Sumerian & Akkadian literature

Inanna is typically the waning out of the feminine spirituality of Pre-Ice-Age Homo Sapiens to the masculine spirituality of Neolithic time. We are dealing with Sumerian mythology and it is the matrix of at least two Semitic religions, Judaism and Christianity.

Inanna is the last omnipotent goddess and she is becoming a triple goddess, the merging of three divine principles into one, which Greek mythology and other European mythologies will do whereas Christianity invest this ternary pattern directly in the trinity of the omnipotent and omniscient god.

That shift corresponds to the social development from the hunting and gathering ancient prehistoric society to the agricultural and pastoral society that completely changed the position of women.

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/716031

Babylonian hermeneutics has been the subject of several studies in recent years that have showed that speculative thought exploited the potentiality of the cuneiform system through analogical reasoning in order to find and create new meanings according to phonetic, semantic and graphic similarities. Analogical hermeneutics was prompted by the polysemic and homophonic nature of cuneiform writing and was intended as an inquiry into the cuneiform system itself. Analogical reasoning is also well known in ancient Greece particularly in Heraclitus producing semantic proliferation and ambiguity. A comparison between Mesopotamian and Greek sources shows that Heraclitus’ fragments share with cuneiform scholarship a similar epistemic reasoning based on analogy. The present contribution aims at setting the Babylonian epistemological system in light of Heraclitus' philosophy.

This article will examine the occurrence of the " Vanity Theme " in Mesopotamian wisdom literature and elsewhere. However, the main interest of this investigation lies in the list of rulers or illustrious men of old which is manifest in a variety of wisdom " Vanity Theme " compositions. We will argue that it will not suffice to speak about the " Vanity Theme " in various literatures of the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean. We should try to identify a particular literary expression that is associated with this type of composition. We contend that this expression is the list or naming of " Early Rulers " that comes to serve as an exemplum to the basic assertion of the " Vanity Theme. "

Les neiges d'antan: " Gobernantes antiguos " y el tema de la vanidad en la literatura sapiencial de Mesopotamia y más allá Este artículo examinará la aparición del " tema de la vanidad " en la literatura sapien-cial de Mesopotamia y más allá. Sin embargo, el interés principal de esta investiga-ción radica en la lista de gobernantes u hombres ilustres de antaño que se manifiesta en una variedad de composiciones sapienciales con el " tema de la vanidad ". Argüiremos que no es suficiente con hablar sobre el " tema de la vanidad " en las diversas literaturas del antiguo Cercano Oriente y el Mediterráneo. Deberíamos tratar de identificar una expresión literaria particular que esté asociada con este tipo de composición. Sostenemos que esta expresión es la lista o denominación de los

Third-millennium Mesopotamia has provided an impressive quantity of sources for the study of ancient slavery, among them a collection of standards (the so-called Laws of Ur-Namma). Despite the volume of documents, Mesopotamian slavery remains elusive in its general traits. This is partly due to the nature of the sources, but also to the approaches and interpretations of modern scholars. Slavery in ancient Mesopotamia has been the focus of several studies in the 1960s and 1970s that interpreted the sources using comparative approaches and Marxist analyses. Since then, the topic has seldom been revisited. In this article, I present the status quaestionis with an overview of the available sources and related studies, together with a sketch of the different types of bonded and forced labor in the Neo-Sumerian period (21st cent. bce).

The paper offers an edition of an Old Babylonian Gilgamesh tablet from the Schøyen Collection (OB Schøyen2 in the edition by A.R. George). The text has been extensively commented upon. New interpretations are proposed for ll. 30, 37, 40, 46, 55.

L’invenzione del dialogo raccoglie una serie di testi letterari cristiani in lingua siriaca, di un genere in cui questa letteratura si distinse ed eccelse: l’innografia e la poesia piegate a esporre temi e motivi teologici, esegetici e sapienziali. Gli scritti debitamente introdotti e commentati mostrano la varietà di forme e contenuti che questi conobbero: dalla riflessione filosofica e teologica di Efrem, al ricamo narrativo ed esegetico di dialoghi immaginari tra personaggi della Bibbia o dell’agiografia, da Caino e Abele o Giuseppe e la moglie di Potifar, a Giuseppe e Maria o la peccatrice e Satana, fino ai contraddittori che in età cristiana riprendono e reinventano un genere mesopotamico antico: quello della disputa, ad esempio tra anima e corpo, tra i mesi, tra l’oro e il grano.

Indice e preview: https://www.claudiana.it/scheda-libro/alessandro-mengozzi/linvenzione-del-dialogo-9788839409577-2152.html

"Το βιβλίο αποτελεί την έκδοση της μεταπτυχιακής μου εργασίας που είχε τίτλο "Το δέντρο στη διήγηση του Παραδείσου και στο πολιτιστικό περιβάλλον του Ισραήλ"-Τμήμα Θεολογίας, Θεολογική Σχολή Α.Π.Θ. Βλ. https://www.academia.edu/5475507/_

Σύντομη περιγραφή:

Το βιβλίο αυτό πραγματοποιεί ένα ταξίδι στον αρχαίο κόσμο και πραγματεύεται το Ιερό Δέντρο στους πολιτισμούς των Σουμερίων, Ασσυρίων, Βαβυλωνίων, Αιγυπτίων, Χαναναίων και Εβραίων. Τι ποιότητες απέδωσαν στο σύμβολο του δέντρου όλοι αυτοί οι λαοί; Με ποιο τρόπο οι μυθολογικές παραστάσεις της Εγγύς Ανατολής αποδόθηκαν στο βιβλικό κείμενο; Ποιες είναι οι ρίζες των δύο δέντρων της ιστορίας του βιβλικού Παραδείσου; Τι ακριβώς ήταν το δέντρο της γνώσης του καλού και του κακού και τί το δέντρο της ζωής στον κήπο της Εδέμ; Ποια η σχέση τους με το φυτό του Γκιλγκαμές, το ασσυριακό δέντρο της ζωής και τα υπόλοιπα ιερά δέντρα;
Όλα αυτά θα μας απασχολήσουν σε ένα ταξίδι στον χρόνο και στους μύθους του παρελθόντος, στην αναζήτηση της αθανασίας, της γνώσης και του χαμένου Παραδείσου. http://daidaleos.gr/the-sacred-tree/
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This book is the publication of my Master’s dissertation, titled “The tree in the paradise story and in the cultural environment of Israel”.
See https://www.academia.edu/1695150/The_Tree_in_the_Garden_of_Eden_and_its_Possible_Origins

Short description:

This book makes a journey to the ancient world and discusses the Sacred Tree in the civilizations of the Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Canaanites and Jews. What qualities were attributed to the symbol of the tree in all these people? How mythological representations of the ancient Near East were attributed to the biblical text and what are the roots of the two trees in the story of biblical paradise? What exactly was the tree of knowledge of good and what evil and the tree of life in the Garden of Eden, and what was their relationship with the plant of Gilgamesh, the Assyrian tree of Life and other sacred trees?"  http://daidaleos.gr/the-sacred-tree/"

This thesis explores a specific form of representation from the Syrian Bronze Age: aniconic standing-stones, lacking inscriptions or decorations. These have been mainly studied from the point of view of texts which mention cult activity associated with them, but there has been heretofore no integrated analysis of archaeological finds, analysing architecture and associated material culture in comparison to texts. I will interpret litholatry (the cult of standing-stones) from the point of view of the influence of semi-nomadic pastoralists from the Syrian desert frontier on the culture of urban societies, and of the negotiation of urban/tribal identities of city kings through ritual.

Many of the world's first written records have been found in the area of the ancient Near East, in what is today known as the Middle East. While many people are familiar with the ancient Israelite literature recorded in the Hebrew Bible, most Near Eastern literature remains a mystery. From an Antique Land lifts the veil from these fascinating writings, explaining the ancient stories in the context of their cultures.
From the invention of writing through the conquest of Alexander the Great, expert scholars examine literature originally written in Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, Ugaritic, Canaanite, Hebrew, and Aramaic. Each chapter includes an overview of the culture, a discussion of literary genres, and descriptions and short analyses of the major literary works. Photos of archaeological remains further illustrate these people and their writings.
Contributors: Gary Beckman, Carl S. Ehrlich, Benjamin R. Foster, Susan Tower Hollis, Ingo Kottsieper, Wayne T. Pitard, Gonzalo Rubio.

In 'Weapons of Words: Intertextual Competition in Babylonian Poetry' Selena Wisnom offers an in-depth literary study of three poems central to Babylonian culture: Anzû, Enūma eliš, and Erra and Išum. Fundamentally interconnected, each poem strives to out-do its predecessors and competes to establish its protagonist, its ideals, and its poetics as superior to those that came before them.

The first of its kind in Assyriology, Weapons of Words explores the rich nuances of these poems by unravelling complex networks of allusion. Through a sophisticated analysis of literary techniques, Selena Wisnom traces developments in the Akkadian poetic tradition and demonstrates that intertextual readings are essential for a deeper understanding of Mesopotamian literature.

A sequence of omens has puzzled Assyriologists since 1866, when Henry C. Rawlinson published the first copy of these peculiar divinatory texts. The omens have the structure DIŠ MUL ana . . . GUR, “If a star turns into . . .”, where the object into which the star changes can be an animal, metal, stone or some other item. Such a change has been held to belong to the field of dreams or, more generally, to terrestrial events rather than to astronomy. In fact, however, these omens refer to a specific celestial phenomenon, the transformation of a “star” into a meteorite that can be picked up from the ground, as can also be seen in the phrasing of the corresponding namburbi-ritual, which some scribes appended to their recension of this omen sequence.

Rachel’s Theft of the Teraphim has invited the distaste of many generations of Rabbis & rabbinical scholars. Twentieth Century CE Assyriologists & philologists attempted tenuous explanations.  No one examined the theft’s benefits to Rachel herself.
The rollicking story of Inanna’s theft of the Mes--so widespread & popular in ancient Mesopotamia—has similarly been overlooked by “serious” scholars. 
The two stories agree in so many aspects.  Inanna’s theft made her Temple the most prosperous in Mesopotamia & she & her successors, Ishtar & Anahita, conferred kingship.
Rachel becomes the divine ancestor of Israel & of Judah’s first kings.  Kings were confirmed at her tomb in Bethlehem (I Samuel 10:2).  Her shrine has hosted pilgrims of three creeds consistently from Biblical times to today.  The Bible speaks of other shrines where she weeps for Israel’s exiles.

Nin-me-šara - Myths as argumentative weapons in a ritual song of the high priestess En-ḫedu-Ana:
New translation (revised version of the edition of Zgoll 1997),
first study of myth and ritual in the text,
terminus ante quem for the myth INANA BRINGS THE FIRST HOUSE OF HEAVEN

Christians have long spoken of Satan, the devil and Lucifer, yet when we research these titles, we find nothing in the ancient world. In Isaiah 14, the prophet said: “How you are fallen from heaven, O Heilel [Hêlēl הֵילֵ֣ל], son of the morning!” (Isa 14:12). “Lucifer” is not Satan's name; The underlying Hebrew in the word is Heilel ֵ[Hêlēl הֵילֵ֣ל].  Deciphering this word using the tools of the Ancient Near East is the key we need.

The Silver Cup of Elam, an astoundingly beautiful drinking flagon, resides in the Archaeological Museum of Tehran, capital of Iran. Persian laborers found the silver cup in 1966 while digging an irrigation ditch near Persepolis, the ancient ceremonial center of the Persian Empire. The front and back contain life-like images of two sisters dressed in identical robes, trimmed with fox or faux fox. They both look over their shoulder in the same direction, as if watching someone approach. After the cup was completed, a formal inscription just below the rim was carefully applied from the outside. Vertical lines separate phrases of evenly-spaced letters.
The script, called Linear Elamite, is a version of Old European that came from Estonia, whose national emblem is the fox. Dated 2240 BC, the inscription says the cup is a wedding gift from Kiririsa, the Elamite goddess of war and fertility, to her sister Narunte, goddess of victory, on the eve of her marriage to Sargon of Akkad. This is incredibly important, because almost nothing is known about his wife except that he was always faithful to her. This marriage combined the two regional powers, Akkad and Elam.

The presented master’s thesis deals with the Epic of Zimrī-Lîm, a text from the ancient city of Mari from the beginning of the 18th century BC. The text of the epic is included in transliteration (based on the edition by Michaël Guichard from 2014) and in English translation. The epic has also been published online as the first entry of NERE (Near Eastern Royal Epics) project on ORACC (Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus). In addition to the text itself, the thesis includes a broader historical-cultural commentary. There, selected elements of the ancient text are portraited as well-set within the lived cultural-political environment of the ancient Near East, with particular attention to the time of Zimrī-Lîm. Most of the space is devoted to the religious aspect of the work, especially the role of the deities. Last but not least, the composition is discussed within the context of other royal epics of the ancient Near East.

This volume is the edited collection of the papers from a conference we hosted in Oxford in 2017, drawing together specialists from the United Kingdom, continental Europe and the United States, to examine afresh the relationship between early Greece and the civilisations of the ancient Near East. This is one of the most controversial and rapidly developing research topics in Classics, and the aim of the conference was to bring together Classicists and non-Classicists in a truly interdisciplinary environment, in which specialists from several different fields could observe and draw upon one another’s discoveries and knowledge. It was the first time that all major scholars who have so far contributed to the debate were assembled at a conference, a fact that was reflected by large crowd of over seventy participants at the Ioannou Centre in Oxford, over two full days. Our hope was that the resulting interchange would reflect on the disparate methodologies which have developed in these distinct fields, and move towards a new consensus. In order to achieve this, we limited the papers to the presentation of narratives to do with the gods; this led to a clear cross-fertilisation between papers (both in the general discussion and in the presentations), and a movement away from a narrow concern with the question of direct influence towards a more truly comparative perspective, in which the individual dynamics of the Greek and Near Eastern traditions help to illuminate what is distinctive about each of them. This represents a paradigm shift in a field once concerned solely with collecting literary parallels and letting them ‘speak for themselves’ (in Martin West’s famous words), and this is one of the major reasons why we think the resulting volume will cohere both thematically and as articulating a crucial moment in the history of scholarship on this question.

The volume serves two interconnected purposes. The first is that the book is an illustrative, handbook-like overview of the history and current state of the discussion, an aspect to be supported by an extensive Introduction to the volume, to be written by the editors. The second is that it offers new material and fresh approaches formulated by the leading scholars in the field. The volume will thus capture the state of the current discussion and shape the future debate. In keeping with the theme and discoveries of the conference, the chapters are not simply lists of parallels, but attempts to consider the processes of interaction and their significance for the texts being discussed.

The cast list of contributors is, as one should expect in a volume with this kind of ambition, international: Angus Bowie (Oxford), Yoram Cohen (Tel Aviv), Bruno Currie (Oxford), Andrew George (SOAS), Amir Gilan (Tel-Aviv), Johannes Haubold (Durham), Adrian Kelly (Oxford), Andre Lardinois (Nijmegen), Carolina Lopez-Ruiz (Ohio State), Christopher Metcalf (Oxford), Bernardo Petrella (Oxford), Fran Reynolds (Oxford), Ruth Scodel (Michigan), Robert Rollinger (Innsbruck), Ian Rutherford (Reading), Sylvie Vanséveren (Brussels), and Mark Weeden (SOAS).