The Sumerians and the Indo-Europeans
The Sumerian civilization, which flourished in Mesopotamia beginning of the fourth millennium BC, holds many mysteries even today. One of them is the origin of the Sumerian civilization. Another one is their language, whose classification is still uncertain today. Here, however, we will deal with another controversial topic, namely the relationship between Sumerians and Indo-Europeans. Although the Sumerians are not considered Indo-European, the points of contact with the Indo-European world are different and deserve to be examined more closely.
Index
- Linguistic convergences
- Mythological Convergences
- Sumerian and Indo-European origins: possible scenarios
Linguistic convergences
The Sumerian language is the oldest language of which we have written evidence, and without doubt one of those that has made crazy the linguists: in fact, to date there is no agreement on its origin and its kinship and affinities with Uralic, Cartvelian, Dravidian, Austroasiatic, Dene-Caucasian and other languages have been noted. This should give a vague idea of the difficulty of the problem …
In my view, however, some connections are more plausible than others. In particular, the hypothesis of the Finnish Assyriologist Simo Parpola appears quite convincing, according to which Sumerian is a Uralic language, therefore related to Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian and other minor languages spoken above all in Russia. Also interesting is the work of Andis Kaulins, an independent German researcher of Latvian origin, who found numerous similarities between Sumerian and Latvian words; he has also identified similarities between the Akkadian Agushaya Hymn and the dainas, folk songs of Latvia. Perhaps it is no coincidence that precisely in the Baltic countries, where Finnish, Estonian and Latvian are spoken, there are many toponyms that recall the Sumerian world.
According to a still controversial hypothesis, the Indo-European and Uralic languages would descend from the same family, called Indo-Uralic. This hypothesis, proposed for the first time in the 19th century, explains the numerous similarities, both morphological and lexical, between the two linguistic families. Although many similarities could be due to loan words, several scholars believe it is unlikely that all of them have this origin. In any case, they demonstrate that Indo-European and Uralic speakers lived in geographical proximity for millennia: therefore, if indeed the Sumerian language can be ascribed to the Uralic branch, it probably originated in an area close to the Urheimat Indo-European, or even coinciding with the latter, if the supporters of the Indo-Uralic hypothesis are right (although in this case we should speak of Urheimat - precisely - Indo-Uralic and not Indo-European).
Sahala (2009, http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/~asahala/asahala_sumerian_and_pie.pdf) has listed about thirty Sumerian words that support the hypothesis of ancient contacts between Sumerians and Indo-Europeans. The words are divided into four groups according to their possible origin:
- words of Sumerian origin;
- loan words from Indo-European to Sumerian;
- words with a common protohistoric origin;
- words of uncertain origin.
Some of these terms are listed in the table below.
Many other words have been identified by Whittaker (2008, http://science.org.ge/old/moambe/2-3/Gordon%20Whitteker.pdf), a supporter of the Euphratic hypothesis, an Indo-European language that would have served as a substrate for the Sumerian language.
Mythological Convergences
Mythology can tell us a lot about the history of a people: often the presence of similar myths or almost homonymous deities among peoples even very distant from each other (think for example of the Indian Ashvin and the Lithuanian Ašvieniai) can be traced back to a common source (or even to a common origin). For this reason, it is important to trace remarkable similarities between the Sumerian myths and those of various Indo-European peoples (Greeks, Hittites, Germans…).
Let's see some examples.
A myth is that of the separation of Heaven and Earth: the most famous version (but according to scholars, not the original) is the Greek one, in which Cronus castrates the god of the sky, Uranus, thus separating him from Mother Earth, Gea (or Gaia). Analogous myths are found among the Hittites, where Kumarbi bites off the genitals of the sky god Anu; in Egypt, where Shu divides the earth god Geb from the sky goddess Nut; and even among the Maori, where Rongo separates the Sky Father Rangi from the Earth Mother Pope. Note that the names of the deities are similar in all these myths …
Also in Mesopotamia we find something similar, where the Sky Father and the Earth Mother are respectively An and Ki, whose names closely resemble those of Uranus and Gea/Gaia; the "Crono" of the situation is Enlil instead. It is thought that the Sumerian version of the myth was the source of the more recent ones of the Hittites and Greeks. But the presence of this story also in Egypt and New Zealand, moreover with gods with very similar names as protagonists, in my opinion could indicate the existence of a very ancient source common to both the Sumerians and the Proto-Indo-Europeans, and perhaps even to other people.
Heller (1971, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/nam.1971.19.1.43) noted several similarities between the names of Sumerian and Germanic gods. The solar god Utu, for example, recalls Odin, in German Wotan (Heller claims that originally the latter also represented the Sun). The lunar god Nanna, on the other hand, is perfectly homonymous with the Germanic Nanna, also a lunar deity but female rather than male. Furthermore Thunr, the ancient name of the god of thunder Thor, which has a hammer or an ax as an attribute, is almost identical to the Sumerian word tun, which indicates the hammer or the ax.
The parallels between Sumerian and Celtic mythology are also very striking. The mother goddess of the Celts, for example, was called Anu, a name that is difficult not to connect to that of the Sumerian god An, called Anu in Akkadian. It is also difficult not to notice the resemblance between Siduri, the innkeeper who welcomes Gilgamesh during his journey across the ocean in search of immortality, and the "women of Sid" (the afterlife), who according to Celtic myths lived on the islands in the middle of the ocean welcoming the heroes who joined them. They could also grant them immortality and eternal youth, a peculiarity that also brings them closer to the Calypso of the Odyssey, of which already in the past some scholars highlighted the analogies with the Mesopotamian Siduri. It is rather unlikely that such a web of correspondences is the result of mere coincidences…
Sumerian and Indo-European origins: possible scenarios
As we have just seen, the similarities encountered so far are too many to be solely the result of chance. But how could they be explained? In my view, there are three possible explanations. Let's see them one by one.
A first explanation is that the transmission of words and stories can be traced back to relatively recent contacts, when the Sumerians and some Indo-European peoples already occupied their historical sites. This explanation, however, does not take into account, for example, the similarities between the myths of peoples even very distant from Mesopotamia, such as the Celts and the Germans. Not to mention that, as we have seen, some Sumerian and Indo-European words seem to have a common origin and are not simple loans.
A second explanation, already mentioned, is that Sumerians and Indo-Europeans had a common Urheimat, perhaps Baltic or Arctic, at a time when the Indo-European and Uralic linguistic families had not yet separated. The Sumerians would obviously have left this area a few millennia before the Indo-Europeans, taking their baggage of words and myths with them.
A third and final explanation is that Sumerians and Indo-Europeans are more distantly related: the linguistic and mythological convergences would be due to a unitary phase much older than the Indo-Uralic one, to be identified perhaps in the era of formation of the Nostratic linguistic family (at which certainly also corresponded to a certain ethnic unity). This superfamily would include most of the languages spoken in Europe and Asia, including the Sumerian language: all of them would descend from the "Proto-Nostratic" language spoken in the Upper Paleolithic, more than 12,000 years ago.
As we have seen, therefore, there are several scenarios that could explain the linguistic and mythological correspondences between Sumerians and Indo-Europeans; scenarios which, however, are not mutually exclusive but partially superimposable. In my opinion, the second and third remain the most likely; certainly, however, there are still many aspects to be clarified. I think it will be difficult to resolve the question if scholars do not decide to take into consideration even "extreme" hypotheses such as that of the Arctic Urheimat. In the meantime, we just have to continue, piece by piece, our reconstruction of history.
Note
This article is an english translation of the italian article "Sumeri e Indoeuropei" by Merlo Bianco. You can find the original article here: https://merlobianco.altervista.org/sumeri-e-indoeuropei/
