Debate between Winter and Summer

Seven "debate" topics are known from the Sumerian literature, falling in the category of 'disputations'; some examples are: the debate between sheep and grain; the debate between bird and fish; the tree and the reed; and the dispute between silver and copper, etc. These topics came some centuries after writing was established in Sumerian Mesopotamia. The debates are philosophical and address humanity's place in the world. ==Compilation==

The first lines of the myth were discovered on the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, catalogue of the Babylonian section (CBS), tablet number 8310 from their excavations at the temple library at Nippur. This was translated by George Aaron Barton in 1918 and first published as "Sumerian religious texts" in Miscellaneous Babylonian Inscriptions, number seven, entitled "A Hymn to Ibbi-Sin". The tablet is by by at its thickest point. Barton describes Ibbi-Sin as an "inglorious King" suggesting the text to have been composed during his lifetime, he commented "The hymn provides a powerful statement for emperor worship in Ur at the time of composition." Ibbi-Sin is still mentioned in the modern translation "For my king named by Nanna, the son of Enlil, Ibbi-Sin, when he is arrayed in the 'cutur' garment and the 'hursag' garment." Samuel Noah Kramer included CBS tablets 3167, 10431, 13857, 29.13.464, 29.16.142 (which forms a join with 8310), 29.16.232, 29.16.417, 29.16.427, 29.16.446 and 29.16.448. He also included translations from tablets in the Nippur collection of the Museum of the Ancient Orient in Istanbul, catalogue numbers 2705, 3167 and 4004. Further tablets from Nippur were added by Jane Heimerdinger. Other tablets were added from the "Ur excavations texts" in 1928 along with several others to bring it to its present form. A later edition of the text were published by Miguel Civil in 1996. ==Story==

The story takes the form of a contest poem between two cultural entities first identified by Kramer as vegetation gods, Emesh and Enten. These were later identified with the natural phenomena of Summer and Winter, respectively. The location and occasion of the story is described in the introduction with the usual creation sequence of day and night, food and fertility, weather and seasons and sluice gates for irrigation. The two seasons are personified as brothers, born after Enlil copulates with a "hursag" (hill). The destinies of Summer and Winter are then described, Summer founding towns and villages with plentiful harvests, Winter to bring the Spring floods. The two brothers soon decide to take their gifts to Enlil's "house of life", the E-namtila, where they begin a debate about their relative merits. Summer argues: To which Winter replies: Enlil eventually intervenes and declares Winter the winner of the debate and there is a scene of reconciliation. Bendt Alster explains "Winter prevails over Summer, because Winter provides the water that was so essential to agriculture in the hot climate of ancient Mesopotamia." ==Discussion==

John Walton wrote that "people in the Ancient Near East did not think of creation in terms of making material things – instead, everything is function oriented. Creation thus constituted bringing order to the cosmos from an originally nonfunctional condition. Consequently, to create something (cause it to exist) in the ancient world means to give it a function, not material properties." This connection has been made by other scholars. The disputation form has also been suggested to have similar elements to the discussions between Job and his friends in the Book of Job. M. L. West noted similarities with Aesop's fable "a debate between Winter and Spring" along with another similar work by Bion of Smyrna. J.J.A. van Dijk analysed the myth and determined the following common elements with other Sumerian debates "(1) Introduction, presenting the disputants and the occasion of the dispute; (2) the dispute itself, in which each party praises himself and attacks the other; (3) judgement uttered by a god, followed by reconciliation; (4) a formula of praise." Bendt Alster suggests a link to harvest festivals, saying "It is definitely conceivable that summer and winter contests may have belonged to festivals celebrating the harvest among the peasants." Eliade and Adams note that in the story, the water flows through the "hursag" (foothills), Enlil is identified as a "kurgal" (mountain) and his main temple being the "Ekur" (mountain house), they link this mountain aspect with Enlil being the "Lord of the winds" by suggesting the ancients believed the winds originated in the mountains. Piotr Michalowski makes the connection in the story that "E-hursag" is a structure "named as the residence of the king" and "E-namtilla" "as the residence of Enlil", suspecting the two words refer to the same place and that "E-namtilla is simply another name for E-hursag" and that it was a royal palace. ==See also==