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Civilization's gifts included deception
Gifts of Enki
In the myth, Enki, king of the gods, gives his daughter Inanna the gifts of civilization, and she passes them on to the Sumerian people. They include the crafts of the carpenter, coppersmith, scribe, blacksmith, leatherworker, builder, and reed worker. They include wisdom, the shepherd's law, the laws of the pastures, and the correct laws of inheritance. They include the art of good governance.
The Darker Gifts
Enki then keeps giving. The holy Inanna also receives deception and rebellious lands, heroism, power, evil, and the plundering of cities. The Sumerians seem to have known from the dawn of civilized society what a later thinker, Walter Benjamin, would put into words: no record of civilization is not also a record of barbarism.
Slavery in Sumer
The record bears the myth out. Around this period the Sumerians began the enslavement of people. They seized men and women from the hill countries beyond their borders and used their labor to fuel the growth of their economy.
How did Inanna get the gifts from Enki?
In the Sumerian myth Inanna and Enki, Inanna visits Enki in his city of Eridu, and the two feast on beer. Enki, drunk, hands over the me, the divine powers that make civilization work. When he sobers up, he sends sea monsters to retrieve her boat. Inanna escapes with the me to Uruk, where the people welcome her. The text lists more than a hundred me.
Where does Benjamin's line about barbarism come from?
Walter Benjamin wrote it in his Theses on the Philosophy of History, composed in 1940. The line reads that there is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism. The theses were published after his death.
How did Sumerians come to own slaves?
Slaves came from war captives, from debt bondage, and from purchase. Many captives were brought down from the highlands to the north and east. The Sumerian sign for a female slave combines the signs for woman and mountain.
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