#king of lagash

[thatshowthingstarted]

Cone of Urukagina, king of Lagash, circa 2350  BC,

Girsu, Mesopotamia,

Detailing his reforms againt abuse of "old days".

Height: 27 cm (10.6 in); diameter: 15 cm (5.9 in).

Collections of the Louvre (Department of Near Eastern Antiquities).

[haitianempress]

Battle of the worst parents

[tammuz]

Sumerian stone bust of the priest-king Guedea of Lagash, dating back to 2150 BCE. It is one of twenty-seven statues of Gudea that have been found in southern Mesopotamia. Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA.    

Photo by Babylon Chronicle

[mamamoon92]

List of Mesopotamian deities✨

Mesopotamian legendary beasts ✨

☆Battle Bison beast - one of the creatures slain by Ninurta

☆The eleven mythical monsters created by Tiāmat in the Epic of Creation, Enûma Eliš:

☆Bašmu, “Venomous Snake”

☆Ušumgallu, “Great Dragon”

☆Mušmaḫḫū, “Exalted Serpent”

☆Mušḫuššu, “Furious Snake”

☆Laḫmu, the “Hairy One”

☆Ugallu, the “Big Weather-Beast”

☆Uridimmu, “Mad Lion”

☆Girtablullû, “Scorpion-Man”

☆Umū dabrūtu, “Violent Storms”

☆Kulullû, “Fish-Man”

☆Kusarikku, “Bull-Man”

Mesopotamian Spirits and demons ✨

☆Alû, demon of night

☆Asag - monstrous demon whose presence makes fish boil alive in the rivers

☆Asakku, evil demon(s)

☆The edimmu - ghosts of those who were not buried properly

☆Gallû, underworld demon

☆Hanbi or Hanpa - father of Pazuzu

☆Humbaba - guardian of the Cedar Forest

☆Lamashtu - a malevolent being who menaced women during childbirth

☆Lilû, wandering demon

☆Mukīl rēš lemutti demon of headaches

☆Pazuzu - king of the demons of the wind; he also represented the southwestern wind, the bearer of storms and drought

☆Rabisu - an evil vampiric spirit

☆Šulak the bathroom demon, “lurker” in the bathroom

☆Zu - divine storm-bird and the personification of the southern wind and the thunder clouds

Mesopotamian Demigods and Heroes ✨

☆Adapa - a hero who unknowingly refused the gift of immortality

☆The Apkallu - seven demigods created by the god Enki to give civilization to mankind ☆Gilgamesh - hero and king of Uruk; central character in the Epic of Gilgamesh

☆Enkidu - hero and companion of Gilgamesh

☆Enmerkar - the legendary builder of the city of Uruk

☆Lugalbanda - second king of Uruk, who ruled for 1,200 years

☆Utnapishtim - hero who survived a great flood and was granted immortality; character in the Epic of Gilgamesh

Mesopotamian Primordial beings✨

☆Abzu - the Ocean Below, the name for fresh water from underground aquifers; depicted as a deity only in the Babylonian creation epic Enûma Eliš

☆Anshar - god of the sky and male principle

☆Kishar - goddess of the earth and female principle

☆Kur - the first dragon, born of Abzu and Ma. Also Kur-gal, or Ki-gal the underworld

☆Lahamu - first-born daughter of Abzu and Tiamat

☆Lahmu - first-born son of Abzu and Tiamat; a protective and beneficent deity

☆Ma -primordial goddess of the earth

☆Mummu - god of crafts and technical skill

☆Tiamat - primordial goddess of the ocean

Mesopotamian Minor deities✨

This is only some of them. There are thousands.

Abu - a minor god of vegetation

Ama-arhus - Akkadian fertility goddess; later merged into Ninhursag

Amasagnul - Akkadian fertility goddess

Amurru - god of the Amorite people

An - a goddess, possibly the female principle of Anu

Arah - the goddess of fate.

Asaruludu or Namshub - a protective deity

Ashnan - goddess of grain

Aya - a mother goddess and consort of Shamash

Azimua - a minor Sumerian goddess

Bau - dog-headed patron goddess of Lagash

Belet-Seri - recorder of the dead entering the underworld

Birdu - an underworld god; consort of Manungal and later syncretized with Nergal

Bunene - divine charioteer of Shamash

Damgalnuna - mother of Marduk

Damu - god of vegetation and rebirth; possibly a local offshoot of Dumuzi

Emesh - god of vegetation, created to take responsibility on earth for woods, fields, sheep folds, and stables

Enbilulu - god of rivers, canals, irrigation and farming

Endursaga - a herald god

Enkimdu - god of farming, canals and ditches

Enmesarra - an underworld god of the law, equated with Nergal

Ennugi - attendant and throne-bearer of Enlil

Enshag - a minor deity born to relieve the illness of Enki

Enten - god of vegetation, created to take responsibility on earth for the fertility of ewes, goats, cows, donkeys, birds

Erra - Akkadian god of mayhem and pestilence

Gaga - a minor deity featured in the Enûma Eliš

Gatumdag - a fertility goddess and tutelary mother goddess of Lagash

Geshtinanna - Sumerian goddess of wine and cold seasons, sister to Dumuzid

Geshtu-E - minor god of intelligence

Gibil or Gerra - god of fire

Gugalanna - the Great Bull of Heaven, the constellation Taurus and the first husband of Ereshkigal

Gunara - a minor god of uncertain status

Hahanu - a minor god of uncertain status

Hani - an attendant of the storm god Adad

Hayasum - a minor god of uncertain status

Hegir-Nuna - a daughter of the goddess Bau

Hendursaga - god of law

Ilabrat - attendant and minister of state to Anu

Ishum - brother of Shamash and attendant of Erra

Isimud - two-faced messenger of Enki

Ištaran - god of the city of Der (Sumer)

Kabta - obscure god “Lofty one of heaven”

Kakka - attendant and minister of state to both Anu and Anshar

Kingu - consort of Tiamat; killed by Marduk, who used his blood to create mankind

Kubaba - tutelary goddess of the city of Carchemish

Kulla - god of bricks and building

Kus (god) - god of herdsmen

Lahar - god of cattle

Lugal-Irra - possibly a minor variation of Erra

Lulal - the younger son of Inanna; patron god of Bad-tibira

Mamitu - Sumerian goddess of fate

Manungal - an underworld goddess; consort of Birdu

Mandanu -god of divine judgment

Muati - obscure Sumerian god who became syncretized with Nabu

Mushdamma - god of buildings and foundations

Nammu - a creation goddess

Nanaya - goddess personifying voluptuousness and sensuality

Nazi - a minor deity born to relieve the illness of Enki

Negun - a minor goddess of uncertain status

Neti - a minor underworld god; the chief gatekeeper of the netherworld and the servant of Ereshkigal

Nibhaz - god of the Avim

Nidaba - goddess of writing, learning and the harvest

Namtar - minister of Ereshkigal

Nin-Ildu - god of carpenters

Nin-imma - goddess of the female sex organs

Ninazu - god of the underworld and healing

Nindub - god associated with the city Lagash

Ningal - goddess of reeds and consort of Nanna (Sin)

Ningikuga - goddess of reeds and marshes

Ningirama - god of magic and protector against snakes

Ningishzida - god of the vegetation and underworld

Ninkarnunna - god of barbers

Ninkasi - goddess of beer

Ninkilim - "Lord Rodent" god of vermin

Ninkurra - minor mother goddess

Ninmena - Sumerian mother goddess who became syncretized with Ninhursag

Ninsar - goddess of plants

Ninshubur - Sumerian messenger goddess and second-in-command to Inanna, later adapted by the Akkadians as the male god Papsukkal

Ninsun - "Lady Wild Cow"; mother of Gilgamesh

Ninsutu - a minor deity born to relieve the illness of Enki

Nintinugga - Babylonian goddess of healing

Nintulla - a minor deity born to relieve the illness of Enki

Nu Mus Da - patron god of the lost city of Kazallu

Nunbarsegunu - goddess of barley

Nusku - god of light and fire

Pabilsaĝ - tutelary god of the city of Isin

Pap-nigin-gara - Akkadian and Babylonian god of war, syncretized with Ninurta

Pazuzu - son of Hanbi, and king of the demons of the wind

Sarpanit - mother goddess and consort of Marduk

The Sebitti - a group of minor war gods

Shakka - patron god of herdsmen

Shala - goddess of war and grain

Shara - minor god of war and a son of Inanna

Sharra Itu - Sumerian fertility goddess

Shul-pa-e - astral and fertility god associated with the planet Jupiter

Shul-utula - personal deity to Entemena, king of the city of Eninnu

Shullat - minor god and attendant of Shamash

Shulmanu - god of the underworld, fertility and war

Shulsaga - astral goddess

Sirara - goddess of the Persian Gulf

Siris - goddess of beer

Sirsir - god of mariners and boatmen

Sirtir - goddess of sheep

Sumugan - god of the river plains

Tashmetum - consort of Nabu

Tishpak - tutelary god of the city of Eshnunna

Tutu - tutelary god of the city of Borsippa

Ua-Ildak - goddess responsible for pastures and poplar trees

Ukur - a god of the underworld

Uttu - goddess of weaving and clothing

Wer - a storm god linked to Adad

Zaqar - messenger of Sin who relays communication through dreams and nightmares

Mesopotamian Major Deities✨

Hadad (or Adad) - storm and rain god

Enlil (or Ashur) - god of air, head of the Assyrian and Sumerian pantheon

Anu (or An) - god of heaven and the sky, lord of constellations, and father of the gods

Dagon (or Dagan) - god of fertility

Enki (or Ea) - god of the Abzu, crafts, water, intelligence, mischief and creation and divine ruler of the Earth and its humans

Ereshkigal - goddess of Irkalla, the Underworld

Inanna (later known as Ishtar) - goddess of fertility, love, and war

Marduk - patron deity of Babylon who eventually became regarded as the head of the Babylonian pantheon

Nabu - god of wisdom and writing

Nanshe - goddess of prophecy, fertility and fish

Nergal - god of plague, war, and the sun in its destructive capacity; later husband of Ereshkigal

Ninhursag (or Mami, Belet-Ili, Ki, Ninmah, Nintu, or Aruru) - earth and mother goddess

Ninlil - goddess of the air; consort of Enlil

Ninurta - champion of the gods, the epitome of youthful vigor, and god of agriculture

Shamash (or Utu) - god of the sun, arbiter of justice and patron of travelers

Sin (or Nanna) - god of the moon

Tammuz (or Dumuzid) - god of food and vegetation

[bagdemagus]

Stone tablet with proto-cuneiform inscription Mesopotamia (Iraq), probably Girsu (modern Tello) Early Dynastic period, ca. 2750-2500 BCE

The text records allocations of land to various individuals, and it mentions the name of a certain Enhegal, who seems to bear the title “king (lugal) of Lagash,” but who is otherwise not attested in historical sources.

Penn Museum, Philadelphia, PA, CBS 10000

https://www.penn.museum/collections/object/347463

[haggishlyhagging]

By the end of the second millennium, the religious thinkers of Mesopotamia saw the cosmos as controlled and regulated by male gods, with only Ishtar maintaining a position of power. When we see such a pattern of theological change, we must ask whether the religious imagery is leading society, or whether it is following socioeconomic development? Was the supplanting of goddesses in Sumerian religious texts an inner theological development that resulted purely from the tendency to view the world of the gods on the model of an imperial state in which women paid no real political role? Or does it follow in the wake of sociological change, of the development of what might be called "patriarchy"? And if the latter is true, is the change in the world of the gods contemporary to the changes in human society, or does it lag behind it by hundreds of years? To these questions we really have no answer. The general impression that we get from Sumerian texts is that at least some women had a more prominent role than was possible in the succeeding Babylonian and Assyrian periods of Mesopotamian history. But developments within the 600-year period covered by Sumerian literature are more difficult to detect. One slight clue might (very hesitantly) be furnished by a royal document called the Reforms of Uruinimgina." Uruinimgina (whose name is read Urukagina in earlier scholarly literature) was a king of Lagash around 2350 B.C.E. As a nondynastic successor to the throne, he had to justify his power, and wrote a "reform" text in which he related how bad matters were before he became king and described the new reforms that he instituted in order to pursue social justice. Among them we read, "the women of the former days used to take two husbands, but the women of today (if they attempt to do this) are stoned with the stones inscribed with their evil intent." Polyandry (if it ever really existed) has been supplanted by monogamy and occasional polygyny.

In early Sumer, royal women had considerable power. In early Lagash, the wives of the governors managed the large temple estates. The dynasty of Kish was founded by Enmebaragesi, a contemporary of Gilgamesh, who it now appears may have been a woman; later, another woman, Kubaba the tavern lady, became ruler of Kish and founded a dynasty that lasted a hundred years. We do not know how important politically the position of En priestess of Ur was, but it was a high position, occupied by royal women at least from the time of Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon (circa 2300 B.C.E.), and through the time of the sister of Warad-Sin and Rim-Sin of Larsa in the second millennium. The prominence of individual royal women continued throughout the third dynasty of Ur. By contrast, women have very little role to play in the latter half of the second millennium; and in first millennium texts, as in those of the Assyrian period, they are practically invisible.

We do not know all the reasons for this decline. It would be tempting to attribute it to the new ideas brought in by new people with the mass immigration of the West Semites into Mesopotamia at the start of the second millennium. However, this cannot be the true origin. The city of Mari on the Euphrates in Syria around 1800 B.C.E. was a site inhabited to a great extent by West Semites. In the documents from this site, women (again, royal women) played a role in religion and politics that was not less than that played by Sumerian women of the Ur IlI period (2111-1950 B.C.E.). The causes for the change in women's position is not ethnically based. The dramatic decline of women's visibility does not take place until well into the Old Babylonian period (circa 1600 B.C.E.), and may be function of the change from city-states to larger nation-states and the changes in the social and economic systems that this entailed.

The eclipse of the goddesses was undoubtedly part of the same process that witnessed a decline in the public role of women, with both reflective of fundamental changes in society that we cannot yet specify. The existence and power of a goddess, particularly of Ishtar, is no indication or guarantee of a high status for human women. In Assyria, where Ishtar was so prominent, women were not. The texts rarely mention any individual women, and, according to the Middle Assyrian laws, married women were to be veiled, had no rights to their husband's property (even to movable goods), and could be struck or mutilated by their husbands at will. Ishtar, the female with the fundamental attributes of manhood, does not enable women to transcend their femaleness. In her being and her cult (where she changes men into women and women into men), she provides an outlet for strong feelings about gender, but in the final analysis, she is the supporter and maintainer of the gender order. The world by the end of the second millennium was a male's world, above and below; and the ancient goddesses have all but disappeared.

-Tikva Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth

[inspofromancientworld]

King of the Universe

By Marie-Lan Nguyen - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=725195

King of the Universe, King of Everything, King of Totality, King of All, or King of the World (Sumerian: lugal ki-sár-ra or lugal kiš-ki, Akkadian: šarru kiššat māti, šar-kiššati or šar kiššatim) was a commonly used title by those kings who were powerful in ancient Mesopotamia. Later, it was applied to the Abrahamic God to show that He held dominion over everything, even the greatest kings or conquerors before or after.

By Ciudades_de_Sumeria.svg: Cratesderivative work: Phirosiberia (talk) - Ciudades_de_Sumeria.svg, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13255857

The Sumerians viewed their city Kish (𒆧𒆠) was the center of the universe so the title originally meant simply the king of the city of Kish. In the Sumerian Flood myth, kingship was granted in Kish after the flood. The Akkadians adopted the title, though the meaning shifted to 'King of the Universe', making the primacy of Kish's king over Sumer to it's logical conclusion, even when the seat of kingship moved from Kish.

Sargon of Akkad, who reigned from about 2334-2284 BCE, was the first king we have records using the title. Not every king used the title and there's some evidence that it had to be earned through great acts. The last king to use it was the Seleuchid king Antiochus I, who reigned from 281-261 BCE.

CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1084105

The cities of Ur, Uruk, Lagash, Umma, and Kish were engaged in a game of sorts of trying to build up an empire so that the king of that city-state could gain more and more prestigious titles until this game gave rise to the desire to rule over everything, or as much as they could manage. As the Sumerians saw Mesopotamia as the whole of the world, they fought to the farthest corners of the world: Susa, Mari, Assur and other far flung cities between the Persian Gulf (the lower sea) and the Mediterranean (the upper sea). This change happened around 2450 BCE. Lugalannemundu, king of Adab, likely a legendary king, was the first who is said to have completed the game and claimed to have 'subjugated the Four Corners'. The second to have completed the game was Uruk's king Lugalzaggesi, who claimed to rule everything between the upper and lower sea and adopted the title 'King of the Land' (Sumerian: lugal-kalam-ma).

Because their mythology assigned Kish such a grand position, kings who were good at empire building began to claim the title, whether they ruled there or not, to show they had the right to rule over Sumer. One didn't even need to actually be a king, just good at winning battles and building cities, to claim the title.

By Unknown artist - Jastrow (2006), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53024

Sargon started his political career as cupbearer to Ur-Zababa, who did rule Kish. He survived an assassination attempt somehow, then claimed the throne, using the title šar kiššatim (King of Kish or King of the Universe) even when he moved the capital to Akkad. He also used the title šar māt Akkadi, King of Akkad primarily as his empire grew. His successors were fond of the title šar kiššatim, though, especially Naram-Sin, who reigned from 2254-2218, who expanded it to 'King of the Four Corners and the World'.

By Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. http://www.cngcoins.com, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73606367

After the conquest of Mesopotamia by Alexander the Great, the Seleucid emperors took over the area and acted as a Greek state rather than a fully independent and free empire. Though the last time the title was used in cuneiform was 300 years before, Antiochus I used the title, as well as 'King of Kings' or "Great King' as they were common Babylonian titles.

By Maur - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12013124

Beginning with the reign of Esarhaddon (681-669 BCE), he used the title for himself, but also applies it to Sarpanit, Babylon's patron deity, though it would be better translated as 'Queen of the Universe'. In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the title applies exclusively to their singular God with Jewish blessings beginning 'Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu, melekh ha`olam…' (Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the Universe…) and the Islamic Quran referring to God as 'rabbil-'alamin' ('Lord of the Universe') in its first chapter.

[bracketsoffear]

Nightfall (Isaac Asimov & Robert Silverberg) "From TV Tropes: Lagash's six suns means an Endless Daytime, except for once every 2,049 years, when five suns set and the only sun left in the hemisphere is eclipsed by the moon. The scientists are trying to prepare civilization and themselves for the upcoming nightfall, but when it does occur, no-one is prepared for the thirty thousand stars that suddenly appear in the night sky. This leads to the far more devastating revelation how tiny and insignificant they are by comparison." "Aton, somewhere, was crying, whimpering horribly like a terribly frightened child. 'Stars — all the Stars — we didn't know at all. We didn't know anything. We thought six stars in a universe is something the Stars didn't notice is Darkness forever and ever and ever and the walls are breaking in and we didn't know we couldn't know and anything —'"

The Jaunt (Stephen King) “As a family prepares to be "Jaunted" to Mars in the 24th century, the father entertains his two children by recounting the curious tale of the discovery and history of this crude form of teleportation. He explains how the scientist who serendipitously discovered it quickly learned that it had a disturbing, inexplicable effect on the mice he "sent through"—eventually concluding that they could only survive the "Jaunt effect" while unconscious. That, the father explains, is why all people must undergo general anaesthesia before using the Jaunt.

The father spares his children the gruesome semi-apocryphal account of the first human to be Jaunted awake, a condemned murderer offered a full pardon for agreeing to the experiment. The man "came through" and immediately suffered a massive heart attack, living just long enough to utter a single cryptic phrase:

It's eternity in there…

The father also doesn't mention that since that time, roughly thirty people have, voluntarily or otherwise, jaunted while conscious; they either died instantly or emerged insane. One woman was even shoved alive into eternal limbo by her murderous husband, stuck between two jaunt portals. The man was convicted of murder; though his attorneys attempted to argue that he was not guilty on the grounds that his wife was not technically dead, the implications of the same argument served to secure and hasten his execution.

After the father finishes his story, the family is subjected to the sleeping gas and Jaunted to Mars. When the father wakes, he finds that his inquisitive son held his breath in order to experience the Jaunt while conscious…Hair white with shock, corneas yellowed with age, clawing out his own eyes, the boy reveals the terrible nature of the Jaunt: "Longer than you think, Dad! It's longer than you think!"

Underland (Robert MacFarlane) "A series of essays on "deep time" - that is, viewing the world over timeframes of billions of years, rather than the shorter timeframes we live within & understand. It is essentially the vastness of time. This concept stretches eons into the past and future and is very daunting to read about. The essays all revolve around things underground and often focus on how they're so much larger than us, existing far before us and stretching far beyond.

Also there's a chapter where the author talks about a calving glacier he saw surge upwards hundreds of feet from the sea, unbelievably huge. He recounts how the ice at its base hadn't seen sunlight in eons, and had never even been seen by human eyes, it was so ancient - it then sank underwater again, to once more be hidden. And if that doesn't sound like the origin of a vast avatar idk what does"

[offshoreoilrig]

The Sumerian Game is an early text-based strategy video game of land and resource management. It was developed as part of a joint research project between the Board of Cooperative Educational Services of Westchester County, New York and IBM in 1964–1966 for investigation of the use of computer-based simulations in schools. It was designed by Mabel Addis, then a fourth-grade teacher, and programmed by William McKay for the IBM 7090 time-shared mainframe computer. The first version of the game was played by a group of 30 sixth-grade students in 1964, and a revised version featuring refocused gameplay and added narrative and audiovisual elements was played by a second group of students in 1966.

The game is composed of three segments, representing the reigns of three successive rulers of the city of Lagash in Sumer around 3500 BC. In each segment the game asks the players how to allocate workers and grain over a series of rounds while accommodating the effects of their prior decisions, random disasters, and technological innovations, with each segment adding complexity. At the conclusion of the project the game was not put into widespread use, though it was used as a demonstration in the BOCES Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York and made available by "special arrangement" with BOCES into at least the early 1970s. A description of the game, however, was given to Doug Dyment in 1968, and he recreated a version of the first segment of the game as King of Sumeria. This game was expanded on in 1971 by David H. Ahl as Hamurabi, which in turn led to many early strategy and city-building games. The Sumerian Game has been described as the first video game with a narrative, as well as the first edutainment game. As a result, Mabel Addis has been called the first female video game designer and the first writer for a video game. In 2024 a recreation of the game, based off of the available information, was released for Windows.

[mulbruk]

trick or treathe..

When Anu the Sublime, King of the Anunaki, and Bel, the lord of Heaven and earth, who decreed the fate of the land, assigned to Marduk, the over-ruling son of Ea, God of righteousness, dominion over earthly man, and made him great among the Igigi, they called Babylon by his illustrious name, made it great on earth, and founded an everlasting kingdom in it, whose foundations are laid so solidly as those of heaven and earth; then Anu and Bel called by name me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, who feared God, to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak; so that I should rule over the black-headed people like Shamash, and enlighten the land, to further the well-being of mankind.

Hammurabi, the prince, called of Bel am I, making riches and increase, enriching Nippur and Dur-ilu beyond compare, sublime patron of E-kur; who reestablished Eridu and purified the worship of E-apsu; who conquered the four quarters of the world, made great the name of Babylon, rejoiced the heart of Marduk, his lord who daily pays his devotions in Saggil; the royal scion whom Sin made; who enriched Ur; the humble, the reverent, who brings wealth to Gish-shir-gal; the white king, heard of Shamash, the mighty, who again laid the foundations of Sippara; who clothed the gravestones of Malkat with green; who made E-babbar great, which is like the heavens, the warrior who guarded Larsa and renewed E-babbar, with Shamash as his helper; the lord who granted new life to Uruk, who brought plenteous water to its inhabitants, raised the head of E-anna, and perfected the beauty of Anu and Nana; shield of the land, who reunited the scattered inhabitants of Isin; who richly endowed E-gal-mach; the protecting king of the city, brother of the god Zamama; who firmly founded the farms of Kish, crowned E-me-te-ursag with glory, redoubled the great holy treasures of Nana, managed the temple of Harsag-kalama; the grave of the enemy, whose help brought about the victory; who increased the power of Cuthah; made all glorious in E-shidlam, the black steer, who gored the enemy; beloved of the god Nebo, who rejoiced the inhabitants of Borsippa, the Sublime; who is indefatigable for E-zida; the divine king of the city; the White, Wise; who broadened the fields of Dilbat, who heaped up the harvests for Urash; the Mighty, the lord to whom come scepter and crown, with which he clothes himself; the Elect of Ma-ma; who fixed the temple bounds of Kesh, who made rich the holy feasts of Nin-tu; the provident, solicitous, who provided food and drink for Lagash and Girsu, who provided large sacrificial offerings for the temple of Ningirsu; who captured the enemy, the Elect of the oracle who fulfilled the prediction of Hallab, who rejoiced the heart of Anunit; the pure prince, whose prayer is accepted by Adad; who satisfied the heart of Adad, the warrior, in Karkar, who restored the vessels for worship in E-ud-gal-gal; the king who granted life to the city of Adab; the guide of E-mach; the princely king of the city, the irresistible warrior, who granted life to the inhabitants of Mashkanshabri, and brought abundance to the temple of Shidlam; the White, Potent, who penetrated the secret cave of the bandits, saved the inhabitants of Malka from misfortune, and fixed their home fast in wealth; who established pure sacrificial gifts for Ea and Dam-gal-nun-na, who made his kingdom everlastingly great; the princely king of the city, who subjected the districts on the Ud-kib-nun-na Canal to the sway of Dagon, his Creator; who spared the inhabitants of Mera and Tutul; the sublime prince, who makes the face of Ninni shine; who presents holy meals to the divinity of Nin-a-zu, who cared for its inhabitants in their need, provided a portion for them in Babylon in peace; the shepherd of the oppressed and of the slaves; whose deeds find favor before Anunit, who provided for Anunit in the temple of Dumash in the suburb of Agade; who recognizes the right, who rules by law; who gave back to the city of Ashur its protecting god; who let the name of Ishtar of Nineveh remain in E-mish-mish; the Sublime, who humbles himself before the great gods; successor of Sumula-il; the mighty son of Sin-muballit; the royal scion of Eternity; the mighty monarch, the sun of Babylon, whose rays shed light over the land of Sumer and Akkad; the king, obeyed by the four quarters of the world; Beloved of Ninni, am I.

[blueiscoool]

Archaeologists Uncover 5,000-Year-Old Tavern in Iraq

The find also includes hundreds of ceramic vessels and a primitive refrigerator.

A team of U.S. and Italian archaeologists digging in southern Iraq have unearthed the remains of an ancient tavern, dating back to 2,700 B.C.

Excavated as part of a joint project by the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Pisa over the fall of 2022, the site is a small rectangular room that opens directly onto a courtyard. Across its plaster floor were strewn about 36,965 shards of ceramic bowls and beakers—some of the pottery even containing residue of food and drink, including fish bones. A number of shelves and benches along a wall further pointed to what might have been a “public eatery” with open-air seating.

The same room also housed two large jars, one placed inside the other, representing what appears to be a primitive cooling device for beverages. According to Reed Goodman, one of the University of Pennsylvania archaeologists, the brick remains of a “large oven” were also located, containing ashy deposits of “various burning episodes.”

“We’ve got the refrigerator, we’ve got the hundreds of vessels ready to be served, benches where people would sit… and behind the refrigerator is an oven that would have been used for cooking food,” Holly Pittman of the Penn Museum, University of Pennsylvania told AFP.

The array of artifacts, she added, has led the team to believe the place to be “where people—regular people—could come to eat and that is not domestic.”

The find was made in Lagash, an ancient city east of Al-Shatrah, Iraq. Located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the area was a major center of the early dynastic Sumerian civilization, known for their advanced agricultural and writing systems, and architectural projects such as the Girsu temple complex.

That the archaeologists deemed the site to be that of a “tavern” is down to the Sumerians’ preference for the beverage, “even more than water,” said Pittman. She further pointed to the discovery of “a beer recipe,” inscribed on a cuneiform tablet, at an excavated temple close by.

The team emphasized that while previous digs in the area have focused on uncovering religious or royal architecture, its current excavations are intended to provide a better understanding of the lives of the everyday, non-elite citizens. The aim, it stated, was to learn about the “urban social fabric of Lagash.”

“We hope to be able to characterize the neighborhoods and the kinds of occupation… of the people that lived in this big city who were not the elite,” said Pittman.

“The fact that you have a public gathering place where people can sit down and have a pint and have their fish stew, they’re not laboring under the tyranny of kings,” Goodman added. “Right there, there is already something that is giving us a much more colorful history of the city.”

By Min Chen.

[yamayuandadu]

I don't really have any tips, but I can provide a quick terminology rundown. The reply got too long to respond to the ask normally, my sincere apologies. Some 6 pages worth of text under the cut.

Mesopotamia is, broadly speaking, the area between Tigris and Euphrates, in other words most of modern Iraq and part of Syria. At the dawn of recorded history, in the Early Dynastic period, the inhabitants of the area were Sumerians and Akkadians. These are largely just linguistic labels, they do not correspond to states in the modern sense. Sumerian is a language isolate, Akkadian belongs to the family of Semitic languages, though the “East” branch it is assigned to is now extinct, and has been for a long while. There was a lot of borrowing between the two languages, including individual words, phrases, and even grammatical structures. The oldest texts are, generally, Sumerian, but Akkadian names already pop up here and there. Some of the major city-states in the early period of Mesopotamian history were Uruk, Ur, Umma (with its religious center in nearby Zabalam), Lagash (with religious centers in Girsu and Nigin/NINA), Adab (with religious center in Kesh), Kish and Mari. Nippur and Sippar were religiously significant, but not political powers in their own right. Additionally, a major city in the third millennium BCE was Ebla, located to the west of Mesopotamia. The Eblaites spoke a language similar to Akkadian, Eblaite. It is presumed other related dialects were spoken all over northern Syria through most of the third millennium BCE, for example in Nagar and Nabada, but they eventually vanished in favor of Amorite and other similar languages, which belong to the western branch of the Semitic language family, much like Hebrew or Aramaic. The Early Dynastic period was followed up by the Akkadian Empire, ie. the Akkadian or Old Akkadian or Sargonic period. The formerly insignificant city of Akkad gradually conquered all of Mesopotamia and quite a few areas beyond it, but this all eventually fell apart after a bit more than a century. This resulted in the establishment of Gutian rule over (part of) Mesopotamia, which is typically not treated as a distant era. The Gutians and their homeland Gutium (presumably located in the Zagros) hardly figure in historical records, and were essentially synonymous with the notion of crude mountain-dwelling barbarians in the eyes of Mesopotamians. Little is left in the way of material culture which can be linked to them, but the names of the few recorded kings or chieftains do not appear to match any known language. For the time being Gutians are largely an obscure curiosity and not much can be said about them. There are a few other similar labels too, like Lullubi or Turukkeans, similarly nebulous for now. A few indigenous dynasties coexisted with the Gutian rulers, for example the Second Dynasty of Lagash, but it took the rise of the Third Dynasty of Ur to warrant a fully new label: near the end of the third millennium BCE, the Ur III period - also known as Neo-Sumerian - began. A new development was the influx of foreigners in Mesopotamia from both west and north - most importantly Hurrians (more on them later) and Amorites. The latter, who I already mentioned earlier, lived in most of what is now Syria, but they migrated en masse to southern Mesopotamia, where they gradually assimilated. It should be noted “Amorite” is not an entirely homogenous group, and the term is actually how Mesopotamians called westerners and the land they came from, not an endonym. The term Martu has the exact same meaning. The initial perception of Amorites was negative - they were portrayed as barely civilized and barbaric, presumably due to their nomadic agricultural-pastoral lifestyle differing from that generally followed by Mesopotamians. The Ur III period ended abruptly after less than 200 years. What followed was the Old Assyrian period in the north, where the city of Assur became the unquestionable cultural hegemony, paving the road for later Assyrian culture, and the Isin-Larsa period in the south. Isin-Larsa is sometimes treated as a part of the Old Babylonian period, which I personally find preferable. Old Babylonian period proper refers to the rise of the city of Babylon, formerly utterly insignificant, as a new hegemon. However, Babylon did not just magically rise to the top: to reach its status, it had to defeat the other great powers of its era. As you can guess, two were Larsa and Isin; additionally, Uruk held on for a while, Mari came back on top under new management, and in the Diyala area (which for much of Mesopotamian history maintained distinct unique traditions but remains relatively poorly known) Eshnunna attained a similar position. There was obviously also Assyria, which was involved either in (long lived) establishment of new trade routes or (for now short lived) conquests. A further powerful state was Yamhad in northern Syria, centered around Aleppo, which de facto belonged to the broader Mesopotamian political sphere. Many of the old centers of power vanished - Umma and Lagash in particular fared poorly. There are also areas we simply do not know all that much about, for example Der in the far east of Mesopotamia had its own monarchs, but the site has yet to be excavated. The newcomers to Mesopotamia, Amorites, did pretty well - many new dynasties used Amorite names. However, Akkadian was the most commonly spoken language at this point, and it seems with time the vernacular use of Amorite ceased. Sumerian was no longer spoken, but continued to be used as a language of the learned, not unlike how Latin survived in the middle ages and later. Much of what is labeled as “Sumerian mythology” online are texts compiled in Old Babylonian scribal schools to teach Sumerian. We know relatively little about the end of the Old Babylonian period. A somewhat uniform culture started to emerge, and this arguably is the point at which it becomes fair to call the entirety of southern Mesopotamia “Babylonia”, though this term is also used in scholarship to refer to earlier periods which is a bit confusing seeing as Babylon was but a small, irrelevant town. Two further plot twists were the formation of the so-called “Sealand”, a kingdom in the Iraqi Marshes which remains poorly known, and the arrival of another new group of people, the Kassites. We know next to nothing about the early history of the Kassites. We have a decent idea where they came from - the Zagros - but people with Kassite names are absent from earliest records from eastern locations so they might have migrated from somewhere else. Their language, which is only known from personal names and a handful of synonyms in Mesopotamian “dictionaries” is most likely an isolate. Under unclear circumstances, a dynasty of Kassite origin took over Babylonia, eventually conquered its only rival, the Sealand, rechristened the entire area “Karduniash”… and promptly much like Amorites earlier got gradually assimilated - so thoroughly that I’ve seen a proposal to refer to the Kassite dynasty as “kings with Kassite names” rather than as strictly Kassite kings. The same presumably happened to ordinary Kassites, though it is plausible that their culture in its non-Mesopotamified form might have survived in their Zagros homeland until Hellenistic times. At least early on, the Kassite rule brought Babylonia an unprecedented level of stability, and the religious centers which did survive fared pretty well, especially Nippur. Meanwhile, the Assyrians entered the Middle Assyrian period, and decided to give this “empire” thing a try, with varying results. Generally speaking, this was bad news to you first and foremost if you were a Hurrian - more on that in their own section later. Despite its early successes, the Kassite state eventually fell apart. What followed were various brief dynasties which remain poorly known - the second dynasty of Isin, second dynasty of Sealand, Bazi dynasty, Elamite dynasty (with a whopping total of one ruler), and the E dynasty (yeah). This is typically referred to as the Middle Babylonian period, but note that some authors refer to Kassite period as already “Middle Babylonian”, while others basically count the entire history of Babylonia down to the establishment of the Neo-Babylonian Empire as “Middle Babylonian”. In the Middle Babylonian period in the strictest sense, two new groups arrived or emerged, the Arameans and the Chaldeans, both of them speaking West Semitic languages. Arameans were also active virtually all over Syria, where they founded new kingdoms such as Aram-Damascus. A further group were the Suteans, “southerners”, who already show up here and there earlier and probably spoke a language similar to Amorite, but remain very nebulous. Due to political uncertainty, raids of various newcomers to the region, inept rulers etc. Babylonia was not particularly stable through most of this period  Eventually, the Assyrians, who built a sizable empire once again, decided they might as well give taking over it a try - and succeeded. While Akkadian remained in use under their rule, Aramaic rose to an almost equal status, and seemingly gradually displaced it as vernacular in more and more areas. While the Assyrians incorporated many other states into the Neo-Assyrian Empire, somewhat homogenizing the culture of the region in the process, their dominion did not last forever, and eventually they were themselves conquered by politically resurgent Babylonians, who established the new Neo-Babylonian Empire, in vintage literature called “Chaldean” sometimes. Obviously, this did not end Assyrian culture and identity per say, but its role as arguably the foremost hegemon in the history of the world up to that point was over. Babylonians reigned for a few centuries, consolidated Assyrian conquests, got to be the villains in the freshly compiled Hebrew Bible, and finally lost to Persians (who will get a brief paragraph later).. The final period of the history of ancient Mesopotamia is sometimes referred to as “late Babylonian” and “post-Imperial Assyrian” and essentially refers to the intellectual and religious life of culturally Mesopotamian communities under Achaemenid, Seleucid and Parthian rule. As expected, it is basically a gradual decline (though the city of Assur did recover, and Uruk was doing reasonably well) coupled with occasional pursuit of “traditional” lifestyle resulting in puzzling developments like the construction of a new enormous temple for previously seldom worshiped sky god Anu in Uruk, Akkadian continued to be spoken and written, but less and less often, and finally went extinct, though it lived on via loanwords in Aramaic, and less directly in Arabic, Hebrew and Greek. A symbolic end of ancient Mesopotamian culture is often assumed to be the death of cuneiform - it is presumed that the last people capable of reading it lived in the early centuries CE. Some customs presumably persisted longer, especially in Harran, but do not fall for the unhinged wikipedia claim that Mesopotamian religion was alive in the eighteenth century CE, sources from Simo Parpola, a man whose work I can only describe as devious. Dude is convinced Sumerians were basically Finnish, Assyrians were monotheist, and rewrites everything about personal gnostic beliefs. With this crash course in the history of Mesopotamia proper done, let’s look at the periphery of the cuneiform world..

The north was known as Subartu in Mesopotamia, and its inhabitants as Subarians. Subarian was not an endonym, obviously; today it is agreed that in the overwhelming majority of cases, it corresponds to the label “Hurrian”. The Hurrians entered the scene in the Old Akkadian period. They initially lived in the distant north, possibly initially migrating to Mesopotamia from the area around lake Van but eventually spread through much of the north of modern Syria and Iraq, as far as the Kirkuk area in the east, as well as through southeastern Turkey. Hurrian soft power, chiefly in terms of naming patterns and religion, reached even further. Mesopotamian perception of the northerners is a bit mixed: on one hand, they dodged the label of subhuman barbarians and whatnot, on the other the term “shubur” was essentially a fancy synonym of “servant”. However, overall the positive associations seem more common: they could hold prominent positions in royal administration, their religious expertise was often recognized, and there were even cities where the vernacular was seemingly something like a pidgin or creole mixing Hurrian and Akkadian, Nuzi being the main example. The Hurrian language itself was not related to Sumerian or Akkadian, and has only one known relative, Urartian. Both are extinct. The oldest known Hurrian state was Urkesh, a client of the Akkadian Empire. In later periods the well attested examples include Nineveh and Arrapha. The apparent religious capital of the Hurrian world was Kumme, the city of the weather god Teshub, which has yet to be properly located. While Mesopotamians were considerably less invested in weather gods than many of their neighbors, we do nonetheless know it had enough prestige for Zimri-Lim of Mari to honor the local god. The only Hurrian state to reach a more or less imperial scale was Mitanni, roughly contemporary with the Kassite period in Mesopotamia. For unknown reasons, kings of this empire often had names seemingly borrowed from an early Indo-European language, despite writing in Hurrian and Akkadian. How come remains unresolved, and the online discourse sadly often is in thrall of 19th century race science, gleefully kept alive by youtube talking heads, twitter trads with names like AryanHunterGatherer420, Hindu hypernationalists, and other similar groups. It’s basically a largely irrelevant bit of trivia. While Hurrian language reached a degree of prestige midway through the second millennium BCE, with kings in many Syrian cities taking Hurrian regnal names and Hurrian deities spreading to local pantheons as far south as Ugarit on the coast and Qatna inland, the success was ultimately not meant to last, and the resurgent Assyrian state eventually conquered Mitanni, its clients and Hurrianized Syrian statelets, which resulted in the extinction of Hurrian language probably at some point in the early first millennium BCE. Obviously Bronze Age collapse did not help, either.

As a side note - the closest linguistic relatives of Hurrians, Urartians, were not really culturally similar to them, and only entered history in the first millennium BCE. They fought Assyria, built a network of enormous fortresses in the mountains, eventually lost nonetheless and… that seems to be it. They might have played a role in the early history of Armenia.

More parallels can be drawn between strictly Hurrian states and the partially Hurrianized part of Syria. I do not think there is a single agreed upon term meant to refer to this area, sadly, at least one more precise than “archeological sites in northern Syria”. The primary cities of this cultural sphere would be Ugarit, Alalakh, Carchemish, Nuḫašše, Tunip… The degree of “Hurrianization” varied between periods and locations, obviously. Ugarit is a special case: while most sites in the region have not yielded any texts written in a local vernacular language, this city does have an enormous corpus of such texts, often written in a unique script, alphabetic Ugaritic. It was used to write Hurrian locally, too. Labeling Ugarit as “Canaanite”, as often done by neopagans, Bible scholars, wikipedia editors, SMT compendium entry authors and the like is not really correct, as the inhabitants of this city-state themselves were pretty clear about this term designating a completely different area from their point of view.

Ugarit was separated from Canaan with a poorly known kingdom apparently called Amurru. Not much is known about it so I’ll skip it. How come an exonym for westerners used in Mesopotamia came to be an endonym for a kingdom well to the west to traditional sphere of direct influence of Mesopotamian states is beyond me. Canaan in the strict sense starts roughly around Byblos and ends in Gaza, encompassing cities such Sidon or Tyre. After the Bronze Age collapse, the culture Greeks referred to as “Phoenician” arose there. Ugarit by design isn’t really Phoenician because it’s well to the north of that and was gone by the time the maritime Phoenician networks of colonies arose, which seems hard to grasp for Wikipedia.

To finish this section it’s worth noting that the “Hurrianized” zone overlaps with what is typically referred to as “Middle Euphrates”, an area including cities such as Emar (capital of a kingdom known as Aštata) and Tuttul. Technically the term can also encompass the kingdom of Mari which was already discussed before as well (as well as areas such as Suhu and the city of Hit). The primary unifying cultural factor in this entire region was the presence of Dagan as the head of the pantheon; in Mesopotamia he was more or less just a god granting authority over the west, on the coast he is rare, and in Hurro-Hittite sources almost absent.

Anatolia is much more straightforward to explain, at least the part of it which is broadly speaking relevant here. The oldest inhabitants of at the very least the north of the area were the Hattians. Hattians spoke Hattic, which is a language isolate as far as we know, though it has been proposed it might be distantly related to various languages spoken in the Caucasus today.  Hattian culture was evidently urban and reasonably complex, to the point that when subsequently a wave of new groups arrived in Anatolia their culture came to be largely patterned after that of the Hattians; these were the Hittites.

Hittites actually did not call themselves Hittites - they used the term “land of Hatti” for the area they inhabited, and “Nesite” for their language; the latter is derived from Kanesh, a famous and well documented city.

Next to Hittites, speakers of two other Indo-European languages played a role in shaping Bronze Age Anatolia: Palaians, who spoke Palaic and lived in the far north and Luwians who spoke, wait for it, Luwian. In the long run, the last of these groups fared best, and remnants of Luwian religion persisted well into Roman times. Luwians were also seemingly the majority of the people inhabiting the so-called “Neo-Hittite” states which arose after the fall of the Hittite empire; these were eventually all swept up by Assyria and that was pretty much it for their history. I won’t lie: I can’t actually name most of them.

Comparatively little is known about western Anatolia; contrary to what you might hear from Greek mythology fans online, Troy was NOT Hittite (also, Hittites were considerably more interested in east than west, the world, in fact, does not revolve around Greece). It is presumed that the inhabitants of western Bronze Age Anatolia were the forerunners of Lycians, Lydians and Carians of classical antiquity; Phrygians arrived much later.

Already mentioned Hurrians lived in Anatolia too, specifically in the southeast in the kingdom of Kizzuwatna, whose capital was Kummani (not to be confused with Kumme!). It eventually became a Hittite dependency, leading to a period of “Hurrianization” of Hittite culture near the end of the Bronze Age. Hurrian deities suddenly came to occupy the top of the Hittite pantheon. Hittites also started compiling or translating Hurrian literature. The translations sometimes dabble in interpretatio, with some, but not all, Hurrian gods appearing under Hittite names, with variable results (I will never understand what the hell was going through the head of the Hittite who used Anzili as stand-in for Shaushka), but the locations, themes and core plots are evidently Hurrian in origin, and reflect Hurrian theology. And, needless to say, they cannot be randomly combined with Hittite elements - Teshub did not fight Illuyanka nor does he have anything to do with Telipinu, contrary to what shoddy online sources may tell you.

The last part of the question, regarding Persia, is also pretty easy to explain. The history of modern Iran begins roughly contemporarily with Mesopotamia with Elam - this is basically the Mesopotamian term for the area, though, there were multiple states which can be considered “Elamite”. Elamites spoke, wait for it, a language isolate, Elamite. We know there were multiple Elamite states - Awan, Anshan, Shimashi et cetera - but their full extent, detailed history and so on are presently impossible to write. A special case is Susa, which due to proximity to Mesopotamia was a bit like a contact zone between Elamite and Mesopotamian culture, with a heavily “Mesopotamized” pantheon; we do know this city’s history reasonably well. Mesopotamian political interests rarely, if ever, reached further east than Elam; we know there was a state further east, Marhashi, which might correspond to the so-called “Jiroft culture”, and that merchants from even further east, ie. the Indus Valley, were sometimes present in Mesopotamia, but that’s about it. There is no real indication Mesopotamians were aware of the Bactria-Margiana Complex.

Persians only come into the picture in the first millennium BCE. Presumably they started moving into Elamite territory and got at least partially acculturated since the first sources, the Achaemenid archives, indicate that the earliest Persians worshiped both Ahura Mazda (“Auramaza” at the time) and Elamite gods, especially Humban; there is also evidence for coexistence of speakers of Elamite and Persian in various strata of society. Eventually Elamite went out of use though. Other peoples who arrived alongside Persians include the Medes and the Parthians, who spoke closely related languages. That’s basically it.

While the history of the Arabian Peninsula actually does not overlap with Mesopotamia in the discussed period, I suppose it is worth to at least mention Dilmun and Magan, the Bronze Age names for, respectively, Bahrain and Oman; both areas actively traded with Mesopotamia and were seemingly inhabited by speakers of languages related to Amorite. Also, the label “Arab” first appears in the Neo-Assyrian sources and I think it’s safe to assume it was an endonym but little can be said about it other than people using it at the time lived south of Damascus at the time. I can’t really help much with the first millennium BCE kingdoms in that area because I do not actually know much about them.

[aboutanancientenquiry]

Herodotus and the Babylonian "Sacred Marriage"

"The metaphorical substance of the “sacred marriage” expressions was appreciated by all who shared the ANE lore including the Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus (484–425 BCE) as evident by his description of the ziggurat at Babylon. I here argue that although the text has been often quoted as corroborating evidence for the practice of actual “sacred marriages” in the ANE (and the overall disapproval of the Greeks for the practice), a closer reading can reveal that Herodotus does not refer explicitly to sex between a priestess and the god. Once we establish that the “love” of the goddess is metaphorical, then the shift between the millennia becomes primarily an aesthetic one. The text (Hdt.1.181.5–182.1–2) reads:145

ἐν δὲ τῷ τελευταίῳ πύργῳ 146 νηὸς ἔπεστι μέγας· ἐν δὲ τῷ νηῷ κλίνη μεγάλη κέεται εὖ ἐστρωμένη, καὶ οἱ τράπεζα παρακέεται χρυσέη. ἄγαλμα δὲ οὐκ ἔνι οὐδὲν αὐτόθι ἐνιδρυμένον, οὐδὲ νύκτα οὐδεὶς ἐναυλίζεται ἀνθρώπων ὅτι μὴ γυν�� μούνη τῶν ἐπιχωρίων, τὴν ἂν ὁ θεὸς ἕληται ἐκ πασέων, ὡς λέγουσι οἱ Χαλδαῖοι ἐόντες ἱρέες τούτου τοῦ θεοῦ. φασὶ δὲ οἱ αὐτοὶ οὗτοι, ἐμοὶ μὲν οὐ πιστὰ λέγοντες, τὸν θεὸν αὐτὸν φοιτᾶν τε ἐς τὸν νηὸν καὶ ἀμπαύεσθαι ἐπὶ τῆς κλίνης, κατά περ ἐν Θήβῃσι τῇσι Αἰγυπτίῃσι κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον, ὡς λέγουσι οἱ Αἰγύπτιοι· καὶ γὰρ δὴ ἐκεῖθι κοιμᾶται ἐν τῷ τοῦ Διὸς τοῦ Θηβαιέος γυνή, ἀμφότεραι δὲ αὗται λέγονται ἀνδρῶν οὐδαμῶν ἐς ὁμιλίην φοιτᾶν· καὶ κατά περ ἐν Πατάροισι τῆς Λυκίης ἡ πρόμαντις τοῦ θεοῦ, ἐπεὰν γένηται· οὐ γὰρ ὦν αἰεί ἐστι χρηστήριον αὐτόθι· ἐπεὰν δὲ γένηται τότε ὦν συγκατακληίεται τὰς νύκτας ἔσω ἐν τῷ νηῷ.

And in the last tower there is a large cell and in that cell there is a large bed, well covered, and a golden table is placed near it. And there is no image set up there nor does any human being spend the night there except only one woman of the natives of the place, whomsoever the god shall choose from all the women, as the Chaldaeans say who are the priests of this god. These same men also say, but I do not believe them, that the god himself comes often to the cell and rests upon the bed, just as it happens in the Egyptian Thebes according to the report of the Egyptians, for there also a woman sleeps in the temple of the Theban Zeus (and both these women are said to abstain from interacting with men), and as happens also with the prophetess of the god in Patara in Lycia, whenever there is one, for there is not always an oracle there, but whenever there is one, then she is shut up during the nights in the temple within the cell.

Although Herodotus concedes that the god “chooses” the woman (ἕληται) and that he “rests” upon the bed (ἀμπαύεσθαι ἐπὶ τῆς κλίνης) – implying sleeping with the priestess, in fact, what the priests say, using their usual figurative language,147 is that the god visits the woman and inspires her during her sleep with one of his oracles. The phenomenon was apparently known, as Herodotus stresses, in Egyptian Thebes and Lycia. Therefore, it could be argued that the practice may well refer to cases of incubation148 in search for the divine will which was popular throughout the ANE; in fact, it was generally believed that divine dreams could be precipitated by sleeping at the temple of the god,149 a notion familiar to the Greeks of the Hellenistic period, who believed in therapeutic incubation, especially in connection with the cult of Asclepius.150 In ANE tradition, the dreams often had to do with legitimizing the king’s rule 151 and were attested from the earliest times: therefore, Edzard cited the early example of Gudea of Lagash (ca. 2144–2124 BCE), inscribed on a cylinder (E3/1.1.7 CylA); according to the text, Gudea seeks a dream from the god Ningiršu which he then aims to relate to his mother, a dream interpreter, for further analysis.152 As discussed in Chapter 1, from the time of Gudea 153 to the time of Tukulti-Ninurta I (1244–1208 BCE) building temples became a sign of divine favour and at the same time a way of securing the immortality of the king.154 In one message dream from Ištar, the message is for Aššurbanipal, but the goddess has sent it through a professional dream interpreter, to pass on to the king. The dream occurs during the war against Elam presumably in the temple; while Aššurbanipal prays, and indeed receives comforting words from the goddess himself, apparently while awake, the goddess sends a dream to a šabrû (a male dream interpreter) with further instructions concerning what Aššurbanipal should do.

Since message dreams can be used to justify political actions, Butler interprets the dreams as “propaganda.” For example, the dream of Gudea explains the motivation behind building a temple (Gudea Cylinder A). Having received an unsolicited dream from the god Ningiršu, Gudea, seeking further help, offers bread and water to the goddess Gatumdug, then sets up a bed next to her statue and sleeps there, having prayed to Gatumdug for a sign, and calling on the goddess Nanše, the interpreter of dreams, to interpret it for him. All the dreams relate to the building of the temple. The Hittites had a similar practice in which the receiver of the dream could be either the king himself or a prophet or a priestess.155 It is also worth examining here the case of Nabonidus (556–539 BCE), whom Herodotus refers to as Labynetus (Hdt.1.77, 188) and who interpreted a lunar eclipse on the 13th of the month Elul as a celestial sign from the Moon-god who “desired” a priestess, understood to be the god’s “mistress” (īrišu enta).156

Obviously, the question to be asked here is whether any member of the ancient audiences, including Herodotus, understood these reports to imply actual sexual activity between the god and the priestess. The metaphorical understanding of “sacred marriage” ceremonies could ease a number of unresolved debates such as whether a “sacred marriage” was included in the akītu festival and whether it was ever found “distasteful” by the Hellenistic kings. Herodotus’ rendering seems to be quite close to the figurative speech found in cuneiform sources, such as the clay cylinder of Nabonidus reportedly from Ur.157 In addition, Herodotus does not seem to comment specifically on the nature of the relationship between the god and his chosen priestess, probably because he appreciated the allegorical language of the priests.158 What he doubts, though, is that any actual epiphany took place in this instance or even whether divine epiphanies could be thus achieved.159 Hence, Herodotus’ objection does not relate to the “sacred marriage” ceremony at all but to the rite’s effectiveness as a means of communicating with the divine. Such reading is compatible with recent evaluations of Herodotus and his employment of religion as a way of explaining the downfall of powerful rulers; it is not the god who is at fault, of course, but the mortal worshippers who fail to interpret the signs correctly.160 Interestingly a number of texts accuse Nabonidus of cultic innovations that had not been demanded by the gods at all.161 Nabonidus’ religious piety had already been systematically exaggerated in the autobiography of his mother, Adad-guppi, as a way of legitimizing her son’s claim to power, and hence, the god’s “desire” for Nabonidus’ daughter should be understood in the same light.162"

Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides In the Garden of the Gods. Models of kingship from the Sumerians to the Seleucids, Routledge 2017 (pp 84-86)

[kiyote23]

Ashur (god) - Wikipedia

In the Old Assyrian period, the kings never assumed the title of king, instead referring to themselves as the governor (iššiak) or city ruler (rubā’um), reserving the title of king instead for Ashur.[9] Pongratz-Leisten notes that similar cases could be found in Pre-Sargonic Lagash, where the kings of Lagash designated themselves as the ENSI (governor) of Lagash, and also in Eshnunna, especially…

[fatehbaz]

For posterity, from my earlier/first answer to this question, regarding other big creatures and devegetation in the eastern Mediterranean, just to get all of this stuff in one post/place:

How dramatic was the deforestation?

[Excerpt:] While some texts merely allude to environmental degradation, such as the Sumerian gardener Shukallituda's experimentation with agroforestry in the wake of deforestation [...] others contain explicit description of forest clearance, including the claim of Gudea of Lagash (2141-2122 BC), who "made a path" into the forest, "cut its cedars," and sent cedar rafters floating "like giant snakes" down the Euphrates [...]. Despite declining biological diversity and productivity, the annals of Ashurnasirpal II [king of Assyria from 883-859 BC] describe abundant wildlife and a substantial inventory of domesticated livestock. He claimed to have slain 450 lions, killed 390 wild bulls, decapitated 200 ostriches; caught thirty elephants in pitfalls; and captured alive fifty wild bulls, 140 ostriches, and twenty adult lions. In addition, he received five live elephants as tribute, and "organized herds of wild bulls, lions, ostriches, and [...] monkeys." At a banquet on the occasion of the inauguration of the palace at Kalhu (biblical Calah), his 69,574 guests dined on 1200 head of cattle and 1000 calves; 11,000 sheep and 16,000 lambs; 500 stags; 500 gazelles; 1000 ducks; 1000 geese; 1000 mesuku birds, 1000 qaribu birds, 20,000 doves, and 10,000 other assorted small birds; 10,000 assorted fish; and 10,000 jerboas - along with enormous quantities of beer and wine, milk, cheese, eggs, bread, fruit and vegetables, and a vast number of other offerings. [...] Hence, many indigenous societies were disrupted, reconfigured, and dominated prior to formal colonial annexation. [...] In Western Asia, patterns of [ecological] disturbance and [social] domination emerge with the complex interplay of ascendant [...] aristocracies in the fifth millennium BC - patterns that cascade through history. [End of excerpt.] Source: Jeffrey A. Gritzner. "Environment, Culture, and the American Presence in Western Asia: An Exploratory Essay." 2010.

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If the description is to be taken as authentic, this deforestation was intense enough that cedar trunks floated down the Euphrates "like giant snakes". Assyrian princes caught elephants in pitfall traps for sport.

The cedar forests of the Fertile Crescent probably hosted oryx and gazelles with nearby populations of Syrian elephant, Syrian ostrich (Parthians gifted ostriches to Chinese courts; ostrich art appears in Tang-era China), the Asiatic lion, cheetahs, leopards, and the Caspian tiger.

Extinction of some of these creatures only happened very recently within the past century-ish: Tigers, lions, cheetah, caracal, and leopard were all alive in Persia, Anatolia, the Levant, the Caucasus, and Mesopotamia within the last 125 years.

OK so I actually have a better answer, now. The other post, where I initially responded to this message, addresses the forests of the Fertile Crescent, the effects of devegetation on other large creatures (tigers, elephants, etc.) that historically lived in the Levant and Mesopotamia, the extinction of rhinos in most of China, and the possibility that Stephanorhinus (a Pleistocene rhino from a now-extinct genus) survived until the early Holocene. But here, I want to talk about rhinos in North Africa. In my initial response, in naming Stephanorhinus hemitoechus as a potential inhabitant of the Middle East, I was distracted and thinking about rhinos living in the Levant/Assyria and Mesopotamia specifically. If the question is “have rhinos lived in the Middle East during the Holocene?” … then I think it’s important to emphasize this: The extinct Ceratotherium mauritanicum (in the same genus as white rhinos) and the still-living Ceratotherium cottoni (the “northern white rhino” or “Nile rhino”) were both alive in Morocco and Algeria during the Holocene. And the northern white rhino probably survived in the Sahara for longer. Holocene rock art across the Sahara depicts rhinos. Some petroglyphs, perhaps as young as 7,000 years old, depict rhinos in Morocco, Libya, and Egypt.

Short answer: There were white rhinos, possibly two different species of white rhinos, living in North Africa and near the Mediterranean coast in the Holocene long after the construction of Gobekli Tepe.

The “rhinos of the Middle East” are white rhinos. Within a matter of a few years, they will no longer exist on this planet.

As of 2022, there are only two remaining northern white rhinos left alive. This species will be extinct, vanished, very soon, within our lifetimes.

And it turns out that this so-called northern white rhino, Ceratotherium cottoni, seems to have inhabited Egypt, Libya, Algeria, and the Mediterranean coast of North Africa during the early Holocene.

In media campaigns and textbooks, this creature has long been a prominent example of a “critically endangered species.”

The “northern white rhino” is also called the “Nile rhino”. This creature a unique subspecies, Ceratotherium simum cottoni. However some researchers instead consider it to be a unique species of its own, Ceratotherium cottoni. In 2018, “Sudan,” the last male of the species, passed away. The two remaining northern white rhinos, Fatu and the older Najin, are both over the age of 20. In October 2021, Najin was “retired,” or determined to be ineligible for breeding.

—

We have no evidence that Stephanorhinus survived into the Holocene, or any later than 14,000 years ago. But if we consider the wider “Middle East” and incorporate the Mediterranean coast of North Africa, then rhinos were still present until at least 9,500-ish years ago. Long story short:

Basically, even if Stephanorhinus went extinct before the end of the Pleistocene, Ceratotherium mauritanicum could have been alive on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa for several thousand more years. And then even if Ceratotherium mauritanicum went extinct at the beginning of the Holocene, it remains possible that remnant populations of the still-living northern white rhino lived in North Africa (since we know they previously lived across the entire region as far as Morocco). Finally, even the still-living black rhino may have lived farther north into Egypt before the ascent of the Old Kingdom.

Ancient rock art of a rhino in the Draa valley of Morocco:

The rhinos depicted in the early-Holocene rock art could be either the extinct C. mauritanicum or locally-extinct populations of the extant white rhino.

Furthermore, considering the “Green Sahara” of the middle Holocene was much wetter and featured savanna landscapes, the still-living black rhinoceros may also have had a wider distribution, at least up until the time that the Sahara began to dry again which coincidentally aligns with the time of earliest dynastic Egypt. White rhinos (both the extinct C. mauritanicum and the living white rhinos) seem better adapted to dryland environments, like those of the Sahara and North Africa. And black rhinos seem more associated with seasonal woodland and more-vegetated landscapes. But the “Green Sahara” may have suitable to some black rhinos.

However, rhinos remain conspicuously absent from Egyptian depictions of the lower Nile. Therefore, I doubt rhinos persisted anywhere near the Fertile Crescent after 3000 BC.

Here’s the “Green Sahara” landscape, featuring “Lake Mega-Chad” and large areas of vegetated savanna and wetland:

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So here’s the geographical gap we’re talking about.

And this might appear conspicuous, given that within human history, other large mammals like elephants lived in both Africa and Asia and also in the Fertile Crescent between them; lions and cheetahs and leopards lived in both Africa and Asia and also in the Fertile Crescent between them.

Distribution map of the 6 living species/subspecies of rhinoceros (made with working-class GIS, MS Paint, lol):

That’s what rhino distribution looks like “in history.” Today, rhinos are extinct across like 99% of all of that distribution range, though.

Anyway, here’s what the Late Pleistocene in North Africa looks like.

Note that I haven’t included the woolly rhino, the Siberian unicorn,  or Stephanorhinus mercki, all three of which lived farther north in Europe, Central Asia, and northern East Asia.

Note that at 12,000 years ago, the northern white rhino’s distribution is wider than it is today.

Even the straightforward W!ikipedia article about Ceratotherium mauritanicum explicitly proposes that the rhino was still alive during the “earliest Holocene” and disappeared “by the Mesolithic.” Now, even when following-up with academic sources, I have questions about how the distinction between two species is being made. Here’s what we know:

- Ceratotherium mauritanicum was definitely alive during the Late Pleistocene, and maybe later, and was definitely present in Morocco.

- The closely-related Ceratotherium cottoni, the still-living “northern white rhinoceros,” was also living in Morocco and northern Algeria during the Late Pleistocene, alongside C. mauritanicum.

- Rhinos are depicted in ancient artwork/petroglyphs from the early Holocene in Morocco.

My question is: If C. mauritanicum and C. cottoni (a still-living species) were so closely-related and living in the same place, can we really know which species of rhino is depicted in the ancient rock art?

Furthermore, it’s still possible, also, that the still-living black rhinoceros ranged further northward in the “Green Sahara” during the early Holocene. It has been suggested that some rock art in Egypt, east of the Nile, depicts the black rhino, but I don’t know where this oft-repeated claim comes from?

So finally, this is my guess at the presence of rhinos by the time of pre-dynastic Egypt:

Anyway, if you want to do some research, these are sites with artwork depicting rhinoceros from pre-dynastic and/or early dynastic Egypt, the early Mesolithic, “Bubalus” style locations, or the early Holocene generally (from maybe 8000 years before present, or younger):

L’Assif N’Talaisane in the High Atlas of Morocco; Yagour in the High Atlas of Morocco; Messak-Tadrart area of Libya; Aramat area of Libya; Gilf Kebir in Egypt

Elephants are even more common in early Holocene art from the Sahara. A lot of these sites also have petroglyphs of giraffes, too, including the “Giraffe Caves” at Gebel Uwaynat at the Egypt-Sudan frontier.

A giraffe in ancient rock art in Libya:

“The last humid period […] end[ed] about the time of the first Pharaoh in Egypt.”

Even without rhino presence, here’s the milieu of creatures known to be present in the eastern Mediterranean in the Holocene up until at least the Bronze Age:

Asian elephant (in Assyria, eastern Anatolia, and Mesopotamia); African elephant (in Nubia, Kush, Punt and probably also in Algeria until Rome’s conquering of Carthage); aurochs; hippopotamus (in Nile delta, Sinai, and at times in Phoenicia/Lebanon); gazelles; Arabian oryx; Asiatic lion (widespread, including Greece and Balkans until 500 BC and Mesopotamia until 20th century); Caspian tiger (in eastern Anatolia, the Caucasus, Hyrcania, Kwarazmia, in some places until the mid-20th-century); Arabian leopard and Persian leopard (both still present); caracal; cheetah (widespread though probably intermittent, still alive in Persia); Syrian ostrich (now extinct); sacred crocodile (in Nile delta, coastal Palestine, and isolated oases in Tunisia and Morocco)

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Anyway. After the construction of Gobekli Tepe, after the decline of (most!) woolly mammoths, after the end of the Pleistocene, as “civilizations” emerged in Egypt and Mesopotamia, was there a rhinoceros that lived naturally in the eastern Mediterranean? Probably, yes. The white rhino. Maybe two different kinds of white rhinos. But they were probably gone by the time of dynastic Egypt. And of that entire lineage of North African white rhinos, only two individuals survive on the planet today.

We will live to see the final end of North African white rhinos.

[goyesariel]

Ancient Mesopotamia(Modern History)

Introduction:

Ancient Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, relied heavily on water for its survival. Water conservation was a cornerstone of its success, as it developed complex irrigation systems, flood control measures, and city planning to efficiently manage this vital resource. These early societies recognized the crucial role of water and left behind records of their efforts. Understanding water's significance in ancient Mesopotamia provides valuable insights for modern water conservation in the face of growing global water scarcity.

Historical context:

Water conservation was of great historical significance in ancient Mesopotamia, which encompassed the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (modern-day Iraq, southeastern Turkey, and parts of Iran and Syria). This area is often referred to as the "cradle of civilization" because it was home to some of the world's earliest advanced societies.

Key figures and actions:

King Urukagina: This Sumerian ruler from the city of Lagash in the 24th century BCE is famous for one of the earliest known legal codes. His laws included regulations on water usage and the fair distribution of water resources among citizens, emphasizing equity in water management.

Hammurabi: The sixth Babylonian king, known for Hammurabi's Code (circa 1754 BCE), set laws for water rights and management. His code addressed issues like the proper use of water for irrigation and established responsibilities for maintaining canals and dikes.

Cuneiform Tablets: The extensive records kept on clay tablets in cuneiform script often included references to water management, allocation of water resources, and efforts to prevent water waste.

Outcomes and impact:

Those were significant and contributed to the prosperity and sustainability of the region's early civilizations. Here are some of the key outcomes and impacts of water conservation in ancient Mesopotamia:

Agricultural Productivity: Water conservation measures, including sophisticated irrigation systems and the efficient use of water resources, led to increased agricultural productivity. This surplus in food production allowed for population growth and urban development.

Societal Growth: The efficient management of water resources facilitated the growth of cities and urban centers, leading to the development of complex societies and the rise of advanced civilizations in Mesopotamia.

Economic Prosperity: Abundant crops, made possible by water conservation, formed the economic backbone of Mesopotamian societies. This prosperity enabled trade and specialization of labor, driving economic growth.

Relevance to contemporary issues:

Water Scarcity: The arid climate of Mesopotamia mirrors the water scarcity issues faced by many regions today. The lessons from ancient Mesopotamia emphasize the importance of efficient water use and responsible management in the face of diminishing water resources.

Climate Change: Contemporary climate change impacts water availability and quality. The historical focus on flood control and efficient irrigation can inform modern strategies for adapting to climate change and mitigating its effects.

Urban Planning: Ancient Mesopotamian city planning with water management in mind provides insights for sustainable urban development. Integrating rainwater harvesting and wastewater management into city planning can address contemporary issues related to urbanization and water supply.

Resume:

Ancient Mesopotamia's innovative and advanced approach to water conservation, tailored to the arid climate of the region, was instrumental in the rise of early civilizations. Their efficient irrigation systems, flood control measures, and urban planning set a precedent for sustainable resource management.

The relevance of these historical practices is striking in today's context of water scarcity, climate change, and urbanization. We can draw lessons from Mesopotamia to address contemporary challenges such as responsible water use, equitable resource distribution, and sustainable urban development.

The legacy of ancient Mesopotamia's water conservation efforts reminds us of the importance of innovation, resource equity, and environmental stewardship in ensuring a resilient and prosperous future for our world. These timeless principles continue to guide our collective journey toward sustainable water management and a more sustainable world.