Enmerkar and En-suhgir-ana

Enmerkar and En-suhgir-ana (also known as Enmerkar and Ensuhkeshdanna) is text in Sumerian literature appearing as a sequel to Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, and is second in a series of four accounts describing the contests of Aratta against Enmerkar, lord of Unug and Kulaba, and his successor Lugalbanda, father of Gilgamesh.

Quotes

• Kulaba, city which reaches from heaven to earth; Unug, whose fame like the rainbow reaches up to the sky, a multicoloured sheen, as the new moon standing in the heavens. Built in magnificence with all the great powers, lustrous mount founded on a favourable day, like moonlight coming up over the land, like bright sunlight radiating over the land.

• At that time the day was lord, the night was sovereign, and Utu was king.

• He with the man born to be a god; he with a man manifest as a god.

• The messenger runs like a wild ram and flies like a falcon. He leaves in the morning and returns already at dusk, like small birds at dawn.

• No city was made to be so well-built as the city of Unug.
  • Enmerkar.

• You have to hold back yourself. Calm down; your heart will prompt you to achieve nothing.
  • An assembly of priests to Ensuhkeshdanna.

• If my city becomes a ruin mound, then I will be a potsherd of it, but I will never submit to the lord of Unug, the lord of Kulaba.
  • Ensuhkeshdanna.

• Sorcerer, you do have magical powers, but where is your sense? How on earth could you think of going to do sorcery at Ereš, which is the city of Nisaba, a city whose destiny was decreed by An and Enlil, the primeval city, the beloved city of Ninlil?
  • Sagburu, sorceress of Eresh, to Urgirinuna.

External links

• English translation of Enmerkar and En-suḫgir-ana, in the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature - University of Oxford.