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A recent study by Dr. Jana Matuszak, in the academic journal Iraq, examines the mythical narrative contained in a tablet (Ni 12501) dating to the Early Dynastic IIIb period (ca. 2540–2350 BCE) from Nippur, Sumer.

Despite the tablet having been excavated in the 19th century, a comprehensive edition and analysis has thus far never been published.

This may in part be due to the tablet's fragmented nature, which provides as many answers as it does questions. Additionally, when it was chosen to adorn the dust jacket of a book by Samuel Noah Kramer in 1956, Kramer omitted its museum number, only providing it in a separate publication five years later.

Ni 12501 was created around 2400 BCE in ancient Sumer. "Around 2400 BCE, Sumer consisted of politically autonomous city states, though by the middle of the 24th century (ca. 2350 BCE), there were ultimately successful attempts at unifying them into a kingdom. City states usually had one urban center as well as smaller settlements in the periphery," explained Dr. Matuszak.

"Each city-state had one patron deity (who in turn had an entire family and staff). In the case of Nippur, this was Enlil. But cities had various temples dedicated to other deities as well.

"Despite their political autonomy, the city states generally shared similar political and administrative practices, a language, a writing system, and a belief system, with local differences: for example, there would have been different dialects of Sumerian, but they only occasionally shine through the standard orthography.

"Also, there's evidence for local panthea, but the big gods were venerated throughout Sumer… For Ni 12501, this means that it likely presents a Nippurite tradition, but if it was known outside of Nippur (for which we currently have no evidence), there's no reason to believe that people would have contested it in any way. Nippur and Adab were neighbors and their panthea were interlinked."

The basic narrative of Ni 12501 is one in which the storm god Ishkur is held captive in the netherworld (kur). Ishkur's father, Enlil, convened a divine assembly, asking one of the other gods to retrieve Ishkur. However, only Fox volunteers to go.

The story continues with Fox successfully entering the kur by accepting the food and drink offered to him but hiding them in his receptacle instead of eating them. The tablet's narrative cuts off here, and it is unknown whether Fox successfully completes his objective.

"The main protagonists are Enlil, Ishkur, and Fox. Enlil is the acting head of the Sumerian pantheon and is often referred to as king of the gods, whose main sanctuary is in the city of Nippur—i.e., the city in which this tablet fragment was found. In what is preserved of Ni 12501, his leading role can be seen in the fact that he has the authority to convene the divine assembly," explains Dr. Matuszak.

"In this fragment and a few other sources, storm god Ishkur is considered Enlil's son. Ishkur was responsible for bringing rain.

"In southern Iraq, there is not enough annual rainfall for agriculture, so people had to dig canals branching off the two main rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, to irrigate their fields and orchards.

"The fact that they mainly relied on irrigation agriculture explains why the Sumerian storm god was never as important as the Semitic storm god, who was venerated in regions further north and west, where rainfed agriculture was possible. The Nippur fragment Ni 12501 (of which probably less than one third is preserved) is the only narrative in which Ishkur plays a leading role."

Various motifs are evident throughout the story, including the motive of agricultural abundance.

The beginning of the story opens with glittering waters (rivers and canals) filled with fish and multicolored cows belonging to Ishkur. After both Ishkur and his cows are captured in the kur, it seems children were being born and carried off by the kur, possibly indicating drought and starvation upon Ishkur's disappearance.

This motive of agricultural abundance, the illusion of Ishkur's death and his subsequent (probably) return could have referred to a once-off event, or be a reference to the cyclical nature of the season and the associated rains.

Similarly, the story deals with the motif of the cunning fox, the earliest attestation of this association so far. As well as the helpless gods, saved by an unlikely hero who comes to accomplish what the gods cannot.

Though this specific narrative survives on a single tablet, its motifs, elements, and characters continue to reappear in various mythological contexts throughout subsequent centuries.

Ni 12501 provides insights into the rich corpus of Mesopotamian mythology, but also underlines the continued need for further archaeological investigation to help fill in the gaps in our understanding of the Mesopotamian worldview and literary works.

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