The Sumerian-Akkadian Bible

Before the Bible, before Homer, before the great books of Greece and Rome, the people of Mesopotamia pressed their stories into clay. Sumerian and Akkadian are the oldest written languages on earth. Their tablets went into the ground with their cities, lay there for two thousand years, and were read again.The Sumerian- Akkadian Bible, gathers what survived into one scripture: sixty chapters in eight books, set down by the hand of Prof. Stephen E. Dinehart IV.THE EIGHT BOOKS- I. The Book of Beginnings. The Deep before the names; the fashioning of humankind from clay; the gifts of the earth; the noise of humankind; the Flood and the return.- II. The Book of the Gods. The great assembly; Enlil and Ninlil; Inanna and the divine powers; the Descent of Inanna; Dumuzi and Geshtinanna; Nergal and Ereshkigal; the wrath of Erra.- III. The Book of Kings and Cities. Kingship descending from heaven; Enmerkar and Aratta; Lugalbanda in the mountain cave; Sargon of Akkad; Gudea the builder; the fall of Ur and its lament.- IV. The Book of Wisdom and Lament. The Instructions of Shuruppak; the proverbs of the tablet-houses; the Farmer's Instructions; the righteous sufferer; the theodicy; the laments for the cities.- V. The Book of Heroes and Sages. Gilgamesh and Enkidu, from the wild man to the plant of life; Etana carried up by the eagle; Adapa and the bread of life; Ninurta and the Anzu bird.- VI. The Book of Hymns and Prayers. Enheduanna, the first author to sign her name; the songs of Inanna and Dumuzi; the hymns of Shulgi; the prayer to the gods of the night; the prayer to the god who is not known; blessings for the house, the birth-chamber, the sickbed and the road.- VII. The Book of Spirits and Deliverance. The evil that walks in at the door; the Seven; Lamashtu and Pazuzu; the Burning and the Peeling Away; the hand of the ghost; the two healers and the diagnostic tablet; the substitute king; the cleansing of a house; the lifting of the hand.- VIII. The Sacred Tablets. The me, the powers by which a civilization takes its form; the Tablet of Destinies, stolen and restored; the laws of Ur-Namma and Hammurabi; the three paths of the stars; the calendar and its festivals; the school of the scribes, and the clay that outlived the palace.Here are Namma and Abzu, Enki and the ordering of the world, the Anunnaki in their stations.