Mesopotamian Religion

8. Excerpts

Giorgio Buccellati 2024
When on High

Jonah Lynch – December 2021
Marco De Pietri – December 2024

Giorgio Buccellati 2024 When

Buccellati 2024 When
"When on High the Heavens...": Mesopotamian Religion and Spirituality with Reference to the Biblical World
London-New York: Routledge

ToC of Buccellati 2024 When

Table of Contents

I. Methodology and Historical Background
1. Religion and spirituality
     1.1 Religion
          The definition of 'religion'
          The absolute is not defined but can be perceived
     1.2 The absolute as divine element and as matrix
          Two fundamentally different ways of conceiving of the absolute
     1.3 Structure of religious systems
          Structural analogy between religious systems
     1.4 Spirituality
          What we mean by spirituality
     1.5 Piety
     1.6 Revelation and intuition
          'Illumination', revelation and intuition
     1.7 Myth and history
     1.8 Explanation and faith
     1.9 Competence and sensitivity
          Expertise and sensitivity
     1.10 Objectivity
     1.11 Levels of analysis
          On method
     1.12 Culture and experience
          Sharing experience
2. Mesopotamia and the Bible
     2.1 The history of religions
          Religious systems
          Structural comparison
          Links between Mesopotamia and current society
          Reasoning before philosophy
          Dependence of the Bible on Mesopotamia
          Treating institutions as organic wholes
          On the existence of universal terms
          How to consider our own assumptions
          On the origin of slavery
          Multiplicity and Unity of the Divine
          Divine attributes
          On transitivity and intransitivity

General topic(s)
of the book

The present page contains a lengthy list of excerpts from Buccellati's book on Mesopotamian religion When on High the Heavens..., as an aid in understanding the context of the present website. Due to publishing requirements, the full text is available only in the print edition.

Excerpts from Buccellati 2024 When

The concept of the Absolute

Topic	Section	Excerpt
The concept of the Absolute	3.4	From these considerations the profound difference in the way of conceiving the absolute emerges. In the polytheistic conception, the absolute is, in effect, the sum of the relative, and therefore a multifaceted reality that is based on an indefinite progression that is inclusive of everything. In monotheism, on the other hand, the absolute exists beyond the relative. There is a total ontological detachment, which takes concrete form, as we shall see, in the concept of holiness.

Two fundamentally different ways of conceiving of the absolute

Topic	Section	Excerpt
Two fundamentally different ways of conceiving of the absolute	1.2	Conceived in this way, religion is universal in its impact, meaning that it concerns everyone, and not just "believers." Without exception, all human beings are confronted with the fact that they are conditioned by factors over which they have no control. And these factors are perceived in such a coherent way that they inevitably bring us back to a single fulcrum from which this conditioning radiates – the absolute. But there is a fundamental difference in conceiving this fulcrum, depending on whether or not an autonomous capacity for action is attributed to it. The "divine" is the absolute endowed with this capacity. The concept of "god" can be seen, from this point of view, as an active absolute, that is, an entity that, on its own initiative, sets in place the conditions to which we are subject. A religion that presupposes the absolute as an active principle develops a system that is based on an expectation of specific and unpredictable initiatives on the part of the "divine." ... The alternative is an inert absolute, which works, indeed, like a pivot around which reality revolves, but a passive pivot, devoid of all will and ability to act. We can define it as a "matrix," a reality that underlies every phenomenon but without the ability to intervene autonomously.

The absolute is not defined but can be perceived

Topic	Section	Excerpt
The absolute is not defined but can be perceived	1.1	It is therefore possible to speak of a perception of the absolute even if this remains empirically unknown: perception refers to the experience of being conditioned in repeated and coherent ways. It is not the absolute as such that is reduced to the boundaries of empirical experience, but only the resulting effects. While the absolute always remains beyond our senses, and even beyond our ability to define it conceptually and analytically, we can instead define the impact of the resulting limitations. It is not, mind you, that limits as such are sufficient to establish a notion of the absolute: what is added is the perception of a focal point where limits converge coherently. For example, we accept the logical rules of discourse every time we speak to each other, and this single logical principle, which underlies all the rules, is but one aspect of the absolute.

How to consider our own assumptions

Topic	Section	Excerpt
How to consider our own assumptions	2.9	We cannot, in other words, claim to operate independently of our cultural assumptions. If we try to understand something of the past it is because we are as interested in ourselves as we are in the past. So not only can we, but indeed we must, superimpose our mental categories on theirs, provided that we make it clear what these assumptions are. These categories are mainly of two kinds. The first is the way of analysis: we are looking for repetitive patterns that emerge from the data, whether or not the ancients were aware of these regularities. The second is the imposition of conceptual constructs, derived from systems of ultimate principles, on the data. These systems (whether they derive from a comparative study or from a more abstract phenomenology of religion) serve to point in a certain direction, and to ask the questions which allow us to organize the data.

The gods as hypostasized attributes

Topic	Section	Excerpt
The gods as hypostasized attributes	3.6	On closer inspection, what happens with Mesopotamian deities is that each individual identifies with a single attribute and excludes the others. The god of wisdom, Ea, is is univocally identified with that quality, and does not embody love, justice, and so on. The same is true for the goddess of physical love (Ishtar), the god of justice (Shamash), and so on. If anthropomorphism means "in the guise of a human being", the term does not fit the situation. We deal, more appropriately, with iconicity. Every deity is in fact the iconic representation of a single attribute, and not the incarnation of that attribute in a strictly human dimension ("anthropo-morphic"), since men and women sum up in themselves, in the unity of their personality, all those characteristics, even if in different proportions for each individual. Divinities as icons are, in other words, emblematic projections of artificially isolated segments of "anthropic" reality. (We shall see how fate/destiny does not assume the state of divinity precisely because it is not identified with any personal traits, nor with any set of such personal traits). What is missing, therefore, in the polytheistic perception is the very center, the soul, so to speak, of being a man or a woman, and that is the integration in a single individual of the variety of psychological traits that define, precisely because of their integration in unity, the human person, the anthropos. This is precisely the notion of the divine in monotheism, where the sum of psychological characteristics explodes in a tumultuous history that maintains faith in the unity of a single divine character.

The Coherence of the God of Israel

Topic	Section	Excerpt
The Coherence of the God of Israel	5.4	The coherence of divine consciousness is perceived as situated above the flow of time precisely in recognizing that its *"grace" (hen* in Hebrew, that is, its providential interest in world affairs) remains unchanged in any case, in spite of any calamity that comes to afflict the social group that recognizes him as its own. Indeed, it is precisely the collapse of the external forms of political cohesion of that group (the destruction of the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah and the exile that follows) that consolidates the sense of abandonment to that "grace"** instead of leading to a replacement of the point of origin, which in the polytheistic world would be the god who has failed them.

Sharing experience

Topic	Section	Excerpt
Sharing experience	1.12	If, as historians, we cannot properly study the experience of the ancients, we can still study, and indeed we do study, the sharing of that experience as it transpires from the cultural channels in which it took shape. Culture can therefore be understood as the framework within which experience is expressed and transmitted. At the very origins of culture, there is a need to share an experience that can be lived again, and reproduced. This is one of the beautiful and profound aspects of being human, namely that we can communicate not only knowledge, but also fragments of our individual experience: culture acts as a mediator for the immediate; even though it is not an experience in itself, it serves as a springboard to get there. In this context, we can say that religion offers a public mechanism for the institutionalization of the private.

On the meaning of evemerism

Topic	Section	Excerpt
On the meaning of evemerism	6.3	Evemeristic interpretation largely infuences our way of seeing and understanding polytheistic perception and, in partcular, the fundamentals of the spirituality at its core. But this can easily lead us to an overly simplistic evaluation, and it is good to consider an alternatve point of view. Instead of starting from natural phenomena which, when unexplained are interpreted as spiritual values, I prefer to see the opposite path: what lies at the beginning is the percepton of the absolute, and the reference to natural phenomena is the result of an effort aimed at giving substance to this perception, an effort that serves to focus on a vision that would otherwise remain too difuse and inarticulate. In other words, it is not that, being impressed by the power of the storm and the sun, the Mesopotamians "created" corresponding divine representations. Instead, having a generic perception of the absolute as a real force, they would seek evidence of its concrete manifestation, and connect it with other real forces of which they had precise perception, such as the thunderstorm or the sun.

Expertise and sensitivity

Topic	Section	Excerpt
Expertise and sensitivity	1.9	In addition to expertise, we must develop a sensitivity for the initial experience from which the cultural construct that is the initial object of study has sprung. This sensitivity helps us to study culture not only as an object, extrinsically, but to assimilate its values, to assimilate the hidden experience. While expertise results from a scientific effort, sensitivity derives from a humanistic afflatus. These two approaches are intimately linked, like poles of a single reality. Expertise without sensitivity can easily become turn into a pedantry that is both sterile and wooden. But sensitivity without expertise can easily evaporate into a form of fantastic fiction.

The personal culture of the scholar

Topic	Section	Excerpt
The personal culture of the scholar	1.10	Immersed in our culture, we all have a wealth of cultural assumptions with which we approach other cultures. It is an illusion to think that it is possible to discard these assumptions. This is also because, if this were ever possible, it would result in an inhuman attitude, since it would rob us of our cultural specificity, meaning that we operate as mechanical robots. Instead, we can say that the measure of our objectivity in terms of sensitivity lies in our ability to calibrate our cultural assumptions. This means that we can, and must, first of all be aware of our assumptions, and make them explicit to those who read or observe us. We must also tend to tune ("calibrate," as with a tuning fork) our assumptions with those at the base of the phenomena we study. In other words, we must broaden our sensitivity. For example, looking at the Mesopotamian religious experience through the filter of biblical texts, in a prejudicial way, can easily lead us to consider it as a senseless superstition, the gods as lifeless idols, mythology as a ridiculous fantasy. One may claim to be entitled to do so, but only on condition that we clearly articulate our starting point. If we want to go further, we can calibrate our sensitivity along the lines of those repetitive patterns that we have recognized as objective before, and that can educate us to progressively recognize the presence of different values that define the Mesopotamian experience in an autonomous way. Instead of being fixed and static, objectivity emerges as something dynamic and constantly growing.

Founding personalities

Topic	Section	Excerpt
Founding personalities	4.6	In Mesopotamia there are no founding personalities of the religious system, let alone human personalities who are conceived as historically valid and who propose their own intuition of divine reality as a specific expression of a manifestation or revelation deriving directly from that reality. The centrality of these personalities is instead total in the biblical world, and the perception (in the tradition) of their historicity is undisputed. The social organization of the religious system hinges unequivocally on these two conceptions and, whatever the similarity of the underlying formulation, there could not be a more radical difference in the basic conception.

Gods as attributes

Topic	Section	Excerpt
Gods as attributes	5.1	The contrast between anthropomorphism and iconicity (see 3.6 above) will serve as a starting point. Gods are icons or emblems of specific human and natural attributes, and each attribute is present in an absolute way, so to speak, in each individual deity. So justice, for example, is present in a single deity, the sun god Shamash, and not in another deity. We can therefore say that the attribute is present in a deity in an "absolute" way (because it is absent in other deities), but this same quality is "relativized" because it is divorced from the other attributes – such as wisdom, which is identified with the freshwater god, Ea, or sexual attraction, which is identified with the morning star, Ishtar, and so on. The attributes are also specifically highlighted with recurrent elements in the representative arts.

‘Illumination’, revelation and intuition

Topic	Section	Excerpt
'Illumination', revelation and intuition	1.6	Under the term "illumination," therefore, I intend to subsume both revelation and intuition, in the same way as I trace back to the single concept of “absolute” the duality of divine element and matrix. Without meaning to belittle the fundamental import of diversity, I wish, in this way, to justify the real validity of the common human experience that is at its root, of what I call, precisely, spirituality.

Treating institutions as organic wholes

Topic	Section	Excerpt
Treating institutions as organic wholes	2.8	We can also refer to the methodological approach known under the French term longue durée, which takes into account the influence of the structural continuity of the institutions over a very long periods of time. It is in this perspective that I approach the study of Mesopotamian religion and spirituality as an organic whole. There is undoubtedly an element of simplification in this approach, all the more so because of the systematic comparison that I intend to propose with biblical perception, which will also be viewed as an organic whole. In both cases, we look at an immense multiplicity of typologies and extraordinarily long time periods, which seems to work against any possible grouping into unitary and overall patterns. The validity, or not, of the results will be determined by the coherence of the vision that emerges from the presentation of the data and the way in which they relate organically to each other, as proposed.

Dependence of the Bible on Mesopotamia

Topic	Section	Excerpt
Dependence of the Bible on Mesopotamia	2.5	Paradoxically, another reason why Mesopotamian religion is relevant to us today is the structural contrast with biblical tradition, which I intend to highlight in this work. Mesopotamia was the great cultural matrix within which the history of ancient Israel developed. While Mesopotamian civilization developed without any reference to Israel, the opposite is not true: the Palestinian reality of Israel meant that the confrontation with the Mesopotamian matrix was always operational. The self-perception that Israel has of its beginnings is emblematic: Abraham starts from Mesopotamia. In the resulting contrast, a polarity develops that profoundly conditions the religious reality that we find represented in the Bible. A reality that, in whatever way one wants to see the question, has radically influenced our intellectual history. Understanding the polarity therefore means better understanding our roots.

Links between Mesopotamia and current society

Topic	Section	Excerpt
Links between Mesopotamia and current society	2.3	Mesopotamian society was the first to experiment with alternative ways of social aggregation on a large scale, the city: and our effort to extend mass civilization on a global scale has its beginnings right there, and can be better explained through a deeper understanding of its ultimate roots. Writing, first systematically developed in Mesopotamia, was the most important communication technology ever invented in the history of mankind, after the introduction of language and before that of the computer. The crystallization of thought and its dynamic reification as we see it developed in electronic data processing and logical processes dramatically brings to our attention the impact of these technologies on our entire logical and perceptual system. Polytheism, seen as a conceptual system that confronts visible reality starting from the the assumption of an absolute, tangible only in the way we see ourselves conditioned, found its precise and exact codification in the Mesopotamian religious tradition: and it can be seen as the foundation of our scientific tradition aimed at fragmenting reality in order to make it fall within an analytical system of control.

Multiplicity and Unity of the Divine

Topic	Section	Excerpt
Multiplicity and Unity of the Divine	3.2	The multiplicity of the divinities, however conspicuous, cannot be considered as the truly distinctive element. First of all, in polytheism there is also a fundamental unity of the divine that results not only from the coordination of the individual divinities in an organic system, but also from the dependence of this system on fate/destiny as a basic force and principle. More important is the fact that, if we put all the emphasis on the numerical aspect, on the one hand polytheism is unduly accentuated as an incoherent conglomeration of self-limiting idols, on the other hand monotheism simply emerges as a rarefied polytheism, where the one is a numerical concept identical in substance to the concept of the many.

Necromancy

Topic	Section	Excerpt
Necromancy	11.7	In the Mesopotamian realm, as we know from Sumerian and Akkadian texts, there are no cases of necromancy: the active presence of spirits from beyond the grave was a cause of great anguish, and it was to be avoided. We find it instead in the Hurrian sphere, and in the famous, though unique, case of the biblical episode in which King Saul secretly asks for a response from a necromancer. Saul is terrified facing the Philistines, knowing that he no longer has divine support: "Yahweh answered him neither through dreams, nor through the Urim, nor through prophets" (1 Sam 28:6.15). And so he secretly went to Endor to consult a necromancer who is called "the lady of 'ôb", a Hebrew word identical to the Hurrian abi [= unit A12]^{Note 1}: it designates a pit or magic circle from within which the spirit evoked emerged from the underworld. The reason why Saul goes secretly to Endor is that he himself had declared necromantic practice illegal. It is important to note, in this regard, that the biblical account accepts the evocation of the spirit to which Saul wanted to turn (the prophet Samuel) as having actually happened. The prohibition, therefore, had nothing to do with an alleged accusation that the necromancers were charlatans, but rather with the very nature of the operation. And this opens a window of great interest to us on the actual spread of the biblical spirit on a social level. Prohibition (of a political nature because it emanated from the king himself) concerns the fact that the evocation of the spirits of the underworld serves to answer questions of a completely contingent nature. The apparition of the spirit is not called into question, nor is the truthfulness of the answer. On the contrary, it is precisely Samuel who speaks, from beyond the grave, through the medium of *the "lady of 'ôb", of which there is no doubt (28:13-15). And his response is then true: Saul is defeated and killed (31:6), and so he truly reaches Samuel in the netherworld (28:19). Far from being a fraud, the necromantic practice is all too faithful*. But it goes against the profound spirit according to which contact with the sphere of the divine must not be such as to "tempt" God (see 7.10 above). We see here how the quality of the interlocutors of the biblical message can be colored in ways that indicate how the message goes beyond a narrow circle, and affects the "piety" of ordinary people in a direct and explicit way.

On method

Topic	Section	Excerpt
On method	1.11	Another aspect of objectivity is the equally fundamental need to keep the levels of analysis separate. This is also a way of calibrating one's approach to the data, and it is an essential question of method. The rule is simple: one must not argue in a given field of research with assumptions derived from another field. For example, if we are proposing a linguistic argument, we must do so in a purely linguistic key, without mixing facts or reasoning derived from other levels, historical, religious or otherwise.

The God of Israel as personal absolute

Topic	Section	Excerpt
The God of Israel as personal absolute	5.4	Simplifying things, we can say that the god of Israel is the absolute, endowed with the quality of a person. All the attributes of the individual gods merge in him and he emerges at the same time as personified fate/destiny. It is therefore the absolute that implements the relative, rather than a relativized absolute.

Reasoning before philosophy

Topic	Section	Excerpt
Reasoning before philosophy	2.4	The logic of reasoning is already present in Mesopotamia, as is the empirical collection and systematic cataloging of data from which conclusions can be drawn. It is this very refined capacity of analysis that constitutes the foundation of the method of reasoning: to fragment reality into its minimal constitutive elements, to articulate these elements within an organic conceptual system, to define the increasingly minute limits of knowledge – it is from all this that a true scientific method emerges. The resulting certainty is based on the awareness of having a control system that works primarily in two ways. On the one hand, the ability to descend in a capillary way from the highest nodes of an intellectual construction to the smallest constituents, the atoms of the system. On the other hand, the continuous verification of internal coherence in this grand logical tree that, the more it is fragmented, the more it appears as a congruent whole in its innumerable ramifications. It is the security of being able to "explain" everything progressively. And this procedure reaches its climax precisely within the framework of religion, when the system is applied to the absolute.

The definition of ‘religion’

Topic	Section	Excerpt
The definition of 'religion'	1.1	By religion I mean the codification of the interaction with an absolute that remains empirically unknown, but is nevertheless empirically assumed. It is an absolute because our perception of things is conditioned by it in ways that are beyond our control. An empirically unknown absolute because it totally eludes all physical and tangible parameters. Unknown, but whose reality we presuppose because of the coherence with which our experience is conditioned. As a result, there is a need to develop a relationship and to interact with the source of this conditioning. This relationship is codified through a series of cultural mechanisms that are conditioned over time by vast social groups.

Religious systems

Topic	Section	Excerpt
Religious systems	2.1	The history of religions presents us with a very wide range of typologies in which the various methods of conceiving the absolute and the relationship between the absolute and the tangible world are configured. Interest is directed mainly towards the study of two parallel systems – the conceptual and the institutional. The conceptual system includes the description of the elements that define the intangible – the entities (god, fate, deities), the origins (the coming into existence of the world or of the gods themselves), the ultimate principles (morality, justice, and so on). The institutional system includes the procedures through which the relationship with the intangible is regulated – worship as an affirmation of the absolute perceived in its modalities, rituals as mechanisms of relative control for the propitiation of an apparently uncontrollable power, rules of conduct as a prerequisite for a human relationship acceptable to these impervious forces. ... It is important to look at systems qua systems, that is, from a structural point of view. We must, therefore, go beyond the anecdotal level and see how the elements blend coherently and organically. The emphasis on spirituality is helpful because it directs our attention to the basic principles from which the systematic codification of religious forms flows.

The origin of slavery

Topic	Section	Excerpt
The origin of slavery	2.10	The end of the fourth millennium B.C. (roughly the period between 3200 and 3000 B.C.) can be considered as a decisive watershed in the history of humanity, similar only to that of our own times, the dawn of the third millennium A.D., "post-history." It was then, five thousand years ago, that human communities reached the critical mass which caused a profound structural transformation of what was their very basic nature. Resulting in large part from more efficient planning strategies (from an industrial-type organization of agriculture to extremely capillary systems of power delegation), it became possible for human aggregates of thousands of people to maintain a sense of solidarity and a completely organic social coherence without the benefit of a face-to-face mutual association between the individuals who constituted the group. The result was a profound social and psychological transformation, which manifested itself, among other things, with the introduction of slavery, the most extreme phenomenon of depersonalization in human relations, whereby persons were reduced institutionally to mere functional slots. It is an extreme case, though certainly not the only indicator of the transformation. It was in the very nature of urbanization that individuals were to be judged not by their individual personalities, but by their generic function: if you had a potter or a scribe in a city, you knew that you could have more than one to choose from within its respective class, whether or not you knew him by name. [about the first urbanization, cf. also Mes-Pol, chapter 5; note by mDP]

What we mean by spirituality

Topic	Section	Excerpt
What we mean by spirituality	1.4	My main aim is, in fact, to consider the nature of the relationship between the two poles, the absolute and the human, and to look at religion (a structured and culturally defined codification) as a window onto its origin. As I already mentioned in the introduction, spirituality is, on the one hand, the inner impulse towards the absolute, and on the other, the equally inner enrichment that comes from it. It is therefore a question of directing our attention to sensitivity, a sensitivity not detached from external forms (which are the only data accessible to a historical investigation), but seen as the focal point from which forms arise.

Structural analogy between religious systems

Topic	Section	Excerpt
Structural analogy between religious systems	1.3	A premise of my analysis is that there is a structural analogy between the various religious systems. In short, we can describe the nature of this universal structure as follows. First, the interaction between the human element and the divine element can be seen in two different ways, depending on whether the initiative is attributed to one pole or the other, and, in the case of the human element, whether it is a single individual or a community. ... A further aspect of the structural analogy lies in the fact that the interaction between the two elements can be implicit or explicit. In the first case, interaction emerges on the basis of attitudes and institutions that presuppose certain ways of seeing things. Such attitudes and institutions are cultural data that can be explicitly identified and described, but the driving force behind them can only be deduced from the explicit data. The explicit relationship, on the other hand, is evidenced in a form that is either repetitive or spontaneous.

Structural comparison

Topic	Section	Excerpt
Structural comparison	2.2	The importance of a structural approach is even greater when comparing one religion with another. It is essential not to limit oneself to a comparison of segments, however significant they may be, but to arrive instead at an overall view, where the relationship of the segments to each other is taken into account. It is the systematic branching of the segments, the way in which one depends on the other, that emerges with a much more marked specificity than the weight of the individual elements: the comparison between structures and systems is much more conclusive than that between individual aspects, because the complexity of an organic system is proportionately more distinctive.

On transitivity and intransitivity

Topic	Section	Excerpt
On transitivity and intransitivity	7.3	This split depends on whether one sees the absolute as the subject or as the object of the relationship that is preceived by individuals and by human groups in their their intuition of the absolute and in the institutions that follow. We should further add that the two terms (subject and object) are to be understood in the syntactic sense of what governs a predicate or is governed by it, with the consequence that the nature of the absolute radically changes the nature of the predicate itself, as follows. In Mesopotamia, we can say that the predicate is intransitive, because the absolute (subject or object) is not conceived in a personal way. As such, it is not really the term of a relationship that is based on a face-to-face encounter. The Mesopotamian absolute does not look us in the eye, nor can human beings look him in the eye. Because, in fact, it has neither face nor eyes. This is how the absolute, seen as a profound immanence, qualifies the nature of the relationship. How can we have an "object," syntactically speaking, if the verb is intransitive? It must be understood in a broad sense, like “standing in front of”, rather than “dialoguing with”. This is what I will develop during the course of the exposition. In the biblical perception, exactly the opposite occurs. The relationship is transitive in the specific sense that there is a face-to-face posture that is, symmetrical with, if not on the same level as, the absolute conceived as God. This profoundly colors the nature of the relationship, and indeed changes its deep structure, even when there are strong similarities in external appearances. It is precisely from this strong systemic difference that the structural contrast I intend to highlight emerges in its fullest dimension.

On the existence of universal terms

Topic	Section	Excerpt
On the existence of universal terms	2.9	Note, then, that in none of the languages used in Mesopotamia is there a term that can be translated as "religion" (nor, it should be noted, can one be found in the languages of the Bible). Even more significant is the lack of a Mesopotamian theory of religion, a theology, so to speak. But we must not draw too negative a conclusion from this, since it is a phenomenon that is part of a much wider set of circumstances. For example, a true Mesopotamian linguistic theory is also missing (although there is no lack of grammatical texts, especially in the form of paradigms). But we certainly cannot conclude that Mesopotamian languages are impervious to our grammatical models.

Notes

Note 1: Texts in square brackets and in smaller case are by the authors of the present page. _{Back to text}