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Arsay
Arsay (Ugaritic: ''‘arṣy'') was a goddess worshiped in the city of Ugarit in the late Bronze Age. Her standing in the Ugaritic pantheon and her role in Ugaritic religion remain uncertain. It has been proposed that she was associated with the underworld or with groundwater, though neither theory found universal support. She was most likely regarded as a daughter of the weather god Baal, though neither of the goddesses most often associated with him, Anat and Ashtart, was ever described as her mother. In a single passage from the Baal Cycle she appears alongside Pidray and Tallay, and as a result these three goddesses are often grouped in scholarship, but there is no evidence that they were associated with her in other contexts. Character Arsay's name was derived from the Ugaritic word ''‘arṣ'', which can be translated as "earth" or "underworld." The final sign, ''y'', is a common suffix of feminine names. The name is typically translated as "Earthy." Her epithet ''bt y y ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Euphemism
A euphemism () is an innocuous word or expression used in place of one that is deemed offensive or suggests something unpleasant. Some euphemisms are intended to amuse, while others use bland, inoffensive terms for concepts that the user wishes to downplay. Euphemisms may be used to mask profanity or refer to topics some consider taboo such as disability, sex, excretion, or death in a polite way. Etymology ''Euphemism'' comes from the Greek word () which refers to the use of 'words of good omen'; it is a compound of (), meaning 'good, well', and (), meaning 'prophetic speech; rumour, talk'. '' Eupheme'' is a reference to the female Greek spirit of words of praise and positivity, etc. The term ''euphemism'' itself was used as a euphemism by the ancient Greeks; with the meaning "to keep a holy silence" (speaking well by not speaking at all). Purpose Avoidance Reasons for using euphemisms vary by context and intent. Commonly, euphemisms are used to avoid directly addressing sub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ugarit
) , image =Ugarit Corbel.jpg , image_size=300 , alt = , caption = Entrance to the Royal Palace of Ugarit , map_type = Near East#Syria , map_alt = , map_size = 300 , relief=yes , location = Latakia Governorate, Syria , region = Fertile Crescent , coordinates = , type = settlement , part_of = , length = , width = , area = , height = , builder = , material = , built = c. 6000 BC , abandoned = c. 1185 BC , epochs =Neolithic–Late Bronze Age , cultures = Canaanite , dependency_of = , occupants = , event = Bronze Age Collapse , excavations = 1928–present , archaeologists = Claude F. A. Schaeffer , condition = ruins , ownership = Public , public_access = Yes , website = , notes = Ugarit (; uga, 𐎜𐎂𐎗𐎚, ''ʾUgarītu''; ar, أُوغَارِيت ''Ūġārīt'' or ''Ūǧārīt'') was an ancient port city in northern Syria, in the outskirts of modern Latakia, discovered by accident in 1928 together with the Ugar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ugaritic Texts
The Ugaritic texts are a corpus of ancient cuneiform texts discovered since 1928 in Ugarit (Ras Shamra) and Ras Ibn Hani in Syria, and written in Ugaritic, an otherwise unknown Northwest Semitic language. Approximately 1,500 texts and fragments have been found to date. The texts were written in the 13th and 12th centuries BCE. The most famous of the Ugarit texts are the approximately fifty epic poems; the three major literary texts are the Baal Cycle, the Legend of Keret, and the Tale of Aqhat. The other texts include 150 tablets describing the Ugaritic cult and rituals, 100 letters of correspondence, a very small number of legal texts (Akkadian is considered to have been the contemporary language of law), and hundreds of administrative or economic texts. Unique among the Ugarit texts are the earliest known abecedaries, lists of letters in alphabetic cuneiform, where not only the canonical order of Phoenician script is evidenced, but also the traditional names for letters of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ereshkigal
In Mesopotamian mythology, Ereshkigal ( sux, , lit. "Queen of the Great Earth") was the goddess of Kur, the land of the dead or underworld in Sumerian religion, Sumerian mythology. In later myths, she was said to rule Irkalla alongside her husband Nergal. Sometimes her name is given as Irkalla, similar to the way the name Hades was used in Greek mythology for both the underworld and its ruler, and sometimes it is given as Ninkigal, lit. "Lady of the Great Earth". Ereshkigal was only one of multiple deities regarded as rulers of the underworld in Mesopotamia. The main temple dedicated to her was located in Kutha, a city originally associated with Nergal, and her cult had a very limited scope. No personal names with "Ereshkigal" as a theophoric element are known. In the ancient Sumerian poem ''Inanna#Descent into the underworld, Inanna's Descent to the Underworld'', Ereshkigal is described as Inanna's older sister. However, they were not commonly associated with each other. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Mesopotamian Deities
Deities in ancient Mesopotamia were almost exclusively anthropomorphic. They were thought to possess extraordinary powers and were often envisioned as being of tremendous physical size. The deities typically wore ''melam'', an ambiguous substance which "covered them in terrifying splendor" and which could also be worn by heroes, kings, giants, and even demons. The effect that seeing a deity's ''melam'' has on a human is described as ''ni'', a word for the " physical creeping of the flesh". Both the Sumerian and Akkadian languages contain many words to express the sensation of ''ni'', including the word ''puluhtu'', meaning "fear". Deities were almost always depicted wearing horned caps, consisting of up to seven superimposed pairs of ox-horns. They were also sometimes depicted wearing clothes with elaborate decorative gold and silver ornaments sewn into them. The ancient Mesopotamians believed that their deities lived in Heaven, but that a god's statue was a physical embodime ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allani
Allani, also known under the Akkadian name Allatu (or Allatum) was the Hurrian goddess of the underworld, incorporated into Hittite and Mesopotamian pantheons as well. Name and epithets The name Allani is derived from a Hurrian word meaning "lady." Giving gods simple epithet-like names like Allani or Shaushka ("the great") was common in Hurrian culture. In 1980 Wilfred G. Lambert proposed that Allatum, who he understood as the same deity as Ereshkigal in origin, was in origin the feminine counterpart, and possibly wife, of the minor Sumerian underworld god Alla. Alla was worshiped in Esagi, a settlement whose location remains unknown, and he is also attested as the sukkal (attendant deity) of Ningishzida. However, Gernot Wilhelm already noted in 1989 that no convincing Akkadian etymology has been proposed for the name Allatum, and it is now agreed that it was a derivative of Allani. In Emar, an ancient city in Syria, both the spellings Allani and Allatu were used. Allani ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hurrian Goddess
The Hurrian pantheon consisted of gods of varied backgrounds, some of them natively Hurrian, while others adopted from other pantheons, for example Eblaite and Mesopotamian. Like the other inhabitants of the Ancient Near East, Hurrians regarded their gods as anthropomorphic. They were usually represented in the form of statues holding the symbols associated with a specific deity. The Yazılıkaya sanctuary, which was Hittite in origin but served as a center of the practice of Hurrian religion, is considered a valuable source of information about their iconography. Hurrians organized their gods into lists known as ''kaluti'' or into similar lexical lists The cuneiform lexical lists are a series of ancient Mesopotamian glossaries which preserve the semantics of Sumerograms, their phonetic value and their Akkadian or other language equivalents. They are the oldest literary texts from Mesopotamia a ... as the Mesopotamians. The formal structure of the pantheon was most likely based ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-shaped impressions (Latin: ) which form its signs. Cuneiform was originally developed to write the Sumerian language of southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). Cuneiform is the earliest known writing system. Over the course of its history, cuneiform was adapted to write a number of languages in addition to Sumerian. Akkadian texts are attested from the 24th century BC onward and make up the bulk of the cuneiform record. Akkadian cuneiform was itself adapted to write the Hittite language in the early second millennium BC. The other languages with significant cuneiform corpora are Eblaite, Elamite, Hurrian, Luwian, and Urartian. The Old Persian and Ugaritic alphabets feature cuneiform-style signs; however, they are unrelated to the cuneiform lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ishara
Ishara (Išḫara) was the tutelary goddess of the ancient Syrian city of Ebla. The origin of her name is unknown. Both Hurrian and West Semitic etymologies have been proposed, but they found no broad support and today it is often assumed that her name belongs to an unknown linguistic substrate. Her cult had a wide reach across the ancient Near East. In addition to Ebla, she was also worshiped in cities such as Mari, Emar, Alalakh and Ugarit. From these Syrian cities the worship of Ishara spread to Mesopotamia. The Hurrians also adopted her into their pantheon after arriving in Syria, from which she found her way to the Hittite pantheon. In various time periods and areas different functions were assigned to her. In Ebla she was the tutelary deity of the ruling family, but also a love goddess. In Mesopotamia the latter function lead to an association with Ishtar, and later Nanaya, Kanisurra and Gazbaba as well. In Hurrian religion she acquired the role of a goddess associate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shapash
Shapash (Ugaritic: 𐎌𐎔𐎌 ''špš'', "sun"), alternatively written as Shapshu or Shapsh, was a Canaanite sun goddess. She also served as the royal messenger of the high god El, her probable father. Her most common epithets in the Ugaritic corpus are ''nrt 'ilm špš'' ("Shapash, lamp of the gods", also translated as "torch" or "luminary" of the gods by various authors), ''rbt špš'' ("great lady Shapash"), and ''špš 'lm'' ("eternal Shapash"). In the pantheon lists KTU 1.118 and 1.148, Shapash is equated with the Akkadian dšamaš. Cult Unlike Shamash or Utu in Mesopotamia, but like Shams in Arabia, Shapash was a female solar deity. In addition to attestations in Ugaritic texts, Amarna letter EA 323 uses the Sumerogram for the sun deity, dUTU, as a feminine noun (''ša tiram dUTU'', line 19); given the letter's provenance with Yidya of Ashkelon it may refer to Shapash. Similarly, the letter EA 155 from Abimilki of Tyre to the Pharaoh includes a feminine dUTU (''LUGAL ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ugaritic Alphabet
The Ugaritic writing system is a cuneiform abjad (consonantal alphabet) used from around either 1400 BCE or 1300 BCE for Ugaritic, an extinct Northwest Semitic language, and discovered in Ugarit (modern Ras Al Shamra), Syria, in 1928. It has 30 letters. Other languages (particularly Hurrian) were occasionally written in the Ugaritic script in the area around Ugarit, although not elsewhere. Clay tablets written in Ugaritic provide the earliest evidence of both the North Semitic and South Semitic orders of the alphabet, which gave rise to the alphabetic orders of the reduced Phoenician writing system and its descendants (including the Paleo-Hebrew aleph-bet, Hebrew, Syriac, Greek and Latin) on the one hand, and of the Ge'ez alphabet on the other which was also influenced by the ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic writing system, and adapted for Amharic. The Arabic and Ancient South Arabian scripts are the only other Semitic alphabets which have letters for all or almost all of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Akkadian Language
Akkadian (, Akkadian: )John Huehnergard & Christopher Woods, "Akkadian and Eblaite", ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages''. Ed. Roger D. Woodard (2004, Cambridge) Pages 218-280 is an extinct East Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia ( Akkad, Assyria, Isin, Larsa and Babylonia) from the third millennium BC until its gradual replacement by Akkadian-influenced Old Aramaic among Mesopotamians by the 8th century BC. It is the earliest documented Semitic language. It used the cuneiform script, which was originally used to write the unrelated, and also extinct, Sumerian (which is a language isolate). Akkadian is named after the city of Akkad, a major centre of Mesopotamian civilization during the Akkadian Empire (c. 2334–2154 BC). The mutual influence between Sumerian and Akkadian had led scholars to describe the languages as a '' Sprachbund''. Akkadian proper names were first attested in Sumerian texts from around the mid 3rd-mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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