The myths of Sumer

This book is a collection of Sumerian myths: thirty-six literary compositions, organised into thematic cycles, that introduce the reader to the gods, heroes, cities, and ideas of ancient Sumer. Drawing on texts preserved mainly in Old Babylonian scribal-school tablets, it explores stories of creation, divine order, the underworld, heroic combat, kingship, love, death, and the origins of civilisation. The book includes major mythological figures such as Enki, Enlil, Ninurta, Inanna, Dumuzid, Nanna-Suen, Gilgamesh, Enmerkar, and Lugalbanda, while also presenting debate poems and fragmentary traditions that reveal the intellectual world of the Sumerian scribes.

Together, these myths show how the “black-headed people” imagined the structure of the cosmos, the boundary between life and death, the legitimacy of power, and the transmission of knowledge. They also reveal the deep continuity between Sumerian storytelling and later mythological traditions, from the flood and the descent to the underworld to the hero’s quest for fame and the struggle to bring order out of chaos.

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