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Mukīl Rēš Lemutti
Mukīl rēš lemutti, inscribed in cuneiform Sumerian language, Sumerian syllabograms as (d)SAG.ḪUL.ḪA.ZAThe ''lù = zitàte'' lexical lists, lexical list (published in MSL 12), and meaning "he who holds the head of evil", was an ancient Mesopotamian winged leonine demon, a harbinger of misfortune associated with benign headaches and wild swings in mood, where the afflicted "continually behaves like an animal caught in a trap." It was one of the two demons that followed people around, an “evil accomplice” also referred to as ''rabis lemutti'' (“he who offers misfortune”), with its auspicious alter-ego ''mukīl rēš daniqti'' or ''rabis damiqti'' (“he who offers good things”). Textual references Although it features in the Esagil-kin-apli#The Exorcists Manual, Exorcists Manual, the list of works of the craft of the ''āšipūtu'', in the part attributed to Esagil-kin-apli himself, there is no extant work dedicated to this demon, or to the disorders it was thought t ... [...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] |
Sumerian Language
Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer. It is one of the oldest attested languages, dating back to at least 3000 BC. It is accepted to be a local language isolate and to have been spoken in ancient Mesopotamia, in the area that is modern-day Iraq. Akkadian, a Semitic language, gradually replaced Sumerian as a spoken language in the area around 2000 BC (the exact date is debated), but Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific language in Akkadian-speaking Mesopotamian states such as Assyria and Babylonia until the 1st century AD. Thereafter it seems to have fallen into obscurity until the 19th century, when Assyriologists began deciphering the cuneiform inscriptions and excavated tablets that had been left by its speakers. Stages The history of written Sumerian can be divided into several periods: *Archaic Sumerian – 31st–26th century BC *Old or Classical Sumerian – 26th–23rd century BC *Neo-Sumerian – 23rd–21s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Syllabogram
Syllabograms are signs used to write the syllables (or morae) of words. This term is most often used in the context of a writing system otherwise organized on different principles—an alphabet where most symbols represent phonemes, or a logographic script where most symbols represent morphemes—but a system based mostly on syllabograms is a syllabary. Syllabograms in the Maya script most frequently take the form of V (vowel) or CV (consonant-vowel) syllables of which approximately 83 are known. CVC signs are present as well. Two modern well-known examples of syllabaries consisting mostly of CV syllabograms are the Japanese kana, used to represent the same sounds in different occasions. Syllabograms tend not to be used for languages with more complicated syllables: for example English phonotactics allows syllables as complex as CCCVCCCC (as in ''strengths''), generating many thousands of possible syllables and making the use of syllabograms cumbersome. Types of writing system t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 and one of the most widespread genres in the ancient Near East. Wherever cuneiform tablets have been uncovered, inside Iraq or in the wider Middle East, these lists have been discovered. History The earliest lexical lists are the archaic (early third millennium BC) word lists uncovered in caches of business documents and which comprise lists of nouns, the absence of verbs being due to their sparse use in these records of commercial transactions. The most notable text is LU A, a list of professions which would be reproduced for the next thousand years until the end of the Old Babylonian period virtually unchanged. Later third millennium lists dating to around 2600 BC have been uncovered at Fara and Abū Ṣalābīkh, including the ''Fa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia occupies modern Iraq. In the broader sense, the historical region included present-day Iraq and Kuwait and parts of present-day Iran, Syria and Turkey. The Sumerians and Akkadians (including Assyrians and Babylonians) originating from different areas in present-day Iraq, dominated Mesopotamia from the beginning of written history () to the fall of Babylon in 539 BC, when it was conquered by the Achaemenid Empire. It fell to Alexander the Great in 332 BC, and after his death, it became part of the Greek Seleucid Empire. Later the Arameans dominated major parts of Mesopotamia (). Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. It has been identi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Esagil-kin-apli
Esagil-kin-apli was the ''ummânū'', or chief scholar, of Babylonian king Adad-apla-iddina, 1067–1046 BCE, as he appears on the Uruk ''List of Sages and Scholars'' (165 BCE)W 20030,7 the Seleucid ''List of Sages and Scholars'', obverse line 16, recovered from Anu’s Bīt Rēš temple during the 1959/60 excavation. listed beside him and is best known for his Diagnostic Handbook, ''Sakikkū'' (SA.GIG), a medical treatise which uses symptoms to ascertain etiology, frequently supernatural, and prognosis, which became the received text during the first millennium. He was a “prominent citizen of Borsippa” from a learned family as he was referred to as the “son” of Assalluḫi-mansum, the ''apkallu'', or sage, of Hammurabi’s time, c. 1792–1750 BCE. Works The ''Exorcists Manual'' The ''Exorcists Manual''KAR 44 aCDLI(ref. P369026) rev 5-20. is sometimes described as a “vade mecum” and is a compendium of the works all those aspiring to master the ''āšipūtu'', or craft ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lecanomancy
Lecanomancy (Gr. λεκάνη, "dish, pan" + μαντεία, "divination") is a form of divination using a dish, usually of water, which, like many ancient forms of divination, has multiple forms. The earliest form of lecanomancy appears to have come from Ancient Babylonia, though it is only mentioned in one text. Even there, there were two types of the divination used. Some court magicians would use inductive lecanomancy; whereby the magician or priest would observe patterns of oil within water to predict the future. However, intuitive lecanomany is thought to have developed out of this, which merely required the magician to interpret ripples on the water through meditation. There are also reports of inductive lecanomany being used by the Mesopotamians, though they sometimes substituted flour for oil. In the Old Testament a form of lecanomancy was apparently used by Joseph in Egypt (Genesis 44:5) The Catawba people used an entirely different system of divination, which is sti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shamash
Utu (dUD "Sun"), also known under the Akkadian name Shamash, ''šmš'', syc, ܫܡܫܐ ''šemša'', he, שֶׁמֶשׁ ''šemeš'', ar, شمس ''šams'', Ashurian Aramaic: 𐣴𐣬𐣴 ''š'meš(ā)'' was the ancient Mesopotamian sun god. He was believed to see everything that happened in the world every day, and was therefore responsible for justice and protection of travelers. As a divine judge, he could be associated with the underworld. Additionally, he could serve as the god of divination, typically alongside the weather god Adad. While he was universally regarded as one of the primary gods, he was particularly venerated in Sippar and Larsa. The moon god Nanna (Sin) and his wife Ningal were regarded as his parents, while his twin sister was Inanna (Ishtar). Occasionally other goddesses, such as Manzat and Pinikir, could be regarded as his sisters too. The dawn goddess Aya (Sherida) was his wife, and multiple texts describe their daily reunions taking place on a mount ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bārûtu
The Bārûtu, the “art of the diviner,” is a monumental ancient Mesopotamian compendium of the science of extispicy or sacrificial omens stretching over around a hundred cuneiform tablets which was assembled in the Neo-Assyrian/ Babylonian period based upon earlier recensions. At the Assyrian court, the term extended to encompass sacrificial prayers and rituals, commentaries and organ models. The ''ikribu'' was the name of collections of incantations to accompany the extispicy. The ''bārûtu's'' extant predecessors date back to Old Babylonian times with the liver models from Mari (pictured right) and where the order of the exta were largely fixed. The task of the ''bārû'', or diviner, was summarized as ''lipit qāti hiniq immeri naqē niqē nēpešti bārûti'', “the ‘touch of hand’, the restriction? of the sheep, the offering of the sacrifice, the performance of extispicy.” This required elaborate ritual purity, achieved through washing hands and mouth, donning fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Šumma ālu
Šumma ālu ina mēlê šakin is the title for a series of a collected number of cuneiform texts of ancient Mesopotamia amounting to one hundred and twenty clay tablets. The title translates as ''If a City is Situated on a Height'', and it lists over ten thousand omens. Many of the omens listed in this group begin with the words "Šumma ina āli ma'du (kind of people)," as in, "if there are too many kinds of people," and the omens in this group then proceed with a description of misfortune or negative occurrence. Similarities are recognised within the nature of the series and in other types of works that are concerned with hemerology and menology Menologium (), also written menology, and menologe, is a service-book used in the Eastern Orthodox Church and those Eastern Catholic Churches which follow the Byzantine Rite. From its derivation from Greek , ''menológion'', from μήν ''m ....Erlend Gehlken (editor) Weather Omens of Enūma Anu Enlil: Thunderstorms, Wind and Ra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iškar Zaqīqu
The Dream Book, iškar dZaqīqu (“core text of the god Zaqīqu”), is an eleven tablet compendium of oneiromancy Oneiromancy (from the , and ) is a form of divination based upon dreams, and also uses dreams to predict the future. Oneirogen plants may also be used to produce or enhance dream-like states of consciousness. Occasionally, the dreamer feels as if ... written in Akkadian. Tablets two to nine form the manual of deductive divination, while tablets one, ten and eleven provide rituals to alleviate bad dreams. Zaqīqu, which means "spirit" or "ghost," is a name of the dream god. The text Dream interpretations first appear in texts from Mari, whether solicited by the incubation ritual or spontaneous. The iškar dZaqīqu is one of the few texts to have survived in fairly complete form from the library of Ashurbanipal, and is believed to have been copied from an old Babylonian original. Visions from dreams came in three types: messages from a deity, reflections of the d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Religious Chronicle
The Religious Chronicle is an ancient Mesopotamian register of portents such as the straying of wild animals into urban areas and extraordinary natural phenomena which presaged the disruptions which interfered with the Akītu or new year festival and the performance of its regular cultic activities which included the transport of the idols of the gods to the city of Babylon during the tumultuous years of chaos caused by the incursions of Aramean nomads. The text It seems to have drawn its sources from the protases of omen literature in contrast to the Chronicle of Early Kings which drew them from their apodoses. The tablet has two columns per side and is in poor condition, with the surface severely abraded and most of the left-hand side (columns I and IV) gone. It may have been part of a series as there is part of a catch-line evident on line 8 of column IV. It is designated BM 35968 (Sp III, 504) and is held in the British Museum. Written during the Seleucid era, it was acqui ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
