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Article

cuneiform  

Martin Worthington and Mark Chetwood

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Linguistics
  2. Near East

The cuneiform writing system originated in Southern Iraq in the mid-to-late 4th millennium bce and was used into the Common Era. Hence for over half of human history there were people writing in cuneiform. Extant sources suggest that it was the usual script for writing Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, and Elamite. Cuneiform documents, mostly consisting in clay tablets, are thus attested from Egypt and Turkey in the West to Iran in the East. The majority are written in Sumerian and/or Akkadian, and stem from ancient Iraq.

The cuneiform script1 has no punctuation, no equivalent of capital letters, and spaces are not normally left between words (though Old Assyrian frequently used a single vertical wedge as “word divider”). Sight-reading cuneiform, at least in Sumerian and Akkadian, and particularly for complex writings such as poetry, was probably a process of “fits and starts,” and not as smooth as sight-reading is for us today.

Article

Epic of Erra  

Frauke Weiershäuser

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 November 2023
Subjects:
  1. Near East

The “Epic of Erra” is a major Babylonian literary composition, dating from the first half of the 1st millennium bce. The text describes the horrors of war, caused by the god Erra running amok, in an unusually rich imagery of destruction, unrest, and misery. It is a very dynamic composition with a high proportion of dialogues that push the plot forward. Erra’s furious heart is eventually pacified, and peace then returns to Babylonia.

The Babylonian literary text known as “Epic of Erra” is sometimes also called “Song of Erra” or “Erra and Ishum.”1

The composition tells the story of Erra, the god of war and pestilence, who, instigated by his seven divine weapons (the Sebetti), decides to wreak havoc in Babylonia. He leaves his temple in the city of Cutha and travels to Babylon, where he convinces the city’s tutelary deity (the god Marduk) to leave his divine throne and take his insignia to be cleaned and repaired. Erra volunteers to take care of Babylon during Marduk’s absence. With this trickery and Marduk leaving his divine abode, Erra should have had immediate free rein to execute his plans of bringing about war and destruction to Babylonia. However, it takes some time for Erra to initiate his destructive work. First, the gods try to negotiate the issue in their divine assembly and to convince Erra to abandon his plans. Unfortunately, this part of the composition is still very fragmentarily preserved, but the extant parts of the text seem to indicate that Marduk returns and takes part in the discussions in the divine assembly. Erra’s rage and hunger for war increases, and finally, he is able to start his ravage because even with Marduk's return, the cosmic order is still too unstable to stop Erra in his rage.

Article

Akkadian  

Martin Worthington

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Linguistics
  2. Near East
Akkadian—the umbrella term for Babylonian and Assyrian—is an ancient but well-understood Semitic language (or group of languages) with a documented history of more than two thousand years. It was normally written in the cuneiform script and offers a dizzying array of written sources, more of which appear by the year.Akkadian comprised four main varieties, often referred to as “dialects.” In the 3rd millennium bce, these were Eblaite (attested at the city of Ebla, in Syria) and Old Akkadian (attested in writings from the dynasty of Sargon of Akkad). In the second and first millennia bce, these were Babylonian and Assyrian (with their various subvarieties): Old Babylonian/Assyrian c. 1900–1500bce, Middle Babylonian/Assyrian c. 1500–1000, and Neo-Babylonian and Assyrian in the first millennium (Neo-Assyrian only until c. 600bce). Vernacular Babylonian of the later first millennium is sometimes called Late Babylonian.“Standard Babylonian” is the language of poetry in the first millennium .

Article

Astronomical Diaries  

Kathryn Stevens

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
18 September 2024
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Economy
  2. Greek History and Historiography
  3. Science, Technology, and Medicine
  4. Near East

The Astronomical Diaries are Akkadian texts from Babylon which contain observations of astronomical phenomena and selected events on earth. They are written in the cuneiform script and preserved on several hundred clay tablets, most of which are today in the British Museum.

Very few of the tablets are complete, and some are in an extremely fragmentary state. Where no date formula survives, it is often possible to date them based on the astronomical observations recorded. The surviving tablets range in date from the mid-7th to the 1st century bce, but the vast majority date between 400 and 60 bce.

Diaries usually cover periods of four to six months, divided into monthly sections. Daily astronomical observations form the bulk of each section. At the end of each month, the Diaries report the river level of the Euphrates; the market exchange values of several commodities in Babylon, and sometimes selected historical events such as warfare, disease outbreaks, visits from kings or officials, and cultic activities. The Diaries contain no explicit indications of purpose, but since they exhibit significant parallelism with prognostic material, it is likely that they were connected to some extent with divination. There are also parallels in content and phrasing between the Diaries and the Late Babylonian Chronicles.