Academic literature on the topic 'Sumerians, religion'

The article studies the circumstances of the emergence of Sumerology in Russia based on the personal archives of B.A. Turaev and P.K. Kokovtsov. It was stated that: a) Turaev, who studied Assyriology in Berlin, was the first Russian Sumerologist and strongly supported W.G. Schileico in his desire to study the history and religion of the Sumerians; b) the “father of Russian Assyriology” M.V. Nikolsky at the beginning of the century doubted the existence of the Sumerians and was ready to side with the position of J. Halévy and Kokovtsov, who considered the Sumerian writing to be an allography of the Babylonian priests; c) together with Schileico, the future coptologist P.V. Jernstedt was engaged in Assyriology, who was forced to withdraw from cuneiform classes as a result of a poorly thought out training program by Kokovtsov; d) it was Nikolsky who recommended the first articles by Schileico on the history of the Sumerians to European journals; e) the whole history of Russian Assyriology could have gone differently if Nikolsky in 1908, despite Kokovtsov’s discontent, had been elected professor at St...

Man used to attribute good and evil in his life to celestial bodies. Therefore, ancient civilizations paid much attention to astronomy which had a lasting impact on mythology and religion. In ancient Iraqi mythology, sad and happy events like war and peace, death and fertility, flood and famine, were attributed to the appearance and disappearance of the moon.Among the post-modern writers who wrote novels about Iraq are the Arab-American Diana Abu Jaber (1959 -) and the Paris-based Iraqi Inaam Kachachi (1952 -). Abu Jaber's Crescent (2003) tells a love story between an Iraqi professor and an Iraqi-American girl. The crescent of the title has to do with the Islamic ritual of marking the beginning of a lunar month like Ramadhan. As the novel suggests it has to do with patience and the unknown as represented by the sudden and unexpected reappearance of the protagonist (Hanif) after a long time of absence. Whereas Kachachi's Tashari (2013) details the scattering of Iraqis in different parts of the world after the-2003 events. It attributes this tragedy to the Pope's refusal to visit the city of Ur, the birthplace of Prophet Abraham which also used to be the residence of Nana, the moon god of the ancient Sumerians. While apparently both novels deal in part with the religious beliefs and practices related to the moon in Islam and Christianity, they, however, make no direct reference to ancient Iraqi myths. Although Abu Jaber expressed the wish of writing about "the legacy of Iraq", "the cradle of civilization" and Kachachi wrote mainly about Iraq and its " good old days", but rarely they made a direct reference to the moon and its significance in ancient Iraqi culture. Nevertheless, both novels implicitly abound in references to the moon that can be analyzed in terms of its status and the lasting impact it had on ancient Iraqi culture, which will be the focus of this paper.

This article discusses the nexus of religion and nature by means of an investigation of the mountain wilderness space in ancient Mesopotamia. Drawing inspiration from theories of social space and the field of religion and nature, it pays special attention to the mediality of the sources embedding the wilderness space by analyzing the literary-narrative form of a set of Old Babylonian, Sumerian religious narratives related to the deities Inana and Ninurta and the heroes Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh. Contrary to previous research, which has seen the mountain wilderness as a dangerous and inimical chaos region, this article argues that the mountain wilderness is also ascribed benign connotations and functions. It is a wild and dangerous region, but it is also naturally abundant, primeval, and harbors forms of agency and force. It is an arena for magical transformation, heroic acts, and for direct communication with the deities. It is thus a more ambiguous space than has previously been recognized, and it should be understood in the context of the social space of the scribal milieu. Finally, the article suggests that cosmology studies and the relationships between natural domains and deities, in the general history of religions, are reconsidered in light of theories of social space and in light of the mediality of the sources.

This article deals with the different racial approaches that influenced the academic debate known as “The Sumerian problem”. The so-called “problem” under discussion was the racial affiliation of the inventors of the first writing system, the cuneiform script. The notion of ‘race’, which tied religion, language and culture into one essence, played a key role here. Some scholars were eager to prove the “non-Semitic character” of such a major invention. Others were convinced that only “Semites” inhabited ancient Babylonia and thus were the only possible inventors of writing. The focus of this paper is Joseph Halévy, who was the determined leader of the “anti-Sumerist” camp. This article will show that Halévy shared many essentialist views with his anti-Semitic protagonists. He did this by applying a ‘pro-Semitic’ approach to the ‘Sumerian-problem’.

Human dignity is the recognition and respect of human need, desire and expectation one individual by another. This recognition is indispensable because no human being survives alone: Human dignity creates the foundation of society and civilization. Our knowledge of history suggests that religious ideas have provided this basic foundation of civilization. Describing the first recognized civilization in history one historian says, “Religion permeated Sumerian civic life.” According to another historian, “Religion dominated, suffused, and inspired all features of Near Eastern society—law, kingship, art, and science.” Based on these observations while defining civilization Samuel Huntington asserts, “Religion is a central defining characteristic of civilizations.”In Islam, the Qur’an declares that: “We have bestowed dignity on the progeny of Adam.” The verse then continues to remind the whole of mankind of God's special favor unto them with physical and intellectual abilities, natural resources and with superiority over most other creatures in the world. This dignity is bestowed through God's act of creating Adam and breathing into him His Own Spirit. Since all human beings originated from Adam and his spouse, every single human being possesses this dignity regardless of color, race, religion and tribe. The whole of mankind, as khalīfah (vice-resenf) is responsible for establishing peace on earth through divinely ordained values such as amānah (trust), ‘adālah (justice) and shūra (consultation).

According to modern scientific and philosophical representations, the world is its creation as development. Because of anthroponoospherization, world development appears as a historical and spiritual development. A measure of progressive development are: 1) the completeness of the implementation of legislative tendency (directions) of development, 2) the superiority of the old to new, 3) the increase of consciousness and spiritual factors of development. In the development of society, the historical-spiritual appear to it: 1) degrees, 2) local ways (civilization) actually happen-ideas-development, which are: 1) initial with the stages of anthroposociogenesis, tribal community of collectors and hunters, the clan community of farmers and herders, 2) agrarian society with the stages of the first civilizations of the copper stone age (Ancient Egyptian, Sumerian-Babylonian, Indo, Aegean, Hatto-Smallasian Early Chinese, Ancient American) iron age from the 1st millennium BC of ancient (Middle East, Antique, Ancient Indian and Ancient Chinese) and medieval (Far Eastern, Indian, Austrian, Central Asian, Iranian-Islamic, Eastern Christian and West Christian local civilizations) and so-called industrial society with preindustrialization XVIІІ-mid. ХVІІ century, industrialization the middle of ХVІІ–ХІХ centuries, industrial first half of Twentieth century and, the middle of XX century, the globalization-information stages of development with the corresponding all of them-events-ideas-development. Stages of development are determined by their main direction. Civilizations can be defined as local socio-culturaland organisms that are inherent in the physiognomic unity of distinctive features. In the process of historical development there is a growth of conscious-spiritual factors of development (socio-cultural paradigm), mainly as the implementation of various socio-cultural projects, which prompts the creation of consciously projected, intellectually creative, idea-creative, spiritually-constructed world as it happens-idea- development. Events are actingknowledged as ideas, and ideas are projected as development. All further history of mankind is the deduction and embodiment of consciously-projected ideas. Socio-cultural projects require the realization, and that’s why historical development is somehow dejected, and is carried out as some kind of enthusiasm. Religion - faith in God through the cult, what is the act of consciousness (faith) of world creation (God) through its activation in itself (the cult). The historical-spiritual world-development are as follows: 1) the continuation of the world creation, 2) the belief of realization as a kind of locomotive, because of what 3) religious socio-cultural projects of spiritual world transformation are currently the largest. From the New Times monotheism comes into the secular phase of practicing faith. From the seventeenth century humanity passes to industrial ways of development and to the twentieth century. the world economy is formed, world politics and world spirituality that are from the middle of Twentieth century turn into the globalization-informational period of “the inventive future”, when any social and cultural projects can be implemented. There is a world civilization as a cathedral unity of national cultures. In the field of religious, there is not immorality, but newly-religions as a God's gradual faith. Innovation faith occurs as: 1) ecumenization, 2) secularization, and 3) new secular dynastic theologians. A peculiar “spiritual evaporation” of globalization processes is the maturation of the so-called universal religion. There can be no universal religion, only a universal faith can be. Universal religion is not a separate religion, but the unity of all religions of the world as its spiritual transformation. Universal religion arises as 1) activation of the creative forces of man, 2) the locomotive of socio-cultural projects that require the faith realization, 3) as a social and cultural project for the spiritual transformation of the world (God's reign, etc.). The unity of all religions in the world is currently the most expressed in theistic evolutionism, which in modern universal evolutionism receives a scientific and philosophical justification, where a new process-creative-centric image of the world for its transformation arises. Secular gradual faith passes into the development of the world, world-wide – the consciousness of the world as its development, which is achieved by the event-idea-development. The world of faith appears in three hypostases: 1) as the unity of all religions of the world as its spiritual transformation, 2) the world is not religion, but faith, and 3) acts consciousness of the world as its development. Concentration of the meanings of spiritual uplift form the so-called spiritual republics (Zion, Shambhala, mountainous Jerusalem, etc.) as our antisocial spiritual homeland. World-development of historical-spiritual appears as an intelligent world development (World building).

AbstractA brief and fragmentary newly reconstructed Sumerian literary passage contains a portion of a hymn to Nergal or a hymnic passage centered around Nergal. Most notably, it contains a rare reference to seven aurae (ni2 imin), which is attested elsewhere only in conjunction with Huwawa.

In the texts from Syrian cities like Ebla, Mari, Emar and Ugarit there are several words indicating textiles destined to cover the head and sometimes also the shoulders of women. In the Ebla texts PAD (-TUG2) (Sumerian), gu2-du-mu/ma-ga-da-ma-tum/ma-da-ma-tum (Semitic) is a textile, often of linen, used to cover the body, the shoulders and the head. During the great ritual of royalty at Ebla the queen received the veil only after several days of trip. The veil at Ebla is destined mostly for brides but not only. Married women in Syria did not always wear the veil.

Chapter 5 focuses on Ur, Tell al-Muqayyar, in southern Iraq, and the discovery and popularization, after the First World War, of Sumerian civilization, largely unknown until then. Excavated between 1922 and 1934 by an Anglo-American expedition directed by Leonard Woolley, the most prominent public archaeologist of the Near East between the wars, Ur became a spectacle of a distant antiquity that was related to modernity. The discovery of Ur’s cemeteries, studied here, competed with the contemporary exposure of the tomb of Tutankhamun. The chapter considers Ur’s appeal as an “antique modern”, combining the drawing power of the biblical paradigm manifested in the identification between Ur, Abraham, and the birth of Abrahamic religions, and the appeal of the material riches discovered in the cemeteries, extracted from their place of origin and displayed in metropolitan museums and venues, a process which the chapter recovers. Represented as an Ur-culture, the place of origin of Near Eastern and world civilizations, older than Egypt, Ur was modernized and envisioned as the hub of a global ancient world, a vision that matched mandate notions about the development of Iraq. At the same time, evidence of live burials at the cemeteries was connected to mass killing during the First World War and the commemoration of the war dead. In addition to written, archival, and published sources, the chapter makes use of a wealth of visual representations, including aerial photography, illustrations, and archaeological objects.

The donkey was domesticated from the African wild ass in Northeast Africa some 7–6,000 years ago. This chapter looks at what happened when donkeys turned right and exited Africa into Asia. Though tracking their movement as far as India and China, its principal focus lies in the Ancient Near East, the region stretching from Israel north to Turkey and eastward into Iraq and Iran that is often termed the ‘Fertile Crescent’. Within this vast area, donkeys were used in daily life, including the agricultural cycle, just as they were in Egypt. But like there they also acquired other, more specialized uses and associations. Thus, after tracing the donkey’s spread I look at its role in three key aspects of the Near East’s earliest civilizations: the organization of trade; the legitimization of kingship; and religion. By 3500 BC the earliest cities had already emerged in Mesopotamia, the ‘land between the rivers’ Euphrates and Tigris. Over the course of the next 1,500 years, urbanization gathered pace across Palestine and Syria in the west, northward in Turkey, and east through Iran. Within Mesopotamia the independent Sumerian city-states of the south developed increasingly monarchical forms of government, seeing brief unity under the kings of Akkad and the Third Dynasty of Ur in the late third millennium BC. Then and later a city-state pattern of political organization also held in northern Mesopotamia (for example, at Aššur and its neighbour Mari) and in the Levant. In the mid-second millennium bc, however, much larger kingdoms emerged: the Hittites in central Turkey, Assyria in northern Mesopotamia, and Babylonia in its south. The Hittites, in particular, competed with Egypt for control of Syrian and Palestinian cities like Ugarit. When these Bronze Age powers collapsed around 1200 BC, their disappearance opened a window for smaller states like Israel to flourish briefly in their wake. Subsequently, however, first Assyria (911–612 BC) and then Babylon (612–539 BC) established much more centralized and extensive empires across the Near East before being subsumed within the Persian Empire of Cyrus the Great and his successors.