{"id":532,"date":"2016-04-17T21:08:54","date_gmt":"2016-04-18T02:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/?p=532"},"modified":"2016-06-11T11:24:29","modified_gmt":"2016-06-11T16:24:29","slug":"the-temporary-thesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/the-temporary-thesis\/","title":{"rendered":"The Temporary Thesis"},"content":{"rendered":"

A scrap from Liability<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In “Liability,” Emmett’s character description is “A Sumerologist, currently temping.” When I first started working on that script, I was fascinated by different writing systems, including Emmett’s specialty, Sumerian cuneiform. Early drafts probably had too much about Emmett’s specialty; at any rate, over time, many references to his work got trimmed away, including the original title of his thesis:<\/p>\n

Systematic Differences in Compound Cuneiform Characters as a Means of Identifying Scribal Colleges in Pre-Akkadian Sumer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I imagined Emmett squinting over clay tablets trying to identify the handwriting of individual scribes; not that that turned out to have anything to do with the story I was trying to tell.<\/p>\n

Lately, though, identifying the handwriting of individual scribes in the ancient world<\/a> has been in the news, as evidence that literacy was widespread in the Holy Land quite early, which may change ideas about when biblical texts were first written.<\/p>\n

In honor of Emmett and ancient handwriting, here’s a speech of his that also got cut.<\/p>\n

EMMETT: The story of Enki and Ninmah.<\/p>\n

Before there were people, the gods had to do all the menial work.<\/p>\n

They complained about this to the water god, Enki; they got his mother to wake him up from his bed in the sea.<\/p>\n

With the help of a number of goddesses, including Ninmah, the earth mother, Enki molded people out of clay, brought them to life, and set them to work.<\/p>\n

Freed from the work they hated, the grateful gods threw a party for Enki. Enki and Ninmah had too much to drink. Ninmah started playing with the leftover clay.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnki, look at this, I made a blind one. What are you going to do with him?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe can be a singer. I\u2019ll give him bread to eat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEnki, look at this, I made a woman who can\u2019t give birth. What are you going to do with her?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe can live in the women\u2019s house. I\u2019ll give her bread to eat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, it\u2019s Enki\u2019s turn. He makes a weak and useless creature who can neither stand, sit, nor lie down. \u201cAll right, Ninmah, what are you going to do?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ninmah tries to speak to this creature, but he can\u2019t answer; she offers him bread, but he can\u2019t reach for it.<\/p>\n

She can find no place for him.<\/p>\n

So Enki wins. – At least, that seems to be the gist of how the story ends; several lines are missing or damaged at that point.<\/p>\n

This text survives in two separate tablets, one excavated from Nippur and now at the University of Pennsylvania; the other, of unknown provenance, in the Louvre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A scrap from Liability. In “Liability,” Emmett’s character description is “A Sumerologist, currently temping.” When I first started working on that script, I was fascinated by different writing systems, including Emmett’s specialty, Sumerian cuneiform. Early drafts probably had too much about Emmett’s specialty; at any rate, over time, many references to his work got trimmed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scraps"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/512px-Stele_of_Vultures_detail_02_reverse.jpg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":696,"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532\/revisions\/696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}