人文科学研究所主催公開講演会開催のお知らせ（「歴史の中の「個」と「共同体」－社会史をこえて」チーム）

Piotr Michalowski 氏 (ミシガン大学教授)

テーマ：      The Sometime Voice of Goddesses and Men: The
           Emesal Version of the Ancient Sumerian Language

要 旨： The long extinct Sumerian language is documented in
             writing for over three millennia (ca. 3200 BCE ? 1st
            c. CE), inscribed on clay tablets utilizing the
            cuneiform script. Although it ceased to be spoken as
             a vernacular in southern Mesopotamia (today the
            land covered by the state of Iraq) some time before
            the 18th c. BCE, it was used in writing for
            scholarship and literature down to the time that the
            alphabet took over from cuneiform. Originally used in
            southern Babylonia in an area named Sumer, it was
            used to teach writing and to acquire Mesopotamian
            written knowledge throughout Western Asia, in Iran,
            Anatolia, Syria and the Levant. Sumerian was an
            isolate, with no attested relatives and was structurally
             and typologically very different from the Semitic,
            Elamite, Hurro-Urartean, and Indoeuropean tongues
            spoken by the scribes, students and scholars who
            studied the ancient language. Early administrative,
            economic, legal, commemorative, scientific and
            introductory pedagogical texts aside, the corpus of
            Sumerian literary texts consists mainly of poetic
            composition and a smaller amount of literary prose.
            There is also, however, a substantial amount of
            liturgical material written in a form of the language
            that differs from the standard literary form of
            expression. In the native sources this form of
            expression was named Emesal, “fine tongue,” and in
            addition to prayers uttered by a class of lamentation
            priests, it was used by goddesses and occasionally
            by women in otherwise standard Sumerian texts. This
             gendered profile has motivated several explanations
            of the unusual socio-linguistic characteristics of
            Emesal, albeit none of these proposals are
            completely satisfactory. This paper will provide a
            brief sketch of the characteristics of this form of
            Sumerian and propose new perspectives on its
            function  within the system of ancient Mesopotamian
　　　　poetics from a broader semiotic perspective.

使用言語： 英語、通訳なし

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　以 上

人文科学研究所研究会チーム「歴史の中の「個」と「共同体」－社会史をこえて」