THREE TRANSLATIONS OF A NEO-ASSYRIAN TABLET⠀•⠀ WITH A FACSIMILE OF THE TABLET ITSELF

No Reply is pleased to present The Descent of Ishtar, one of the essential works of Mesopotamian literature, in an edition that grapples with the monumental task of translation.

The purpose of this edition is first and foremost to retell a forgotten tale by way of a marvelous little tablet, K. 162, tucked away in The British Museum, one of a thousand such modest objects of the ancient world which one walks past on the way to the Rosetta Stone or Parthenon Marbles. It was excavated from Ninevah (in the modern Iraqi city of Mosul) and dates to the seventh century BCE, a rough contemporary of the Odyssey and Iliad. A contemporary, moreover, of the Homeric Hymns, in which Persephone undertakes a similar descent into the underworld. This story, however, is much older. Ishtar is an Akkadian telling of a Sumerian tale, The Descent of Inanna, which likely goes back to the very late third millennium BCE. The tale would have been as ancient to Jesus as he is to us. The tablet was produced at almost exactly the halfway point between the start of recorded history (approximately 3,200 BCE) and today. Not really that old.

The edition begins with a facsimile of the tablet, printed at its actual size – just a bit larger than an iPhone. (Readers may be surprised to find that, like us, ancient peoples appreciated the “pocket sized”.) What follows are three translations of the tablet – very different cracks at the same code.

H. F. Talbot represents the first generation of Assyriologists, the era of the gentleman-scholar. He was actually a pioneer of photography, a polymath, who, among many passions, dabbled seriously with cuneiform decipherment. When the library at Ninevah was unearthed, he was among the first to work on its contents. His translation is a bi- or tri-cultural text, the reading of an ancient tale through the thick sideways optics of his own time and other, better understood ancient cultures. This is apparent in the very first line, when he translates Kurnugi as “Hades.” Stephanie Dalley is among the great contemporary Assyriologists, not a dabbler but a doctor in a well-formed academic discipline. Her translations are widely used in universities and considered among the “translations of record,” not above future correction or debate, but certainly above reproach. The text is the text. The gaps, gaps. After reading Talbot’s translation, readers will find Dalley’s to be more confusing, less ironed out, less literary, but deeper – a true glimpse into an alien culture. The third translation is my own. I return to an approach of translation-as-literary-project but, crucially, with the benefit of a hundred and fifty years of Assyriological work (including Dalley’s) to which Talbot was not privy. I have introduced an easy rhyme and meter, simply to approximate a sense of loveliness which the original certainly possesses. The differences, especially between the first and second translations, is vast, and represents a century of work. How interesting it is that we must build our understanding of these literatures and cultures through whatever happens to have survived in the sediment. The more detritus we unearth, the better our understanding. Still, imagine the vastness of what is lost, with only the foundations of temples, sherds, and fragments of tablet writing to go on. The task of translation is daunting, but cuneiform is not as alien as it initially appears… readers of this edition will be challenged to compare the translations to the tablet facsimile and, in all likelihood, will learn a little Akkadian.

The book is printed letterpress on dampened Hahnemühle Biblio using a manually-operated Vandercook Universal proofing press. Multi-color printing appears on nearly every page. The binding is done entirely by hand, using papers painted specially for the edition.

For one week after the announcement, this edition will be discounted. Thereafter, remaining copies will be offered at the full price.