Sin-leqe-unnini
Sin-leqe-unnini
Circa 1600–1150 b.c.e.
Scribe
Scribe and Scholar. Sin-leqe-unnini, whose name means “O Moon God, Accept my Prayer,” was a renowned wise man and scholar. In a text found in Ashurbanipal’s library, Sin-leqe-unnini is credited as the author of the standard. Babylonian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh. A later tradition, dating to the second millennium b.c.e., claims that he was an early third millennium contemporary of Gilgamesh. By placing the scholar in the distant past—even though the available evidence indicates that he lived during the period of the Kassite dynasty, circa 1600-1150 b.c.e.—the tradition attested to his greatness. Many hundreds of years later, in the Hellenistic period, there were scribes at Uruk copying scholarly and scientific texts and recording private business transactions who regarded him as an ancestor.
Sources
W. G. Lambert, “Ancestors, Authors, and Canonicity,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies, 11 (1957): 1–14.
Lambert, “A Catalogue of Texts and Authors,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies, 11 (1957): 1–14.
Ira Spar and Lambert, eds., Literary and Scholastic Texts of the First Millennium B.C., volume 2 of Cuneiform Texts in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, forthcoming 2004), pp. xvi–xix.