My new Element, Reading Creation Myths Economically in Ancient Mesopotamia and Israel, has now been released in the Cambridge Elements in Ancient and Premodern Economies series. Elements are short books that are published (almost) simultaneously in digital and print forms. Mine has officially been published online, with a print publication date of August 31. 

All Elements are free to read and download for the first two weeks after their release, so if you think you might be interested in reading it, go grab yourself a copy before they clamp down the paywall! If you miss the free period, Elements are priced quite reasonably as academic books go.

Origin Story

This particular Element originated in a conversation with a Lyft driver. For a time, I was commuting a couple times a week from Stanford to my home in the outer reaches of the east Bay, which is very long and nearly impossible to do on public transit. Luckily, Stanford agreed to reimburse ride shares, which made my life much more pleasant.

On this day, I was leaving a bit later than I preferred to, meaning that traffic would add anywhere from 30 minutes to two extra hours onto my commute. I was going to be in this car for a while. The driver, Daniel, turned out to be talkative, which I didn’t mind since it was Friday and I was mentally checking out anyway.

He asked what I did at Stanford, and I told him I researched and taught ancient Middle Eastern history and religion.

“Whoa,” he said. “Hey, so I was watching this thing on the History Channel. Have you ever heard of the Anunnaki?”

“Yeah man, I’ve heard of the Anunnaki.” In case you haven’t, the Anunnaki are the high gods of the Sumerian and babylonian pantheons.

“So, they were talking about how advanced they were, and, like, do you think there’s any chance that they could have been aliens or something?”

The Oh no, someone is talking about ancient aliens alarm started going off in my head. I knew I had to do something to take control of the conversation or this was going to turn into a very long ride. So I pivoted.

“No, it’s actually beter than that,” I told him. Then I started telling him the plot of the Old Babylonian epic known as Inūma ilū awīlum “When Gods were Man.” Nowadays we call it the Atraḫasis Epic.

When the gods were the only beings in existence, they were divided into two groups: the Anunnaki and the Igigi. The Anunnaki lived in great houses and forced the Igigi to do all the labor necessary to their upkeep. They did the toil and carried the work basket.

Year after year they toiled, digging rivers to irrigate the plain and heaping up the mountains. The work wore them down and they grew miserable and angry.

So one night, they set out to dethrone the god Enlil and abolish their servitude. They light their tools on fire and lay siege to Enlil’s house. Enlil, afraid, assumes this is a political coup and calls on the other Anunnaki to help him fight and defeat the Igigi. When asked to reveal their leader, however, the Igigi deny they have one and claim to be united in solidarity against their exploited position.

Enki, another of the Anunnaki, sympathizes with their plight and suggests an alternative to violence: instead of forcing the igigi into labor, they will create a new kind of being who can do all the work for all the gods.

The new creatures are called, you guessed it, “humans.”

Daniel exhaled. “bro, they were like, the first Teamsters.”

Exactly.

From there, we had a lovely conversation about labor action, unionization, and the misclassification of rideshare drivers, and never again touched on aliens, ancient or otherwise.

After that, I kept mulling the significance of labor and class to the Atraḫasis Epic. It began to seem like political economy was central to the narrative to a degree that had rarely been recognized.

The book grew from there. I began drawing out the economic themes in Atraḫasis and connecting them with the regular rituals of temples and shrines and broader economic processes. Atrahasis has long been identified as a precursor to the biblical creation stories, and it also seemed to me that similar economic themes, similarly neglected, pervaded those texts as well.

I hope the Element does a decent job working out the ideas. I had fun writing it, and I hope that comes through, too.

I’m very grateful to the series editors, Kenneth Gale Hirth, Timothy Earle, and Emily Kate, for entertaining this strange little project, and to everyone who helped bring it into the world in a presentable form.