Today marks a moment when my almost complete lack of knowledge about cuneiform comes to catch me out. I won’t say the first, as surely there are some absolute howlers in the past 12 days for those who know their tablets. And it won’t be the last by a long chalk. At the start of the week, I had marked down today for the Creation of the Pickaxe, and tomorrow for the Song of the Hoe. But as I began researching, I found they’re actually the same piece – hoe and pickaxe are the same tool in different translation. I’ll have to go digging for another tool or invention to greatly influence my life by tomorrow.
But first, the Song of the Hoe.
Back on day three, my mother put in a request. I’m not a wedding DJ; I don’t do requests, but it was already pencilled in for this week so here you have it, mum! However, she also requested it recorded as “a sung poem for our delectation”. As a sometimes disturbingly well-read person, I’m going to give her the credit of knowing exactly what a difficult task that would be, not just because it’s in a long dead language, but also because of the poetical conceit used in its composition. You see, the song is something between an ancient tongue-twister and an Eminem lyric, full of rhyme and alliteration. The writer makes repeated use of the word “al” meaning hoe (or pickaxe). The word itself, as well as many other nouns ands verb forms which use the sound at the start of the word, or within the word. It hits those repetitions and internal rhymes over and over like the blade of a hoe cutting a drainage channel, only building in frequency as the song reaches its crescendo.
It’s also unsurprising that my mum requested the Song of the Hoe, not for her childish sense of humour, but because she is a gardener. As a tool for the tilling of soil, the suppression of weeds, cutting of channels for irrigation, any blade will serve. Even a sharp-edged rock would do. But providing all that, plus relief from a constantly bent back, a long-handled hoe would indeed be like a gift from the gods. One god specifically, Enlil. According to the song, he had a very special hoe, made of gold and inlaid with lapis lazuli, which he used to cleave heaven from earth and bring forth daylight, and then to “make the human seed of the Land come forth”. The very tool that farmhands in the field use to pull life from the ground, used to germinate human life from that same clay.
