OK, I’m not Jane, but she kindly offered her platform for a brief word on some historical research findings that otherwise would never see the light of day.
We live by proverbs (just ask your grandmother). These are more or less the rules of everyday life. What fascinates me is that some elements of everyday life have not changed over the past 4,600 years. My favorite ancient proverb (forgive me, wives) is the Sumerian “For his pleasure, he got married. On thinking it over, he got divorced.” Today we’ve shortened it to “Marry in haste, repent at leisure.”
Another we use today: “As I escaped from the wild-ox, the wild-cow confronted me,” which in the Bible is “It will be like a man who runs from a lion and meets a bear!” ( Amos 5, 19); or, as I heard so many times as a somewhat less-than-perfect child, “Out of the frying pan, into the fire/,” (More examples in the table below.) Cartoonist Gary Larson captured the proverb as well (below):
I stumbled on the Sumerian proverbs while seeking the origins of environmental stewardship, accessing the earliest written records of civilization using the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL).Throughout time, the estate steward was responsible for ensuring the estate’s assets were kept in good order and produced enough to ensure the sustainability of the estate and all those who lived on it. Those duties included maintenance and protection of environmental quality and today translate into the role of the environmental steward.
My interests revolved around the origin of this stewardship ethic and as I traced it back through time, I came to the “first” civilization, that of the Sumerians whose writings included each of the duties that define the role of the steward. These duties are: fealty to the lord of the estate, fidelity to his wishes, protection of the estate assets; and, production of sufficient output (profit/revenue) to meet the needs of the estate.
The first Sumerian proverb that emerged from this research was the simple statement, “The Master knows, the steward does not,” a clear indication of the fidelity duty of the steward. With this one in hand, the search became more serious.
The ETCSL, a project of the University of Oxford, comprises a selection of nearly 400 literary compositions recorded on sources which come from ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and date to the late third and early second millennia BCE. For lack of funding, no new translations are being added to the corpus (hint to rich readers—give them some money).
The corpus contains Sumerian texts in transliteration, English prose translations and bibliographical information for each composition. [1]
The following cuneiform
is transliterated into an alphabetical rendering of the verbalized cuneiform, written as: niĝ2 ak-zu? gu7 nam ḫe2-eb-tar. This is then translated into English as “The steward rejoices when the estate increases its income.”
Among these ETCSL texts are twenty-eight standard collections of proverbs and half a dozen other proverb collections. Brendt Alster published these collections and their transliterations and translations in a two-volume set entitled Proverbs of Ancient Sumer.[2]. (The second volume provides commentary on each proverb.)
The table below provides his comparison of a few of these Sumerian proverbs with modern proverbs. Some of the comparisons may be obscure, but they reflect his analysis of not only the proverb, but the collection within which it is found. For example, the “pot calling the kettle black” proverb is within a collection reflecting statements a housewife would make in 2600 BCE.
I hope you enjoy the comparisons. I begin with perhaps the most universal and important one, the golden rule, dating more than 1000 years before the old testament and 2600 years before the new testament.
| ›Sumerian Proverb | Modern Proverb |
| Let kindness be repaid to him who repays a kindness. SP 14.1
A curser was not answered with a curse. In answering a curse, another answer would be made with a curse. SP 1.79 |
Love your neighbor as yourself. Lev19:18
So always treat others as you would like them to treat you Matthew 7:12 Treat others as you would like them to treat you. Luke 6:31 |
| You don’t speak of that which you have found You speak of that which you have lost. SP 1.11;
While present, it is considered a loincloth; when lost, it is considered fine clothing. SP 3.187 |
“What we have we prize not to the worth, whiles we enjoy it, but being lacked and lost, why then we rack the value?” Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, IV, i217-219 |
| Wealth, like migratory birds, never finds a place to settle. SP 1.18 | “When you set your eyes on it, it is gone For Wealth certainly makes itself wings, like an eagle that flies toward the heavens.” N.A.S. Proverbs 23:6-7 |
| Where my hearth is at home, there I will go. SP 1.93 | East or west, home is best.
There’s no place like home. |
| What comes out from the heart of the tree is known by the heart of the tree. SP 1.98 | A chip off the same old block. |
| If one pours oil into the inside of a scepter, nobody will know. SP 1.104 | Don’t hide your light under a bushel. |
| A heart never created hatred; speech created hatred. SP 1.105 | A man’s thoughtless talk may cut like a sword. Proverbs 12:18 |
| Husband, you call me unfaithful, yet you chase after the vulva [women].” SP 1.158 | A case of the pot calling the kettle black. |
| A stranger’s ox eats grass, but my own ox lies hungry. SP 2.93 | The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. |
| As I escaped from the wild-ox, the wild-cow confronted me. SP 2.94 | Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
“It will be like a man who runs from a lion and meets a bear!” Amos 5, 19 N.A.S.; “Whoever tries to escape the terror will fall into the pits, and whoever climbs out of the pits will be caught in the snare.” Jer 48:44 N.A.S. |
| For his pleasure, he got married. On thinking it over, he got divorced SP 2.124 | Marry in haste, repent at leisure. |
| Let me go today is what a herdsman says; let me go tomorrow is what a shepherd boy says; but “let me go” is ”let me go” and the time passes. SP 3.6 | “Never put off till tomorrow what may be done today.” |
| The man who shows his impatience will be served first by the ferryman. SP 3.88 | The squeaky wheel gets the grease. |
| Housewife says: My affairs are great affairs, my offices are great offices. SP 11.52 | My home is my castle. |
| The nights are fifty, the days are fifty | In for a penny, in for a pound. |
Finally, Jane posits an interesting question: “Was there anything distinctive about the Sumerian culture that nurtured proverbs?” Not being a Sumerian scholar, I’m loath to opine on what is or isn’t distinctive about their culture. As to proverbs in general, however, their persistence suggests that they are the skin of humanity—the hard-won wisdom of the masses. If there is a thread of knowledge that is the warp of the human tapestry, surely it is the proverb. Just ask your grandmother, she’ll let you know.
[1]]The transliterations and the translations can be searched, browsed and read online using the tools of the website (https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/).
[2] Brendt Alster, Proverbs of Ancient Sumer (Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 1997).
Top image of Sumerian cuneiform writing is by mzmatuszewski0 from Pixabay.
Several millennia and still none of the social engineers have changed human nature. For better or worse, within the next 50 to 100 years genetic engineers may achieve what the social engineers fail to do.
On a separate note, having done many translations and read many more, I would like to see literal translations that preserve word order and grammar to get a better sense of whether the English is translation, imitation, or rendering. (Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat, for instance, he spoke of as renderings since many were quite different, merely inspired by Khayyam’s verses.
Wallace, you raise a good (and important) point. Without question, there are competing translations of some of the “wisdom” literature of Sumer and those who followed. Further, there is context that springs not from the exact text, but from the arrangement of the text or the overall subject of the text, these writings being grouped on the clay tablets. Hence, there are “housewife” tablets, “management” tablets, “estate” tablets, and “temple” tablets, for example. There is also either expertise or hubris in some translations, the translator suggesting that the scribe “made a mistake” and meant something else. This is most likely to happen when there are multiple examples of the statement from multiple tablets, especially when found at multiple archeological sites.
As for the text itself, let me give you one example of the differing translations. Where a piece of text is within brackets “[ xx ]” then it means the surface of the tablet is destroyed or poorly preserved and this point and no signs can be read. In some instances, the author has restored the signs with confidence based upon context or duplicates.
Here are three lines of text from three different sources with three different transliterations (from cuneiform to the latin alphabet).
šu-gi₄-g[i₄ níg-gig ͩnin-urta-kam]
šu-gi₄-gi₄ níg-gig ͩnin-urta-ke₄
˹šu˺-gi₄-[gi₄ níg]-gig ͩnin-urta-kam
The translation offered is “To take revenge is the prerogative of Ninurta.” Ninurta is the god of thunder and rainstorms, of the floods of spring and of the plow and plowing. The translation is that of Bendt Alster, but “follows” that of M.J. Geller. In the commentary, Alster notes that “nig-gig” is here translated, not “is an abomination” but “is the prerogative (of a god)”. Geller notes that the precise meaning of nig-gig is “to be reserved for, to be sacred to (said of a) god” and the meaning “abomination” derives from the concept that that which is sacred to god is forbidden to others to eat. Hence, you find nig-gig used in some places as “prerogative (of a god)” and in others as “an abomination” (presumably in the view of a god).
Now, what is the word for word translation? As best I can discern, it is “revenge” “prerogative of” “Ninurta”. The modern equivalent is probably “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.”
That’s the best I can do for you. From here you will need to go to someone expert in the field.
This was an enjoyable insight into the ancient past and how we are not so far away from it as we imagine.
I like these:
Sumerian:
Where my hearth is at home, there I will go.
Modern:
East or west, home is best.
There’s no place like home.