The Function of Emesal as a Cultic Sociolect

Abstract

The Sumerian language is considered one of the oldest written world languages (Alster 1997: xvi), appearing in Southern Mesopotamia (see Figure 1) around the middle of the Uruk Period (4000-3100 B.C. [Jacobsen 1987: xi]). Sumerian was written using cuneiform, a picture writing at first, which turned to signs for phonetic values that evolved into a stylized form. The earliest written texts have been described as administrative documents and, used for economic purposes over the larger geographic context, were more like abbreviations of transactions or receipts rather than replications of spoken language (Leick xx-xxi). The earliest written literary texts appeared around the Early Dynastic III period (2600-2350 B.C. [Jacobsen 1987: xi]). Sumerian literature comprised numerous genres, from myths and hymns to wisdom literature and royal inscriptions2 (Jacobsen 1987: xiv); the quantity of these texts and their detailed contents revealed that, as Jacobsen puts it, “an extensive and varied oral literature must have existed, ready to become fixed” in writing (1987: xi).