The article explores the mentioning and depiction of festivals in literary texts in the Sumerian language. The most important marker of mentioning is the very word ezen – “festival”, “holiday”. Four cases of mentioning festivals have been identified, while the article deals only with cases directly related to the celebration of the festival. Festivals are classified by eras, cities, and seasons. It is determined that the literary texts describe either agricultural festivals associated with the cultivation of barley, or the festivals of the cult of the dead. The peculiarities of the New Year holidays are the trial of people and the removal from office of guilty officials. The main formal features of the festivals are sacrifices, processions of the god's adepts, trips of the god's statues on a boat, a meal with drinking beer and wine, sports competitions, dressing in solemn attire, and the performance of musical works. The texts are dominated by the festivals of spring and summer. In our opinion, the context of the epic about Ninurta and Asag indicates that the expressions “shaking weapons, the holiday of youths” and “Inanna's games” are allegorical names for military actions, not for specific festivals of the Nippur cult circle.
Key words: Sumer, cultic calendar, festivals, literary texts, “Inanna’s games”
DOI: 10.22250/20728662_2023_2_5
About the author
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Vladimir V. Emelianov – Dr.Sc. (Philosophy), Professor at the Department of Semitic and Hebrew Studies, St. Petersburg State University; |