The Gilgameš Epic at Ugarit
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Republic of Iraq
Republic of Iraq Babylon Nomination Dossier for Inscription of the Property on the World Heritage List January 2018 stnel oC fobalbaT Executive Summary .......................................................................................................................... 1 State Party .......................................................................................................................................................... 1 Province ............................................................................................................................................................. 1 Name of property ............................................................................................................................................... 1 Geographical coordinates to the nearest second ................................................................................................. 1 Center ................................................................................................................................................................ 1 N 32° 32’ 31.09”, E 44° 25’ 15.00” ..................................................................................................................... 1 Textural description of the boundary .................................................................................................................. 1 Criteria under which the property is nominated .................................................................................................. 4 Draft statement -
INITIATIVE for CUNEIFORM ENCODING PROPOSAL November 1, 2003
INITIATIVE FOR CUNEIFORM ENCODING PROPOSAL November 1, 2003 [IMPORTANT NOTE: Due to the pressures of time and other considerations this is one of two proposals submitted to the Unicode Technical Committee by the Initiative for Cuneiform Encoding prior to the UTC meeting at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Nov. 4-7, 2003. This is NOT, however, intended as two competing proposals; it is merely insurance to make sure all exigencies are covered before the ICE proposal presentation at UTC. We intend to present a single proposal.] We find ourselves at an historic crux in the history of writing. From our vantage point we can look backwards 5600 years to the beginnings of the world's first writing, cuneiform, and we can look forward into a future where that heritage will be preserved. International computer standards make it possible. Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform is the world's oldest and longest used writing system. The earliest texts appear in Mesopotamia around 3600 BC and the last native cuneiform texts were written around 75 AD. The ancient scribes pressed the ends of their styluses into damp clay in order to write the approximately 800 different syllabic, logographic, or taxographic signs of this complex, poly-valent script. The clay tablets were sun-dried or baked by fire and were thus preserved in the sands of the Near East for millennia. Since the decipherment of Babylonian cuneiform some 150 years ago museums have accumulated perhaps 300,000 tablets written in most of the major languages of the Ancient Near East - Sumerian, Akkadian (Babylonian and Assyrian), Eblaite, Hittite, Hurrian, and Elamite. -
Miscellaneous Babylonian Inscriptions
MISCELLANEOUS BABYLONIAN INSCRIPTIONS BY GEORGE A. BARTON PROFESSOR IN BRYN MAWR COLLEGE ttCI.f~ -VIb NEW HAVEN YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS MDCCCCXVIII COPYRIGHT 1918 BY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS First published, August, 191 8. TO HAROLD PEIRCE GENEROUS AND EFFICIENT HELPER IN GOOD WORKS PART I SUMERIAN RELIGIOUS TEXTS INTRODUCTORY NOTE The texts in this volume have been copied from tablets in the University Museum, Philadelphia, and edited in moments snatched from many other exacting duties. They present considerable variety. No. i is an incantation copied from a foundation cylinder of the time of the dynasty of Agade. It is the oldest known religious text from Babylonia, and perhaps the oldest in the world. No. 8 contains a new account of the creation of man and the development of agriculture and city life. No. 9 is an oracle of Ishbiurra, founder of the dynasty of Nisin, and throws an interesting light upon his career. It need hardly be added that the first interpretation of any unilingual Sumerian text is necessarily, in the present state of our knowledge, largely tentative. Every one familiar with the language knows that every text presents many possi- bilities of translation and interpretation. The first interpreter cannot hope to have thought of all of these, or to have decided every delicate point in a way that will commend itself to all his colleagues. The writer is indebted to Professor Albert T. Clay, to Professor Morris Jastrow, Jr., and to Dr. Stephen Langdon for many helpful criticisms and suggestions. Their wide knowl- edge of the religious texts of Babylonia, generously placed at the writer's service, has been most helpful. -
Nabu 2016-82 M. Jursa
Nabu 2016-82 M. Jursa 82) Neo-Babylonian texts in CUSAS 15* — In NABU 2014/55, Victor Gysembergh offered significant improvements to the editions of several of the Neo- and Late Babylonian tablets published in CUSAS 15: nos. 14, 43, 48, 67 and 184. He observed that in two of these texts, 67 and 184, a certain Tattannu, son of Talīmu, appears as protagonist, and added that the same man is mentioned as addressee in the letter no. 69 (attributing this observation to J.-M. Durand). The purpose of the present note is to offer a new edition of the letter on the basis of the photo on CDLI (where the text has the number P270698) and of photographs kindly provided by David Owen and Elena Devecchi, to whom I am profoundly grateful. (Note that in the following edition, exclamation marks designate unorthodox sign forms; departures from the original edition are not indicated as such.) CUSAS 15, 69 1 im Idag-mu-mu a-na Ita-at-tan-nu šeš-iá ensic u dag šu-lum u tin šá šeš-ia liq-bu-ú 5 5 mu.an.nameš a-ga-a ul-tu muh-hi šá a-na-ku I ù gu-za-na a-na pa-ni-ku ! ni-il-lik 10-ta buru14 garim-ia ul tarta-re!-e ˹ši˺(partly overwritten by rev. 21) 10 ul šu-gar-ru-ú-a ú-gam!-me-<er>-ka iš-te-en-n[a] en-na a-mur Idag-numun-pab [u] ˹I˺mu-˹dag˺ dumu-˹šú˺ l.e. -
3 a Typology of Sumerian Copular Clauses36
3 A Typology of Sumerian Copular Clauses36 3.1 Introduction CCs may be classified according to a number of characteristics. Jagersma (2010, pp. 687-705) gives a detailed description of Sumerian CCs arranged according to the types of constituents that may function as S or PC. Jagersma’s description is the most detailed one ever written about CCs in Sumerian, and particularly, the parts on clauses with a non-finite verbal form as the PC are extremely insightful. Linguistic studies on CCs, however, discuss the kind of constituents in CCs only in connection with another kind of classification which appears to be more relevant to the description of CCs. This classification is based on the semantic properties of CCs, which in turn have a profound influence on their grammatical and pragmatic properties. In this chapter I will give a description of CCs based mainly on the work of Renaat Declerck (1988) (which itself owes much to Higgins [1979]), and Mikkelsen (2005). My description will also take into account the information structure of CCs. Information structure is understood as “a phenomenon of information packaging that responds to the immediate communicative needs of interlocutors” (Krifka, 2007, p. 13). CCs appear to be ideal for studying the role information packaging plays in Sumerian grammar. Their morphology and structure are much simpler than the morphology and structure of clauses with a non-copular finite verb, and there is a more transparent connection between their pragmatic characteristics and their structure. 3.2 The Classification of Copular Clauses in Linguistics CCs can be divided into three main types on the basis of their meaning: predicational, specificational, and equative. -
Hanigalbat and the Land Hani
Arnhem (nl) 2015 – 3 Anatolia in the bronze age. © Joost Blasweiler student Leiden University - [email protected] Hanigal9bat and the land Hana. From the annals of Hattusili I we know that in his 3rd year the Hurrian enemy attacked his kingdom. Thanks to the text of Hattusili I (“ruler of Kussara and (who) reign the city of Hattusa”) we can be certain that c. 60 years after the abandonment of the city of Kanesh, Hurrian armies extensively entered the kingdom of Hatti. Remarkable is that Hattusili mentioned that it was not a king or a kingdom who had attacked, but had used an expression “the Hurrian enemy”. Which might point that formerly attacks, raids or wars with Hurrians armies were known by Hattusili king of Kussara. And therefore the threatening expression had arisen in Hittite: “the Hurrian enemy”. Translation of Gary Beckman 2008, The Ancient Near East, editor Mark W. Chavalas, 220. The cuneiform texts of the annal are bilingual: Babylonian and Nesili (Hittite). Note: 16. Babylonian text: ‘the enemy from Ḫanikalbat entered my land’. The Babylonian text of the bilingual is more specific: “the enemy of Ḫanigal9 bat”. Therefore the scholar N.B. Jankowska1 thought that apparently the Hurrian kingdom Hanigalbat had existed probably from an earlier date before the reign of Hattusili i.e. before c. 1650 BC. Normally with the term Mittani one is pointing to the mighty Hurrian kingdom of the 15th century BC 2. Ignace J. Gelb reported 3 on “the dragomans of the Habigalbatian soldiers/workers” in an Old Babylonian tablet of Amisaduqa, who was a contemporary with Hattusili I. -
The Beautiful Cubit System I Douglas 2019 the Beautiful Cubit System
The Beautiful Cubit System I Douglas 2019 The Beautiful Cubit System Ian Douglas, B.Sc [email protected] 30 June 2019 Version 1.0.0 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3263864 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Abstract An analysis of the Egyptian Royal cubit, presenting some research and opinions flowing from that research, into what I believe was the original cubit, and how it was corrupted. I show various close arithmetic approximations and multiple ways of getting the divisions of the cubit, as well as some related measures. The cubit also encapsulates the basic components for the metric system. Keywords: Egyptology, metrology, royal cubit, cubit, metre, foot, metric system Contents 1. Introduction 2. Overview of current understanding 3. An alternative origin 4. Different ways of approximating the royal cubit 5. Different ways of getting the cubit divisions 6. Geometry, the Royal Cubit and the metric system 7. Bibliography 1. Introduction The cubit is a well-know ancient measure of length, used around various places in the Middle East and Mediterranean region in the distant past. 1 The Beautiful Cubit System I Douglas 2019 It is allegedly based on the length of a human (male) fore-arm. It is typically measured from the back of the elbow to some point between the wrist and the end of the outstretched middle finger, or in some variants, a point beyond that. The problem with this approach is that everyone’s arm is a different length. If the heights of the dynastic Egyptians is taken as representative, then their arms would have been too short to justify the accepted lengths. -
God Among the Gods: an Analysis of the Function of Yahweh in the Divine Council of Deuteronomy 32 and Psalm 82
LIBERTY BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY AND GRADUATE SCHOOL GOD AMONG THE GODS: AN ANALYSIS OF THE FUNCTION OF YAHWEH IN THE DIVINE COUNCIL OF DEUTERONOMY 32 AND PSALM 82 A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE SCHOOL OF RELIGION IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES BY DANIEL PORTER LYNCHBURG, VIRGINIA MAY 2010 The views expressed in this thesis do not necessarily represent the views of the institution and/or of the thesis readers. Copyright © 2010 by Daniel Porter All Rights Reserved. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To my wife, Mariel And My Parents, The Rev. Fred A. Porter and Drenda Porter Special thanks to Dr. Ed Hindson and Dr. Al Fuhr for their direction and advice through the course of this project. iii ABSTRACT The importance of the Ugaritic texts discovered in 1929 to ancient Near Eastern and Biblical Studies is one of constant debate. The Ugaritic texts offer a window into the cosmology that shaped the ancient Near East and Semitic religions. One of the profound concepts is the idea of a divine council and its function in maintaining order in the cosmos. Over this council sits a high god identified as El in the Ugaritic texts whose divine function is to maintain order in the divine realm as well on earth. Due to Ugarit‟s involvement in the ancient world and the text‟s representation of Canaanite cosmology, scholars have argued that the Ugaritic pantheon is evidenced in the Hebrew Bible where Yahweh appears in conjunction with other divine beings. Drawing on imagery from both the Ugaritic and Hebrew texts, scholars argue that Yahweh was not originally the high god of Israel, and the idea of “Yahweh alone” was a progression throughout the biblical record. -
Shaushka, the Traveling Goddess Graciela GESTOSO SINGER
Shaushka, the Traveling Goddess Graciela GESTOSO SINGER Traveling gods and goddesses between courts was a well-known motif in the ancient Near East. Statues of gods and goddesses served as symbols of life, fertility, healing, prosperity, change, alliances and sometimes represented the “geographical” integration or the “ideological” legitimization of a territory. The Amarna Letters reveal the jour- ney of the goddess Shaushka to the Egyptian court of Amenhotep III. Akkadian, Hurrian, Hittite, and Ugaritic texts reveal the role played by this goddess in local pantheons, as well as in various foreign courts during the second millennium BCE. She was known as the goddess of war, fertility and healing and statues of the goddess were used in rituals performed before military actions, to heal diseases, to bless marriage alliances and assist births. This pa- per analyses the role of this traveling goddess in the Egyptian court of Amenhotep III. El viaje de estatuas de dioses y diosas entre cortes de grandes reyes fue un recurso conocido en el Cercano Oriente antiguo. En la Antigüedad, las estatuas de ciertos dioses y diosas fueron símbolos de vida, fertilidad, curación, prosperidad, cambio, alianzas y, en algunos casos, representaron la integración “geográfica” o la legiti- mación “ideológica” de un territorio. Las Cartas de El Amarna revelan el viaje de la estatua de la diosa Shaushka hacia la corte egipcia durante el reinado de Amenhotep III. Textos acadios, hurritas, hititas y ugaríticos indican el rol cumplido por esta diosa en panteones locales, así como en diversas cortes extranjeras durante el II milenio a.e. Fue reconocida como la diosa de la guerra, fertilidad y curación. -
Sumerian Lexicon, Version 3.0 1 A
Sumerian Lexicon Version 3.0 by John A. Halloran The following lexicon contains 1,255 Sumerian logogram words and 2,511 Sumerian compound words. A logogram is a reading of a cuneiform sign which represents a word in the spoken language. Sumerian scribes invented the practice of writing in cuneiform on clay tablets sometime around 3400 B.C. in the Uruk/Warka region of southern Iraq. The language that they spoke, Sumerian, is known to us through a large body of texts and through bilingual cuneiform dictionaries of Sumerian and Akkadian, the language of their Semitic successors, to which Sumerian is not related. These bilingual dictionaries date from the Old Babylonian period (1800-1600 B.C.), by which time Sumerian had ceased to be spoken, except by the scribes. The earliest and most important words in Sumerian had their own cuneiform signs, whose origins were pictographic, making an initial repertoire of about a thousand signs or logograms. Beyond these words, two-thirds of this lexicon now consists of words that are transparent compounds of separate logogram words. I have greatly expanded the section containing compounds in this version, but I know that many more compound words could be added. Many cuneiform signs can be pronounced in more than one way and often two or more signs share the same pronunciation, in which case it is necessary to indicate in the transliteration which cuneiform sign is meant; Assyriologists have developed a system whereby the second homophone is marked by an acute accent (´), the third homophone by a grave accent (`), and the remainder by subscript numerals. -
The Origins of Social Justice in the Ancient Mesopotamian Religious Traditions Brian R
Digital Commons @ George Fox University Faculty Publications - College of Christian Studies College of Christian Studies 4-2006 The Origins of Social Justice in the Ancient Mesopotamian Religious Traditions Brian R. Doak George Fox University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ccs Part of the Near Eastern Languages and Societies Commons, and the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Doak, Brian R., "The Origins of Social Justice in the Ancient Mesopotamian Religious Traditions" (2006). Faculty Publications - College of Christian Studies. Paper 185. http://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ccs/185 This Conference Proceeding is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Christian Studies at Digital Commons @ George Fox University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications - College of Christian Studies by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ George Fox University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “The Origins of Social Justice in the Ancient Mesopotamian Religious Traditions” Brian R. Doak Presented at the American Schools of Oriental Research Central States Meeting St. Louis, MO (April 2006) Note: This paper was solicited from me as an entry in an introductory multi-volume encyclopedia project on social justice in the world’s religious traditions. I presented it, polished it up for publication, and then the whole project fell apart for some reason that I never understood a few months after I submitted the piece. Since it will never see the light of day otherwise, I post it here for whomever might find it useful. (I) Introduction The existence of written law in the ancient Near East predates the earliest legal codes of other notable ancient civilizations, including those in China and India; thus, through the early Mesopotamians, we are given the first actual historical glimpse of law as idealized and, in some cases, practiced in human civilization. -
Amarna Period Down to the Opening of Sety I's Reign
oi.uchicago.edu STUDIES IN ANCIENT ORIENTAL CIVILIZATION * NO.42 THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Thomas A. Holland * Editor with the assistance of Thomas G. Urban oi.uchicago.edu oi.uchicago.edu Internet publication of this work was made possible with the generous support of Misty and Lewis Gruber THE ROAD TO KADESH A HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE BATTLE RELIEFS OF KING SETY I AT KARNAK SECOND EDITION REVISED WILLIAM J. MURNANE THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO STUDIES IN ANCIENT ORIENTAL CIVILIZATION . NO.42 CHICAGO * ILLINOIS oi.uchicago.edu Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 90-63725 ISBN: 0-918986-67-2 ISSN: 0081-7554 The Oriental Institute, Chicago © 1985, 1990 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Published 1990. Printed in the United States of America. oi.uchicago.edu TABLE OF CONTENTS List of M aps ................................ ................................. ................................. vi Preface to the Second Edition ................................................................................................. vii Preface to the First Edition ................................................................................................. ix List of Bibliographic Abbreviations ..................................... ....................... xi Chapter 1. Egypt's Relations with Hatti From the Amarna Period Down to the Opening of Sety I's Reign ...................................................................... ......................... 1 The Clash of Empires