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Children's Books / The eagle has landed
By Shoham Smith
Tags: Mesopotamian Mythology 

Alilot Anzu Hanesher Hagadol:

Shlosha Sippurim Memesopotamia, Eretz Shnai Hanaharot (The Tales of Anzu the Great Eagle: Three Mesopotamian Tales from the Land of Two Rivers) by Shin Shifra, illustrations by Cristina Kadmon Am Oved Publishers (Hebrew), 84 pages, NIS 78

As I read "Lugalbanda and the Great Eagle Anzu" to my 9-year-old son Yanai, who is something of a mythology aficionado, I get excited by the fact that Shin Shifra's lively tale is based on a story that's about 5,000 years old. This doesn't particularly impress Yanai, but when I inform him that we're done reading about the Sumerian hero's adventures for today, his protest is so vehement that I cave in immediately. To tell the truth, I too am eager to know what happens next and to read more and more, because the story is so beautiful, and so beautifully told.
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"The Tales of Anzu the Great Eagle: Three Mesopotamian Tales from the Land of Two Rivers" (an inspired subtitle) is the second children's story by Shin Shifra, a poet and a translator of myths from the Ancient Near East (principally via the monumental Hebrew anthology of Mesopotamian literature, "In Those Distant Days," which she translated and edited with Prof. Jacob Klein, in 1996). To my mind, it is far better than Shifra's first children's story, "The Epic of Gilgamesh," which came out in 2000. The first book did win the author prestige (Israel's Ze'ev Prize and the International Andersen Honor Citation, both for children's literature) and is certainly praiseworthy as a pioneering cultural project, but its language sounds a bit like a lecture.

In the new book - like her first, an adaptation of ancient mythological tales - Shifra shows herself to be a skilled and clever storyteller who wonderfully integrates pot shards into a story whose language is elegant and measured and at moments poetic (drawing from the original literary structures and images), as well as being clear, varied and vivacious. The author has incorporated in this book the narrator she created in "The Epic of Gilgamesh": Kardinergal, Ashurbanipal's royal scribe. This device - the story of a scribe who tells stories to the king - is especially successful in transmitting ancient myths. In addition to its general advantages as a method of narration - it breaks down a complex story, and creates tension and curiosity while explaining and clarifying various things in the story - it also pays homage to the ancient tradition of oral storytelling and to the culture of writing, which began with clay tablets written in cuneiform, the tablets that once carried the stories before us now.

At the center of the book's three stories, as its title indicates, is the splendid character Anzu, a giant eagle with the head of a lion and the claws of an eagle. Anzu represents a kind of primordial cosmic force - he was born of the mating of the Earth and the cruel waters of the Flood, and he ruled the world before human beings existed. The third story, about the theft of the Tablets of Fate from Anzu, depicts him as a threatening monster ultimately defeated by the cunning of the gods, who represent human domination of the world. In the first two stories, however, he is portrayed in a captivating way (Yanai really fell in love with him), as a creature whose powers are superhuman but whose soul is human. Sometimes he is loyal and sometimes he is treacherous, sometimes he is vulnerable and sometimes he is hurtful; he is a devoted father who cares about his chicks but who is unfeeling and cruel when it comes to the offspring of the Other (the Serpent).


Touch the soul

The tales of the ancient superheroes are exciting. Far more interesting than those of their siblings of today, they touch the depths of the human soul and possess poetic power. In one of the book's subplots, which tells of a vow that Anzu made to the Serpent, the ancient narrator does not content himself with the obvious contrast - eagle in the sky, serpent on the ground; instead, they live in the same tree, with the Serpent down in the roots and the Eagle nesting high in the branches. In so doing, the story creates a kind of small, symbolic microcosm and an unforgettable mythical image. Another scene, which left an even stronger impression on my son, is that of the snake lurking in ambush for the Eagle, who has betrayed him by devouring the Serpent's offspring, whom he had sworn to protect.

These two scenes, it should be noted, are illustrated by seemingly primitive and strongly expressive drawings by Cristina Kadmon. Altogether, the design of the book (by Kobi Franco and Gila Kaplan) is done well. The paper is of excellent quality; the format is large, clean and spacious; and the illustrations, from small vignettes to colorful double spreads, are scattered generously throughout the book. This attention to detail and concern for quality are also a way of signaling to young readers the importance of the volume in their hands, as well as the importance of the culture of the Ancient Near East and of culture in general.

Yanai remembered Uruk as being Gilgamesh's city. He was excited to hear that Gilgamesh was Lugalbanda's son, and pointed out the similarities between the theft of the Tablet of Fates and the theft of the gods' elixir of wisdom in Norse mythology, opening the way to a discussion about the shared motifs of myths. Of the many repetitions in the stories, a style that characterizes Sumerian narrative, he said: It's like in Leah Goldberg's children's story "A Flat to Let."

(This is a good opportunity to offer a warm recommendation for the children's book "Inanna Boheret Melekh" ["Inanna Chooses a King," Keter, 2004], a charming up-to-date adaptation of the Lugalbanda tales and other stories from Sumerian mythology.)

It was only when we got to the third story - in which this rhetorical device is stretched to its limit (to the point that we moderns experience it as parody) and the repetitions become not only numerous but also long - that we both thought enough was enough. We allowed ourselves now and then to skip sentences we had only just read and that were popping up again right away, although the repetition may help very patient readers identify symbolically with the protagonist, who, like them, is hoping for a resolution that will break the pattern described in the plot and reflected in the language.

Beyond providing tremendous pleasure for readers of these beautiful tales, which can serve as a springboard for expanding one's knowledge of the Ancient Near East, Shin Shifra's book is also a major contribution to the massive project of reviving the neighboring Mesopotamian culture - a culture that is of utmost importance and has left its imprint on our own, though we have a tendency to forget such influences.

Writer and critic Shoham Smith is the author of "Six Great Heroines from World Mythology" (Kinneret, Zmora-Bitan, in Hebrew). He is a regular contributor to the Hebrew edition of Haaretz Books.
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