Kesh temple hymn
[2] Fragments of the text were discovered in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology catalogue of the Babylonian section (CBS)[further explanation needed] from their excavations at the temple library at Nippur in modern-day Iraq.
[4] Langdon published a translation from a 4 by 4 by 4 by 4 inches (10 by 10 by 10 by 10 cm) perforated, four sided, Sumerian prism from Nippur and held in the Ashmolean in Oxford in 1913 (number 1911-405) in "Babylonian Liturgies."
The myth was developed with the addition of CBS 8384, translated by George Aaron Barton in 1918 and first published as "Sumerian religious texts" in "Miscellaneous Babylonian Inscriptions," number eleven, entitled "A Fragment of the so-called 'Liturgy to Nintud.
[8] Other translations were made from tablets in the Nippur collection of the Museum of the Ancient Orient in Istanbul (Ni).
[9] Hermann Volrath Hilprecht and Samuel Noah Kramer amongst others worked to translate several others from the Istanbul collection including Ni 4371, 4465, 4555 & 9773, 4597, 9649, 9810, 9861 & 9903.
[23] Biggs recognized various differences in the archaic cuneiform and that "the literary texts of this period were unrecognized for so long is due to the fact that they present formidable obstacles to comprehension".
"[24] Biggs suggested "that other traditional works of literature may also go back in essentially their present form to the last third of the third millennium BCE at least.
She refers to her as the "goddess of vegetation, writing and literature including astronomical texts, the deity of the "house of understanding" (most likely intelligence), and as she who 'knows the (inmost) secrets of numbers'."
[26] Charpin and Todd noted in the relationship between Enlil and Nisuba (similar to Yahweh and Moses) how the text is the work of gods, who created and transmitted it to humans, giving the literature a reason for legitimacy.
Written on tablets it was held in her hands: House, platform of the Land, important fierce bull!
[28]The hymn is composed of 134 lines, formally divided into eight songs or "houses" or "temples", each of which ends with three rhetorical questions discussing the birth of Nintud's warrior son, Acgi:[2][29] Will anyone else bring forth something as great as Kesh?
Lines forty five to fifty seven give a metaphorical description of the temple reaching both for the heaven and descending into the underworld.
Lines fifty eight to seventy three discuss the complexities of the temple with vast quantities of oxen and sheep.
[30]The latest translation describes its founders, geography and features: House founded by An, praised by Enlil, given an oracle by mother Nintud!
House, at its upper end threefold indeed ... Whose well-founded storehouse is established as a household ... whose terrace is supported by lahama deities; whose princely great wall ... the shrine of Urim!
The hymn discusses music being played at the temple towards the end with drums and the coarse sound of a bull's horn sounding at temple ceremonies: "the wild bull's horn was made to growl, the algarsura instrument was made to thud.
"[31] Samuel Noah Kramer suggested that the musical instruments mentioned in the hymn were played in accompaniment.
[32] The hymn finishes with an admonition repeated four times suggested to be both a warning and invocation of the divine presence in the temple.
Ninhursanga, Enlil’s sister, has built a home in your holy court, House of Kesh, and has taken her seat upon your throne.
"[35] Stephen Langdon suggested the hymn gave evidence of the Sumerian theological view that Enlil and Ninlil created mankind and living things.
He noted based on an observation of Theophilus G. Pinches, that Ninlil or Belit Ilani had seven different names (such as Nintud, Ninhursag, Ninmah, etc.)
[38] Jeremy Black noted that Kesh was no longer a major settlement by the time of the later Babylonian versions but presumed that the temple of Nintud still functioned.
[2] Wilfred G. Lambert noted that many kings had built temples and chapels to Ninhursag, but that the Kesh sanctuary "was the centre of the goddess's cult from the Early Dynastic period into the Old Babylonian Dynasty; after this time it lost its importance".
