Lecture by Seth Richardson

Seth Richardson is one of the most innovative thinkers in the world of cuneiform studies. There is hardly an article of his that is not set on history survey modules or more complex classes because they have fundamentally changed the way we think about the topics they were written about.

Thief, “Tooth” & Trickster: On Some Babylonian False Identities

Like many ancient Near Eastern cultures, the notion of false identity was an alien one in Mesopotamia. Little need arose or opportunity existed to pretend to be someone you weren’t. Two Babylonian figures, however, give evidence for a shared quality of imposture and impersonation: the “thief” (Akk. šarrāqu) and the enigmatic “trickster” (Akk. aluzinnu). The two were connected by etymological threads and shared semantics that suggests fraudulence as a binding conceptual metaphor. The topic of the thief raises questions about legal taxonomy; that of the trickster, questions about social, literary, and even cultic function. Tracking these very different topics together shows that both relate to ideas about (mis)represented identity being worked out at different discursive levels. I argue that theft reflected a legal culture in which stolen property and property rights were epiphenomenal to primary concerns about betrayals of social identity through fraud. I then trace this legal precept about false representation to concepts of parody by way of an etymological bridge. The “thief” (Sum. lu2ni2-zuḫ [KA]), in his ability to imitate professional roles (i.e., as fake businessman, shepherd, witness, etc.), served as a model for the “trickster” (Sum. alan-zu2[KA]), who lampooned not specific persons but whole professions and professional knowledge. The theme of impersonation lying at the core of both characters exposes anxieties about status and identity, becoming cruxes in both law and social criticism.

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