2) a score highlighting the differences between the Nineveh and
Assur versions, 3) a normalized transcription, 4) a translation of the compo-
site text, 5) a detailed line-by-line commentary, 6) a grammatical and ortho-
graphic commentary, as well as 7) exhaustive logogram, word and name
indices and 8) a sign list in the customary SAACT style. The normalized
transcription and grammatical explanations are addressed to the beginning
students and non-Assyriologists who wish to study the Akkadian text first-
hand, without recourse to a trained Assyriologist.
Because of the brevity of the myth and the great variety of the interpreta-
tions proposed for it, the surface story and the various layers of meaning
underlying it are not generally discussed in this introduction. The title of the
volume was chosen to draw attention to the fact that the descent of the
Goddess was not a one-way journey But ended in an ascent to heaven.
