Orality, Voicing and Interruption in Babylonian and Assyrian Literature

This paper unfolds in three steps. First it draws attention to how the import of Babylonian and Assyrian belles lettres can be affected by the manner in which the utterances are ‘voiced’. Second, it highlights interruption as a particular instance of this, proposing cases where characters are likely to be interrupting each other (the first treatment of this issue in Assyriology). Finally, it argues that the distribution of speech formulae in Gilgameš associates one such formula with interruption and aggression more than another.