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Samuel Noah Kramer (September 28, 1897 – November 26, 1990) was one of the world's leading Assyriologists, an expert in
He enrolled at Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning in Philadelphia, and became passionately interested in Egyptology. He then transferred to the Oriental Studies Department of the University of Pennsylvania, working with the "brilliant young Ephraim Avigdor Speiser, who was to become one of the world's leading figures in Near Eastern Studies". Speiser was trying to decipher cuneiform tablets of the Late Bronze Age dating from about 1300 BC; it was now that Kramer began his lifelong work in understanding the cuneiform writing system.
Kramer earned his PhD in 1929, and was famous for assembling tablets recounting single stories that had become distributed among different institutions around the world. He retired from formal academic life in 1968, but remained very active throughout his post-retirement years.
In his autobiography published in 1986, he sums up his accomplishments: "First, and most important, is the role I played in the recovery, restoration, and resurrection of Sumerian literature, or at least of a representative cross section ... Through my efforts several thousand Sumerian literary tablets and fragments have been made available to cuneiformists, a basic reservoir of unadulterated data that will endure for many decades to come. Second, I endeavored ... to make available reasonably reliable translations of many of these documents to the academic community, and especially to the anthropologist, historian, and humanist. Third, I have helped to spread the name of Sumer to the world at large, and to make people aware of the crucial role the Sumerians played in the ascent of civilized man".
Kramer died of throat cancer at age 93 on November 26, 1990, in Philadelphia.New York Times Obituary
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Samuel Noah Kramer Institute of Assyriology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kramer, Samuel Noah 1897 births 1990 deaths 20th-century American historians American Assyriologists Linguists of Sumerian American autobiographers American people of Russian-Jewish descent American writers of Russian descent Dropsie College alumni Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States Jews from the Russian Empire Jewish American academics Jewish American historians Jewish orientalists People from Zhashkiv University of Pennsylvania faculty Writers from Philadelphia Translators from Sumerian 20th-century translators 20th-century American male writers American male non-fiction writers Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy 20th-century American Jews South Philadelphia High School alumni
Sumerian history
The history of Sumer spans the 5th to 3rd millennia BCE in southern Mesopotamia, and is taken to include the prehistoric Ubaid and Uruk periods. Sumer was the region's earliest known civilization and ended with the downfall of the Third Dynasty ...
and Sumerian language
Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer. It is one of the oldest attested languages, dating back to at least 3000 BC. It is accepted to be a local language isolate and to have been spoken in ancient Mesopotamia, in the area that is modern-day ...
. After high school, he attended Temple University, before Dropsie and Penn, both in Philadelphia. Among scholars, his work is considered transformative for the field of Sumerian history. His popular book ''History Begins at Sumer'' made Sumerian literature accessible to the general public.
Biography
Kramer was born on September 28, 1897, in Zhashkiv near Uman in the Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire (modern day Ukraine), the son of Benjamin and Yetta Kramer. His family was Jewish. In 1905, as a result of theanti-Semitic
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
pogroms under Czar
Tsar ( or ), also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar'', is a title used by East and South Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word ''caesar'', which was intended to mean "emperor" in the European medieval sense of the ter ...
Nicholas II
Nicholas II or Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov; spelled in pre-revolutionary script. ( 186817 July 1918), known in the Russian Orthodox Church as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer,. was the last Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Pola ...
of Russia, his family emigrated to Philadelphia, where his father established a Hebrew school. After graduating from South Philadelphia High School, obtaining an Academic Diploma, Kramer tried a variety of occupations, including teaching in his father's school, becoming a writer and becoming a businessman.
Concerning the time when he began to approach the age of thirty, still without a career, he later stated in his autobiography
An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life.
It is a form of biography.
Definition
The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...
, ''In the World of Sumer'': "Finally it came to me that I might well go back to my beginnings and try to utilize the Hebrew learning on which I had spent so much of my youth, and relate it in some way to an academic future".
He enrolled at Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning in Philadelphia, and became passionately interested in Egyptology. He then transferred to the Oriental Studies Department of the University of Pennsylvania, working with the "brilliant young Ephraim Avigdor Speiser, who was to become one of the world's leading figures in Near Eastern Studies". Speiser was trying to decipher cuneiform tablets of the Late Bronze Age dating from about 1300 BC; it was now that Kramer began his lifelong work in understanding the cuneiform writing system.
Kramer earned his PhD in 1929, and was famous for assembling tablets recounting single stories that had become distributed among different institutions around the world. He retired from formal academic life in 1968, but remained very active throughout his post-retirement years.
In his autobiography published in 1986, he sums up his accomplishments: "First, and most important, is the role I played in the recovery, restoration, and resurrection of Sumerian literature, or at least of a representative cross section ... Through my efforts several thousand Sumerian literary tablets and fragments have been made available to cuneiformists, a basic reservoir of unadulterated data that will endure for many decades to come. Second, I endeavored ... to make available reasonably reliable translations of many of these documents to the academic community, and especially to the anthropologist, historian, and humanist. Third, I have helped to spread the name of Sumer to the world at large, and to make people aware of the crucial role the Sumerians played in the ascent of civilized man".
Kramer died of throat cancer at age 93 on November 26, 1990, in Philadelphia./ref>
See also
*Inanna
Inanna, also sux, 𒀭𒊩𒌆𒀭𒈾, nin-an-na, label=none is an List of Mesopotamian deities, ancient Mesopotamian goddess of love, war, and fertility. She is also associated with beauty, sex, Divine law, divine justice, and political p ...
*Sumerian literature
Sumerian literature constitutes the earliest known corpus of recorded literature, including the religious writings and other traditional stories maintained by the Sumerian civilization and largely preserved by the later Akkadian and Babylonian em ...
* Lament for Sumer and Ur
*Eridu Genesis
The earliest record of a Sumerian creation myth, called The Eridu Genesis by historian Thorkild Jacobsen, is found on a single fragmentary clay tablet, tablet excavated in Nippur by the Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania in 1893, and firs ...
Selected writings
* Kramer, Samuel Noah. ''Sumerian Mythology: Study of Spiritual and Literary Achievement in the Third Millennium B.C''. 1944, rev. 1961. * Kramer, Samuel Noah. ''History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Man's Recorded History''. 1956/1e (25 firsts), 1959/2e (27 firsts) 1981/3e. University of Pennsylvania Press. . * Kramer, Samuel Noah. ''The Sumerians: Their History, Culture and Character''. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1963. . * Kramer, Samuel Noah. ''Cradle of civilization''. 1967. (the history, politics, religion and cultural achievements of ancient Sumer, Babylonia and Assyria) * Kramer, Samuel Noah and Diane Wolkstein. ''Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth''. New York: Harper & Row, 1983. . * Kramer, Samuel Noah. ''In the World of Sumer, An Autobiography''. Wayne State University Press, 1988. .References
Notes
Bibliography
*External links
Samuel Noah Kramer Institute of Assyriology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kramer, Samuel Noah 1897 births 1990 deaths 20th-century American historians American Assyriologists Linguists of Sumerian American autobiographers American people of Russian-Jewish descent American writers of Russian descent Dropsie College alumni Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States Jews from the Russian Empire Jewish American academics Jewish American historians Jewish orientalists People from Zhashkiv University of Pennsylvania faculty Writers from Philadelphia Translators from Sumerian 20th-century translators 20th-century American male writers American male non-fiction writers Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy 20th-century American Jews South Philadelphia High School alumni