Instructions of Shuruppak Translation
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The Epic of Gilgamesh Humbaba from His Days Running Wild in the Forest
Gilgamesh's superiority. They hugged and became best friends. Name Always eager to build a name for himself, Gilgamesh wanted to have an adventure. He wanted to go to the Cedar Forest and slay its guardian demon, Humbaba. Enkidu did not like the idea. He knew The Epic of Gilgamesh Humbaba from his days running wild in the forest. He tried to talk his best friend out of it. But Gilgamesh refused to listen. Reluctantly, By Vickie Chao Enkidu agreed to go with him. A long, long time ago, there After several days of journeying, Gilgamesh and Enkidu at last was a kingdom called Uruk. reached the edge of the Cedar Forest. Their intrusion made Humbaba Its ruler was Gilgamesh. very angry. But thankfully, with the help of the sun god, Shamash, the duo prevailed. They killed Humbaba and cut down the forest. They Gilgamesh, by all accounts, fashioned a raft out of the cedar trees. Together, they set sail along the was not an ordinary person. Euphrates River and made their way back to Uruk. The only shadow He was actually a cast over this victory was Humbaba's curse. Before he was beheaded, superhuman, two-thirds god he shouted, "Of you two, may Enkidu not live the longer, may Enkidu and one-third human. As king, not find any peace in this world!" Gilgamesh was very harsh. His people were scared of him and grew wary over time. They pleaded with the sky god, Anu, for his help. In When Gilgamesh and Enkidu arrived at Uruk, they received a hero's response, Anu asked the goddess Aruru to create a beast-like man welcome. -
Who Is the Daughter of Babylon?
WHO IS THE DAUGHTER OF BABYLON? ● Babylon was initially a minor city-state, and controlled little surrounding territory; its first four Amorite rulers did not assume the title of king. The older and more powerful states of Assyria, Elam, Isin, and Larsa overshadowed Babylon until it became the capital of Hammurabi's short-lived empire about a century later. Hammurabi (r. 1792–1750 BC) is famous for codifying the laws of Babylonia into the Code of Hammurabi. He conquered all of the cities and city states of southern Mesopotamia, including Isin, Larsa, Ur, Uruk, Nippur, Lagash, Eridu, Kish, Adab, Eshnunna, Akshak, Akkad, Shuruppak, Bad-tibira, Sippar, and Girsu, coalescing them into one kingdom, ruled from Babylon. Hammurabi also invaded and conquered Elam to the east, and the kingdoms of Mari and Ebla to the northwest. After a protracted struggle with the powerful Assyrian king Ishme-Dagan of the Old Assyrian Empire, he forced his successor to pay tribute late in his reign, spreading Babylonian power to Assyria's Hattian and Hurrian colonies in Asia Minor. After the reign of Hammurabi, the whole of southern Mesopotamia came to be known as Babylonia, whereas the north had already coalesced centuries before into Assyria. From this time, Babylon supplanted Nippur and Eridu as the major religious centers of southern Mesopotamia. Hammurabi's empire destabilized after his death. Assyrians defeated and drove out the Babylonians and Amorites. The far south of Mesopotamia broke away, forming the native Sealand Dynasty, and the Elamites appropriated territory in eastern Mesopotamia. The Amorite dynasty remained in power in Babylon, which again became a small city-state. -
The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet V ... They Stood at the Forest's Edge
The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet V ... They stood at the forest's edge, gazing at the top of the Cedar Tree, gazing at the entrance to the forest. Where Humbaba would walk there was a trail, the roads led straight on, the path was excellent. Then they saw the Cedar Mountain, the Dwelling of the Gods, the throne dais of Imini. Across the face of the mountain the Cedar brought forth luxurious foliage, its shade was good, extremely pleasant. The thornbushes were matted together, the woods(?) were a thicket ... among the Cedars,... the boxwood, the forest was surrounded by a ravine two leagues long, ... and again for two-thirds (of that distance), ...Suddenly the swords..., and after the sheaths ..., the axes were smeared... dagger and sword... alone ... Humbaba spoke to Gilgamesh saying :"He does not come (?) ... ... Enlil.. ." Enkidu spoke to Humbaba, saying: "Humbaba...'One alone.. 'Strangers ... 'A slippery path is not feared by two people who help each other. 'Twice three times... 'A three-ply rope cannot be cut. 'The mighty lion--two cubs can roll him over."' ... Humbaba spoke to Gilgamesh, saying: ..An idiot' and a moron should give advice to each other, but you, Gilgamesh, why have you come to me! Give advice, Enkidu, you 'son of a fish,' who does not even know his own father, to the large and small turtles which do not suck their mother's milk! When you were still young I saw you but did not go over to you; ... you,... in my belly. ...,you have brought Gilgamesh into my presence, ... you stand.., an enemy, a stranger. -
The Ubaid Period the Sumerian King List
Sumer by Joshua J. Mark published on 28 April 2011 Sumer was the southernmost region of ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq Map of Sumer (by P L Kessler, Copyright) and Kuwait) which is generally considered the cradle of civilization. The name comes from Akkadian, the language of the north of Mesopotamia, and means “land of the civilized kings”. The Sumerians called themselves “the black headed people” and their land, in cuneiform script, was simply “the land” or “the land of the black headed people”and, in the biblical Book of Genesis, Sumer is known as Shinar. According to the Sumerian King List, when the gods first gave human beings the gifts necessary for cultivating society, they did so by establishing the city of Eridu in the region of Sumer. While the Sumerian city of Uruk is held to be the oldest city in the world, the ancient Mesopotamians believed that it was Eridu and that it was here that order was established and civilization began. The Ubaid Period The region of Sumer was long thought to have been first inhabited around 4500 BCE. This date has been contested in recent years, however, and it now thought that human activity in the area began much earlier. The first selers were not Sumerians but a people of unknown origin whom archaeologists have termed the Ubaid people - from the excavated mound of al- Ubaid where the artifacts were uncovered which first aested to their existence - or the Proto-Euphrateans which designates them as earlier inhabitants of the region of the Euphrates River. Whoever these people were, they had already moved from a hunter- gatherer society to an agrarian one prior to 5000 BCE. -
Eridu, Dunnu, and Babel: a Study in Comparative Mythology
ERIDU, DUNNU, AND BABEL: A STUDY IN COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY by PATRICK D. MILLER, JR. Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ 08542 This essay focuses on some themes in two quite different myths from ancient Mesopotamia, one known commonly as the Sumerian Deluge or Flood story, discovered at Nippur and published around the turn of the century by Poebel (I 9 I 4a and b ), the other published much more recently by Lambert and Walcot (1966) and dubbed by Jacobsen (1984) "The Harab Myth." The former myth was the subject of some attention at the time of its publication and extensive analysis by Poebel, par ticularly in King's Schweich Lectures (1918). As Jacobsen notes, it has not been the subject of much further work except for Kramer's transla tion (Pritchard, 1955, pp. 42-44) and Civil's translation and notes in Lambert and Millard (1969, pp. 138-147). More recently, Kramer has given a new translation of the text together with notes (Kramer, 1983). Both texts have now been the subject of major new treatments in the last three or four years by Jacobsen (1978 and 1984), and that is in a large sense the impetus for my turning to them. Indeed, I first became interested in the two texts when Jacobsen delivered a paper on them entitled "Two Mesopotamian Myths of Beginnings" at a symposium on mythology given at Sweetbriar College several years ago. His rationale for dealing with the two of them at that time was that each "in its own way stands apart and it seems to me, raises interesting questions of a more general nature-about composition, interpretation, and what hap pens when a myth is borrowed from one people to another" ( 1978, p. -
71. Genesis Unleashed
October 10, 2020 Genesis Proclaimed Association www.genesisproclaimed.org Email: [email protected] Genesis Unleashed Dick Fischer Enough archaeological artifacts and pieces of literature have been recovered from the ancient Near East in recent years touching on Genesis characters and events to highlight the need for making necessary English translation adjustments to the sacred text. Rooted in the 1611 King James Version, Genesis has blossomed into puzzling modern versions to keep us perplexed even today. Just a cursory reading of the Genesis 2-11 narrative places early patriarchal history within the context of the Neolithic Period in southern Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq, beginning no earlier than 7,000 years ago, whereas our species has occupied earthly domains for hundreds of thousands of years. Old Testament commentators have shown some awareness of ancient Near East literature in recent years, but typically do not dig deep enough to recognize its value. If these much-maligned chapters of Genesis are translated and understood as Adamic/Semitic history, not as human history, they make perfectly good sense. Only the King James Version is examined here, but the principles apply to all translations. Keywords: Genesis, Adam, Adam and Eve, Seth, Cain, Enoch, Noah, Flood, Sumerians, Akkadians, Eridu, Mesopotamia, Near East, Tigris, Euphrates, Ziusudra, Gilgamesh, Sumerian King List, Adapa. Where Did We Go Wrong? Interpretational mistakes with major long-term consequences began with the early Christian Church. When the Apostle Paul set out on missionary trips he visited synagogues seeking out Jews who would listen to the good news the Messiah had come. Considering Jesus to be God in human form was considered blasphemous to many of his Jewish listeners, yet Paul found a few who took his message to heart. -
The Mortal Kings of Ur: a Short Century of Divine
3 THE MORTAL KINGS OF UR: A SHORT CENTURY OF DIVINE RULE IN ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA PIOTR MICHALOWSKI, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Assyriologists are at a disadvantage whenever the subject of divine kingship comes up. The issue is not an old one, but it has its lingering ghosts, James Frazer and Edward Evans Prichard, and it has its favorite haunting ground, the continent of Africa and the island of Mad agascar. Ever since Frazer delineated the problem in 1890, the focus of investigation has been on Africa, and the definition has encompassed three central components: duality, regicide, and the mediating role of the king. Of the three, regicide has been the most contentious issue, but it is one that is hardly important outside of the Africanist debates. Moreover, as Kasja Ekholm Friedman (1985: 250) has written, some have viewed divine kingship as "an autonomous sym bolic structure that can only be understood in terms of its own internal symbolic structure." Writing about the Lower Congo (Friedman 1985: 251), she undertook to demonstrate that "it is a historical product which has undergone transformations connected to the general structural change that has turned Africa into an underdeveloped periphery of the West." Here, I follow her example and attempt to locate the eruptions of early Mesopotamian divine kingship as historically defined phenomena, rather than as moments in a developmental trajectory of an autonomous symbolic structure. Most studies of the early history of Mesopotamian kingship concentrate on the develop ment of a specific figure in text and art; the underlying notions are social evolutionary, and the methodology is philological, often relying on etymology and the study of the occurrence and history of lexical labels, as summarized well in a recent article by Nicole Brisch (forth coming). -
The Sumerian Takeoff
UC Irvine Structure and Dynamics Title The Sumerian Takeoff Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/76r673km Journal Structure and Dynamics, 1(1) Author Algaze, Guillermo Publication Date 2005-09-18 DOI 10.5070/SD911003264 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Introduction Economic geographers seeking to understand how substantial variations in population concentration and economic activity are created across the landscape correctly note that, except in cases of colonial imposition, such variations are always the result of cumulative processes whereby initial natural advantages of particular sites or areas are extended and compounded by socially created technologies and institutions delivering increasing returns to scale. In this manner, they argue, self-reinforcing processes of accumulation, exchange, agglomeration, and innovation are created that ultimately determine the varying developmental trajectories of different regions and the location, number, and rate of growth of cities within them (Krugman 1991, 1995, 1998; Pred 1966). The economist Paul Krugman (1996a) vividly illustrates this process in reference to the process of expansion of Chicago in the 19th century, as outlined by the historian William Cronon (1991) in his book Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. Cronon insightfully distinguishes between two settings in which the evolution of Chicago took place. The first was its “natural landscape,” entirely determined by geography and environment. The second was what he terms the “created landscape,” which resulted from human innovations and institutions that substantially altered and reshaped Chicago’s natural setting and significantly expanded the advantages of the city’s initial location for human settlement. Cronon argues that in the modern world the created landscape has become more important than the natural landscape as a determinant of urban location and regional developmental rates. -
The Rise of Urbanized Landscapes in Mesopotamia
Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 2019; 109(2): 214–237 Abhandlung Nicolò Marchetti*, Abbas Al-Hussainy, Giacomo Benati, Giampaolo Luglio, Giulia Scazzosi, Marco Valeri and Federico Zaina The Rise of Urbanized Landscapes in Mesopotamia: The QADIS Integrated Survey Results and the Interpretation of Multi-Layered Historical Landscapes https://doi.org/10.1515/za-2019-0016 Abstract: This paper draws on the preliminary results of the QADIS survey project, conducted by the University of Bologna and the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage since 2016 in the Qadisiyah province. The project addresses phenomena related to anthropogenic transformation of landscapes in a region that was at the core of the early Meso potamian urbanization process. Building upon the seminal work conducted by R. McC. Adams in the 1960 s and 1970 s, we implemented an integrated documentation technique to reconstruct at regional levels the changes in the dense network of human settlements and artificial water infrastructures characterizing the evolution of this archaeological landscape over time. The aim of the article is that of providing a finergrained regional picture of 4th and 3rd millennium BC urban developments which can be useful for better conceptualizing the scale and pace of early Mesopotamian urbanism. Keywords: survey, remote sensing, landscape archaeology, urbanized landscapes, settlement pattern, Southern Meso potamia ecosocial system during much of its history and are thus 1 Introduction (NM) central to our understanding of the processes of forma tion, development and decline of urban centers starting in One of the main objectives of the QADIS survey project in the 4th millennium BCE (cf. -
Reinvestigating the Antediluvian Sumerian King List
JETS 36/1 (March 1993) 3-8 REINVESTIGATING THE ANTEDILUVIAN SUMERIAN KING LIST R. K. HARRISON* Of the many fascinating and instructive artifacts that have been recov- ered from sites in Iraq where flourishing Sumerian cities once stood, few have been more intriguing than a prism now in the Weld-Blundell collec- tion of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England. Known more popu- larly as the Sumerian King List, it is held to have been compiled from as many as fifteen different texts.1 The King List traces the rulers of certain Sumerian cities in succession and is of immense value because it contains some very old traditions while at the same time furnishing an important chronological framework for the antediluvian period of the Near East.2 The original form of the List is thought to have gone back to Utu-Hegal, king of Uruk, perhaps about 2000 BC, but who was certainly flourishing during the early stages of the celebrated Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2070-1960 BC).3 The List commenced with an "antediluvian preamble": "When kingship was lowered from heaven, it was in the city of Eridu."4 After two kings had ruled over Eridu, kingship was transferred to Badtibira,5 where the reigns of three kings were duly recorded in succession. The antediluvian portion of the King List concluded with three rulers who reigned in Larak,6 Sippar,7 and Shuruppak8 respectively. At this point the narrative broke off with the terse words: "the flood swept over (the earth)." Thereafter the prism continued with the postdiluvian dynasties of Kish and other cities, but this material comes from a much later period and * R. -
When Kingship Descended from Heaven: Masterpieces of Mesopotamian Art from the Louvre
DOCUMENT RESUME ED 391 773 SO 026 102 TITLE When Kingship Descended from Heaven: Masterpieces of Mesopotamian Art from the Louvre. INSTITUTION Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. PUB DATE 92 NOTE 35p. AVAILABLE FROMEducation Department, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560 ($10 plus $4.50 shipping and handling; packet includes six color slides). PUB TYPE Audiovisual/Non-Print Materials (100) Guides Classroom Use Teaching Guides (For Teacher) (052) Guides Classroom Use Instructional Materials (For Learner)(051) EDRS PRICE MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Ancient History; Area Studies; *Art History; Intermediate Grades; Junior High Schools; Leaders; Leadership Styles; Social Studies IDENTIFIERS Dynasties; Mesopotamia; *Mesopotamian Art; *Mesopotamian Culture ABSTRACT This teaching packet, designed for students in grades 6 through 9, explores the role of rulers in ancient Mesopotamian society and examines the depiction of those rulers in Mesopotamian art. Students are encouraged tc compare present-day political leaders with ancient Mesopotamian ruters. The guide includes:(1) background information for teachers;(2) introductory activities for students; (3) descriptions and discussions for each of six "Slides" included with the packet;(4) follow-up activities for students; (5) an annotated bibliogrti2hy; (6) a glossary; and (7) a chronology of Mesopotamian dynasties. (MM) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by -
Sumerian Civilization
Sumerian civilization Beginnings of the first civilizations Three earliest civilizations: in Egypt, Sumer (known as Mesopotamia, modern Iraq) and in the Indus valley (modern Pakistan) came into existence in the fourth millennium BC. It is surprising that all three originated in very similar climatic and geographical conditions. These are practically semi desert areas, across which flow big rivers - the Nile in Egypt, the Euphrates and Tigris in the Sumer and the Indus in Pakistan. These areas, having high yearly average air temperature and small rainfall1, were not suitable for efficient agriculture. Nonetheless in the run-up to the development of these civilizations the local population was occupied with farming and fishery, and lived in very modest, primitive conditions. As a result of the development of new civilizations, in a very short span of time, in these areas cities come into existence with wonderful temples, with developed trade, with humanitarian laws, and most importantly with a very productive agriculture providing everyone with sufficient amount of food. The arising of civilizations just on large rivers could be linked to drastic climatic changes2 which occurred in the fourth millennium BC. On the account of a constantly reducing amount of rain many areas, lying on certain latitudes such as Sahara, changed into deserts. About 3500 years BC a great drop of rainfall was also recorded in Egypt. So the big rivers ensured constant and reliable water supply, without which obviously no civilization could come into existence and could grow. Archaeological discoveries show that in Mesopotamia, probably about 5500 years ago, Sumerians appeared, however it was not possible to establish where they arrived from.