Inanna and the Me

notes

Inanna and Enki: The Transfer of the Arts of Civilization is one of the most theologically significant Sumerian texts, providing the fullest account of the me — the divine powers and institutions that constitute civilised existence. The text survives in multiple Old Babylonian tablet copies (c. 2000–1600 BCE) from Nippur and Ur, and was assembled and translated primarily through the ETCSL project at Oxford. The me are the objects of the narrative. In Sumerian theology, the me are the fundamental attributes of civilised life, understood as divine offices or properties that can be held, transferred, stolen, and recovered. The text preserves two separate lists: the powers that Enki gives Inanna during their drinking feast (the most extensive list of me in Sumerian literature) and the powers that Inanna loads into the boat of heaven for transport to Uruk. The combined list includes kingship, priesthood, truth, descent to and ascent from the underworld, the scribal arts, carpentry, smithing, musical instruments, sexual behaviour, speech patterns, and many specific religious offices. The me are simultaneously normative (what civilised society is) and descriptive (what it actually does). The text's central drama is theological: Enki, the god of wisdom, gives away the me when drunk and attempts to take them back when sober. He fails. This narrative structure serves a specific ideological purpose: it explains how Uruk, the great city of Inanna, came to hold the divine offices that properly belonged to Eridu, the oldest city and Enki's seat. The text is in part a justification of Uruk's cultural supremacy in the Ur III period. The seven-fold repetition of the sea monster attacks and Inanna's resistance is characteristic of Sumerian narrative formulae and may reflect a liturgical performance context in which the repetitions were chanted. The philosophical content — a complete taxonomy of what makes civilised life possible — is unique in ancient literature. The inclusion alongside kingship and priesthood of items like "deceitful speech," "prostitution," and "forthright speech" as equally divine attributes reflects the Sumerian view that all aspects of human social life, including morally ambiguous ones, were divinely ordained and constitutive of civilisation.

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