The word dMamud, which signifies “Dream (deity)”, is listed in the divine genealogies as the daughter of the Sun God. Since dreams usually occur at night, the close genealogical connection between the god of dreams and the Sun God may seem puzzling. The riddle may be solved, however, by considering that dreamers see a world which is just as bright as the day. [1]
I am often reading and dreaming into the world of the Victorian ghost hunters and psychic researchers. The question from Sumer jogged my memory of a passage I read in a wonderful little book by the Victorian radical reformer and Theosophist Anna Bonus Kingsford:
"The priceless insights and illuminations I have acquired by means of my dreams have gone far to elucidate for me many difficulties and enigmas of life which might have otherwise remained dark to me, and to throw upon the events and vicissitudes of a career filled with bewildering situations, a light which, like sunshine, has penetrated to the very causes and springs of circumstance." [3]
A solution from Victorian England to a Sumerian mystery: Dreams are sunshine in the night.
[1] Annette Zgoll, “Dreams as Gods and Gods in Dreams. Dream-Realities in Ancient Mesopotamia from the 3rd to the 1st Millennium B.C.” Leonhard Sassmannshausen (ed) He Has Opened Nisaba’s House of Learning Studies in Honor of Åke Waldemar Sjöberg (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014) p.305
[2] Mamu for short. Ancient Mesopotamia has many dream gods and goddesses. The Sumerian lady mentioned here is called dMamud by the scholarly translators. This means, “Dream (deity)”. Sumerian has two words for “dream”: ma-mu.d and maš-ĝi6.k. Only the first term, transcribed as ma-mu.d can be written with the divine determinative diĝir (d). A word tagged with this sign is the name of a deity. The word ma-mu.d also denotes a meaningful dream which has the power to influence the future. By contrast, maš-ĝi6.k, refers to all types of dreams, including confused and deceptive ones. Thanks to all the spadework of cuneiformists in decoding the ancient texts, we see that a connection between dreams and the gods is built into what may be the earliest of all written languages. See S.A.L. Butler, Mesopotamian Conceptions of Dreams and Dream Rituals (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1998) pp.73-77
[3] Anna Bonus Kingsford, Preface to Dreams and Dream-Stories (New York: Scribner & Welford ,1889). Interesting that a reprint has been published by Nabu Press. Nabu was an ancient Mesopotamian god of writing and flow. I have a figurine of Nabu, a copy of a statue in the Oriental Institute (as it used to be called) in Chicago on my desk.
Robert, I very much enjoyed reading your blog. And regarding the cross pollination between ancient texts and Victorian writers, I must tell you that I found my way to your blog after you posted the link on Facebook, and after your very lively discussion there about whether you should keep your blog or move over to Substack. The take away from that discussion, for I am investigating the same issue, is that the cross pollination pertains here also. The more places you have a presence the more people find your work. By this I’m encouraged to consider that I might go ahead and make a presence on Substack , and hope that I have the same kind of result. As for this post, I adore this idea that dreams are related to sunlight. Dreams have helped me solve more than one gnarly problem in my life over the years. I pay attention to them for good reason. Thank you for writing, in all the places.
ReplyDeleteCari Ferraro