HIST 4480 - 5480 - Ancient near East History - Dise

Topics covered include matters such as law codes and edicts, government and administrative principles and law, personal status, family law, property and inheritance, treaties, contracts and exchange of goods, and edicts.

In this book, Gadotti argues that Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld was the first, not the last of the Sumerian stories about Gilgamesh. She also suggests that a Sumerian Gilgamesh Cycle, currently only attested in old Babylonian manuscripts (ca. 18th century BCE), was in fact developed during the Ur III period (ca. 2100-2000 BCE).

This anthology of Sumerian literature constitutes the most comprehensive collection ever published, and includes examples of most of the different types of composition written in the language, from narrative myths and lyrical hymns to proverbs and love poetry.

Provides editions of all known royal inscriptions of kings who ruled in ancient Mesopotamia down to the advent of King Sargon of Akkad. The volume includes a handful of new inscriptions recently uncovered in Iraq.

Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literatureis a new contribution to current debates about sex and eroticism. It gives an insight into Mesopotamian attitudes to sexuality by examining the oldest preserved written evidence on the subject - the Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform sources - which were written between the 21st and the 5th centuries B.C.

The Royal Tombs of Ur, dating from approximately 3000-2700 BCE, are among the most famous and impressive archeological discoveries of the twentieth century. Excavated between 1922 and 1934 under the direction of Leonard Woolley, this site is one of the richest sources of information we have about ancient Sumer--however, many mysteries about the society that produced these tombs remain. Based on primary research with the Ur materials at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, and paying particular attention to the iconography found in what Woolley referred to as the "Seal Impression Strata of Ur," this book works to reconstruct the early history of Sumer. What was this society like? What social structures did this society build? What were its institutions of authority?

Literature begins at Sumer, we may say. Given that this ancient crossroads of tin and copper produced not only bronze and the entire Bronze Age, but also by necessity, the first system of record-keeping and the technique of writing. Scribal schools served to propagate the new technique and their curriculum grew to create, preserve and transmit all manner of creative poetry.

Education : the first schools -- Schooldays : the first case of "apple-polishing" -- Father and son : the first case of juvenile delinquency -- International affairs : the first "war of nerves" -- Government : the first bicameral congress -- Civil war in Sumer : the first historian -- Social reform : the first case of tax reduction -- Law codes : the first "Moses" -- Justice : the first legal precedent -- Medicine : the first pharmacopoeia -- Agriculture : the first "farmer's almanac" -- Horticulture : the first experiment in shade-tree gardening -- Philosophy : man's first cosmogony and cosmology -- Ethics : the first moral ideals -- Suffering and submission : the first "Job" -- Wisdom : the first proverbs and sayings -- "Aesopica" : the first animal fables -- Logomachy : the first literary debates -- Paradise : the first biblical parallels -- A flood : the first "Noah" -- Hades : the first tale of resurrection -- Slaying of the dragon : the first "St. George" -- Tales of Gilgamesh : the first case of literary borrowing

As the first known system of writing, the cuneiform symbols traced in Sumerian clay more than six millennia ago were once regarded as a simplistic and clumsy attempt to record in linear form the sounds of a spoken language. More recently, scholars have acknowledged that early Sumerian writing -- far from being a primitive and flawed mechanism that would be "improved" by the Phoenicians and Greeks -- in fact represented a complete written language system, not only meeting the daily needs of economic and government administration, but also providing a new means of understanding the world. In The Invention of Cuneiform Jean-Jacques Glassner traces the development of writing from the earliest attempts to the sophisticated system of roughly 640 signs that comprised the Sumerian repertory by about 3200 B.C.

Mesopotamia produced one of the best-known ancient civilizations, with a literate, urban culture and highly-developed political institutions. Writing primarily for a non-specialist audience but drawing on the most up-to-date historical and archaeological sources, Harriet Crawford reviews the extraordinary social and technological developments in the region over a period of two millennia, from 3800 to 2000 BC. She describes the physical environment and discusses architecture, trade and industry, the development of writing, and changes in social and political structures. The final chapter examines the shift in power during this period from the 'temple' to the 'palace'.

The Sumerians, the pragmatic and gifted people who preceded the Semites in the land first known as Sumer and later as Babylonia, created what was probably the first high civilization in the history of man, spanning the fifth to the second millenniums B.C. This book is an unparalleled compendium of what is known about them.

1. The land and its rivers -- The two regions -- The coastline -- The rivers -- Climate and irrigation -- Salinization -- Northern Iraq -- 2. The twilight of Neolithic man -- The Old Stone Age -- Garrod and Solecki -- American excavators in Kurdistan -- The state of Neolithic research -- Jordan and the Levant; Anatolia; Iran -- The Iraq-Jarmo project.
3. The threshold of written history -- The sequence of discoveries -- Al'Ubaid; Warka; Eridu; Khafaje -- The 'Ubaid period -- Architecture; religion; pottery and small objects; the cemetery -- The Uruk period -- Warka; the Anu area; the Eanna precinct; Tell 'Uqair -- Buildings of the Jemdet Nasr Period -- Warka; Khafaje -- The protoliterate period -- The first writing; sculpture; cylinder-seals; pottery -- Sumerian antecedents.

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