Library of Ashurbanipal

October 12, 2015

Selz: Plant of Birth or Plant of Life in the Etana Legend?

“The story of Etana, one of the oldest tales in a Semitic language, was, as I have argued elsewhere, modeled after the then extant Sumerian tales of the Gilgamesh Epic.

Gilgamesh’s search for “the plant of life,” the ú-nam-ti-la (šammu ša balāti) was, however, replaced by Etana’s search for the plant of birth-giving (šammu ša alādi). The entire story runs as follows:

British Museum K. 19530, Library of Ashurbanipal (reigned 669-631 BCE), excavated from Kouyunjik by Austen Henry Layard. Neo-Assyrian 7th Century BCE, Nineveh.
This cuneiform tablet details the legend of Etana, a mythological king of Kish.
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=287204&partId=1&searchText=WCT28297&page=1
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/me/c/cuneiform_the_legend_of_etana.aspx
This image is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

The gods build the first city Kish, but kingship is still in heaven. A ruler is wanted (and found). Due to an illness, Etana’s wife is unable to conceive. The plant of birth is wanted.

In the ensuing episode eagle and snake swore an oath of friendship. Suddenly the eagle plans to eat up the snake’s children; a baby eagle, with the name of Atrahasīs opposes this plan, but eagle executes it.

Now, the weeping snake seeks justice from the sun-god. With the god’s help the eagle is trapped in a burrow, and now the eagle turns to the sun-god for help. He receives the answer that, because of the taboo-violation he cannot help, but will send someone else.

Etana prays daily for the plant of birth and in a dream the sun-god tells Etana to approach the eagle. In order to get the eagle’s support Etana helps him out of his trap.

BM 89767, Limestone cylinder seal illustrating the myth of Etana, shepherd and legendary king of Kish, who was translated to heaven by an eagle to obtain the plant of life.
This seal portrays Etana’s ascent, witnessed by a shepherd, a dog, goats and sheep. Dated 2250 BCE, this seal was excavated by Hormuzd Rassam, and came from an old, previously unregistered collection acquired before 1884.
Dominique Collon, Catalogue of the Western Asiatic Seals in the British Museum: Cylinder Seals II: Akkadian, Post-Akkadian, Ur III Periods, II, London, British Museum Press, 1982.
R.M. Boehner, Die Entwicklung der Glyptic wahrend der Akkad-Zeit, 4, Berlin, 1965.
Alfred Jeremias, Das Alte Testament im Lichte des Alten Orients: Handbuch zur biblisch-orientalischen Altertumskunde, Leipzig, JC Hinrichs, 1906.
Also AN128085001, 1983, 0101.299.
This image is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.
© The Trustees of the British Museum.
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx?partid=1&assetid=128085001&objectid=368707

Now the eagle, carrying Etana on his back, ascends to the heavens. On the uppermost level of the heavens Etana becomes afraid and the eagle takes him back to the earth.

The end of the story is missing, but that Etana finally got hold of the plant of birth is very likely, since other sources mention his son.

To summarize: I have tried to show that some features of the Enoch tradition are a re-writing of very ancient concepts. I do not claim that they all can be explained assuming dependencies, as earlier scholarship has done.

I do not intend to idolize “origins,” but what might eventually come out of such a research—if the topics mentioned here are thoroughly worked out and elaborated in detail—is, that our texts implicate many more meanings than tradition may have supposed.

In my opinion there can be little doubt that the official transmission of texts in Mesopotamia was supplemented by a wealth of oral tradition. Indeed, the situation may be comparable to the one attested in the (still) living oral tradition on Enoch in the Balkanian vernaculars.”

This Akkadian clay tablet, dated to circa 1900-1600 BCE, preserves a partial version of the Sumerian Legend of Etana.
Held by the Morgan Library.
http://www.codex99.com/typography/1.html

(See G.J. Selz, “Die Etana-Erzählung: Ursprung und Tradition eines der ältesten epischen Texte in einer semitischen Sprache,” Acta Sumerologica (Japan) 20 (1998): pp. 135-79.

A different opinion is expressed by P. Steinkeller, “Early Semitic Literature and Third Millennium Seals with Mythological Motifs,” in Literature and Literary Language at Ebla (ed. P. Fronzaroli; Quaderni di Semitistica 18; Florence: Dipartimento di linguistica Università di Firenze, 1992), pp. 243-75 and pls. 1-8.

Further remarks on the ruler’s ascension to heaven are discussed by G.J. Selz, “Der sogenannte ‘geflügelte Tempel’ und die ‘Himmelfahrt’ der Herrscher: Spekulationen über ein ungelöstes Problem der altakkadischen Glyptik und dessen möglichen rituellen Hintergrund,” in Studi sul Vicino Oriente Antico dedicati alla memoria di Luigi Cagni (ed. S. Graziani; Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 2000, pp. 961-83.)

Gebhard J. Selz, “Of Heroes and Sages–Considerations of the Early Mesopotamian Background of Some Enochic Traditions,” in Armin Lange, et al, The Dead Sea Scrolls in Context, v. 2, Brill, 2011, pp. 799-800.

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October 1, 2015

Selz: Enūma Anu Enlil and MUL.APIN

“My contribution is an outsider’s view, neither pretending to do justice to the ongoing discussions in biblical studies, in particular in the studies of the Dead Sea Scrolls, nor dwelling on the highly complicated matter of the Babylonian background of the astronomical Enoch tradition.

O. Neugebauer, one of the pioneers working on Babylonian astronomical texts wrote in 1981:

“The search for time and place of origin of this primitive picture of the cosmic order can hardly be expected to lead to definitive results. The use of 30-day schematic months could have been inspired, e.g., by Babylonian arithmetical schemes (of the type of ‘Mul-Apin’), or by the Egyptian calendar.”

He then continues: “But [sc. in Astronomical Enoch] there is no visible trace of the sophisticated Babylonian astronomy of the Persian or Seleucid-Parthian period.”

The Neo-Assyrian star map K 8538, from H. Hunger, ed., Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings (SAA 8, Helsinki: Helsinki University Press: 1992), p. 46.<br /> K8538 is held in the British Museum collection, excavated by Austen Henry Layard from the Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh.<br /> The curator's comments state that the text and depicted constellations are interpreted in Koch, 1989.<br /> A celestial planisphere with eight sections, representing the night sky of 3-4 January 650 BCE over Nineveh.<br /> Also Figure 1, Gebhard Selz, Of Heroes and Sages, p. 785. http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=303316&partId=1

The Neo-Assyrian star map K 8538, from H. Hunger, ed., Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings (SAA 8, Helsinki: Helsinki University Press: 1992), p. 46.
K8538 is held in the British Museum collection, excavated by Austen Henry Layard from the Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh.
The curator’s comments state that the text and depicted constellations are interpreted in Koch, 1989.
A celestial planisphere with eight sections, representing the night sky of 3-4 January 650 BCE over Nineveh.
Also Figure 1, Gebhard Selz, Of Heroes and Sages, p. 785. http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=303316&partId=1

(Cf. M. Albani, Astronomie und Schöpfungsglaube: Untersuchungen zum astronomischen Henochbuch (WMANT 68; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirche 1994), pp. 1-29; cf. furthermore the works of Milik, Books of Enoch, and O. Neugebauer, The “Astronomical” Chapters of the Ethiopic Book of Enoch (72 to 82) Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab: Matematisk-fysiske Meddelelser 40.10; Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1981).

The opinion “that the astronomical part of the Book of Enoch is based on concepts extant in the Old Testament is simply incorrect: the Enoch year is not an old semitic calendaric unit; the schematic alternation between hollow and full months is not a real lunar calendar, and there exists no linear scheme in the Old Testament for the length of daylight, or patterns for ‘gates,’ for winds, or for ‘thousands’ of stars, related to the schematic year. The whole Enochian astronomy is clearly an ad hoc construction and not the result of a common semitic tradition.

Neugebauer’s opinion sharply contrasts the statement of VanderKam that “Enoch’s science is a Judaized refraction of an early stage in the development of Babylonian astronomy—a stage that finds varied expression in texts such as the astrolabes, Enūma Anu Enlil, and mul APIN.

Enuma Anu Enlil is a series of about 70 tablets dealing with Babylonian astrology. These accounts were found in the early 19th century by excavation in Niniveh, near present day Bagdad. The bulk of the work is a substantial collection of omens, estimated to number between 6500 and 7000, which interpret a wide variety of celestial and atmospheric phenomena in terms relevant to the king and state. The tablets presumably date back to about 650 BCE, but several of the omens may be as old as 1646 BCE. Many of the reports found on the tablets represent ‘astrometeorological’ forecasts (Rasmussen 2010).
http://www.climate4you.com/ClimateAndHistory%205000-0%20BC.htm

In it astronomical and astrological concepts are intermingled and schematic arrangements at times predominate over facts.”

Here VanderKam comes back to an early view of H. Zimmern from 1901, who saw the Enochic tradition anchored in stories around the primeval king Enmeduranki, to whom the gods granted mantic (related to divination or prophecy) and astronomical wisdom.

BM 86378, cuneiform tablets from the library of King Ashurbanipal, circa 687 BCE, held in the British Museum.<br /> MUL.APIN includes a list of thirty-six stars, three stars for each month of the year. The stars are those having a helical rise in a particular month. The first line lists the three stars, which have the helical rise in the first month of the year, Nisannu, which is associated with the vernal equinox. <br /> In the second line, three other stars are listed, with a helical rise in the second month, Ayyāru, and so on.<br /> I MUL.APIN sono testi antichi su tavolette di argilla, comprendono un elenco di trentasei stelle, tre stelle per ogni mese dell’anno. <br /> Le stelle sono quelle aventi ciascuna la levata eliaca in un particolare mese. Si ha perciò questo schema: nella prima riga sono elencate tre stelle, che hanno la levata eliaca nel primo mese dell'anno, Nīsannu (quello associato all'epoca dell'equinozio di primavera). <br /> Nella seconda riga sono elencate altre tre stelle, ancora ciascuna avente levata eliaca nel secondo mese, Ayyāru, e così via.<br /> http://www.lavia.org/italiano/archivio/calendarioakkadit.htm

BM 86378, cuneiform tablets from the library of King Ashurbanipal, circa 687 BCE, held in the British Museum.
MUL.APIN includes a list of thirty-six stars, three stars for each month of the year. The stars are those having a helical rise in a particular month. The first line lists the three stars, which have the helical rise in the first month of the year, Nisannu, which is associated with the vernal equinox.
In the second line, three other stars are listed, with a helical rise in the second month, Ayyāru, and so on.
I MUL.APIN sono testi antichi su tavolette di argilla, comprendono un elenco di trentasei stelle, tre stelle per ogni mese dell’anno.
Le stelle sono quelle aventi ciascuna la levata eliaca in un particolare mese. Si ha perciò questo schema: nella prima riga sono elencate tre stelle, che hanno la levata eliaca nel primo mese dell’anno, Nīsannu (quello associato all’epoca dell’equinozio di primavera).
Nella seconda riga sono elencate altre tre stelle, ancora ciascuna avente levata eliaca nel secondo mese, Ayyāru, e così via.
http://www.lavia.org/italiano/archivio/calendarioakkadit.htm

(VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth, p. 101. H. Zimmern, Beiträge zur Kenntnis der babylonischen Religion: Die Beschwörungstafeln Šurpu, Ritualtafeln für den Wahrsager, Beschwörer und Sänger (Assyriologische Bibliothek 12; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1901).

The main arguments against Neugebauer’s position are provided by the Enochic Aramaic fragments from Cave 4, the careful evaluation of which prompted Milik already in 1976 to suggest that the astronomical parts of the Enoch tradition do belong to the oldest stratum of the Enoch literature in concordance to the  (originally) year life span allotted to Enoch in Genesis 5:23.”

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September 19, 2015

Melvin: Human Civilization is a Gift of the gods

“At other times, the gods create civilization directly, either through the birth of the patron deities of aspects of civilization (e.g., agriculture) or by means of themes.

(This phenomenon is especially prevalent in Sumerian creation accounts, which often emphasize the importance of agricultural technology by placing the creation of tools prior to and even necessary for the creation of humans (see, for example, The Song of the Hoe [COS 1.157]) and by presenting the development of agriculture as a theogony in which the patron deities of various agricultural technologies are born. See Cattle and Grain in Samuel N. Kramer, Sumerian Mythology: A Study of Spiritual and Literary Achievement in the Third Millennium B.C. (rev. ed.; New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), 72–73.)

(See Enki and Inanna (COS 1.161). See also Kramer, Sumerian Mythology, 64–68; Bottéro, 238–39.)

In The Song of the Hoe, Enlil invents the hoe, first, in order to prepare the ground for sprouting humans, and second, for humans to use in their work of temple-building.

(In Mesopotamian Creation myths, the origin of humans is usually described in one of two ways. The first is that they are fashioned from clay, usually mixed with the blood of a slain god (cf. Enuma Elish; Atrahasis). The second is that they sprout up from the ground like plants, as is the case here.)

Similarly, in Cattle and Grain the arts of animal husbandry and agriculture are tied to their patron deities, Lahar and Ashnan. In another text, Enki decrees the fates of the cities of Sumer, blessing them and causing civilization to develop.

Batto notes that a number of texts present the earliest humans (i.e., humans prior to the divine bestowal of the gift of civilization) as animal-like. Thus, in Cattle and Grain, early humans walk about naked, eat grass like sheep, and drink water from ditches.

A fragment of The Eridu Genesis. <br /> The earliest recorded Sumerian creation myth is The Eridu Genesis, known from a cuneiform tablet excavated from Nippur, a fragment from Ur, and a bilingual fragment in Sumerian with Akkadian, from the Library of Ashurbanipal dated 600 BCE. The main fragment from Nippur (depicted above) is dated to 1600 BCE. <br /> http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.7.4# <br /> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_creation_myth <br /> It was Thorkild Jacobsen who named this fragment. As he says, “…it deals with the creation of man, the institution of kingship, the founding of the first cities and the great flood. Thus it is a story of beginnings, a Genesis, and, as I will try to show in detail later, it prefigures so to speak, the biblical Genesis in its structure. <br /> The god Enki and his city Eridu figure importantly in the story, Enki as savior of mankind, Eridu as the first city. Thus “The Eridu Genesis” seems appropriate." <br /> In a footnote, Jacobsen observes, “The tablet was found at Nippur during the third season’s work of the Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania (1893-6) but was not immediately recognized for what it was. The box in which it was kept was labeled “incantation.” Thus it was not until 1912, when Arno Poebel went through the tablet collection, that its true nature was discovered.” <br /> He continues, “Poebel published it in hardcopy ... and furnished a transliteration, translation and penetrating analysis .... He convincingly dated the tablet (pp. 66-9) on epigraphical and other grounds to the latter half of the First Dynasty of Babylon.” <br /> “Little further work of consequence was done on the text for thirty-six years—a detailed bibliography may be found in Rykle Borger, Handbuch der Keilschriftliteratur I (Berlin: de Gruyter, p. 411 ... but in 1950 Samuel N. Kramer’s translation was published in ANET (pp. 43-4) and again, almost twenty years later, Miguel Civil restudied the text in his chapter on Atra-hasīs (pp. 138-47). <br /> The interpretation here offered owes much to our predecessors, far more than would appear from our often very different understanding of the text." <br /> https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=g5MGVP6gAPkC&pg=PA129&dq=Eridu+Genesis.+Nippur&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAGoVChMI4ImL2PiCxwIVhNWACh01nwD6#v=onepage&q=Eridu%20Genesis.%20Nippur&f=false

A fragment of The Eridu Genesis.
The earliest recorded Sumerian creation myth is The Eridu Genesis, known from a cuneiform tablet excavated from Nippur, a fragment from Ur, and a bilingual fragment in Sumerian with Akkadian, from the Library of Ashurbanipal dated 600 BCE. The main fragment from Nippur (depicted above) is dated to 1600 BCE.
http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.7.4#
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_creation_myth
It was Thorkild Jacobsen who named this fragment. As he says, “…it deals with the creation of man, the institution of kingship, the founding of the first cities and the great flood. Thus it is a story of beginnings, a Genesis, and, as I will try to show in detail later, it prefigures so to speak, the biblical Genesis in its structure.
The god Enki and his city Eridu figure importantly in the story, Enki as savior of mankind, Eridu as the first city. Thus “The Eridu Genesis” seems appropriate.”
In a footnote, Jacobsen observes, “The tablet was found at Nippur during the third season’s work of the Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania (1893-6) but was not immediately recognized for what it was. The box in which it was kept was labeled “incantation.” Thus it was not until 1912, when Arno Poebel went through the tablet collection, that its true nature was discovered.”
He continues, “Poebel published it in hardcopy … and furnished a transliteration, translation and penetrating analysis …. He convincingly dated the tablet (pp. 66-9) on epigraphical and other grounds to the latter half of the First Dynasty of Babylon.”
“Little further work of consequence was done on the text for thirty-six years—a detailed bibliography may be found in Rykle Borger, Handbuch der Keilschriftliteratur I (Berlin: de Gruyter, p. 411 … but in 1950 Samuel N. Kramer’s translation was published in ANET (pp. 43-4) and again, almost twenty years later, Miguel Civil restudied the text in his chapter on Atra-hasīs (pp. 138-47).
The interpretation here offered owes much to our predecessors, far more than would appear from our often very different understanding of the text.”
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=g5MGVP6gAPkC&pg=PA129&dq=Eridu+Genesis.+Nippur&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAGoVChMI4ImL2PiCxwIVhNWACh01nwD6#v=onepage&q=Eridu%20Genesis.%20Nippur&f=false

Both The Rulers of Lagash and The Eridu Genesis present early humanity as similar to animals in that they slept on straw beds in pens because they did not know how to build houses and also lived at the mercy of the rains because they did not know how to dig canals for irrigation.

Batto concludes that Mesopotamian literature depicts the advancement of early humans as their evolution from a low, animal-like state to a higher, “civilized” state by means of gifts from the gods.

A further illustration of the role of the gods in the rise of civilization in Sumer is the myth Innana and Enki􏰓􏰋􏰎􏰋􏰋􏰎􏰃􏰎􏰋􏰐􏰃􏰔􏰋􏰝􏰉. In this text, Inanna steals the mes (in this case, corresponding to the arts of civilization) from Enki in Eridu and brings them to Uruk, thus transferring civilization to Uruk. The text mentions 94 individual elements of civilization, including:

“… the craft of the carpenter, the craft of the copper-smith, the art of the scribe, the craft of the smith, the craft of the leather-worker, the craft of the fuller, the craft of the builder, the craft of the mat-weaver, understanding, knowledge, purifying washing rites, the house of the shepherd,…kindling of fire, extinguishing of fire….”

Key in this myth is the fact that it is the divine mes, originally bestowed by Enki upon Eridu alone but subsequently transferred to Uruk by Inanna, which give rise to civilization.

What is nearly universal in the Mesopotamian literature, as far as the available texts indicate, is that the source of human civilization is divine, with humans acting primarily as recipients of divine knowledge.

Because of its divine origin and the clear benefits which it provides for humans—at least for those favored humans on whom the gods bestow it—civilization is portrayed in an overwhelmingly positive manner in these texts.”

David P. Melvin, “Divine Mediation and the Rise of Civilization in Mesopotamian Literature and in Genesis 1-11,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, 2010, pp. 6-7.

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September 16, 2015

Melvin: On the Role of Divine Counsel

“Elements of civilization are also attributed to the semi-divine hero, Gilgamesh. The opening lines of the Epic of Gilgamesh celebrate his great wisdom:

“He who saw the Deep, the country’s foundation, [who] knew…, was wise in all matters! [Gilgamesh, who] saw the Deep, the country’s foundation, [who] knew…, was wise in all matters! [He …] everywhere […] and [learnt] of everything the sum of wisdom. He saw what was secret, discovered what was hidden, he brought back a tale of before the Deluge.”

(The Epic of Gilgamesh, SBV I.1–8 (Andrew George, The Epic of Gilgamesh: A New Translation [London: Penguin, 2000], p.1).

The text goes on to describe Gilgamesh’s achievements in building the edifices of the city of Uruk, especially its wall. Here the text highlights the great wisdom required for such construction by ascribing the foundations of the city wall to the wisdom of the “Seven Sages” (apkallus).

Cuneiform tablet with the Atrahasis Epic.
Babylonian, about 17th century BCE.
From Sippar, southern Iraq.
A version of the Flood story.
The story outlines the structure of the universe according to Babylonian beliefs. Heaven is ruled by the god Anu, the earth by Enlil and the subterranean sweet water by Enki. The text then explains how the minor gods work in the fields but then rebel. As a result, humans are made from clay, saliva and divine blood to act as servants of the gods.
This does not prove a perfect solution, as the humans reproduce and their noise disturbs Enlil’s sleep. He decides to destroy them with plague, famine, drought and finally a flood.
However, each time Enki instructs one of the humans, Atrahasis, to survive the disasters. The god gives Atrahasis seven days warning of the flood, and he builds a boat, loads it with his possessions, animals and birds. He is subsequently saved while the rest of humankind is destroyed.
However, the gods are unhappy as they no longer receive the offerings they used to.
There is a gap in the text at this point but it does end with Atrahasis making an offering and Enlil accepting the existence and usefulness of humans.
Copies of this story have survived from the seventeenth to the seventh century BCE showing that it was copied and re-copied over the centuries. This is the most complete version. There are clear similarities between this Flood story and others known in Mesopotamian literature, for example, the Epic of Gilgamesh.
T.C. Mitchell, The Bible in the British Museum (London, The British Museum Press, 1988)
S. Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia (Oxford University Press, 1991)
W.G. Lambert and A.R. Millard, Atra-hasis (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1969)
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/me/c/cuneiform_the_atrahasis_epic.aspx

Moreover, within the epic, the greatest achievements of Gilgamesh are the building of the wall of Uruk and the wisdom he obtained and passed on to subsequent generations.

(Jeffrey H. Tigay, The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic (Phildelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), pp.142–49; 213.)

The source of this wisdom is his encounter with the divinized Flood hero, as the Sumerian text The Death of Bilgames indicates:

“…you reached Ziusudra in his abode! The rites of Sumer, forgotten there since distant days of old, the rituals and customs—it was you brought them down to the land. The rites of hand-washing and mouth-washing you put in good order, [after the] Deluge it was you made known all the tasks of the land […].”

(The Death of Bilgames, M 57–62 (George, The Epic of Gilgamesh, pp.198– 99).

Thus, Gilgamesh acts as a mediating figure between the divine source of the knowledge necessary for aspects of civilization and the people of Sumer. The source of his divine knowledge is the divinized Flood hero, who had in turn received his knowledge from Enki / Ea, as well as perhaps his divine mother, Ninsun.

Library of Ashurbanipal / The Flood Tablet / The Gilgamesh Tablet
Date 15 July 2010
Current location: British Museum wikidata:Q6373
Source/Photographer Fæ (Own work)
Other versions File:British Museum Flood Tablet 1.jpg
British Museum reference K.3375
Detailed description:
Part of a clay tablet, upper right corner, 2 columns of inscription on either side, 49 and 51 lines + 45 and 49 lines, Neo-Assyrian, Epic of Gilgamesh, tablet 11, story of the Flood. ~- Description extract from BM record.
Location Room 55  
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Library_of_Ashurbanipal_The_Flood_Tablet.jpg

(See Atrahasis OBV I.364–67; III.11–35 (Benjamin R. Foster, Before 􏰂􏰕􏰇􏰃􏰄􏰖􏰆􏰇􏰆􏰛􏰃􏰙􏰋􏰃􏰙􏰋􏰂􏰕􏰌􏰒􏰌􏰞􏰚􏰃􏰌􏰘􏰃􏰙􏰝􏰝the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature [3rd ed.; Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 2005], pp. 329, 247–48).

(In The Death of Bilgames, Enki, following the recounting of Gilgamesh’s great achievements and wisdom, states, “And now we look on Bilgames: despite his mother we cannot show him mercy!” (M 78–79 [George, The Epic of Gilgamesh, 199 (sic)]).

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Ninsun counsels Gilgamesh by her divine wisdom following his dreams portending Enkidu’s arrival, and, like the apkallus, Gilgamesh is said to have been granted “broad understanding” by the gods (SBV I.242–98 [George, The Epic of Gilgamesh, pp. 9–11]).

In similar fashion, Enmerkar acts as a mediator of divine knowledge which benefits humanity by aiding in the rise of civilization. In the Sumerian myth Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, Enmerkar competes with the Lord of Aratta for supremacy in the region.

They engage in a battle of wits in which the Lord of Aratta issues various seemingly impossible challenges for Enmerkar, and in each case, Enmerkar succeeds by receiving divine inspiration from a deity.

Thus, for example, when the Lord of Aratta challenges Enmerkar to carry grain from Uruk to Aratta in a net, he receives the solution from the grain goddess, Nidaba, who “open[s] for him her ‘Nidaba’s holy house of understanding.’”

(Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, lines 324–26 (Thorkild Jacobsen, The Harps That Once…: Sumerian Poetry in Translation [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987], p. 301).

By his reception of divine knowledge, Enmerkar is able not only to meet the Lord of Aratta’s challenges, he also invents several new technologies (e.g., writing) along the way.

Because of the crucial role divine counsel plays in Enmerkar’s cultural achievements, his accomplishments become, indirectly, the work of the gods in bringing about human civilization.”

David P. Melvin, “Divine Mediation and the Rise of Civilization in Mesopotamian Literature and in Genesis 1-11,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, 2010, pp. 4-5.

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August 14, 2015

Kvanvig: Introducing Ahiqar

“The figures in the next list of ten are generally designated ummanu, which is the common designation for a scholar of high reputation. There are one or perhaps two exceptions.

The first figure of the second list, Nungalpiriggal, is designated apkallu. This might be a reflection of a tradition, since this figure is also designated apkallu in Bīt Mēseri.

The second case is trickier. I.L. Finkel claims to see the Sumerian signs nun.me, equivalent to Akkadian apkallu, also connected to Sinliqunninni, the next figure, who operated during the reign of Gilgamesh.

It might be that this is also a reflection of tradition, since the next two figures in Bīt Mēseri are designated apkallu as well. The reason for this inconsistency could be that there existed a tradition where the number seven was fixed to the apkallus, while the different authors could not deny that there had been other apkallus beside these.

Library of Ashurbanipal / The Flood Tablet / The Gilgamesh Tablet<br /> Date 15 July 2010<br /> Current location: British Museum wikidata:Q6373<br /> Source/Photographer Fæ (Own work)<br /> Other versions File:British Museum Flood Tablet 1.jpg<br /> British Museum reference K.3375<br /> Detailed description:<br /> Part of a clay tablet, upper right corner, 2 columns of inscription on either side, 49 and 51 lines + 45 and 49 lines, Neo-Assyrian, Epic of Gilgamesh, tablet 11, story of the Flood. ~ Description extract from BM record.<br /> Location Room 55  <br /> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Library_of_Ashurbanipal_The_Flood_Tablet.jpg

Library of Ashurbanipal / The Flood Tablet / The Gilgamesh Tablet
Date 15 July 2010
Current location: British Museum wikidata:Q6373
Source/Photographer Fæ (Own work)
Other versions File:British Museum Flood Tablet 1.jpg
British Museum reference K.3375
Detailed description:
Part of a clay tablet, upper right corner, 2 columns of inscription on either side, 49 and 51 lines + 45 and 49 lines, Neo-Assyrian, Epic of Gilgamesh, tablet 11, story of the Flood. ~ Description extract from BM record.
Location Room 55  
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Library_of_Ashurbanipal_The_Flood_Tablet.jpg

Sinliqunninni is a famous scholar; in the Catalogue of Texts and Authors he is listed as the author of the Epic of Gilgamesh (VI, 10).

(Cf. W.G. Lambert, “A Catalogue of Texts and Authors,” JCS 16 (1962): 59-77, 67.)

The names of most postdiluvian scholars are well-known from incipits, colophons, and in the Catalogue of Texts and Authors. They are regarded as famous scholars responsible for “scientific” works.

The name of the first, however, Nungalpiriggal, seems to be pure fiction. Previously the sign pirig was understood as a word for “lion,” thus indicating the figure’s monstrous appearance. In a commentary to diagnostic omens, however, the sign is explained as Akkadian nūru, “light.” The name would thus mean “great prince, great light.”

The figure at the tenth place in the Uruk text is of special significance. Therefore the text devotes a special commentary to him: at the time of the king Aššurahiddina, Aba’enlidari was ummânū, [šá lū] ah-la-MI-mu—ú i-qab-bu-ú a-hu-‘u-qa-a-ri, “whom the Arameans call Ahiqar” (rev. line 20).

Aba’enlidari is known as the ancestor of the wisdom tradition in Nippur. In the Uruk tablet he is made the same person as one of Sennacherib’s counselors. The author of the Uruk tablet obviously knew that there existed Aramaic traditions about a great wise man at Sennacherib’s court and made the connection to Aba’enlidari.

A novel about Ahiqar, written in Aramaic, together with a series of his proverbs, was found in Upper Egypt, in Elephantine.

Prior to this discovery, extracts from this book were known. Ahiqar is also known in the Jewish book of Tobit (1:22; 14:10).

(For a thorough analysis of both the proverbs and the novel of Ahiqar, cf. I. Kottsieper, “The Aramaic Tradition: Ahiqar,” in Scribes, Sages, and Seers: The Sage in the Eastern Mediterranean World, ed. L.G. Perdue. Göttingen 2008, 109-24.)

In the Elephantine Ahiqar story he is described in the following way:

“Are you] the wise scribe and the lord of good counsel,

who [was a righteous] man [and b]y whose counsel all of Assyria was guided?

(Elephantine Ahiqar story iii, 42-3).

He is also described as “the great Ahiqar” (iii, 60).

(Text in A. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C. Oxford 1923, 204f., 213f.)

Helge Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading, Brill, 2011, pp. 111-3.

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August 9, 2015

Timeline: Sumer

Timeline: Sumer

5400 BCE: The City of Eridu is founded.

5000 BCE: Godin Tepe settled.

5000 BCE – 1750 BCE: Sumerian civilization in the Tigris-Euphrates valley.

5000 BCE: Sumer inhabited by Ubaid people.

5000 BCE – 4100 BCE: The Ubaid Period in Sumer.

5000 BCE: Evidence of burial in Sumer.

4500 BCE: The Sumerians built their first temple.

4500 BCE: The City of Uruk founded.

4100 BCE – 2900 BCE: Uruk Period in Sumer.

3600 BCE: Invention of writing in Sumer at Uruk.

3500 BCE: Late Uruk Period.

3500 BCE: First written evidence of religion in Sumerian cuneiform.

2900 BCE – 2334 BCE: The Early Dynastic Period in Sumer.

2900 BCE – 2300 BCE: Early Dynastic I.

2750 BCE – 2600 BCE: Early Dynastic II.

2600 BCE -2300 BCE: Early Dynastic III. (Fara Period).

2600 BCE – 2000 BCE: The Royal Graves of Ur used in Sumer.

2500 BCE: First Dynasty of Lagash under King Eannutum is the first empire in Mesopotamia.

A fragment of the victory stele of king Eannutum of Lagash over Umma, called «Stele of Vultures».
Circa 2450 BC, Sumerian archaic dynasties. Found in 1881 in Girsu (now Tello, Iraq), Mesopotamia, by Édouard de Sarzec.  
CC BY-SA 3.0
File:Stele of Vultures detail 02.jpg
Uploaded by Sting
Uploaded: 18 December 2007
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eannatum#/media/File:Stele_of_Vultures_detail_02.jpg

2330 BCE -2190 BCE: Akkadian Period.

2350 BCE: First code of laws by Urukagina, king of Lagash.

Fragment of an inscription of Urukagina; it reads as follows: “He [Uruinimgina] dug (…) the canal to the town-of-NINA. At its beginning, he built the Eninnu; at its ending, he built the Esiraran.” (Musée du Louvre)  
Public Domain
Clay cone Urukagina Louvre AO4598ab.jpg
Uploaded by Jastrow
Created: circa 2350 BC

Victory Stele of Naram-Sin.
The original Akkadian states that the six foot tall stele commemorates the victory of King Naram-Sin of Akkad over King Satuni, ruler of the Lullubi people of the mountainous Zagros. Naram-Sin was the grandson of Sargon, founder of the Akkadian empire, and the first potentate to unite the entirety of Mesopotamia in the late 24th century BCE.
Naram-Sin was the fourth sovereign of his line, following his uncle Rimush and his father Manishtusu. The Sumerian King List ascribes his rule of 36 years to 2254 BCE to 2218 BCE, a long reign not otherwise confirmed by extant documents.
The stele depicts the Akkadian army climbing the Zagros Mountains, eradicating all resistance. The slain are trampled underfoot or thrown from a precipice. Naram-Sin is portrayed wearing the horned crown of divinity, symbolic of a ruler who aspires to divinity himself. In official documentation, the name of Naram-Sin was preceded by the divine determinative. He styled himself the King of the Four Regions, or King of the World.
The stele was removed from Sippar to Susa, Iran a thousand years later by the Elamite King Shutruk-Nahhunte, as a war prize after his victorious campaign against Babylon in the 12th century BCE.
Alongside the preexisting cuneiform inscription, King Shutruk-Nahhunte appended another one glorifying himself, recording that the stele was looted during the pillage of Sippar.
Jacques de Morgan, Mémoires, I, Paris, 1900, p. 106, 144 sq, pl. X.
Victor Scheil, Mémoires, II, Paris, 1900, p. 53 sq, pl. II.
Victor Scheil, Mémoires, III, Paris, 1901, p. 40 sq, pl. II.
André Parrot, Sumer, Paris, 1960, fig. 212-213.
Pierre Amiet, L’Art d’Agadé au musée du Louvre, Paris, Ed. de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 1976 – p. 29-32.
Louvre Museum
Accession number Sb 4
Found by J. de Morgan
Photo: Rama
This work is free software; you can redistribute it or modify it under the terms of the CeCILL. The terms of the CeCILL license are available at http://www.cecill.info.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Victory_stele_of_Naram_Sin_9068.jpg
http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/victory-stele-naram-sin

2218 BCE – 2047 BCE: The Gutian Period in Sumer.

2150 BCE – 1400 BCE: The Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh written on clay tablets.

Library of Ashurbanipal / The Flood Tablet / The Gilgamesh Tablet
Date 15 July 2010
Current location: British Museum wikidata:Q6373
Source/Photographer Fæ (Own work)
Other versions File:British Museum Flood Tablet 1.jpg
British Museum reference K.3375
Detailed description:
Part of a clay tablet, upper right corner, 2 columns of inscription on either side, 49 and 51 lines + 45 and 49 lines, Neo-Assyrian., Epic of Gilgamesh, tablet 11, story of the Flood. ~ Description extract from BM record.
Location Room 55  
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Library_of_Ashurbanipal_The_Flood_Tablet.jpg

2100 BCE: The Reign of Utu-Hegal at Uruk in Sumer and creation of the Sumerian King List.

2095 BCE – 2047 BCE: King Shulgi reigns in Ur, (following Gane).

Among all the extant exemplars of the Sumerian King List, the Weld-Blundell prism in the Ashmolean Museum cuneiform collection represents the most extensive version as well as the most complete copy of the King List.
In this depiction, all four sides of the Sumerian King List prism are portrayed.
http://cdli.ox.ac.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=the_sumerian_king_list_sklid=the_sumerian_king_list_skl

2047 BCE – 2030 BCE: Ur-Nammu’s reign over Sumer. The legal Code of Ur-Nammu dates to 2100 BCE – 2050 BCE.

From the Stele of Ur-Nammu. <br /> This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.<br />  This applies to Australia, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.  <br /> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Nammu#/media/File:Stela_of_Ur-Nammu_detail.jpg

From the Stele of Ur-Nammu.
This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.
 This applies to Australia, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Nammu#/media/File:Stela_of_Ur-Nammu_detail.jpg

“In all probability I would have missed the Ur-Nammu tablet altogether had it not been for an opportune letter from F. R. Kraus, now Professor of Cuneiform Studies at the University of Leiden in Holland…
His letter said that some years ago, in the course of his duties as curator in the Istanbul Museum, he had come upon two fragments of a tablet inscribed with Sumerian laws, had made a “join” of the two pieces, and had catalogued the resulting tablet as No. 3191 of the Nippur collection of the Museum…
Since Sumerian law tablets are extremely rare, I had No. 3191 brought to my working table at once. There it lay, a sun-baked tablet, light brown in color, 20 by 10 centimeters in size. More than half of the writing was destroyed, and what was preserved seemed at first hopelessly unintelligible. But after several days of concentrated study, its contents began to become clear and take shape, and I realized with no little excitement that what I held in my hand was a copy of the oldest law code as yet known to man.”
  Samuel Noah Kramer, History Begins at Sumer, pp. 52–55.  CC0
File:Ur Nammu code Istanbul.jpg
Uploaded by Oncenawhile
Created: 1 August 2014  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Ur-Nammu#/media/File:Ur_Nammu_code_Istanbul.jpg

2047 BCE – 1750 BCE: The Ur III Period in Sumer, known as the Sumerian Renaissance, or the Neo-Sumerian Empire.

This tablet glorifies king Shulgi and his victories over the Lullubi peoples. It mentions the city of Erbil and the district of Sulaymaniayh. 2111-2004 BCE.
The Sulaymaniyah Museum, Iraq.
  CC BY-SA 4.0
File:Tablet of Shulgi.JPG
Uploaded by Neuroforever
Created: 20 January 2014  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shulgi#/media/File:Tablet_of_Shulgi.JPG

2038 BCE: King Shulgi of Ur builds his great wall in Sumer.

2000 BCE – 1600 BCE: Old Babylonian Period.

2000 BCE – 1800 BCE: Isin – Larsa.

Text:
“IN ERIDU: ALULIM RULED AS KING 28,800 YEARS. ELALGAR RULED 43,200 YEARS. ERIDU WAS ABANDONED. KINGSHIP WAS TAKEN TO BAD-TIBIRA. AMMILU’ANNA THE KING RULED 36,000 YEARS. ENMEGALANNA RULED 28,800 YEARS. DUMUZI RULED 28,800 YEARS. BAD-TIBIRA WAS ABANDONED. KINGSHIP WAS TAKEN TO LARAK. EN-SIPA-ZI-ANNA RULED 13,800 YEARS. LARAK WAS ABANDONED. KINGSHIP WAS TAKEN TO SIPPAR. MEDURANKI RULED 7,200 YEARS. SIPPAR WAS ABANDONED. KINGSHIP WAS TAKEN TO SHURUPPAK. UBUR-TUTU RULED 36,000 YEARS. TOTAL: 8 KINGS, THEIR YEARS: 222,600”
MS in Sumerian on clay, probably Larsa Babylonia, 2000-1800 BC, 1 tablet, 8,1×6,5×2,7 cm, single column, 26 lines in cuneiform script.
5 other copies of the Antediluvian king list are known only: MS 3175, 2 in Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, one is similar to this list, containing 10 kings and 6 cities, the other is a big clay cylinder of the Sumerian King List, on which the kings before the flood form the first section, and has the same 8 kings in the same 5 cities as the present.
A 4th copy is in Berkeley: Museum of the University of California, and is a school tablet. A 5th tablet, a small fragment, is in Istanbul.
The list provides the beginnings of Sumerian and the world’s history as the Sumerians knew it. The cities listed were all very old sites, and the names of the kings are names of old types within Sumerian name-giving. Thus it is possible that correct traditions are contained, though the sequence given need not be correct. The city dynasties may have overlapped.
It is generally held that the Antediluvian king list is reflected in Genesis 5, which lists the 10 patriarchs from Adam to Noah, all living from 365 years (Enoch) to 969 years (Methuselah), altogether 8,575 years.
It is possible that the 222,600 years of the king list reflects a more realistic understanding of the huge span of time from Creation to the Flood, and the lengths of the dynasties involved.
The first of the 5 cities mentioned, Eridu, is in Uruk, in the area where the myths place the Garden of Eden, while the last city, Shuruppak, is the city of Ziusudra, the Sumerian Noah.
Jöran Friberg: A Remarkable Collection of Babylonian Mathematical Texts. Springer 2007.
Sources and Studies in the History of Mathematics and Physical Sciences.
Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection, vol. 6, Cuneiform Texts I. pp. 237-241. Andrew George, ed.: Cuneiform Royal Inscriptions and Related Texts in the Schøyen Collection, Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology, vol. 17,
Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection, Cuneiform texts VI. CDL Press, Bethesda, MD, 2011, text 96, pp. 199-200, pls. LXXVIII-LXXIX.
Andrew E. Hill & John H. Walton: A Survey of the Old Testament, 3rd ed., Grand Rapids, MI., Zondervan Publishing House, 2009, p. 206.
Zondervan Illustrated Bible, Backgrounds, Commentary. John H. Walton, gen. ed. Grand Rapids, Mich., Zondervan, 2009, vol 1, p. 482, vol. 5, p. 398.

1861 BCE – 1837 BCE: King Enlil-bāni reigns in Isin.

1792 BCE – 1750: Reign of King Hammurabi (Old Babylonian Period).

1772 BCE: The Code of Hammurabi: One of the earliest codes of law in the world.

The Code of Hammurabi was discovered by archaeologists in 1901, with its editio princeps translation published in 1902 by Jean-Vincent Scheil. This nearly complete example of the Code is carved into a diorite stele in the shape of a huge index finger, 2.25-metre (7.4 ft) tall. The Code is inscribed in Akkadian, using cuneiform script. It is currently on display in the Louvre, with exact replicas in the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, the library of the Theological University of the Reformed Churches (Dutch: Theologische Universiteit Kampen voor de Gereformeerde Kerken) in The Netherlands, the Pergamon Museum of Berlin and the National Museum of Iran in Tehran.
CC BY-SA 2.0 fr
File:Code-de-Hammurabi-1.jpg
Uploaded by Rama
Uploaded: 8 November 2005  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi#/media/File:Code-de-Hammurabi-1.jpg

1750 BCE: Elamite invasion and Amorite migration ends the Sumerian civilization.

Cuneiform tablet with the Sumerian tale of The Deluge, dated to circa 1740 BCE, from the ruins of Nippur.
From the permanent collection of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia.
Text and photo © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. All rights reserved.

1600 BCE – 1155 BCE: Kassite Period.

1595 BCE: King Agum-kakrime, aka Agum II, Kassite Kingdom.

1350 BCE – 1050 BCE: Middle Assyrian Period.

A gypsum memorial slab from the Middle Assyrian Period (1300 – 1275 BCE), findspot Kalah Shergat, Aššur.
The inscription records the name, titles and conquests of King Adad-Nirari, his father Arik-den-ili, his grandfather Enlil-nirari, and his great-grandfather Ashur-uballit I.
Memorializing the restoration of the Temple of Aššur in the city of Aššur, the text invokes curses upon the head of any king or other person who alters or defaces the monument.
The artifact was purchased from the French Consul in Mosul in 1874 for £70, the British Museum notes reference Mr. George Smith and The Daily Telegraph with an acquisition date of 1874.
Bezold, Carl, Catalogue of the Cuneiform Tablets in the Kouyunjik Collection of the British Museum, IV, London, BMP, 1896.
Furlani, G, Il Sacrificio Nella Religione dei Semiti di Babilonia e Assiria, Rome, 1932.
Rawlinson, Henry C; Smith, George, The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, IV, London, 1861.
Budge, E A W, A Guide to the Babylonian and Assyrian Antiquities., London, 1922.
Budge, E A W, The Rise and Progress of Assyriology, London, Martin Hopkinson & Co, 1925.
Grayson, Albert Kirk, Assyrian Rulers of the Third and Second Millennia BC (to 1115 BC), 1, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1987.
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?assetId=32639001&objectId=283138&partId=1

1330 BCE – 1295 BCE: Reign of King Muršili II (Hittite Kingdom).

1126 BCE – 1104 BCE: Reign of King Nebuchadnezzar I (Old Babylonian Period).

1120 BCE: The Sumerian Enuma Elish (creation story) is written.

Enuma Elish means “when above”, the two first words of the epic.
This Babylonian creation story was discovered among the 26,000 clay tablets found by Austen Henry Layard in the 1840’s at the ruins of Nineveh.
Enuma Elish was made known to the public in 1875 by the Assyriologist George Adam Smith (1840-76) of the British Museum, who was also the discoverer of the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. He made several of his findings on excavations in Nineveh.
http://www.creationmyths.org/enumaelish-babylonian-creation/enumaelish-babylonian-creation-3.htm

930 BCE – 612 BCE: Neo-Assyrian Period.

884 BCE – 859 BCE: Reign of King Ashurnasirpal II.

860 BCE – 850 BCE: Reign of King Nabû-apla-iddina (Babylonian Period).

858 BCE – 824 BCE: Reign of King Shalmaneser III.

854 BCE – 819 BCE: Reign of King Marduk-zākir-šumi (Babylonian Period).

823 BCE – 811 BCE: Reign of King Shamsi-Adad V.

810 BCE – 783 BCE: Reign of King Adad-nirari III.

782 BCE – 773 BCE: Reign of King Shalmaneser IV.

772 BCE – 755 BCE: Reign of King Assur-dan III.

Venus Tablet Of Ammisaduqa, 7th Century
The Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa (Enuma Anu Enlil Tablet 63) refers to a record of astronomical observations of Venus, as preserved in numerous cuneiform tablets dating from the first millennium BC. This astronomical record was first compiled during the reign of King Ammisaduqa (or Ammizaduga), with the text dated to the mid-seventh century BCE.
The tablet recorded the rise times of Venus and its first and last visibility on the horizon before or after sunrise and sunset in the form of lunar dates. Recorded for a period of 21 years, this Venus tablet is part of Enuma anu enlil (“In the days of Anu and Enlil”), a long text dealing with Babylonian astrology, which mostly consists of omens interpreting celestial phenomena.
http://fineartamerica.com/featured/2-venus-tablet-of-ammisaduqa-7th-century-science-source.html

754 BCE – 745 BCE: Reign of King Assur-nirari V.

744 BCE – 727 BCE: Reign of King Tiglath-Pileser III.

726 BCE – 722 BCE: Reign of King Shalmaneser V.

721 BCE – 705 BCE: Reign of King Sargon II.

704 BCE – 681 BCE: Reign of King Sennacherib.

This stone water basin in the collection of the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin came from the forecourt of the Temple of Aššur at Assur. The sides are inscribed with images of Enki / Ea, the Mesopotamian god of wisdom and exorcism, and puradu-fish apkallu. The textual references on the basin refer to the Assyrian king Sennacherib.
The Temple of Aššur was known as the Ešarra, or Temple of the Universe.
The Corpus of Mesopotamian Anti-Witchcraft Rituals online notes that water was rendered sacred for ritual purposes by leaving it exposed outside overnight, open to the stars and the purifying powers of the astral deities. The subterranean ocean, or apsû, was the abode of Enki / Ea, and the source of incantations, purification rites and demons, disease, and witchcraft.
Adapted from text © by Daniel Schwemer 2014, (CC BY-NC-ND license).
http://www.cmawro.altorientalistik.uni-wuerzburg.de/magic_witchcraft/gods_stars/
https://books.google.co.th/books?id=LSaeT9CloGIC&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=water+basin+assur+temple+assur+vorderasiatisches+Museum+Berlin&source=bl&ots=9fw1d16kjb&sig=4ufIF4Ev9MiZl1QUQ8Rv3QU_BZU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAGoVChMIysSB25rYyAIVUFmOCh1G7QKS#v=onepage&q&f=false

680 BCE – 669 BCE: Reign of King Esarhaddon.

668 BCE – 627 BCE: Reign of King Ashurbanipal.

626 BCE – 539 BCE: Neo-Babylonian Period.

625 BCE – 605 BCE: Reign of King Nabopolassar.

604 BCE – 562 BCE: Reign of King Nebuchadnezzar II.

Astronomical Diary VAT 4956 in the collection of the Berlin Museum sets the precise date of the destruction of Jerusalem.
This tablet details the positions of the moon and planets during the year 37 of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, which was 567 BCE. Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 BCE.
http://www.lavia.org/english/archivo/vat4956en.htm

561 BCE – 560 BCE: Reign of King Evil-Merodach.

559 BCE – 556 BCE: Reign of King Neriglissar.

556 BCE: Reign of King Labashi-Marduk.

555 BCE – 539 BCE: Reign of King Nabonidus.

550 BCE – 331 BCE: Achaemenid (Early Persian) Period.

538 BCE – 530 BCE: Reign of King Cyrus II.

529 BCE – 522 BCE: Reign of King Cambyses II.

522 BCE: Reign of King Bardiya.

522 BCE: Reign of King Nebuchadrezzar III.

521 BCE: Reign of King Nebuchadrezzar IV.

521 BCE – 486 BCE: Reign of King Darius I.

485 BCE – 465 BCE: Reign of King Xerxes I.

482 BCE: Reign of King Bel-shimanni.

482 BCE: Reign of King Shamash-eriba.

464 BCE – 424 BCE: Reign of King Artaxerxes.

424 BCE: Reign of King Xerxes II.

423 BCE – 405 BCE: Reign of King Darius II.

404 BCE – 359 BCE: Reign of King Artaxerxes II Memnon.

358 BCE – 338 BCE: Reign of King Artaxerxes III Ochus.

337 BCE – 336 BCE: Reign of King Arses.

336 BCE – 323 BCE: Reign of Alexander the Great (Greek Period, below).

335 BCE – 331 BCE: Reign of King Darius III.

323 BCE – 63 BCE: Seleucid (Hellenistic) Period.

333 BCE – 312 BCE: Macedonian Dynasty.

281 BCE – 261 BCE: Reign of Antiochus I.

The Cylinder of Antiochus I Soter from the Ezida Temple in Borsippa (Antiochus Cylinder) is an historiographical text from ancient Babylonia, dated 268 BCE, that recounts the Seleucid crown prince Antiochus, the son of king Seleucus Nicator, rebuilding the Ezida Temple.
 Lenzi: “The opening lines read: “I am Antiochus, great king, strong king, king of the inhabited world, king of Babylon, king of the lands, the provider of Esagil and Ezida, foremost son of Seleucus, the king, the Macedonian, king of Babylon.”
https://therealsamizdat.com/category/alan-lenzi/
 The cuneiform text itself (BM 36277) is now in the British Museum.   The document is a barrel-shaped clay cylinder, which was buried in the foundations of the Ezida temple in Borsippa.
The script of this cylinder is inscribed in archaic ceremonial Babylonian cuneiform script that was also used in the well-known Codex of Hammurabi and adopted in a number of royal inscriptions of Neo-Babylonian kings, including. Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus (cf. Berger 1973).
The script is quite different from the cuneiform script that was used for chronicles, diaries, rituals, scientific and administrative texts. 
(Another late example is the Cyrus Cylinder, commemorating Cyrus’ capture of Babylon in 539 BCE (Schaudig 2001: 550-6). This cylinder, however, was written in normal Neo-Babylonian script.)
The Antiochus Cylinder was found by Hormuzd Rassam in 1880 in Ezida, the temple of the god Nabu in Borsippa, in what must have been its original position, “encased in some kiln-burnt bricks covered over with bitumen” in the “doorway” of Koldewey’s Room A1: probably this was built into the eastern section of the wall between A1 and Court A, since the men of Daud Thoma, the chief foreman, seem to have destroyed much of the brickwork at this point.
Rassam (1897: 270) mistakenly records this as a cylinder of Nebuchadnezzar II (Reade 1986: 109). The cylinder is now in the British Museum in London.   (BM 36277).
http://www.livius.org/cg-cm/chronicles/antiochus_cylinder/antiochus_cylinder1.html

This timeline is modified from an original on the ancient.eu site. I added links and illustrations, and tagged and categorized timeframes, which should bring up useful search results when surfing among the tags and categories at the bottom of the page.

I also integrated chronological periods and a selected list of kings from Constance Ellen Gane’s Composite Beings in Neo-Babylonian Art, 2012, p. xxii – xxiii, and de-conflicted the entry for the Ur III Period, aka The Sumerian Renaissance, which Gane dates with more precision than the original.

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July 29, 2015

Lenzi: The Antediluvian Medical Tablet from Ashurbanipal’s Library (K.4023)

“As is well-known, antediluvian knowledge had special significance in Mesopotamia. (For other examples of antediluvian knowledge (though sometimes in a broken context), see the examples gathered by Lambert, “Catalogue of Texts and Authors,” 72 at the note on VI 15.)

The most important example of this fact for the purposes of this study comes from an oft cited colophon of a medical tablet from Ashurbanipal’s library, AMT 105,1 (K.4023), lines 21-25.

AM-102 ; No. #1 (K4023)
British Museum of London   Tablet K.4023
COL. I
[Starting on Line 38] . . .
Root of caper which (is) on a grave, root of thorn (acacia) which (is) on a grave, right horn of an ox, left horn of a kid, seed of tamarisk, seed of laurel, Cannabis, seven drugs for a bandage against the Hand of a Ghost thou shalt bind on his temples.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] – The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, Vol. 54, No. 1/4 (Oct., 1937), pp. 12-40; Assyrian Prescriptions for the Head By R. Campbell Thompson   
http://antiquecannabisbook.com/chap2B/Assyria/K4023.htm

This colophon shows not only the association of antediluvian sages and a human sage but also the “mythology of scribal succession” in action.

(For the original copy of the tablet, see R. Campbell Thompson, Assyrian Medical Texts (London: H. Milford / New York: Oxford University Press, 1923; reprinted, Osnabrück: Otto Zeller Verlag, 1983), 105,1 (=K.4023, col. iv, and thus probably from Nineveh).

I have cited the text according to Hermann Hunger, Babylonische und assyrische Kolophone, Alter Orient und Altes Testament 2 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag / Kevelaer: Verlag Butzon and Bercker, 1968), no. 533, with corrections from Yaakov Elman, “Authoritative Oral Tradition in Neo-Assyrian Scribal Circles,” Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 7 (1975), 19-32, here 31.)

Salves (and) bandages: tested (and) checked, which are ready at hand, composed by the ancient sages from before the flood, which in Suruppak in the second year of Enlil-bani, king of Isin, Enlil-muballit, sage of Nippur, bequeathed.

Although the number of apkallū is unspecified in this text, the indication of plurality of sages and the antediluvian time frame strongly suggest an association with the seven sages known from traditions such as Bīt mēseri and the ULKS.

The fact that the tablet claims the apkallū composed these recipes bolsters the authority (by invoking these beings associated with Ea) and legitimacy (by asserting antiquity) of the recipes contained in the text.

This depiction of a fish-apkallū of the parādu-fish type guarded the entrance to the temple of Ninurta at Nimrud.
A fish’s head can be seen on the apkallu’s head, and its skin hangs down over the back of his body.
It is important to recall that the so-called Seven Sages of Sumeria were apkallū of this type.
Neo-Assyrian era, 865-860 BCE.
From the Temple of Ninurta, Nimrud (ancient Kalhu; Biblical Calah), northern Mesopotamia, Iraq. (The British Museum, London).
Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP (Glasg)
http://www.ancient.eu/image/2708/

But I do not think that is its primary purpose. The claim is not made in the context of a ritual; so it does not primarily function to create ritual power.

Rather, the claim occurs in a colophon, a label that communicates something about the tablet for other would-be readers/users of it. The invocation of the apkallū and a claim to antediluvian knowledge in a colophon intends therefore to affect the social situation in which the tablet is used.

In this case the colophon credentials a human being as the possessor of antediluvian knowledge (i.e., medical recipes). Revealed by primeval apkallū, mediated to the human sage Enlil-muballit, and transmitted, presumably, by means of various copyists to the present possessor, AMT 105,1 implies the same notion of succession as the ULKS.

A similar idea is probably attested in KAR 177, obv. iv 25-32, a text containing hemerologies, which reads:

Favorable days. According to the seven s[ages(?)].
Duplicate of a tablet from Sippar, Nippur, Babylon, Larsa, Ur, Uruk, and Eridu.
The scholars excerpted, selected, and gave it to Nazimuruttash, king of the world.

(The tablet is from Assur and presumably the NA period. The text and restorations follow W. G. Lambert, “Ancestors, Authors, and Canonicity,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 11 (1957), 1-14, here 8.

Lambert also gives the remainder of the colophon, rev. iv 1-3 (8), which is of no interest in this context, and sets out von Soden’s readings in a follow-up note (“Ancestors, Authors, and Canonicity [JCS XI, 1-14]: Additions and Corrections,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 11 [1957], 112).

It seemed highly unlikely to the editor (Lambert) that the seven cities named in the text represented the seven exemplars from which the scribe worked. In other words, it seems unlikely that the scribe was looking at seven different copies while writing his own tablet.

Instead, Lambert proposed that the seven cities represent a succession of exemplars. Each of the exemplars was written by one of the seven sages one after another thereby creating a line of succession for the present tablet that extends back into earliest times.

The claim of this colophon, therefore, is that the tablet of hemerologies over which the ummânū labored goes back to the apkallū and ultimately originated in Eridu, the home city of Ea.

This again demonstrates an example of the “mythology of scribal succession” and an implicit assertion of antediluvian knowledge.”

Alan Lenzi, The Uruk List of Kings and Sages and Late Mesopotamian Scholarship, JANER 8.2, Brill, Leiden, 2008. pp. 149-51.

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June 26, 2015

Flood Traditions

“Another point of connection with Mesopotamian traditions concerns the relationship between Genesis 6:1-4 and the flood story. Since Genesis 6:1-4 occurs immediately prior to the flood story, it is possible that the stories were more richly connected in other versions of these stories, whether oral or written.

One such possibility would be a version of the flood story in which the deeds and / or existence of the mixed breed demigods provoked God to destroy them in a great cataclysm–the flood. This possible story is not told in biblical or Mesopotamian texts of the flood, but an intriguing Greek text about the Trojan War (see below) raises the possibility of this combination of motifs.

Library of Ashurbanipal / The Flood Tablet / The Gilgamesh Tablet
Date 15 July 2010
Current location: British Museum Link back to Institution wikidata:Q6373
Source/Photographer Fæ (Own work)
Other versions File:British Museum Flood Tablet 1.jpg
British Museum reference K.3375
Detailed description:
Part of a clay tablet, upper right corner, 2 columns of inscription on either side, 49 and 51 lines + 45 and 49 lines, Neo-Assyrian., Epic of Gilgamesh, tablet 11, story of the Flood. ~ Description extract from BM record.
Location Room 55  
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Library_of_Ashurbanipal_The_Flood_Tablet.jpg

In the versions of the flood recounted in Mesopotamian and biblical texts, the motives for the flood are several:

Old Babylonian Atrahasis: the “noise” (rigmu) of overabundant humans makes it impossible for Enlil to sleep. The flood is an extreme and, as Enki points out, morally repugnant method of population reduction.
Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh epic. Tablet XI and the flood tablet from Ugarit: the flood was sent for reasons impenetrable to humans: it is a “secret of the gods” (pirišta ša ili. XI.10).
The J flood story of Genesis: the evil of the human heart makes Yahweh regret that he created humans, and so he resolves to destroy them with a flood (Genesis 6:5-7).
The P flood story of Genesis: the violence of humans has corrupted the earth, and so God resolves to destroy them with a flood (Genesis 8:11-3).

None of these motives directly requires the existence of mixed-breed demigods or the sexual mingling of gods and humans. In its context as a prologue to the flood, Genesis 6:1-4 serves as one of several illustrations of human evil or corruption, but is not itself a necessary or sufficient cause of the flood.

Cuneiform tablet with the Atrahasis Epic, Babylonian, about 17th century BC
From Sippar, southern Iraq
A version of the Flood story
The story outlines the structure of the universe according to Babylonian beliefs. Heaven is ruled by the god Anu, the earth by Enlil and the subterranean sweet water by Enki.
The text then explains how the minor gods work in the fields but then rebel. As a result, humans are made from clay, saliva and divine blood to act as servants of the gods. This does not prove a perfect solution, as the humans reproduce and their noise disturbs Enlil’s sleep.
He decides to destroy them with plague, famine, drought and finally a flood. However, each time Enki instructs one of the humans, Atrahasis, to survive the disasters.
The god gives Atrahasis seven days warning of the flood, and he builds a boat, loads it with his possessions, animals and birds. He is subsequently saved while the rest of humankind is destroyed.
However, the gods are unhappy as they no longer receive the offerings they used to. There is a gap in the text at this point but it does end with Atrahasis making an offering and Enlil accepting the existence and usefulness of humans.
Copies of this story have survived from the seventeenth to the seventh century BC showing that it was copied and re-copied over the centuries. This is the most complete version.
There are clear similarities between this Flood story and others known in Mesopotamian literature, for example, the Epic of Gilgamesh.
T.C. Mitchell, The Bible in the British Museum (London, The British Museum Press, 1988)
S. Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia (Oxford University Press, 1991)
W.G. Lambert and A.R. Millard, Atra-hasis: the Babylonian story (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1969)
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/me/c/cuneiform_the_atrahasis_epic.aspx

But it is in the nature of oral and mythological traditions that stories and myths can be combined and recombined–this is what Claude Lévi-Strauss (The Savage Mind, Chicago, 1966, pp. 16-22) calls the “bricolage” of myth making, and what Albert Lord (Singer of Tales, 2d ed., Harvard university Press, 2000,) calls the multiformity of oral narrative traditions.

It is possible that the birth and proliferation of the demigods signified a kind of chaotic disruption of the cosmic order that required a global destruction. But to find an example of such a combination of motifs, we must turn from Mesopotamia to Greece.”

Ronald Hendel, “The Nephilim Were on the Earth: Genesis 6:1-4 and its Ancient Near Eastern Context,” in Christoph Auffarth and Loren T. Stuckenbruck, eds., The Fall of the Angels, Brill, 2004, pp. 29-30.

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June 22, 2015

Editorial Note on the Apkallu and the Roadmap Ahead

I am breaking the narrative stream to speak directly to the process emerging from our reading on the apkallū, the antediluvian and postdiluvian sages of ancient Mesopotamia.

If you are reading along over my shoulder, you noticed that we digressed from Martin Lang, “Mesopotamian Early History and the Flood Story,” in a post titled On the Date of the Flood.

Martin Lang wrote:

“Berossos’ own knowledge of primordial kings probably goes back to sources that were available in Hellenistic times. The Sumerian King List itself was still known in the Seleucid era, or rather versions of king lists that echo, structurally and stylistically, their ancient forerunners from the early second millennium.

In matching up the primordial kings with the seven sages, the apkallū, Berossos once again works in the vein of contemporary scholars, who demonstrably constructed lists with kings and apkallū in order to advertise their own importance, and the primordial roots of their knowledge, as Alan Lenzi has recently shown.”

I updated that post to include a link to Alan Lenzi, “The Uruk List of Kings and Sages and Late Mesopotamian Scholarship,” JANER 8.2, 2008, which is serialized and linked in posts below.

I also changed the link to the Sumerian King List to point to the beautiful 1939 edition by Thorkild Jacobsen generously published by the University of Chicago Press, available for free download off the web.

We then dipped into Anne Draffkorn Kilmer, “The Mesopotamian Counterparts of the Biblical Nephilim,” in Francis I. Andersen, et al, eds., Perspectives on Language and Text: Essays and Poems in Honor of Francis I. Andersen’s Sixtieth Birthday, 1985, in a post titled On the Apkallū.

This is where I drilled in hard on the apkallū, incorporating bas reliefs and figurines held at the Louvre and the British Museum. Out of numerous posts addressing the apkallū, this one is well-illustrated, and lushly hyperlinked.

Moreover, Anne Kilmer synthesized the supporting research on the apkallū at the time of writing very effectively, so if you are overwhelmed by the other articles, just read this one. It goes without saying that you should not be intimidated by this academic literature. I have made it as readable and accessible as I can.

Yes, there is a lot of it. As I excavate the academic literature on the apkallū the hard way, mining references from footnote after footnote, I get a sense of what it might be like, to be an academic Assyriologist rather than an autodidact.

I do not include everything that I find. I assess and include just those pieces which accrue gravitas in that greater academic community. If you see glaring omissions, please let me know. This note is shaping up to be an academic survey of the literature on the apkallū, and it may save others treading these same paths some time.

Fair warning: our continuing digression into the apkallu will be deep.

As I complete serialization of source texts, I will include links to the posts beneath their citation below. These sources are sorted by date, so we can track the evolution of academic thinking on the apkallū. Our digression includes excerpts from:

Erica Reiner, “The Etiological Myth of the “Seven Sages,” Orientalia, v. 30, No. 1, 1961, pp. 1-11. Posted as:
- Erica Reiner on the Etiological Myth of the “Seven Sages.”
- Each King had his Apkallū.
- On the Ummânu.
- Why No Canonical Literature Regarding the Apkallū?
Anthony Green, “Neo-Assyrian Apotropaic Figures,” Iraq, Vol. 45, 1983.
- From Anthony Green, Neo-Assyrian Apotropaic Figures, 1983.
- Figurines Excavated from the Burnt Palace and Fort Shalmanesar.
- Green Identifies the Lahmu and the Ugallu.
- Green Defines Numerous Figures.
Anne Draffkorn Kilmer, “The Mesopotamian Counterparts of the Biblical Nephilim,” in Francis I. Andersen, Edgar W. Conrad, & Edward G. Newing, eds., Perspectives on Language and Text: Essays and Poems in Honor of Francis I. Andersen’s Sixtieth Birthday, 1985, posted as:
- On the Apkallu.
H.S. Kvanvig, Roots of Apocalyptic: The Mesopotamian Background of the Enoch Figure and the Son of Man, WMANT 61, 1988.
E. Noort, “The Stories of the Great Flood: Notes on Genesis 6:5-9:17 in its Context of the Ancient Near East,” in F. Garcia Martinez and G.P. Luttikhuizen, eds., Interpretations of the Flood, 1988.
Jean Bottéro, Mesopotamia: Writing, Reasoning, and the Gods, Zainab Bahrani and Marc Van De Mieroop (translators); Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
F.A.M. Wiggermann, Mesopotamian Protective Spirits: The Ritual Texts, Brill, 1992. Posted as:
- Lahmu, “The Hairy One,” is Not Apkallu.
- Mesopotamian Apotropaic Gods and Monsters.
- Apkallu Details (Excerpt from Wiggermann).
- Statues in Private Rooms, the apkallū, “Sages.”
- On the Banduddū, or “Bucket.”
- On the Mullilu, the “cleaner,” the Purification Instrument of the Apkallū Exorcist.
- Things that Apkallū Hold.
- On the Names of the Ūmu-Apkallū.
- Bird-Apkallū, Characterized as Griffin Demons.
- On the Fish-Apkallū.
- Wiggermann Defines the Lamassu.
F.A.M. Wiggermann, “Mischwesen A,” Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie (RlA) 8, Berlin, 1993-7.
Anthony Green, “Mischwesen B,” Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie (RlA) 8, Berlin, 1993-7.
Rykele Borger, “The Incantation Series Bīt Mēseri and Enoch’s Ascension to Heaven,” in I Studied Inscriptions from Before the Flood: Ancient Near Eastern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1-11 (ed. R.S. Hess and D.T. Tsumura; Sources for Biblical and Theological Study 4, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1994), pp. 224-33.
Schlomo Izre’el, Adapa and the South Wind: Language Has the Power of Life and Death, Eisenbrauns, 2001.
- Izre’el: Origins of the Adapa Myth.
- Izre’el: The Tale of the Adapa Myth.
- Izre’el: Listing the Fragments.
- Izre’el: Adapa and the South Wind as Mythos.
Carolyn Nakamura, “Dedicating Magic: Neo-Assyrian Apotropaic Figurines and the Protection of Aššur,” World Archeology, 2004.
Ronald Hendel, “The Nephilim Were on the Earth: Genesis 6:1-4 and its Ancient Near Eastern Context,” in Christoph Auffarth and Loren T. Stuckenbruck, eds., The Fall of the Angels, Brill, 2004, posted as:
- The Children of El in Ancient Ugarit
- Asherah, Astarte, Anat, Athirat in Ancient Ugarit
- Correspondences Between Apkallu and the Nephilim
- Flood Traditions
- The Sexual Mingling of Gods and Humans
- Sex, Evil, and the Fall.
Carolyn Nakamura, “Mastering matters: magical sense and apotropaic figurine worlds of Neo-Assyria,” Archaeologies of materiality (2005): 18-45.
- Carolyn Nakamura on the Figurines.
- Nakamura: Rimbaud’s Derangement of All the Senses, Magic, and Archeology.
- Nakamura: More on Magic and Archeology.
- Nakamura: Magic Produces Wonder.
- Nakamura: Magic as Mimesis in Mesopotamia.
- Nakamura: Magic’s Perception and Performance.
- Nakamura: Clay Pit Ritual.
- Nakamura: The Common Terrain Shared by Myth and Iconography.
- Nakamura: An Idiom of Protection Arises in the Material Enactment of Memory.
- Nakamura: Humans Make Up the gods Who Make Them.
- Nakamura: The Figurines as Magical Objects.
- Nakamura: The āšipu was Master of the Figurines.
- Nakamura: Magic Enchants Us with the Possible Made Real.
Alan Lenzi, “The Uruk List of Kings and Sages and Late Mesopotamian Scholarship,” JANER 8.2, 2008.
- Lenzi: The Uruk List of Kings and Sages.
- Lenzi: The Mythology of Scribal Succession.
- Lenzi: On the apkallū-ummânū Association.
- Lenzi: Human Apkallū are a Later Inclusion.
- Lenzi: A Fault Line Where Legend and History Collides.
- Lenzi: The Apkallū and the Ummânū May Be Artificially Related.
- Lenzi: The Antediluvian Medical Tablet from Ashurbanipal’s Library (K.4023).
- Lenzi: The ummânū Were The Scribal Heirs of the Antediluvian Sages.
- Lenzi: Strabo, Pausanias and Pliny All Have Agendas.
- Lenzi: On the Restoration of the Temples.
- Lenzi: On Nikarchos and Kephalon.
- Lenzi: The Exaltation of the god Anu.
- Lenzi: More on the Exaltation of the Anu Cult.
- Lenzi: Authority Rooted in Divinity.
- Lenzi: The Uruk List of Kings and Sages Renewed the Anu Cult.
David P. Melvin, “Divine Mediation and the Rise of Civilization in Mesopotamian Literature and in Genesis 1-11,” The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, v. 10, art. 17, 2010.
- Melvin: Origins of Human Civilization–Divine Mediation or Human Endeavor?
- Melvin: Divine or Semi-Divine Intermediaries.
- Melvin: On the Role of Divine Counsel.
- Melvin: Human Civilization is a Gift of the gods.
- Melvin: Who Built the First City? Cain? Enoch? Chouser? Or Nimrod?
- Melvin: On the Tower of Babel.
- Melvin: Divine Instruction Reappears in 1 Enoch.
- Melvin: Divine Knowledge was Sexual Knowledge.
- Melvin: Divine Knowledge is Transcendent.
- Melvin: Human Knowledge is Sinful.
Trevor Curnow, Wisdom in the Ancient World, Bloomsbury, 2010.
- Curnow: Boundaries of Legend and History.
- Curnow: Ziusudra Divides Invented Myth from Mythologized Fact.
- Curnow: Atrahasis is More Historical Than Noah.
Stephanie Dalley, “Apkallu,” Iconography of Deities and Demons in the Ancient Near East (IDD), Swiss National Science Foundation, University of Zurich, 2011 (text updated 2011 and illustrations updated 2007).
- Dalley: Apkallu, IDD 2011.
- Dalley: Apkallu-2, IDD 2011.
- Dalley: Apkallu-3, IDD 2011.
- Dalley: Apkallu-4, IDD 2011.
- Dalley: Apkallu-5, IDD 2011.
- Dalley: Apkallu-6, IDD 2011.
- Dalley: Apkallu-7, IDD 2011.
Helge Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading, Brill, 2011.
- Kvanvig: The Lists of the Seven Apkallus.
- Kvanvig: The Apkallu List From Bīt Mēseri.
- Kvanvig: Discrepancies Between the Lists.
- Kvanvig: Introducing Ahiqar.
- Kvanvig: Berossos and Primeval History.
- Kvanvig: Introducing the Apkallu Odakon.
- Kvanvig: The Apkallus Had a Cosmic Function.
- Kvanvig: Bīt Mēseri and the Adapa Myth.
- Kvanvig: The Adapa Myth Symbolizes the Initiation of Humanity into Civilization.
- Kvanvig: Adapa Breaks the Wing of the South Wind.
- Kvanvig: On the Destiny of Adapa.
- Kvanvig: The Apkallu are on the Borderline Between the Human and the Divine.
- Kvanvig: Human Knowledge is Dangerous to the Cosmic Order.
- Kvanvig: Limitations of Human Wisdom and the Loss of Eternal Life.
- Kvanvig: The Apkallus as Protective Spirits.
- Kvanvig: The Bīt Mēseri Ritual.
- Kvanvig: On Sēp lemutti, Averting Evil.
- Kvanvig: The ilū mušīti Are the Stars of the Night.
- Kvanvig: The Maklû Ritual Against Witchcraft.
- Kvanvig: The mīs pî and pīt pî Rituals of Mouth Washing and Mouth Opening.
- Kvanvig: Aššurbanipal Studied Inscriptions on Stone From Before the Flood.
- Kvanvig: Surpassing the Wisdom of the Abyss–Or Not.
- Kvanvig: Five Specialties of Sages Communicating with the Divine.
- Kvanvig: The Sacred Tree.
- Kvanvig: The apkallus as Watchers and Guardians.
- Kvanvig: Transmission of Antediluvian Revelation.
- Kvanvig: Antediluvian Scribes of the gods.
- Kvanvig: Initiation is a Restriction of Marduk.
- Kvanvig: Divine Origin of Antediluvian Texts.
- Kvanvig: On the Correspondences Between Antediluvian Myths.
- Kvanvig: At the Brink of Legendary Time and Historical Time.
- Kvanvig: Earthly Counterparts of the Divine Watchers.
- Kvanvig: Dates the apkallu to the Beginning of the 1st Millennium BCE.
Gebhard J. Selz, “Of Heroes and Sages–Considerations of the Early Mesopotamian Background of Some Enochic Traditions,” in Armin Lange, et al, The Dead Sea Scrolls in Context, v. 2, Brill, 2011.
- Selz: Enoch Derives from 3d Millennium BCE Mesopotamia.
- Selz: On Giants.
- Selz: An Excerpt from the Book of Giants.
- Selz: Enūma Anu Enlil and MUL.APIN.
- Selz: On the Astronomical Diaries of Babylon.
- Selz: The Debate Over Mesopotamian Influence on Jewish Pre-History is 2000 Years Old.
- Selz: No Connection Between the Biblical Patriarchs and the Babylonian Antediluvian Kings.
- Selz: Tracking Gilgamesh Throughout History and Literature.
- Selz: Patriarchs and Sages.
- Selz: Connects the Apkallu with the Fallen Angels.
- Selz: On Sacred Marriage.
- Selz: Victory Steles, Dreams and the Erra Epic.
- Selz: The Dream of Gudea.
- Selz: Plant of Life or Plant of Birth in the Etana Legend?
Constance Ellen Gane, Composite Beings in Neo-Babylonian Art, University of California, 2012.
- Gane: Composite Beings in Neo-Babylonian Art.
- Gane: A Study of Mischwesen in the Neo-Babylonian Period.
- Gane: Neo-Babylonian Monsters, Demons & Dragons From a Narrow Slice of Time & Space.
- Gane: Review of the Literature on Monsters, Demons and gods.
- Gane: Applying Black’s Theory of Metaphor.

After we complete our deep dive into the apkallu, we will return to the Sumerian King List, then resume with Berossos. This is the roadmap ahead.

Editorial note: In some cases citations above which are not followed by links in the bulleted list are internet dry holes, no digital versions are available. In other cases, links are to Google Books editions, which often limit visible pages. Google’s intent is to sell electronic versions of the texts that they scan.

Under these circumstances, I end up rekeying entire articles, at ruinous waste of time. If you have a moment, please send a sweet nastygram to Google asking them to post free and complete eBooks as they continue their vast project to digitize the entirety of human knowledge.

In other cases, I simply have not yet reviewed the articles and posted them. If you are following this project, you see that I post updates nearly every day. Stay tuned.

My purpose in publishing Samizdat is to highlight excerpts from the great books, mining synchronicities from legends and myths. As I point out in the About page, the Deluge was an historical event for the ancient Sumerians.

I now need to update that page, incorporating the research that we have already completed on the Sumerian King List, setting up a future digression into the concept of the Great Year, which Berossos associated with traditions of a Conflagration and the Deluge.

If you wondered where we were going, I wrote this for you.

Updated 20 November 2015, 23:39 hrs.

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March 16, 2015

The Story of Mesopotamian Archeology

“Although official attentions were now turned elsewhere, strong popular interest in Mesopotamian antiquities continued, fueling a flourishing trade in material looted by local merchants from the ancient cities of Assyria. Scholarly plundering had already caused considerable destruction. Now the situation reached its nadir, with the retrieval of saleable pieces being the only aim, very much at the expense of the ancient remains.

Scholarly activity had not ceased, however, although it was no longer concentrated in the field. By the end of the 1850s the successful decipherment of Akkadian cuneiform meant that inscriptions and texts recovered from Nineveh and elsewhere could now yield a vast amount of information on the ancient Mesopotamian world.

One of the most surprising discoveries was the great time depth of the civilization. Biblical and Classical sources had painted a picture of the wealth and grandeur of Assyria in the first millennium B.C.E., and this had been confirmed by the excavations at Nineveh and adjacent cities.

The library uncovered in Ashurbanipal’s palace included texts written in the second millennium B.C.E., shedding light on the period of the Old Babylonian Empire and the early history of the Assyrians, the time of the biblical patriarch Abraham, native of the Mesopotamian city of Ur.

But there were also copies of even more ancient texts that revealed the existence in the third millennium B.C.E. of the southern Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer and Akkad.

The later nineteenth century was a time of great intellectual upheaval. The developing science of geology was revealing the immense age and gradual formation of the earth, while Charles Darwin was showing how life had evolved in all its diversity. This new knowledge undermined the certainties of the Bible, according to which the world was created in immutable form at a date calculated by biblical scholars as 4004 B.C.E.

In this epoch of challenge to established traditional views, many found it reassuring that archaeological research in the Near East was uncovering cities and records of individuals familiar from the Bible, thus confirming and buttressing its authenticity.

It was therefore electrifying news when George Smith, who had spent many years quietly studying cuneiform texts, announced in December 1872 that he had found part of a tablet recounting the story of the Flood. A serious-minded man, he amazed his colleagues at the moment of discovery by leaping to his feet, rushing round the room, and beginning to tear off his clothes.

In less than two months he found himself en route to Mosul to look for the missing pieces of the tablet, lavishly sponsored by the Daily Telegraph of London—a measure of the immense popular excitement that his discovery had generated.

Once Smith had accomplished the tedious and time-consuming task of extracting a permit from the Ottoman authorities, he achieved his objective in just five days of digging, finding among the debris left by previous excavators a piece of tablet that accounted for the major part of the missing section.

Smith later returned to excavate further at Nineveh, but in 1876 he contracted a fatal illness. As his replacement, the British Museum appointed Hormuzd Rassam, veteran of the 1850s excavations.”

Jane R. McIntosh, Ancient Mesopotamia, 2005, pp. 29-30.

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February 21, 2015

The Demons Named

” … The existence of several elaborate incantation series in Ashurbanapal’s library, prescribing a large number of formulas to be recited in connection with symbolical rites to get rid of the demons, furnishes the proof for the practical significance attached to incantations in both Babylonia and Assyria.

These series, Babylonian in origin, revert to Sumerian prototypes and represent compilations stretching over a long period, with additions intended to adapt them to conditions prevailing in Assyria.

The scribes of Ashurbanapal were not indulging in a purely academic exercise in copying the archives of Babylonian temples ; their purpose, as was also the aim of the king, was to make Nineveh the central religious authority as well as the political mistress by having in their control the accumulated experience of the past, in dealing with the religious needs and problems of their own age.

A feature which these incantation series [1] have in common is the recognition of a large number of demons, with special functions assigned in many cases to the one class or the other.

So, for example, there is a demon Labartu, represented as a horrible monster with swine sucking at her breasts, [2] who threatens the life of the mother at childbirth; a group known as Ashakku who cause varieties of wasting diseases, another demon Ti’u, whose special function was to cause diseases, manifesting themselves by headaches accompanied by fever, and so on through a long list. It will be apparent that there is no differentiation between the demon and the disease. The one is the synonym of the other, and accordingly in medical texts the demons are introduced as the designations of the diseases themselves.

The names given to the demons in many cases convey the “strength” or “size” ascribed to them, such as Utukku, Alu, Shedu, Gallu, or they embody a descriptive epithet like AkKkhazu, “seizer” (also the name of a form of jaundice); ‘Eabisu, the one lying-in-wait; Labasu, “overthrower”; Lilu and the feminine Lilitu, “night-spirit;” Etimmu, ghost or shade, suggesting an identification of some demons with the dead who return to plague the living, Namtar, “pestilence,” and more the like.

The descriptions given of them, cruel, horrible of aspect, blood-thirsty, flying through space, generally invisible though sometimes assuming human or animal shape or a mixture of the two, further illustrate the conceptions popularly held.”

Morris Jastrow, The Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria, 1915, pp. 241-3.

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Tag: Library of Ashurbanipal

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