The _Epic of Gilgamesh_, a 3600-year 12-tablet collection, was looted from an Iraqi museum during the 1991 Gulf War, and fraudulently imported into the United States. In September, 2021, UNESCO facilitated its repatriation to Iraq, which is seen as an occasion to consolidate Iraq’s efforts to rebuild its legacy, since the _Epic of Gilgamesh_ is of immense cultural, historical and religious value for Iraq The current study examines the _Epic of Gilgamesh_ in the light of the ancient Sumerian and Akkadian (...) traditions. This collection of tablets carries a great legacy of the contemporary Babylonian and Mesopotamian beliefs and socio-religious values, also evident in the use of cuneiform and clay tablets, being ancient forms of writings. The study made use of content analysis and historical and analytical approaches to retrieve data through a documentation research design. The study found that the _Epic of Gilgamesh_ is not only a work of religious literature, but a treatise on civilization. On one hand it narrates the stories engrained in the Mesopotamian mythology, such as those of Ninsun, Shamash and Utnapishtim; on the other hand, owing to its content, literary style and tone, characterization and symbolism, this study would be a great contribution to relive the story of Gilgamesh from current literary, and socio-religious perspective and provide a comprehensive account of the legacy and inheritance that it brings in for the modern generation. (shrink)

The article explores the question whether there was a possible dialogue between ancient Greek and Mesopotamian chronography. This is an interesting albeit challenging subject due to the fragmentary preservation of the Greek texts. The idea that cuneiform tablets might have influenced the development of the genre in Greece lingers in the background without having been the subject of detailed discussion. Notably the Neo-Assyrian limmu list has been suggested as a possible blueprint for the Athenian archon list. In order to (...) examine this topic further, a thorough analysis of ancient Greek chronography starting in the second half of the fifth century BC, when eponymous dates in various literary compositions begin to appear, is required. A close examination of the fragmentary evidence shows how difficult it is to trace the supposed annalistic style in the local histories of Athens (Atthides). In the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the eponymous limmu officials served as the chronological backbone, but there remains a huge time gap between the seventh century cuneiform manuscripts and the Athenian archon list from the fifth century. A comparison of the Neo-Assyrian Eponymous Chronicles with the preserved Greek chronographic traditions in Eusebius’ chronicle (fourth century AD) shows that the similarity is mainly confined to an abbreviated style, as the entries clearly point to the different cultural and political settings. Apart from the Neo-Assyrian sources, the Neo- and Late-Babylonian chronicles deserve further attention in the present inquiry. Looking for a connection with ancient Greek chronography in the fifth century, the lack of wholly preserved texts on both sides in the corresponding time constitutes an unsurmountable obstacle. Presenting and scrutinising the textual evidence both for ancient Greek and for Mesopotamian chronography enables an improved understanding of similarities and differences alike. To exemplify this point, Greek and Akkadian temple histories serve as test cases. (shrink)

Much of the surviving text of the Epic of Etana tells the story of an eagle and a snake. The eagle and snake are extraordinary creatures, and their story abounds with mythological subtext. This paper argues that the Neo-Assyrian recension of Etana was amended to include explicit references to the eagle and the snake by the names of their mythological counterparts, anzû and bašmu. These references occur in two analogous contexts and serve the same narrative purpose: to dehumanize the other (...) when the eagle and the snake seek to do each other harm. The deliberate character of these changes and their symmetry suggest that they are the product of a conscientious scribe with a developed literary sensibility. (shrink)

Inquiries about existence in Mesopotamia started with the Sumerians. They set an example for the civilizations established in this geography and affected them deeply. According to Sumerian mythology, they are cosmic forces identified with fresh water, salt water and mist that are eternal. With the combination of these cosmic elements, the sky and the earth, which are symbolized by the gods, were formed. The whole they formed was separated from each other by Enlil, who was identified with air, and celestial (...) bodies were formed with the expansion of air. The Semites continued this understanding with its main lines. In the Babylonian Epic of Creation, the beginning of the cosmic process is based on the generational conflict between the gods and is explained with the sacrifice of Tiamat, one of the first cosmic forces. The Chief God Marduk shattered Tiamat and created the universe from her remains, and man from the remains of Kingsu. According to the Mesopotamian mythological tradition, gods were derived from the first cosmic elements, which were eternal, and then they created the universe and man from these cosmic remains. According to Egyptian mythology, the eternal is the ocean. The primary gods, who existed in the eternal ocean, created the universe and humans with their natural secretions. According to many mythological narratives, the dominant god has performed the act of creation by expressing his thoughts or the imagination of the heart. As in Mesopotamian mythology, gods and natural beings were identified with a symbolic language in Egyptian mythology. Greek mythological approaches are gathered in outlines in the works of Homer and Hesiod, who are considered to be the founders of religion. Homer stated that the eternal, the divine ocean, is the source of everything. According to Hesiod, in the beginning, chaos (emptiness) occurred, and then the universe, gods and human beings emerged from this chaos, respectively. These understandings of existence also contain a significant amount of philosophical content. There is a parallelism between the understanding of being in myths and those of philosophers. (shrink)

The Babylonian Theodicy. By Takayoshi Oshima. State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts, vol. 9. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2013. Pp. lxiii + 63. $39. [Distributed by Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, Ind.].

The Mesopotamian system of sexagesimal counting numbers was based on the progressive series of units 1, 10, 1·60, 10·60, …. It may have been in use already before the invention of writing, with the mentioned units represented by various kinds of small clay tokens. After the invention of proto-cuneiform writing, c. 3300 BC, it continued to be used, with the successive units of the system represented by distinctive impressed cup- and disk-shaped number signs. Other kinds of “metrological” number systems (...) in the proto-cuneiform script, with similar number signs, were used to denote area numbers, capacity numbers, etc. In a handful of known mathematical cuneiform texts from the latter half of the third millennium BC, the ancient systems of sexagesimal counting numbers and area numbers were still in use, alongside new kinds of systems of capacity numbers and weight numbers. Large area numbers, capacity numbers, and weight numbers were counted sexagesimally, while each metrological number system had its own kind of fractional units. In the system of counting numbers itself, fractions could be expressed as sixtieths, sixtieths of sixtieths, and so on, but also in terms of small units borrowed from the system of weight numbers. Among them were the “basic fractions” which we would understand as 1/3, 1/2, and 2/3. In a very early series of metro-mathematical division exercises and an equally early metro-mathematical table of squares, “quasi-integers” of the form “integer plus basic fraction” play a prominent role. Quasi-integers play an essential role also in a recently found atypical cuneiform table of reciprocals. The invention of sexagesimal numbers in place-value notation, in the Neo-Sumerian period c. 2000 BC, was based on a series of innovations. The range of the system of sexagesimal counting numbers was extended indefinitely both upward and downward, and the use of quasi-integers was abolished. Sexagesimal place-value numbers were used for all kinds of calculations in Old Babylonian mathematical cuneiform texts, c. 1700 BC, while traditional metrological numbers were retained in both questions and answers of the exercises. Examples of impressive computations of reciprocals of many-place regular sexagesimal place-value numbers, with no practical applications whatsoever, are known from the Old Babylonian period. In the Late Babylonian period, such computations were still popular, performed by the same persons who constructed the many-place sexagesimal tables that make up the corpus of Late Babylonian mathematical astronomy. (shrink)

Most of what is told in this paper has been told before by the same author, in a number of publications of various kinds, but this is the first time that all this material has been brought together and treated in a uniform way. Smaller errors in the earlier publications are corrected here without comment. It has been known since the 1920s that quadratic equations played a prominent role in Babylonian mathematics. See, most recently, Høyrup (Hist Sci 34:1–32, 1996, and (...) Lengths, widths, surfaces: a portrait of old Babylonian algebra and its kin. Springer, New York, 2002). What has not been known, however, is how quadratic equations came to play that role, since it is difficult to think of any practical use for quadratic equations in the life and work of a Babylonian scribe. One goal of the present paper is to show how the need to find solutions to quadratic equations actually arose in Mesopotamia not later than in the second half of the third millennium BC, and probably before that in connection with certain geometric division of property problems. This issue was brought up for the first time in Friberg (Cuneiform Digit Lib J 2009:3, 2009). In this connection, it is argued that the tool used for the first exact solution of a quadratic equation was either a clever use of the “conjugate rule” or a “completion of the square,” but that both methods ultimately depend on a certain division of a square, the same in both cases. Another, closely related goal of the paper is to discuss briefly certain of the most impressive achievements of anonymous Babylonian mathematicians in the first half of the second millennium BC, namely recursive geometric algorithms for the solution of various problems related to division of figures, more specifically trapezoidal fields. For an earlier, comprehensive (but less accessible) treatment of these issues, see Friberg (Amazing traces of a Babylonian origin in Greek mathematics. WorldScientific, Singapore 2007b, Ch. 11 and App. 1). (shrink)

BM 76829, a fragment from the mid-section of a small tablet from Sippar in Late Babylonian script, preserves what remains of two new unparalleled pieces from the cuneiform astronomical repertoire relating to the zodiac. The text on the obverse assigns numerical values to sectors assigned to zodiacal signs, while the text on the reverse seems to relate zodiacal signs with specific days or intervals of days. The system used on the obverse also presents a new way of representing the (...) concept of numerical ‘zero’ in cuneiform, and for the first time in cuneiform, a system for dividing the horizon into six arcs in the east and six arcs in the west akin to that used in the Astronomical Book of Enoch. Both the obverse and the reverse may describe the periodical courses of the sun and moon, in a similar way to what is found in astronomical texts from Qumran, thus adding to our knowledge of the scientific relationship between the two cultures. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper argues that ancient Babylonian signs (omens) reflect a mode of inferential reasoning as a function of their syntactic and logical structure as conditionals. Taking into account the institutional context that produced a systematic written body of omens, the paper is principally interested in the cognitive disposition of such texts. Investigating what constitutes system in these works, formal aspects of the material are examined in terms of the nature of conditionals and the logic of conditional statements. It is argued (...) that conditional statements about ominous phenomena speak as much to a notion of conceivability and possibility as to empirical physical actuality. It is claimed that the epistemological character of the Babylonian compendia of signs cannot be understood without due attention to epistemic possibility and further, that the cuneiform omen texts comprise a different kind of scientific knowledge from that limited to a knowledge of physical phenomena and their laws. (shrink)

In the final tablet of Ludlul bēl nēmeqi lines 42–53 Šubši-mešrê-Šakkan passes through twelve gates in or near the precincts of Marduk’s Esagila in Babylon. As the protagonist passes through these twelve gates he is symbolically rehabilitated and reintegrated into society, marking the end of his trials and the beginning of his Marduk-renewed life. One gate is named in each of the twelve lines. At each gate, identified in the first half of the line, the protagonist is granted something positive, (...) which is described in the second half of the line. In the present study I argue that the author of Ludlul derived the substance of what the sufferer received at each gate—and therefore the textual substance of the second half of each of these poetic lines—from the names of the gates themselves via the same kinds of learned scribal interpretive methods used in commentary and explanatory texts. That is, the author of Ludlul connected the names of the gates and the descriptions of what the sufferer received at each by way of applied translations of the Sumerian gate names, sound plays on the words and syllables comprising the names of the gates, graphic plays on the cuneiform signs with which the names are written, and in at least one case a mythological interpretation based on the gate’s name. (shrink)

Significant progress has been made in understanding Mesopotamian astronomy and astrology since the decipherment of cuneiform tablets containing astronomical and astrological texts in the late nineteenth century. However, until now few attempts have been made to write a detailed history of the Mesopotamian astral sciences as opposed to detailed studies of particular texts and types of astronomy or astrology. My aim in this paper is to present some ideas of how such a history should be written and in particular (...) to consider if and how visual evidence can be brought alongside textual evidence in the writing of this history. (shrink)

Sargonic Cuneiform Tablets in the Real Academia de la Historia: The Carl L. Lippmann Collection. By Manuel Molina. Catálogo del Gabinete de Antigüedades. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia and Ministerio de Cultura de la República de Iraq, 2014. Pp. 317, 337 plts.

Dr. Drew A. Hyland traces the origins of philosophy from its earliest roots in Babylonian and Homeric-Hesiodic mythology to its flowering in the Pre-Socratic imagination. Using selections from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Hesiod, Homer, Pythagoras, Zeno, Plato, and Socrates, to name but a few, Dr. Hyland argues against what he calls the "historical approach" to the origin of philosophy. In Hyland's view the differentiation of the human self from notions of God and nature may rightly be called the origin of (...) philosophy. The book's skilled intermingling of original source material, with commentaries by Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger, among others, and the author's own thought-provoking introduction, provides an invaluable study of this fascinating period in human intellectual development. (shrink)

Babylonian Oracle Questions. By W. G. Lambert. Mesopotamian Civilizations, vol. 13. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2007. Pp. xiv + 216, plates. $49.50.

Neo-Sumerian Administrative Tablets from the Yale Babylonian Collection, Parts One and Two. By Marcel Sigrist and Tohru Ozaki. Biblioteca del Próximo Oriente Antiguo, vols. 6–7. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2009. Pp. 613, 601.

Conditional Structures in Mesopotamian Old Babylonian. By Eran Cohen. Languages of the Ancient Near East, vol. 4. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2012. Pp. x + 198. $44.50.

Corpus of Middle Babylonian and Middle Assyrian Incantations. By Elyze Zomer. Leipziger Altorientalische Studien, vol. 9. Wiesbaden: HarrassowitZ Verlag, 2018. Pp. xxiv + 463, 3 pls. €84.

Machine generated contents note: Part I: Sources for Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography -- 1. The Levels of the Universe: KAR 307 30-38 and AO 8196 iv 20-223 -- 2. "The Babylonian Map of the World"20 -- 3. The Flights of Etana and the Eagle into the Heavens43 -- 4. The Sargon Geography67 -- 5. Gilgamesh and the Distant Reaches of the Earth's Surface 96 -- 6. Cosmic Geography in Accounts of Creation 107 -- 7. The Geography of the Sky: The "Astrolabes', (...) Mul-Apin, and Related Texts150 -- 8. BagM. Beih. 2 no. 98 and the Compass Points193 -- 9. "Seven Heavens and Seven Earths"208 -- Part II: The Regions of the Universe -- Names for Heaven223 -- 11. The Geography of the Heavens243 -- 12. Names for Earth268 -- 13. The Geography of Earth318 -- Appendixes363 -- Indexes369 -- Subject Index369 -- Ancient Texts and Modern Editions382 -- Sumerian and Akkadian Terms391 -- Stars3 9 7 -- Plates399. (shrink)