Death and Nether World According to the Sumerian Literary Texts
From the point of view of Sumerian cultural behaviour, the royal tombs excavated at Ur with such care and skill by Sir Leonard Woolley, were of epoch-making significance; they indicate with reasonable certainty that customarily the early rulers of Sumer were accompanied to the grave not only by some of their most precious personal possessions, but by a considerable human retinue as well. Needless to say, immediately upon this rather startling discovery the cuneiformists, and particularly the Sumerologists, began searching the documents for inscriptional verification of one sort or another, but without success. Moreover, in the past two decades, quite a number of Sumerian myths, epic tales, hymns, lamentations, and “historiographic” documents have become available, and it seemed not unreasonable to hope that one or another of these might shed light on the Sumerian burial customs relating to the royal tombs. But this hope, too, failed to materialise to any significant extent, which is not too surprising in view of the fact that the royal tombs date from about 2500 B.C., while the majority of our available literary documents were probably first composed about 2000 B.C. However, a number of the Sumerian literary works are concerned in one way or another with death and the Nether World, and the invitation to participate in the Woolley Festschrift offered an opportune moment to sift, collect, analyse and present the Sumerian ideas about death and “immortality,” in honour of the archaeologist who has done so much to make the long dead Sumerians “immortal.”
The early Sumerians must have believed therefore that their rulers would continue to live in the world beyond more or less as they lived on earth. It is hardly likely, however, that they thought this matter through very carefully or consistently. What was uppermost in the minds of those who planned and attended the elaborate and costly funeral arrangements—the king and his top officials, no doubt—was the ardent resolve to see to it that their beloved king, leader, and friend take with him to his grave all these personal goods, servants, and attendants which he had treasured most during his life-time. In short, as will be corroborated by the literary evidence discussed in this paper, we learn more about the living than the dead from the Sumerian funerary practices and beliefs.