Sumerian Texts
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Sumerian Texts
Sumerian literature constitutes the earliest known corpus of recorded literature, including the religious writings and other traditional stories maintained by the Sumerian civilization and largely preserved by the later Akkadian and Babylonian empires. These records were written in the Sumerian language in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC during the Middle Bronze Age. The Sumerians invented one of the first writing systems, developing Sumerian cuneiform writing out of earlier proto-writing systems by about the 30th century BC. The Sumerian language remained in official and literary use in the Akkadian and Babylonian empires, even after the spoken language disappeared from the population; literacy was widespread, and the Sumerian texts that students copied heavily influenced later Babylonian literature. The basic genres of Sumerian literature were literary catalogues, narrative/mythological compositions, historical compositions, letters and legal documents, disputation poems, prover ...
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Sumerian 26th C Adab
Sumerian or Sumerians may refer to: *Sumer, an ancient civilization **Sumerian language **Sumerian art **Sumerian architecture **Sumerian literature **Cuneiform script, used in Sumerian writing *Sumerian Records, an American record label based in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles See also *Sumeria (other) *Sumer (other) *Sumarian (other) Sumarian is a misspelling and may refer to: * Sumerian *Samaria or Samaritans Samaritans (; ; ; ), are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Hebrews and Israelites of the ancient Near East. They are indigenous to Samaria, a historica ... {{disambiguation Language and nationality disambiguation pages ...
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Line (poetry)
A line is a unit of writing into which a poem or play is divided: literally, a single row of text. The use of a line operates on principles which are distinct from and not necessarily coincident with grammatical structures, such as the sentence or single clauses in sentences. Although the word for a single poetic line is '' verse'', that term now tends to be used to signify poetic form more generally. A line break is the termination of the line of a poem and the beginning of a new line. The process of arranging words using lines and line breaks is known as ''lineation'', and is one of the defining features of poetry. A distinct numbered group of lines in verse is normally called a '' stanza''. A title, in certain poems, is considered a line. General conventions in Western poetry Conventions that determine what might constitute line in poetry depend upon different constraints, aural characteristics or scripting conventions for any given language. On the whole, where relevant, ...
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Huwawa
Humbaba (Ḫumbaba; , ''Ḫumbāba'', with an optional determinative ), originally known as Ḫuwawa in Sumerian (, ''Ḫuwāwa''), was a figure in Mesopotamian mythology. The origin and meaning of his name are unknown. He was portrayed as an anthropomorphic figure comparable to an ogre or giant. He is best known from Sumerian and Akkadian narratives focused on the hero Gilgamesh, including short compositions belonging to the curriculum of scribal schools, various versions of the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'', and several Hurrian and Hittite adaptations. He is invariably portrayed as the inhabitant or guardian of the cedar forest, to which Gilgamesh ventures with his companion Enkidu. The subsequent encounter leads to the death of Humbaba, which provokes the anger of the gods. Humbaba is also attested in other works of Mesopotamian literature. Multiple depictions of him have also been identified, including combat scenes and apotropaic clay heads. It has been suggested that the iconograp ...
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Epic Of Gilgamesh
The ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' () is an epic poetry, epic from ancient Mesopotamia. The literary history of Gilgamesh begins with five Sumerian language, Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh (formerly read as Sumerian "Bilgames"), king of Uruk, some of which may date back to the Third Dynasty of Ur (). These independent stories were later used as source material for a combined epic in Akkadian language, Akkadian. The first surviving version of this combined epic, known as the "Old Babylonian" version, dates back to the 18th century BCE and is titled after its incipit, ''Shūtur eli sharrī'' ("Surpassing All Other Kings"). Only a few clay tablet, tablets of it have survived. The later Standard Babylonian version compiled by Sîn-lēqi-unninni dates to somewhere between the 13th to the 10th centuries BCE and bears the incipit ''Sha naqba īmuru'' ("He who Saw the Deep(s)", ). Approximately two-thirds of this longer, twelve-tablet version have been recovered. Some of the best copies were d ...
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Decad (Sumerian Texts)
The Decad is a name given to a standard sequence of ten scribal training compositions in ancient Sumer. Sources and evidence The grouping of compositions known as the Decad is attested in several literary collection catalog, catalogues of tablets dating to Mesopotamia's Old Babylonian period. Sumerian literary catalogues were lists of literary compositions recorded by their initial lines or incipits. While literary catalogues were normally used for administration of business, administration of a library, the Decad is argued to have been written on curriculum, curricular clay tablet, tablets. The best attestation of the Decad is on a tablet originating in ancient Nippur and now stored at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University Museum in Philadelphia (referred to in this article as P). This tablet lists sixty-two Sumerian literary compositions in all (fifty-five of which have been identified and translated.), organized into six groups of ...
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Eduba
An eduba () is a scribal school for the Sumerian language. The eduba was the institution that trained and educated young scribes in ancient Mesopotamia during the late third or early second millennium BCE. Most of the information known about edubas comes from cuneiform texts dating to the Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000-1600 BCE). Archaeological evidence Archaeological evidence for the Old Babylonian school system suggests that scribal education was small-scale and usually took place in private homes. School tablets have been found in private residences in many sites across Mesopotamia. Some houses, where particularly large numbers of school tablets were unearthed, have been interpreted by archaeologists as "school houses" or homes in which scribal education almost certainly took place. The best example of this is House F in the city of Nippur. Nearly one and a half thousand fragments of tablets were found at this house. They date to the 17th century BCE (short chronology) ( ...
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Wisdom Literature
Wisdom literature is a genre of literature common in the ancient Near East. It consists of statements by sages and the wise that offer teachings about divinity and virtue. Although this genre uses techniques of traditional oral storytelling, it was disseminated in written form. The earliest known wisdom literature dates back to the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, originating from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. These regions continued to produce wisdom literature over the subsequent two and a half millennia. Wisdom literature from Jewish, Greek, Chinese, and Indian cultures started appearing around the middle of the 1st millennium BC. In the 1st millennium AD, Egyptian-Greek wisdom literature emerged, some elements of which were later incorporated into Islamic thought. Much of wisdom literature can be broadly categorized into two types – conservative "positive wisdom" and critical "negative wisdom" or "vanity literature": * Conservative Positive Wisdom – Pragmatic, r ...
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Electronic Text Corpus Of Sumerian Literature
The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL) is an online digital library of texts and translations of Sumerian language, Sumerian literature that was created by a now-completed project based at the Oriental Institute, Oxford, Oriental Institute of the University of Oxford. This project's website contains "Sumerian text, English prose translation and bibliographical information" for "over 400 literary works composed in the Sumerian language in ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) during the late third and early second millennia BCE." It is both browsable and searchable and includes transliterations, composite texts, a bibliography of Sumerian literature and a guide to spelling conventions for proper nouns and literary forms. The purpose of the project was to make Sumerian literature accessible to those wishing to read or study it, and make it known to a wider public. The project was founded by Jeremy Black (assyriologist), Jeremy Black in 1997 and is based at the Orient ...
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Assyriologists
Assyriology (from Greek , ''Assyriā''; and , ''-logia''), also known as Cuneiform studies or Ancient Near East studies, is the archaeological, anthropological, historical, and linguistic study of the cultures that used cuneiform writing. The field covers Pre Dynastic Mesopotamia, Sumer, the early Sumero-Akkadian city-states, the Akkadian Empire, Ebla, the Akkadian and Imperial Aramaic speaking states of Assyria, Babylonia and the Sealand Dynasty, the migrant foreign dynasties of southern Mesopotamia, including the Gutians, Amorites, Kassites, Arameans, Suteans and Chaldeans. Assyriology can be included to cover Neolithic pre-Dynastic cultures dating to as far back as 8000 BC, to the Islamic Conquest of the 7th century AD, so the topic is significantly wider than that implied by the root "Assyria". The large number of cuneiform clay tablets preserved by these Sumero-Akkadian and Assyro-Babylonian cultures provide an extremely large resource for the study of the period. Th ...
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Miguel Civil
Miguel Civil (Miquel Civil i Desveus; May 7, 1926 – January 13, 2019) was an American Assyriologist and expert on Sumer and Ancient Mesopotamian studies at the University of Chicago Oriental Institute. According to his colleague, Christopher Woods, at the time of his death, Civil knew the Sumerian language better than anyone since it was last spoken 4000 years ago. Early life Civil was born in 1926 in Sabadell, Barcelona, Spain. He studied Sumerology in Paris and was associate researcher at the University of Pennsylvania from 1958 to 1963. From 1964 until 2001, he was Professor of Sumerology at the Oriental Institute in the University of Chicago. He was also associate director of studies of the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, epigraphist of thNippur Expedition to Iraq a member of the editorial board of thChicago Assyrian Dictionary and main editor of the series Materials for the Sumerian Lexicon (in which he published several volumes). He is widely considered the ...
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Title (publishing)
The title of a book, or any other published text or work of art, is a name for the work which is usually chosen by the author. A title can be used to identify the work, to put it in context, to convey a minimal summary of its contents, and to pique the reader's curiosity. Some works supplement the title with a subtitle. Texts without separate titles may be referred to by their incipit (first word), especially those produced before the practice of titling became popular. During development, a work may be referred to by a temporary working title. A piece of legislation may have both a short title and a long title. In library cataloging, a uniform title is assigned to a work whose title is ambiguous. In book design, the title is typically shown on the spine, the front cover, and the title page. History The first books, such as the Five Books of Moses, in Hebrew Torah, did not have titles. They were referred to by their incipit: ''Be-reshit'', "In the beginning" ( Genesis), ''Va ...
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Musical Instrument
A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make Music, musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who plays a musical instrument is known as an ''#Instrumentalist, instrumentalist''. The history of musical instruments dates to the beginnings of human culture. Early musical instruments may have been used for rituals, such as a horn (music), horn to signal success on the hunt, or a drum in a religious ceremony. Cultures eventually developed composition and performance of melody, melodies for entertainment. Musical instruments evolved in step with changing applications and technologies. The exact date and specific origin of the first device considered a musical instrument, is widely disputed. The oldest object identified by scholars as a musical instrument, is Divje Babe flute, a simple flute, dated back 50,000–60,000 years. Many scho ...
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