Translated material
The evolution of the calendars of the ancient East
Schumerologist Vladimir Emelyanov , professor of the Department of Semitology and Hibraistics of the Eastern Department of St. Petersburg State University, tells about the background and prospects of the grant project “Calendar holidays of the ancient East: the calendar ritual and the role of temporal representations in the formation of the traditional consciousness of the peoples of the ancient world”.
Fruise of astral theory
When in my student years I began to read the Sumerian and Akkadian literary texts, I realized that they are associated with various rituals. A number of texts at the Institute of Oriental Studies were read with students in their free time I. M. Dyakonov and I. T. Kanev, after their seminars, one could begin to independently read other literary texts. Unfortunately, the program of the Department of History of the Countries of the Ancient East, which I graduated at St. Petersburg State University, was not included in the history of the Mesopotamian religion. We read mainly royal inscriptions and household texts. And the semester course of Sumero-Akkadian literature was so incoherent that we did not read a single text, jumping from literary plots to plots from glyptic collections. So the knowledge of the connection between the literature and the religion of ancient Mesopotamia had to be obtained from books of the late XIX - early XX centuries, mainly German.
The German Assyriologists of that time, especially the pan -Avilonists, associated the origin of the ritual with observations of the starry sky and the signs of the zodiac. Scientists such as G. Winkler, P. Yenzen, A. Jeremias suggested that the inhabitants of Ancient Mesopotamia created a calendar, observing the starry sky, and then all the calendars of neighboring regions arose on the basis of the Mesopotamian calendar, and the monotheistic religions of the ancient Middle East - Judaism, Christianity, Islam - mechanically absorbed into themselves Babylonian heritage. Panvavilonists went so far that they imagined Jesus Christ as the Sun, and twelve apostles - as the constellations of the Zodiac, not realizing that in the religions of the era of late antiquity, real events of history could be encrypted in symbols.
Subsequently, on the basis of these ideas, the concept of the first researcher of the calendars of the Middle East, Stephen Langdon, appeared, according to which all calendars and calendar myths of antiquity depend on the constellation, near which there is the point of the spring equinox. Langdon in 1933 suggested that the Sumerian calendar mythology began in 3000 BC. e., when the point of the spring equinox was in Taurus and the Pleiades, and in the mythology of the Bronze Age the central symbol was a bull. And after 1100 BC. e. Mythology begins to count from Aries, and, accordingly, the mythology of the Iron Age pushes the image of a sacrificial lamb. This later allowed K. G. Jung and E. Houvell to create the theory of synchronism of astrological signs and eras, dividing the whole history and culture of mankind into the eras of Taurus, Aries and fish. Of course, such constructions are not confirmed by the ancient texts themselves. But the astral theory has a rational grain: the panVavilonists noticed that the dominant of the Mesopotamian religion is a cult calendar.
Of course, the main thesis of the astral theory could not satisfy me. I was not ready to divide Winkler’s hypothesis about the origin of religions based on observations of the zodiac signs. Back in my student years, I read the book of P.V. Shcheglov "The Earth Myths reflected in the sky." It rightly noted there that all the names of the constellations are associated with the mythological representations of hunters and farmers. Therefore, I rejected the main point of the astral theory immediately, realizing that the causal relationship should develop in the opposite direction: from holidays to the name of the constellations. But, nevertheless, the reading of the pan -Avilonists was a serious school. It became clear that the religions of ancient Mesopotamia are based on calendar performances, and holidays are nothing more than the formalization of these ideas.
Bara2-ZA3-ĝAR | Nisannu | Nisan | March - April |
GU4-SI-SA2 | Ajaru | Iyar | April - May |
SIG4 -U3-WAB-BA-ĝAR | Simānu | Sivan | May - June |
Šu-Numun | Du'Zu | Tamuz | June - July |
Ne.ne ĝar | Abu | AB | July - August |
Kin-Dinin | Elūlu/ulūlu | Elul | August - September |
Dul-Kug | Tašrītu | Tishrey | September - October |
Apin-per8-a | AraḫSAMNA | Marchesh-Wan | October - November |
Gan-Gan-E3 | KIS (SI) Līmu | Kislev | November - December |
Ab-Ba-E3 | Tebētu | Teeth | December - January |
Ziz.an | Šabātu | SHOP | January - February |
še-gur10-ku5 | Addaru | Adar | February - March |
Sumerians did not sang barley
Next, I became interested in the labor theory of the origin of the holidays. Naturally, she dominated at the time of my student, but also the majority of ethnographers still share it. I have long been noticeable for one thing: in Mesopotamic texts nothing is said about the holidays dedicated to work, moreover, agricultural crops are never sung there. There are no holidays of barley, wheat or half a harvest. A month can be called the word “harvest”, but there are no songs in honor of the harvest, there is no idea that barley is an extraordinary sacred creature. The goddess of accounting of the Barley of Nisaba (but already as the goddess of the school and letters) could be revered, there is even a text about the dispute between the goddess of the grain Ashnan and the goddess of the Cattle Lahar. But the festivities in honor of the cereals themselves or labor processes in cuneiform texts are not. Even the Sumerian song about festive plowing was not directly connected with agriculture. Bread in the southern Iraq is sown in the fall, and the earth is open immediately before the sow. And the Sumerian song is dedicated to the spring symbolic plowing, during which the plows are driven by raw virgin lands, imitating the act of sacred marriage between the city gods. It was Sumero-Akkadian texts that made me doubt that the labor theory of the holidays is true. If the ancients themselves do not write anything about the cult of labor, if the ancients themselves do not glorify agricultural crops and crops, it means that in their representation this is not so significant. And what is essential?
The struggle of the two worlds
And in my fifth year I decided to do this more thoroughly. I realized that the main cultural institution, which determines the entire worldview of ancient Mesopotamia, is precisely the calendar and related holidays. And here I was very lucky, because it was precisely when I started to deal with this topic, one after another, monographs began to go out on the cult calendars of ancient Mesopotamia and, most importantly, monographs, where the so -called explanatory texts were published - cuneiform comments on months and holidays. Assyriologists did not previously work with this group of texts-they were published only at the turn of the 1980-1990s, some of them were even later. These texts gave me the opportunity to understand the very logic of the Sumerians, Babylonians and the Assyrians, their understanding of what the calendar is as a system.
My candidate dissertation was called "Nippra calendar as a source of Sumero-Akkadian culture." I saw that many explanatory texts are associated with the lines of already known literary texts. It was possible to understand that a number of monuments of Sumero-Akkadian literature are nothing more than an arrangement of the festive ritual of a month or another. In the end, I came to the conclusion that the Nippur calendar, which served as a standard for all subsequent calendars of ancient Mesopotamia and became the Jewish calendar in the period after Babylonian captivity, is a semantic system.
The main plot of this system is the struggle of the two worlds: the upper, the world of living, and the lower, the world of the dead. The upper world is the period of the first half of the calendar, from spring to the beginning of autumn, and the lower world is the second half of the year. There are four main plots in this plot. Spring is the time of the absolute triumph of the living world over the world of the dead, which is expressed in the victory of the young hero over chaotic beings, whether it be the victory of Ninurta over the Asag from the Sumerians or Marduk over the Tiamat among the Babylonians. Summer is a time of active penetration of the forces of the upper world into the lower world. Heroes travel to the dead or get there by the power of fate (like Gilgamesh or Dumuzi). Autumn is a time of equilibrium between worlds. Winter is the offensive of the Lower World forces and the temporary absorption of the upper world.
It further became clear that the system of the Nippurian calendar, as far as various explanatory texts allow it, is in no way connected with the chanting of the cult of labor, activity as such. It is necessary to part with these simplest interpretations that students hear already in the first lectures on the history of the ancient world. The calendar describes the change of natural phenomena, and above all - a change in air temperature, humidity and brightness of sunlight, that is, weather conditions as a whole. The human team should adapt to these changes, and mythology is nothing more than a form of adaptation, from biogormonal and psychophysiological to cognitive, a form of developing specific mythological models associated with one or another season. Conditionally speaking, the climatic theory of the origin of the cult calendar and, accordingly, the origin of religion in the ancient Middle East, can replace labor theory.
Middle Eastern calendars: Unity and diversity
As I formulated this theory, I was interested in what was happening in the neighboring territories, whether it was possible to also closely trace the evolution of calendar representations on the example of monuments of other regions of the Middle East. For the time being, I could not answer this question. I was carried away by another topic. I began to engage in the evolution of calendars and calendar holidays of Mesopotamia.
In the earliest city calendars there were occasional months and holidays: that is, months were called in honor of some events of a local scale, often insignificant, and then this name changed to another, when the next year, another event took place, which was remembered for everyone. The typical names of the occasional months, for example, are: “The month when the man Uruka came for the third time”, “The month when the luminous large star fell,” “The month when the goat screamed.” They did not immediately come to the stable names of the months - probably only by the end of the XXIV century BC. e., already during the Sargonid dynasty.
Unfortunately, such comments as the Nippurian calendar were written on no other calendar of ancient Mesopotamia, because these calendars were not reference. We can judge the holidays in these calendars only by indirect sources: by economic and literary texts, private letters. In general, we can say that the city calendars of Mesopotamia cannot be called either purely agricultural or purely cattle -breeding. The names of their months indicate various sacrifices, types of irrigation and agricultural works, festivities in honor of the gods and even religious structures. Other Middle Eastern sources turned out to be much less informative compared to Mesopotamian ones. For example, the city cultures of Syria and Palestines that used cuneiform writing (Marie, Emar, Megiddo, Khatsor) are very attentive to calendar holidays, and those later cultures that use the alphabet and leave inscriptions on stone or papyrus are already less attentive to calendars, because the idea of a single god, human freedom, sky and all natural ones appear. processes. And the dependence of ideology, worldview on calendar holidays is pushed into the past. Nevertheless, ancient holidays continued to exist, but in a different situation, when their original climatic mythology was transcoded into the events of the sacred history.
I traced in parallel all the Middle Eastern months and holidays (except for some peripherals, in which the names of months are difficult to translate), brought them to the table - and the system turned out. Many Middle Eastern months - Syrian, Palestinian and even Iranian - were dependent on the Mesopotamian cult calendar. There was the influence of the cuneiform scribe tradition. There are more independent calendars, for example, Hittic or Arabian, but there are parallels between local and Mesopotamian months and holidays. And then I finally realized that the panVavilonists were wrong. It cannot be argued that all the holidays and calendars of the Middle East came from Mesopotamia. On the contrary, we need to talk about the Mesopotamian cult calendar as a particular case of the Middle East calendar.
Semantics of seasonal rituals
This led me to consider the value system inherent in the holidays of each particular season. Recently, many articles have appeared about the influence of seasons on human behavior. They are written by specialists in biology, psychology, psychophysiology and a new scientific direction called chronopsychology. Indeed, you can see that each season has a certain value core.
For spring holidays, the victim is of great importance. The young hero fights with the forces of chaos, defeats them and divides them. From the parts of the bodies of monsters, a new world is being built.
My doctoral dissertation was dedicated to the religious category of ME (that is, life force) and the connection of this category with spring holidays. The more victims enters the temples, the more they have such forces that were considered the basics for creative activities in Mesopotamia.
Summer rituals are associated with the value of life and game. The game is an imitation of struggle; Its goal is to show the lower world that the living are on their feet and are not going to give up. In the summer, sports games are arranged in honor of the heroes. Mourning the god of fertility of Dumuzi is also an extremely important ritual of summer.
The fall is characterized by purification and repentance. The sun turns for the winter; It becomes colder and darker. This enhances depressive states. If the winter is characterized by aggression to another, then autumn is characterized by autoagression. This depressive state in the calendars of the Ancient East is reflected in the mythology of the court, which occurs during the autumn equinox. A huge number of posts, prohibitions on various types of activities arise - all this prepares a person for complete purification, repentance and new life.
And finally, winter is the time of chaos forces (cold and rain, and in the north of the country there is also snow). The rainy season begins in October, the peak falls on January-February. The main value of this time is salvation. The winter period is a story about the flood and how humanity is saved from various disasters.
Man is a cast since time
Thus, it was possible to understand that people of ancient Mesopotamia perceived history as a natural process. They even had an idea that all human affairs are returning to their place, just as heavenly luminaries return to their places, so you can return justice, law, and so on. The kings of Mesopotamia periodically published edicts about justice, in which all unfair acts and transactions were canceled. The people of Mesopotamia did not believe in the eternity of any social order, because, according to their ideas, the Cataclysm time must come for each period of stability. The Sumerians and Babylonians have no eschatology, because any disaster is temporary for them and is inscribed in the world order, and there will never be an end to the end. The life of the collective and human life are perceived in the aspect of the calendar. From this, astrology takes the beginning as a specifically Mesopotamian phenomenon, based on the idea that a person perceives all those features of the climate, nature that are clearly expressed at the time of his birth. In other words, a person is a cast since time.
Then I began to read very interesting calendar-medical texts written at the end of the VIII-beginning of the VII centuries BC. e. And later, already in the Seleucid period, about the influence of the months of the calendar on the behavior and character of a person, on the organs of the human body. It turns out that ancient people were engaged in this topic deeply and fundamentally. At the same time, it became clear that the idea of the twelve signs of the zodiac was directly related to the twelve -part calendar. At first, the zodiac was lunar and consisted of eighteen constellations, but then they decided to equalize them with calendar months. The zodiac became sunny. We can date somewhere in the end of the VIII century BC. e. The emergence of ideas that the nature and health of a person is determined by the moment of the time when he was born. There are many Assiro-Wavilon texts, in which different objects (for example, the body of a person or lamb liver) are divided into twelve parts. This number of number 12, of course, is associated with the months of the calendar. И только в эпоху персидского господства в Вавилонии судьбу и самочувствие начинают связывать уже не с месяцами, а с созвездиями Зодиака. Это происходит в конце V в. BC. e.
На пути к энциклопедии календарей
Дальше возник вопрос: а как обстоят дела с календарями в Египте, Индии? Мне пришло в голову, что нужно сравнить календари Древнего Востока, построить базу данных, провести линии заимствований, подробно рассмотреть сходства и различия. Тогда можно понять, например, насколько влиятельны в индийском календаре иранские и месопотамские праздники. Сверхзадача состоит в том, чтобы понять, каким образом календарные праздники формируют и регулируют деятельность людей, их религиозное сознание и мировоззрение.
С этой целью я собрал научную группу из шести человек и подал заявку в РНФ. В 2019 году мы выиграли грант. В мою группу входят московские и петербургские специалисты по Египту (А. В. Миронова), Иудее (М. В. Вогман), Малой Азии (В. Ю. Шелестин), Ирану (В. Ю. Крюкова), Индии (И. Ю. Котин). Каждый из этих специалистов к моменту подачи заявки уже опубликовал статьи или даже монографии по теме гранта. Сам я занят месопотамским разделом.
Мы начали работать в нескольких направлениях. Во-первых, мы создаем на университетском сайте базу данных по праздникам народов Древнего Востока. Сайт будет доступен на английском и русском языках, он будет содержать ссылки на другие ресурсы, самостоятельные переводы текстов и фотографии памятников изобразительного искусства. Во-вторых, мы работаем над англоязычной монографией, посвященной восприятию времени на Древнем Востоке. В-третьих, мы создаем предварительную теорию происхождения древневосточного календаря и праздников. Разумеется, мы ни в коем случае не хотим ставить телегу впереди лошади: сперва мы проводим частные исследования, а затем выйдем к более общим выводам.
Только что вышла моя книга «Между жертвой и спасением. Календари и праздники Ближнего Востока». Я намеренно не стал затрагивать в этой книге турецкий календарь, потому что он в своей основе связан с другим регионом. Хотя календарь османского времени впитал память о сирийском средневековом календаре, который был образован на базе вавилонского, но по своей природе он другой. Им должны заниматься специалисты по Дальнему Востоку и Центральной Азии.
Дальше хотелось бы создать энциклопедию календаря, лучше всего электронную. Она могла бы включать календари не только Древнего мира, но и вообще всех народов. Можно устанавливать генеалогические связи между календарями, изучать влияние праздников на мировоззрение людей. Календари учитывали изменение климата; этот аспект чрезвычайно важен и для древних, и для нас. Есть российская двухтомная энциклопедия «Мифы народов мира», но энциклопедии календаря нет. В 1999 году в Русском этнографическом музее была проведена конференция «Время и календарь в традиционной культуре». Я участвовал в ней, у меня сохранился сборник ее трудов. Мне кажется, там была заложена основа того, что можно назвать энциклопедией календаря.