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ORALITY, VOICING, AND INTERRUPTION IN BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN LITERATURE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2025

Martin Worthington Open the ORCID record for Martin Worthington [Opens in a new window]
Martin Worthington*
Affiliation:
Department of Near and Middle East Trinity College Dublin
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[email protected]
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Abstract

This paper unfolds in three steps. First it draws attention to how the import of Babylonian and Assyrian belles lettres can be affected by the manner in which the utterances are ‘voiced’. Second, it highlights interruption as a particular instance of this, proposing cases where characters are likely to be interrupting each other (the first treatment of this issue in Assyriology). Finally, it argues that the distribution of speech formulae in Gilgameš associates one such formula with interruption and aggression more than another.

الشفوية والتعبير الصوتي والمقاطعة في الأدب البابلي والآشوري

بقلم: مارتن ورثينجتون

تكشف هذه المقالة البحثية محتوياتها البحثية على ثلاث خطوات. أولاً، تلفت الانتباه إلى كيفية تأثر أهمية الآداب البابلية والآشورية الجميلة (belles lettres) بالطريقة التي يتم بها “نطق” الألفاظ. ثانياً، تسلط الضوء على المقاطعة كمثال خاص على ذلك، وتقترح حالات حيث من المرجح أن يقاطع الشخصيات بعضهم البعض (أول معالجة لهذه القضية في علم الآشوريات). وأخيراً، تزعم أن توزيع صيغ الكلام في جلجامش يربط أحدها بالمقاطعة والعدوان أكثر من غيره.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , First View , pp. 1 - 26
Copyright
© The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 2025

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Footnotes

I am grateful to Jana Matuszak and Mark Weeden, as well as to the three anonymous peer-reviewers, for useful suggestions and bibliographical references. It is a pleasure to dedicate this paper to Andrew George, for whose work (and for whom) I have boundless admiration.

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