Category: LBL

LBL 1: Enuma Elish

sophushelle

The inaugural volume of the Library of Babylonian Literature, which I edit in collaboration with Johannes Haubold, Enrique Jiménez, and Selena Wisnom, presents the Babylonian epic of creation, Enuma Elish, in facing-page translation accompanied by a detailed introduction and thirteen interpretative essays by leading scholars. The epic is a seminal work of Babylonian literature, and as I write in the introduction, “it is no exaggeration to say that, in cuneiform literature and religion, there is a time before and a time after the composition of Enuma Elish.” I contributed the introduction and translation, as well as this chapter.

With Johannes Haubold, Enrique Jiménez, and Selena Wisnom, eds., Enuma Elish: The Babylonian Epic of Creation, Library of Babylonian Literature 1 (London: Bloomsbury, 2024).

Download the volume for free here.

The shape of water

sophushelle

For the first volume of the Library of Babylonian Literature, my chapter argues that Enuma Elish depicts the creation of the world in fundamentally linguistic terms, that is, as a simultaneous emergence of shapes, names, and beings. The epic traces the transformation of the world from a nameless, shapeless, fluid state to a cosmos in which things—and people and gods—come to acquire fixed forms, identities, hierarchies, and roles to play within the world order, that is, fates. The medium of this transformation is language, which is also the medium of the poem, setting up a complex set of relations between the content and the form of the story.

“The shape of water: Content and form in Enuma Elish,” in Enuma Elish: The Babylonian Epic of Creation, edited by Johannes Haubold, Sophus Helle, Enrique Jiménez, and Selena Wisnom, Library of Babylonian Literature 1 (London: Bloomsbury, 2024), pp. 279–95.

Download the chapter for free here.