ABSTRACT
Henri Frankfort, to whose memory this colloquium is dedicated, was Dutch, and it would be appropriate to begin with a quotation from a Dutch poem. In his hymn of praise to Amsterdam, Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679) writes, ll. 3-4:
If we were to substitute Eridu for Amsterdam, which raises its head to heaven’s axis, and Enki for Pluto, into whose breast the city sinks its roots through the morass, then these two lines could serve as an effortless translation of a Sumerian temple hymn. The idea that buildings ‘raise their heads to the sky’ and that their foundations reach into the subterranean waters strikes us as being authentically Mesopotamian.
