Selena Wisnom
My research centres on the languages, literature, and culture of ancient Iraq, with a particular emphasis on poetry and divination. My book 'Weapons of Words: Intertextual Competition in Babylonian Poetry' was published by Brill in 2020. Focusing on Anzu, Enuma Elish, and the Poem of Erra and Ishum, it explores the significance of allusions to other poems. My current project examines the rules and symbolism of divination, specifically extispicy: divination from the entrails of sacrificial sheep. The aim is to understand the rules and symbolism of Babylonian logic: why do they connect certain signs with certain outcomes, and how does the underlying theory work?
I completed my DPhil at Wolfson College, Oxford, where I held the Jeremy Black Studentship in Sumerian and Akkadian from Oct 2009 to Sep 2013. Subsequently I held an AHRC Cultural Engagement Fellowship, working to build links between theatres and academic research. In Oct 2016 I was elected to a Junior Research Fellowship in Manuscript and Text Cultures at The Queen's College, Oxford, and I was a fixed-term lecturer in Assyriology at the University of Cambridge from 2017-2019. I joined the University of Leicester in 2020 as the first Lecturer in the Heritage of the Middle East.
I have written three plays about the last Sargonid kings. Ashurbanipal: the last great king of Assyria' was performed at the Crypt Gallery, Euston, 28th Feb - 3rd Mar 2019:
https://www.catharsistheatre.com/ashurbanipal
and at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, 15th-18th May 2013:
www.ashurbanipal.co.uk
'Esarhaddon: the substitute king' was performed at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, 29th Oct - 1st Nov 2014:
www.esarhaddon.co.uk
My second book, 'The Library of Ancient Wisdom' is forthcoming with Penguin and University of Chicago press in Spring 2025.
I completed my DPhil at Wolfson College, Oxford, where I held the Jeremy Black Studentship in Sumerian and Akkadian from Oct 2009 to Sep 2013. Subsequently I held an AHRC Cultural Engagement Fellowship, working to build links between theatres and academic research. In Oct 2016 I was elected to a Junior Research Fellowship in Manuscript and Text Cultures at The Queen's College, Oxford, and I was a fixed-term lecturer in Assyriology at the University of Cambridge from 2017-2019. I joined the University of Leicester in 2020 as the first Lecturer in the Heritage of the Middle East.
I have written three plays about the last Sargonid kings. Ashurbanipal: the last great king of Assyria' was performed at the Crypt Gallery, Euston, 28th Feb - 3rd Mar 2019:
https://www.catharsistheatre.com/ashurbanipal
and at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, 15th-18th May 2013:
www.ashurbanipal.co.uk
'Esarhaddon: the substitute king' was performed at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, 29th Oct - 1st Nov 2014:
www.esarhaddon.co.uk
My second book, 'The Library of Ancient Wisdom' is forthcoming with Penguin and University of Chicago press in Spring 2025.
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Books by Selena Wisnom
Acting as a companion to the poem, the book provides readers with the tools they need to explore Enuma Elish in greater depth. Essays cover important historical and contextual information, offer discussions of key topics and explanations of technical terms, as well as suggestions of relevant further reading. The book's interpretive and reflective approach, which pays special attention to questions of poetic style, intertextual resonance, and literary and cultural significance, encourages a greater understanding of the poem as a work of literature while remaining grounded in philology.
The critical essays examine Enuma Elish and the following themes: the poem's rhythm and style; its modern receptions, issues of gender, motherhood and masculinity; Marduk's rise to power; Babylonian astronomy; intertextuality and the poem as counter myth.
Buy or download here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/enuma-elish-9781350297166/
The first of its kind in Assyriology, Weapons of Words explores the rich nuances of these poems by unravelling complex networks of allusion. Through a sophisticated analysis of literary techniques, Selena Wisnom traces developments in the Akkadian poetic tradition and demonstrates that intertextual readings are essential for a deeper understanding of Mesopotamian literature.
Articles by Selena Wisnom
Studies of intertextuality in this poem have mostly focused on allusions to other narrative poems, although debts to other scholarly traditions have also been recognized. This chapter will survey these allusions and their significance, including some newly identified ones, and then will argue for hitherto unnoticed parallels with ritual texts, specifically Sumerian lamentations. It emerges that lamentation is a major force in the poem. Tiamat is consistently portrayed as an angry god in need of pacification, in ways that specifically evoke the Mesopotamian strategy of appeasing these deities: ritual lament. Elements of style, language, and specific vocabulary work together to create these resonances, and set up expectations in the reader who is familiar with these traditions about what they will mean. But expectations are there to be subverted, and in a manner typical of Enuma Elish, the poem surprises us by overturning them.
technical genres, suggesting that literature complements the texts used by
ritual experts rather significantly, and perhaps can even be seen as belonging with them. Literature is useful to scholars in three different ways: firstly, it promulgates the ideology of the āšipu, providing a foundation for the concepts underlying his work. Literary texts justify the use of magic by proving its value, giving mythological examples that demonstrate the theory behind the workings of magic. Secondly, this value is also practical: extracts from literary texts are included in incantations and on amulets, showing that they were considered a useful tool to strengthen magical potency. Thirdly, the fact that literature provides a theoretical underpinning for magic and ritual means that literature could be considered a useful source of knowledge about these practices for the Mesopotamians themselves. Literary texts were occasionally consulted in the same way as genres of technical literature, showing them to be another repository of the same kinds of wisdom. They thus become authoritative in their own right—not merely decorative but important, almost like a kind of commentary that can itself become quoted. Although this article is entitled ‘the art of the āšipu’, some of the examples apply to other scholarly professions as well, since I will also discuss the principle of polysemy and ritual lamentation.
Talks by Selena Wisnom
The liver was called the ‘tablet of the gods’, and treated as a manuscript that could be read in a literal as well as metaphorical sense. Not only does the liver itself look like a fresh clay tablet, but the natural creases which occur on the organ’s surface form cuneiform wedges – the building blocks of the Mesopotamian writing system. In the omen series that contains the interpretations of these signs, many entries can be found that describe features in the forms of cuneiform characters. This paper examines how the material features of the liver exerted a strong influence on Mesopotamian divinatory thought and interpretation, exploring the origin of the metaphor of reading the signs.
Erra and Išum shows a number of close and specific resemblances with this lamentation that are not found in other city laments or other more contemporary texts. Although the Sumerian city laments are not usually thought to have survived the Old Babylonian period, these striking connections suggest otherwise. Other evidence that the city lament genre could have survived into the first millennium will be presented that strengthens the likelihood of direct allusion in Erra and Išum to the Lamentation over the destruction of Sumer and Ur. The meaning of these connections will be explored, showing how recognition of intertextual contexts can significantly enhance our understanding of the poem. Finally the implications for other genres of cuneiform scholarship will be discussed, opening up new possibilities for understanding these often-enigmatic texts.
Acting as a companion to the poem, the book provides readers with the tools they need to explore Enuma Elish in greater depth. Essays cover important historical and contextual information, offer discussions of key topics and explanations of technical terms, as well as suggestions of relevant further reading. The book's interpretive and reflective approach, which pays special attention to questions of poetic style, intertextual resonance, and literary and cultural significance, encourages a greater understanding of the poem as a work of literature while remaining grounded in philology.
The critical essays examine Enuma Elish and the following themes: the poem's rhythm and style; its modern receptions, issues of gender, motherhood and masculinity; Marduk's rise to power; Babylonian astronomy; intertextuality and the poem as counter myth.
Buy or download here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/enuma-elish-9781350297166/
The first of its kind in Assyriology, Weapons of Words explores the rich nuances of these poems by unravelling complex networks of allusion. Through a sophisticated analysis of literary techniques, Selena Wisnom traces developments in the Akkadian poetic tradition and demonstrates that intertextual readings are essential for a deeper understanding of Mesopotamian literature.
Studies of intertextuality in this poem have mostly focused on allusions to other narrative poems, although debts to other scholarly traditions have also been recognized. This chapter will survey these allusions and their significance, including some newly identified ones, and then will argue for hitherto unnoticed parallels with ritual texts, specifically Sumerian lamentations. It emerges that lamentation is a major force in the poem. Tiamat is consistently portrayed as an angry god in need of pacification, in ways that specifically evoke the Mesopotamian strategy of appeasing these deities: ritual lament. Elements of style, language, and specific vocabulary work together to create these resonances, and set up expectations in the reader who is familiar with these traditions about what they will mean. But expectations are there to be subverted, and in a manner typical of Enuma Elish, the poem surprises us by overturning them.
technical genres, suggesting that literature complements the texts used by
ritual experts rather significantly, and perhaps can even be seen as belonging with them. Literature is useful to scholars in three different ways: firstly, it promulgates the ideology of the āšipu, providing a foundation for the concepts underlying his work. Literary texts justify the use of magic by proving its value, giving mythological examples that demonstrate the theory behind the workings of magic. Secondly, this value is also practical: extracts from literary texts are included in incantations and on amulets, showing that they were considered a useful tool to strengthen magical potency. Thirdly, the fact that literature provides a theoretical underpinning for magic and ritual means that literature could be considered a useful source of knowledge about these practices for the Mesopotamians themselves. Literary texts were occasionally consulted in the same way as genres of technical literature, showing them to be another repository of the same kinds of wisdom. They thus become authoritative in their own right—not merely decorative but important, almost like a kind of commentary that can itself become quoted. Although this article is entitled ‘the art of the āšipu’, some of the examples apply to other scholarly professions as well, since I will also discuss the principle of polysemy and ritual lamentation.
The liver was called the ‘tablet of the gods’, and treated as a manuscript that could be read in a literal as well as metaphorical sense. Not only does the liver itself look like a fresh clay tablet, but the natural creases which occur on the organ’s surface form cuneiform wedges – the building blocks of the Mesopotamian writing system. In the omen series that contains the interpretations of these signs, many entries can be found that describe features in the forms of cuneiform characters. This paper examines how the material features of the liver exerted a strong influence on Mesopotamian divinatory thought and interpretation, exploring the origin of the metaphor of reading the signs.
Erra and Išum shows a number of close and specific resemblances with this lamentation that are not found in other city laments or other more contemporary texts. Although the Sumerian city laments are not usually thought to have survived the Old Babylonian period, these striking connections suggest otherwise. Other evidence that the city lament genre could have survived into the first millennium will be presented that strengthens the likelihood of direct allusion in Erra and Išum to the Lamentation over the destruction of Sumer and Ur. The meaning of these connections will be explored, showing how recognition of intertextual contexts can significantly enhance our understanding of the poem. Finally the implications for other genres of cuneiform scholarship will be discussed, opening up new possibilities for understanding these often-enigmatic texts.