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Nin-UM
Inanna of Zabalam (also Supālītum, Sugallītu, Nin-Zabalam) was a hypostasis of the Mesopotamian goddess Inanna associated with the city of Zabalam. It has been proposed that she was initially a separate deity, perhaps known under the name Nin-UM, who came to be absorbed by the goddess of Uruk at some point in the prehistory of Mesopotamia and lost her unknown original character in the process, though in certain contexts she nonetheless could still be treated as distinct. She was regarded as the mother of Shara, the god of Umma, a city located near Zabalam. The worship of Inanna of Zabalam is already attested in the early texts from the Uruk period, which makes her one of the oldest tutelary goddesses of specific cities known from Mesopotamian sources. Her temple was known under the ceremonial name Gigunna. It is attested in sources from Early Dynastic, Sargonic and Ur III periods, and from various literary texts. Later on, she came to be associated with the city of Larsa. An ...
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Zame (hymns)
''Zame Hymns'' or ''Zami Hymns'' are a sequence of 70 Sumerian hymns from the Early Dynastic period discovered in Abu Salabikh. Their conventional title is modern, and reflects the recurring use of the formula ''zame'', "praise". They are the oldest known Mesopotamian collection of hymns, and some of the oldest literary cuneiform texts overall. No copies have been discovered outside Abu Salabikh, and it is possible that they reflect a local tradition. However, partial parallels have been identified in texts associated with other sites such as Fara and Kesh. The sequence consists of 70 hymns, each of which is dedicated to a deity associated with a specific location. Most of them belonged to the pantheon of southern Mesopotamia, with northern deities being less numerous and these from more distant areas like Ebla, Mari and Susa absent altogether. While the first eleven hymns are dedicated to major, well attested deities such as Enlil, Inanna, Nanna or Ningal, some of the oth ...
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Shara (god)
Shara ( Sumerian: 𒀭𒁈, '' dšara2'') was a Mesopotamian god associated with the city of Umma and other nearby settlements. He was chiefly regarded as the tutelary deity of this area, responsible for agriculture, animal husbandry, and irrigation, but he could also be characterized as a divine warrior. In the third millennium BCE, his wife was Ninura, associated with the same area, but later, in the Old Babylonian period, her cult faded into obscurity, and Shara was instead associated with Usaḫara or Kumulmul. An association between him and Inanna is well attested. In Umma, he was regarded as the son of Inanna of Zabalam and an unknown father, while in the myth ''Inanna's Descent to the Underworld,'' he is one of the servants mourning her temporary death. He also appears in the myth of Anzû, in which he is one of the three gods who refuse to fight the eponymous monster. Character While the original etymology of Shara's name is unknown, according to Fabienne Huber Vuillet ...
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Inanna
Inanna is the List of Mesopotamian deities, ancient Mesopotamian goddess of war, love, and fertility. She is also associated with political power, divine law, sensuality, and procreation. Originally worshipped in Sumer, she was known by the Akkadian Empire, Akkadians, Babylonian religion, Babylonians, and Assyrians as Ishtar. Her primary title is Queen of Heaven (antiquity), "the Queen of Heaven". She was the patron goddess of the Eanna temple at the city of Uruk, her early main religious center. In archaic Uruk, she was worshipped in three forms: morning Inanna (Inana-UD/hud), evening Inanna (Inanna sig), and princely Inanna (Inanna NUN), the former two reflecting the phases of her associated planet Venus. Her most prominent symbols include the Lion of Babylon, lion and the Star of Ishtar, eight-pointed star. Her husband is the god Dumuzid (later known as Tammuz), and her (attendant) is the goddess Ninshubur, later conflated with the male deities Ilabrat and Papsukkal. Inanna ...
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Babylon
Babylon ( ) was an ancient city located on the lower Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia, within modern-day Hillah, Iraq, about south of modern-day Baghdad. Babylon functioned as the main cultural and political centre of the Akkadian-speaking region of Babylonia. Its rulers established two important empires in antiquity, the 19th–16th century BC Old Babylonian Empire, and the 7th–6th century BC Neo-Babylonian Empire. Babylon was also used as a regional capital of other empires, such as the Achaemenid Empire. Babylon was one of the most important urban centres of the ancient Near East, until its decline during the Hellenistic period. Nearby ancient sites are Kish, Borsippa, Dilbat, and Kutha. The earliest known mention of Babylon as a small town appears on a clay tablet from the reign of Shar-Kali-Sharri (2217–2193 BC), of the Akkadian Empire. Babylon was merely a religious and cultural centre at this point and neither an independent state nor a large city, s ...
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Lexical Lists
The cuneiform lexical lists are a series of ancient Mesopotamian glossaries which preserve the semantics of Sumerograms, their phonetic value and their Akkadian or other language equivalents. They are the oldest literary texts from Mesopotamia and one of the most widespread genres in the ancient Near East. Wherever cuneiform tablets have been uncovered, inside Iraq or in the wider Middle East, these lists have been discovered. History The earliest lexical lists are the archaic (early third millennium BC) word lists uncovered in caches of business documents and which comprise lists of nouns, the absence of verbs being due to their sparse use in these records of commercial transactions. The most notable text is LU A, a list of professions which would be reproduced for the next thousand years until the end of the Old Babylonian period virtually unchanged. Later third millennium lists dating to around 2600 BC have been uncovered at Fara and Abū Ṣalābīkh, including the '' ...
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Juniper
Junipers are coniferous trees and shrubs in the genus ''Juniperus'' ( ) of the cypress family Cupressaceae. Depending on the taxonomy, between 50 and 67 species of junipers are widely distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere as far south as tropical Africa, including the Arctic, parts of Asia, and Central America. The highest-known juniper forest occurs at an altitude of in southeastern Tibet and the northern Himalayas, creating one of the highest tree lines on earth. Description Junipers vary in size and shape from tall trees, tall, to columnar or low-spreading shrubs with long, trailing branches. They are evergreen In botany, an evergreen is a plant which has Leaf, foliage that remains green and functional throughout the year. This contrasts with deciduous plants, which lose their foliage completely during the winter or dry season. Consisting of many diffe ... with needle-like and/or scale-like leaves. They can be either monoecious or dioecious. The female Conif ...
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Folk Etymology
Folk etymology – also known as (generative) popular etymology, analogical reformation, (morphological) reanalysis and etymological reinterpretation – is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more familiar one through popular usage. The form or the meaning of an archaic, foreign, or otherwise unfamiliar word is reinterpreted as resembling more familiar words or morphemes. The term ''folk etymology'' is a loan translation from German ''Volksetymologie'', coined by Ernst Förstemann in 1852. Folk etymology is a productive process in historical linguistics, language change, and social interaction. Reanalysis of a word's history or original form can affect its spelling, pronunciation, or meaning. This is frequently seen in relation to loanwords or words that have become archaic or obsolete. Folk/popular etymology may also refer to a popular false belief about the etymology of a word or phrase that does not lead to a change in t ...
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Reallexikon Der Assyriologie Und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie
The ''Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie'' (RlA), formerly ''Reallexikon der Assyriologie'', is a multi-language (English, German, and French) encyclopedia on the Ancient Near East The ancient Near East was home to many cradles of civilization, spanning Mesopotamia, Egypt, Iran (or Persia), Anatolia and the Armenian highlands, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula. As such, the fields of ancient Near East studies and Nea .... It was founded by Bruno Meissner in 1922, reformed in 1966 by editor and publisher Wolfram von Soden. The lead editor was Dietz Otto Edzard from 1972 to 2004, with taking over in 2005. A team of 585 different authors from many countries have been involved in the project, producing 15 voles, the latest of which was published in 2018. Not to be confused with the '' Akkadisches Handwörterbuch'' (AHw).Akkadisches Handworterbuch; Unter Benutzung des lexikalischen Nachlasses von Bruno Meissner (1868–1947) (German Edition) ...
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Abu Salabikh
The archaeological site of Abu Salabikh (Tell Abū Ṣalābīkh), around northwest of the site of ancient Nippur and about 150 kilometers southeast of the modern city of Baghdad in Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate, Iraq marks the site of a small Sumerian city that existed from the Neolithic through the late 3rd millennium, with cultural connections to the cities of Kish, Mari and Ebla. Its ancient name is unknown though Eresh and Kesh have been suggested as well as Gišgi. Kesh was suggested by Thorkild Jacobsen before excavations began.Biggs, Robert D., "An Archaic Sumerian Version of the Kesh Temple Hymn from Tell Abū Ṣalābīkh", vol. 61, no. 2, pp. 193-207, 1971 The Euphrates was the city's highway and lifeline; when it shifted its old bed (which was identified to the west of the Main Mound by coring techniques), in the late third millennium BC, the city dwindled away. Only eroded traces remain on the site's surface of habitation after the Early Dynastic Period. There is an ...
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Shuruppak
Shuruppak ( , SU.KUR.RUki, "the healing place"), modern Tell Fara, was an ancient Sumerian city situated about 55 kilometres (35 mi) south of Nippur and 30 kilometers north of ancient Uruk on the banks of the Euphrates in Iraq's Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate. Shuruppak was dedicated to Ninlil, also called Sud, the goddess of grain and the air. The Early Dynastic IIIa period is also sometimes called the Fara period. Not to be confused with the Levantine archaeological site Tell el-Far'ah (South). "Shuruppak" is sometimes also the name of a king of the city, legendary survivor of Flood story, the Flood, and supposed author of the Instructions of Shuruppak". History Jemdet Nasr period The earliest excavated levels at Shuruppak date to the Jemdet Nasr period about 3000 BC. Several objects made of arsenical copper were found in Shuruppak/Fara dating to the Jemdet Nasr period (c. 2900 BC). Similar objects were also found at Tepe Gawra (levels XII-VIII). Early Dynastic II The ...
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Adab (city)
Adab (Sumerian language, Sumerian: ''Adab''ki, spelled UD.NUNKI) was an ancient Sumerian city between Girsu and Nippur, lying about 35 kilometers southeast of the latter. It was located at the site of modern Bismaya or Bismya in the Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate of Iraq. The site was occupied at least as early as the 3rd Millenium BC, through the Early Dynastic, Akkadian Empire, and Ur III empire periods, into the Kassite dynasty, Kassite period in the mid-2nd millennium BC. It is known that there were temples of Ninhursag, Ninhursag/Digirmah, Iskur, Asgi, Inanna and Enki at Adab and that the city-god of Adab was Parag'ellilegarra (Panigingarra) "The Sovereign Appointed by Ellil". Not to be confused with the small, later (Old Babylonian and Sassanian periods) archaeological site named Tell Bismaya, 9 kilometers east of the confluence of the Diyala and the Tigris rivers, excavated by Iraqi archaeologists in the 1980s or Dur-Kurigalzu#Tell_Basmaya, Tell Basmaya, southeast of mode ...
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Joan Goodnick Westenholz
Joan Goodnick Westenholz (1 July 1943 – February 2013) was an Assyriologist and the chief curator at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem. She held positions related to academic research at the Oriental Institute (University of Chicago), Harvard University, Ruhr University Bochum (Germany), New York University, Princeton University, and the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research at Jerusalem. She was one of the first people to research gender studies in relation to the Ancient Near East and she co-founded and edited the inter-disciplinary NIN – Journal of Gender Studies in Antiquity. Early life and education Westenholz was born in 1943 in Philadelphia and attended the University of Pennsylvania, where she graduated at the age of 21 with a degree in anthropology. She completed her PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from the University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research uni ...
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