all texts

Composed during the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten — who promoted Aten, the solar disc, as the sole god worthy of worship in a form of ancient monotheism — the Great Hymn to the Aten is one of the finest surviving examples of Egyptian religious poetry. The hymn is inscribed on the walls of the tomb of A…

The Baal Cycle, discovered at the site of ancient Ugarit on the Syrian coast in 1929, is the central mythological text of the Canaanite religion. Written in Ugaritic — a Semitic language using a cuneiform alphabet — the cycle narrates the conflicts of Baal, god of storm and rain, as he fights to est…

The Maxims of Ptahhotep, attributed to the vizier Ptahhotep who served under Pharaoh Djedkare Isesi of the Fifth Dynasty, is one of the oldest and most complete works of Egyptian wisdom literature. The text is framed as a dialogue in which an aged vizier requests the pharaoh's permission to appoint…

This hymn celebrates Enlil, lord of the air and wind and the most powerful god of the Sumerian pantheon before the rise of Marduk in Babylonian theology. The text opens with praise of Enlil's temple, the Ekur — the House of the Mountain — at Nippur, which the hymn describes as a structure whose foun…

The Akkadian Descent of Ishtar is a shorter and more streamlined adaptation of the earlier Sumerian Descent of Inanna. Ishtar, goddess of love and war, descends to the underworld — the Land of No Return — ruled by her sister Ereshkigal. She passes through seven gates, at each surrendering an article…

Commissioned by Hammurabi, sixth king of the First Babylonian Dynasty, this is the most complete ancient law code to survive from the ancient Near East. The stele opens with a prologue in which Hammurabi declares that the gods An and Enlil destined him to promote the welfare of the people and to cau…

Composed in the aftermath of the destruction of the city of Ur by the Elamites and Amorites around 2004 BCE, this lament is the most fully preserved of the five canonical Sumerian city laments. The text opens with the goddess Ningal pleading before the divine assembly — before An and Enlil — to aver…

The Sumerian King List records the succession of kings from the moment kingship first descended from heaven to the compiler's present day. It opens before the flood with eight antediluvian kings who ruled for impossibly long periods — the first king Alulim of Eridu reigned for 28,800 years; the last…

The Instructions of Shuruppak is the oldest surviving wisdom text in the world, framed as the advice of Shuruppak — a wise king identified in the Sumerian King List as the father of the flood hero Ziusudra — to his son. The text consists of several hundred proverbs and maxims covering practical ethi…

Composed by Enheduanna, high priestess of the moon god Nanna at Ur and daughter of Sargon of Akkad, this hymn is the earliest known literary work attributed to a named author. The text opens with a majestic invocation cataloguing the divine powers Inanna holds over all things — from warfare and lame…

The Eridu Genesis, also called the Sumerian Flood Story, is a fragmentary text describing the earliest history of humanity and the great flood. In the surviving portions the gods An, Enlil, Enki, and Ninhursag create the black-headed people and the animals. Kingship descends from heaven and the firs…

Inanna, Queen of Heaven and goddess of love and war, decides to descend to the Great Below — the underworld ruled by her sister Ereshkigal. Before departing, she instructs her vizier Ninshubur to appeal to the gods on her behalf if she does not return in three days. At each of the seven gates of the…

The Atrahasis Epic tells the story of humanity's creation and near-destruction in three tablets. In the beginning the great gods compel the lesser Igigi gods to dig the irrigation canals of Mesopotamia. After forty years the Igigi rebel against their labour. The god Enki proposes a solution: create…

The Enuma Elish, named after its opening words meaning "When on high," is the Babylonian creation epic recited during the New Year festival at Babylon. In the beginning there is only commingled water: Apsu, the primordial freshwater, and Tiamat, the salt sea. From their union the first gods are born…