"I have Forgotten My Burden of Former Days!" Forgetting the Sumerians in Ancient Iraq‪.‬

The honor and occasion of an American Oriental Society presidential address cannot but evoke memories. The annual AOS meeting is, after all, the site of many of our earliest scholarly memories, and more recent ones as well. The memory of my immediate predecessor's address, a very hard act to follow indeed, remains vivid. Sid Griffiths gave a lucid account of a controversial topic with appeal to a broad audience. His delivery was beautifully attuned to the occasion, and his talk was perfectly timed. At the very first AOS presidential address I attended, the speaker was a bit tipsy, and, ten minutes into his talk, he looked at his watch and said, "Oh, I've gone on too long!" and sat down. I also remember a quite different presidential address in which, after an hour had passed, the speaker declared, "I know I've been talking for a long time, but since this is the first and only time most of you will hear anything about my field, I'll continue on until you've heard all I think you ought to know!" It is but a small move from individual memory to cultural memory, a move I would like to make with a slight twist. As my title announces, the subject of this communication will not be how the ancient Mesopotamians remembered their past, but rather how they managed to forget, or seemed to forget, an important component of their early history. (1) The quotation from a Sumerian proverb in my title is taken from the mouth of an ass, who, having thrown off his load, immediately proclaimed: "I have forgotten my burden of former days!" (2) Its relevance to my subject will be discussed toward the end of what follows.