RBL 06/2021 Alan Lenzi An Introduction to Akkadian Literature: Contexts and Content University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 2019. Pp. xxi + 242. Paper. $39.95. ISBN 9781575067292. Nathan Wasserman The Hebrew University of Jerusalem After his Akkadian Prayers and Hymns: A Reader (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), which, according to Alan Lenzi, was meant to serve as “a pedagogical tool intended to increase reading fluency for second or third semester Akkadian students by way of annotated readings” (ix), Alan Lenzi presents us with a study that renders Akkadian literature accessible to a different readership. In his own words: “students or general readers who wish to obtain an introductory knowledge of Akkadian literature with a relatively small investment of time … [and the] nonspecialist scholar and advanced student in the humanities and historical disciplines, ranging across fields such as Assyriology, Egyptology, biblical studies, comparative literature, and history of religion” (xix). Focusing on this audience, the book presents an overview of Akkadian literature in the broadest sense, including legal and divinatory texts. Lenzi’s Introduction to Akkadian Literature will be useful to professional Assyriologists in the preparation of their introductory courses. Though less detailed than B. R. Foster’s Akkadian Literature of the Late Period (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2007), it is certainly more user-friendly and more accessible to those working in adjunct fields to Assyriology. This well-organized, softcover volume begins with the linguistic, geographical, and chronological background of Akkadian. It continues with an outline of the available textual This review was published by RBL ã2021 by the Society of Biblical Literature. See https://www.sblcentral.org/home. record and a description of some physical characteristics of cuneiform writing (8–20). It is a pity that three studies are absent from this chapter: M. P. Streck’s contribution to the quantitative aspect of Akkadian: “Großes Fach Altorientalistik: Der Umfang des keilschriftlichen Textkorpus,” MDOG 142 (2011): 35–58; M. Cammarosano, “The Cuneiform Stylus,” Mesopotamia 49 (2014): 53–90; and M. Cammarosano et al., “They Wrote on Wax: Wax Boards in the Ancient Near East,” Mesopotamia 54 (2019): 121–80, which sheds new light on writing techniques and writing media used in ancient Mesopotamia other than clay. The stages of scribal education, the notion of authorship in ancient Mesopotamia, the process of textual standardization (“canonization”), a brief review of paratextual comments (titles, rubrics, and colophons), a short discussion of genres, as well as the problem of oral literature are discussed next (21–43), followed by a survey of poetics: verse structure, meter, parallelism, and basic literary devices such as repetition, simile and metaphor, paronomasia and alliteration, and literary allusion (44–64). This chapter ends with a discussion of audiences of Akkadian literature examined through the lens of scholarly, religious, and poetic texts and of royal inscriptions (64–76). Although not innovative, this chapter, “Prolegomena to the Study of Akkadian Literature,” offers a thorough and handy summary useful to students and scholars alike. Chapter 2, the bulk of the book (77–192), comprises a survey of selected text groups: myths and epics, historiographical texts (royal inscriptions, dedicatory texts, letters to the god, and narû literature), law collections and treaties (hiding behind the vague heading “Legal and Political Documents”), divinatory texts, scholarly texts, prayers, incantations, and wisdom texts (proverbs, advice, dialogues and debates, and humoristic texts). In each category specimens are chosen (e.g., Enuma Elish, Gilgamesh, Etana, Sargon’s Letter to Assur about his eighth campaign, the Sin of Sargon) and the content of each text summarized. The value of such summaries is limited, since excellent modern translations of many literary texts are available in Foster’s Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature (Bethesda, Md: CDL, 2005), but the bibliographical references to recent studies relevant to every text and to their specific category are valuable. A good example is the presentation of the Erra and Ishum myth (104–9), where a wide range of studies are listed and carefully annotated, useful to anyone venturing into the study of this text. One cannot expect every minor comment pertaining to a specific line to be included (e.g., H. L. J. Vanstiphout, NABU 1987/69 and NABU 1996/53, or Y. Cohen, NABU 2013/10); however, some important studies have been overlooked: P. Marello’s reflections on the secondmillennium Erra-myth substrate revealed in a Mari letter: “Vie nomade,” in Florilegium Marianum, ed. J.-M. Durand (Paris: SEPOA, 1992), 121–22; and Y. Cohen’s thoughtprovoking “Fearful Symmetry: The Poetics, Genre, and Form of Tablet I Lines 109–18 in the Poem of Erra,” in Literature as Politics, Politics as Literature: Essays on the Ancient Near This review was published by RBL ã2021 by the Society of Biblical Literature. See https://www.sblcentral.org/home. East in Honor of Peter Machinist, ed. D. S. Vanderhooft and A. Winitzer (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013), 1–28. Given that the list of secondary literature accompanying each text is a strong point of the Introduction to Akkadian Literature, it is interesting to examine the extensive bibliography (197–234). A simple counting indicated that, out of the 740 references, fewer than a quarter are in a language other than English (17.7 percent in German, 3.6 percent in French, and fewer than 1 percent in Italian). This quick calculation seems to reflect the changes that have occurred in recent decades in the field of scholarly writing in Assyriology, which, until recently, was known to be governed by a triumvirate of German-English-French. In the short personal essay that closes the book, “Conclusion: The Future of Akkadian Literature” (193–96), Lenzi asks, “Why study this arcane literary corpus? What is there to gain, collectively and individually, from looking to the past and reading these long dead voices?” Lenzi proposes two answers to this question. The first major factor that has influenced and given reason to the North American, European, Israeli, and Australian academic study of the ancient Near East and thus also Akkadian literature is a religious interest or rather a religious necessity, given the intellectual currents since the Enlightenment, to explore the historical milieus that produced the scriptures of our dominant religions, Christianity and Judaism— with the evaluation of their truth claims or distinctiveness often an irresistible component.… we ancient Near Eastern scholars … have become custodians, curators, and/or critics of our religions’ cultural nativities, even when we are not personally religious. (194–195, emphasis original) The second reason for studying ancient Mesopotamian culture and Akkadian literature according to Lenzi is genealogical; that is, we ancient Near Eastern scholars have a propensity to trace our institutional and intellectual genealogies—cultural, political, literary, artistic, scientific, and so on—back through the classical cultures of Greece and Rome to the “original” societies of the Near East, the so-called cradle of civilization.… we ancient Near Eastern scholars … have often considered our cultures to be heirs to the ancient Near East. (195) The first-person plural voice is somewhat overconfident. The present reviewer, for one, does not feel he is a custodian or curator of any religion’s cultural nativity, nor does he have familial or genealogical ties to the ancient Near East. To my mind, it is precisely the absence of any justification for the study of these ancient texts that makes Akkadian a true literature. This review was published by RBL ã2021 by the Society of Biblical Literature. See https://www.sblcentral.org/home. In the same vein, it is the unexplained passion felt for ancient words and worlds that makes Assyriology such an enriching human endeavor, rendering the reconstruction and interpretation of the Akkadian textual record “one of the best-kept secrets of humanistic scholarship” (193). This review was published by RBL ã2021 by the Society of Biblical Literature. See https://www.sblcentral.org/home.