A. The Sumerian Version
As is to be expected,
the Mesopotamian tradition is rich with details concerning the
revolt in the Pantheon, the war, and the motivations for it. These
motivations may be broadly classified into two types, the “Mankind
Motivation,” and the “Technological Motivation.” In this chapter,
our focus is on the first motivation. The technological motivation
will be discussed in the next chapter.
There are three main
texts that tell the story of who was involved in the revolt, why
they were involved, what happened, and that give an indication of
when it happened. These are the Atrahasis
Epic, the legend of Erra/Nergal and
Ishum, and the well-known Sumerian
Kings List. In this section we shall be concerned with the
first two, reserving our comments on the Sumerian Kings List for a later section of this
chapter.