Download or read book The Role of the Sumerian Goddess written by Faruq Zamani and published by LEARN ALCHEMICAL PRESS. This book was released on with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sumerian people once inhabited the region near the Persian Gulf, known as Iraq. Greeks called this country Mesopotamia, which means the land between the rivers, as the Euphrates and Tigris, rising in Anatolia, flowed through Syria and Iraq before discharging into the Persian Gulf. 'Simurrum' is the name given to the northern region by the Semitic peoples later, like the word Sumerian, which was later used for the southern region. According to the Sumerians, their land was called Kien-gi, or 'land of the lordly En,' after the priest-king of Sumer (En). Sometime after 4000 BC, the Sumerians moved to this coastal area, but it's unclear from where they came. There is no connection between their language and any other language spoken in the region. After sailing upriver from the Persian Gulf, they migrated inland from the coastal area. On the other hand, Sumerians came from the northeast of Mesopotamia and traveled down the river to the south. 'Simurrum' could indicate that the Sumerians once lived in the northern region. The Sumerians must have encountered people who had already settled in the Persian Gulf area for a long time when they entered since a few cities had names that did not match Sumerians but were most likely derived from an unknown language. Examples include Uruk, Ešnunna, and Shuruppak. Similarly, Buranuna, the name of the Euphrates River, makes no sense in Sumerian, whereas Idigna, the name of the Tigris River, might be explained as 'the blue river. Farmers had established small settlements along these two great rivers during the fifth millennium BC. To irrigate agricultural crops, they diverted water from rivers through canals. There was little rainfall in this area, and the sun burned mercilessly during the summer months, so everyone lived entirely off floodwater from the rivers. The rivers could be dangerous, though, as the land was flat, and there was always the danger that the river would overflow its banks and change its course, inundating new areas and destroying crops and water supplies. The great rivers carried silt through the plain, forming swamps along the Persian coast. Here, the inhabitants grew cane for making little reed houses for the gods. God Enki was responsible for this domain. He brought civilization to the Sumerians and lived underground in a freshwater residence, the Abzu, located below the earth's surface but above the ocean's saltwater expanse.
Download or read book The Role of the Sumerian Goddess written by Faruq Zamani and published by Learn Alchemical Press. This book was released on 2022-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sumerian people once inhabited the region near the Persian Gulf, known as Iraq. Greeks called this country Mesopotamia, which means the land between the rivers, as the Euphrates and Tigris, rising in Anatolia, flowed through Syria and Iraq before discharging into the Persian Gulf. 'Simurrum' is the name given to the northern region by the Semitic peoples later, like the word Sumerian, which was later used for the southern region. According to the Sumerians, their land was called Kien-gi, or 'land of the lordly En, ' after the priest-king of Sumer (En). Sometime after 4000 BC, the Sumerians moved to this coastal area, but it's unclear from where they came. There is no connection between their language and any other language spoken in the region. After sailing upriver from the Persian Gulf, they migrated inland from the coastal area. On the other hand, Sumerians came from the northeast of Mesopotamia and traveled down the river to the south. 'Simurrum' could indicate that the Sumerians once lived in the northern region. The Sumerians must have encountered people who had already settled in the Persian Gulf area for a long time when they entered since a few cities had names that did not match Sumerians but were most likely derived from an unknown language. Examples include Uruk, Esnunna, and Shuruppak. Similarly, Buranuna, the name of the Euphrates River, makes no sense in Sumerian, whereas Idigna, the name of the Tigris River, might be explained as 'the blue river. Farmers had established small settlements along these two great rivers during the fifth millennium BC. To irrigate agricultural crops, they diverted water from rivers through canals. There was little rainfall in this area, and the sun burned mercilessly during the summer months, so everyone lived entirely off floodwater from the rivers. The rivers could be dangerous, though, as the land was flat, and there was always the danger that the river would overflow its banks and change its course, inundating new areas and destroying crops and water supplies. The great rivers carried silt through the plain, forming swamps along the Persian coast. Here, the inhabitants grew cane for making little reed houses for the gods. God Enki was responsible for this domain. He brought civilization to the Sumerians and lived underground in a freshwater residence, the Abzu, located below the earth's surface but above the ocean's saltwater expanse.
Download or read book Inanna Lady of Heaven and Earth written by Henriette Broekema and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inanna was the great goddess of the Sumerians, a people who lived 5000 year ago in the place we know today as Iraq where was created the first urban civilization in human history. Inanna, the goddess of sexual love and connected with the planet Venus was responsible for the fertility of the land and the later goddesses, the Greek Aphrodite and the Roman Venus adopted many aspects of Inanna. The kings worshipped Inanna and celebrated with her the Sacred Marriage rite, but they also needed her help during the many wars they were waging, which gave Inanna the aspects of a warrior goddess. As love goddess Inanna had a passionate love life and her great love was the shepherd Dumuzi, not a god, but a mortal human who wandered about the steppe with his cattle. The peasants sang love songs about Inanna and Dumuzi during the many feasts of the successive agricultural seasons, believing that their love affair stimulated the fertility of the crops and the fecundity of the livestock. But their idyll was not to last for long as Dumuzi was gruesomely murdered. The answer to the question of who killed Dumuzi and why, is hidden deep in the history of the ancient agrarian communities. The Sumerians wrote their texts on clay tablets that once dried could be preserved until our own day and thanks to this miraculous piece of luck we can cognizance of a number of magnificent hymns and myths written about Inanna. These archaic texts call up human emotions that find an answering response in the hearts of people today and are still capable of moving us deeply. In this book the myths are told against the back ground of Sumerian civilization and various aspects of society from this time are also discussed, such as convent life, divine kingship and funeral rites. One aspect of the funeral rites was The Great Wailing, a rite in which Inanna had an important role and which appears to have been performed in many countries around the Mediterranean in the Bronze Age and has left traces even in the Old and New Testament. Henriette Broekema's book makes the complex character and history of goddess Inanna accessible to the ordinary reader and based on the texts from that time, in twenty six richly illustrated chapters, she succeeds in bringing the astonishing world of the goddess Inanna to life. Bron: Flaptekst, uitgeversinformatie.
Download or read book Ishtar written by Louise M. Pryke and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-07-14 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ishtar is the first book dedicated to providing an accessible analysis of the mythology and image of this complex goddess. The polarity of her nature is reflected in her role as goddess of sexual love and war, and has made her difficult to characterise in modern scholarship. By exploring this complexity, Ishtar offers insight into Mesopotamian culture and thought, and elucidates a goddess who transcended the limits of gender, divinity and nature. It gives an accessible introduction to the Near Eastern pantheon, while also opening a pathway for comparison with the later Near Eastern and Mediterranean deities who followed her.
Download or read book Women s Writing of Ancient Mesopotamia written by Charles Halton and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology translates and discusses texts authored by women of ancient Mesopotamia.
Download or read book The Sumerians written by Samuel Noah Kramer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-09-17 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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. Professor Kramer communicates his enthusiasm for his subject as he outlines the history of the Sumerian civilization and describes their cities, religion, literature, education, scientific achievements, social structure, and psychology. Finally, he considers the legacy of Sumer to the ancient and modern world. "There are few scholars in the world qualified to write such a book, and certainly Kramer is one of them. . . . One of the most valuable features of this book is the quantity of texts and fragments which are published for the first time in a form available to the general reader. For the layman the book provides a readable and up-to-date introduction to a most fascinating culture. For the specialist it presents a synthesis with which he may not agree but from which he will nonetheless derive stimulation."—American Journal of Archaeology "An uncontested authority on the civilization of Sumer, Professor Kramer writes with grace and urbanity."—Library Journal
Download or read book Sumerian Mythology written by Matt Clayton and published by . This book was released on 2020-01-19 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book includes tales of gods and goddesses, both major and minor, as well as kings and heroes, both historical and mythical. One such king is the hero of what many scholars believe to be the first written epic: Gilgamesh.
Download or read book Inanna Queen of Heaven and Earth written by Diane Wolkstein and published by HarperCollins Publishers. This book was released on 1983 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh retelling of the ancient texts about Ishtar, the world's first goddess. Illustrated with visual artifacts of the period. "A great masterpiece of universal literature."--Mircea Eliade Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
Download or read book Ancient Mesopotamian Religion and Mythology written by W.G. Lambert and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2016-03-17 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The late W.G. Lambert (1926-2011) was one of the foremost Assyriologists of the latter part of the twentieth century. His principle legacy is a large number of superb critical editions of Babylonian literary compositions. Many of the texts he edited were on religious and mythological subjects. He will always be remembered as the editor of the Babylonian Job (Ludlul bel nemeqi, also known as the Poem of the Righteous Sufferer), the Babylonian Flood Story (Atra-hasis) and the Babylonian Creation Epic (Enuma elish). The present book is a collection of twenty-three essays Lambert published between the years 1958 and 2004. These endure not only as the legacy of one of the greatest authorities on ancient Mesopotamian religion and mythology, but also because each makes statements of considerable validity and importance. As such, many are milestones in the fields of Mesopotamian religion and mythology.
Download or read book Inanna Lady of Largest Heart written by Enheduanna and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Around 2,300 BC Enheduanna was high priestess to the moon god Nanna at his temple in Ur, a position she held for almost forty years. This volume translates Enheduanna's three devotional poems to the goddess Inanna accompanied by an extensive commentary and discussion which places these highly personal and unique expressions within the context of Sumerian culture and religion. The author highlights the importance of the poems and the princess for our understanding of the place of women in Near Eastern society and religion.
Download or read book Sumerian Mythology written by Matt Clayton and published by . This book was released on 2019-07-13 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you're looking for a captivating collection of Sumerian myths, then keep reading... This book includes tales of gods and goddesses, both major and minor, as well as kings and heroes, both historical and mythical. One such king is the hero of what many scholars believe to be the first written epic: Gilgamesh. In addition to creating connections between the human world and the divine, Sumerian myths explain how the world came to be in the first place. These myths establish the cosmic order, which places the greater gods, or Annunaki, at the top of the hierarchy, with the lesser gods, or Igigi, below them. Heroic strength capable of bringing mountains to their knees is the province of both male and female deities in Sumerian myth. The god Ninurta does battle with the evil Asag and rearranges the mountains to allow the Tigris and Euphrates to flow, while the goddess Inanna brings down Mount Ebih in revenge for the mountain's refusal to do the goddess reverence. The original Sumerian texts of these stories are poetic in nature and often contain a significant number of repeated phrases. For the purposes of this book, the stories have been rendered in prose and the repetitions have been smoothed out in order to make the language flow as such. A glossary of names and places for modern readers who may not be familiar with Sumerian mythography is included. But however these stories are transmitted, they will always tell us how this ancient people understood their world and their place in it, as well as about the customs and relationships they found to be most important. In Sumerian Mythology: Captivating Myths of Gods, Goddesses, and Legendary Creatures of Ancient Sumer and Their Importance to the Sumerians, you'll find the following Sumerian myths and topics covered Tales of Gods and Goddesses Tales of Kings and Heroes Inanna and the Huluppu Tree Enkidu in the Underworld Gilgamesh and Huwawa Gilgamesh and Aga And much, much more! So if you want a captivating collection of Sumerian myths, click the "add to cart" button!
Download or read book Mesopotamian Gods Goddesses written by Britannica Educational Publishing and published by Britannica Educational Publishing. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mesopotamian religion was one of the earliest religious systems to develop withand in turn influencea high civilization. Followed by the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians, Mesopotamian religion and mythology reflected the complexities of these societies and has been preserved in remnants of their cultural, economic, and political institutions. This absorbing volume provides a glimpse of the cradle of civilization by examining Mesopotamian religious and mythological beliefs as well as some of the many gods and goddesses at the core of their stories and also looks at epicssuch as that of Gilgameshand other aspects of Mesopotamian life.
Download or read book Goddesses in Context written by Julia M. Asher-Greve and published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors examine from different perspectives some of the most challenging themes in Mesopotamian religion such as gender switch of deities and changes of the status, roles and functions of goddesses. Julia M. Asher-Greve and Goodnick Westenholz incorporate recent scholarship from various disciplines into their analysis of textual and visual sources, representations in diverse media, theological strategies, typologies, and the place of image in religion and cult over a span of three millennia. Different types of syncretism (fusion, fission, mutation) resulted in transformation and homogenization of goddesses' roles and functions. The processes of syncretism (a useful heuristic tool for studying the evolution of religions and the attendant political and social changes) and gender switch were facilitated by the fluidity of personality due to multiple or similar divine roles and functions. Few goddesses kept their identity throughout the millennia. Individuality is rare in the iconography of goddesses while visual emphasis is on repetition of generic divine figures (hieros typos) in order to retain recognizability of divinity, where femininity is of secondary significance. This richly illustrated book demonstrates that goddesses were never marginalized or extrinsic and that their continuous presence in texts, cult images, rituals, and worship throughout Mesopotamian history is testimony to their powerful numinous impact. This richly illustrated book is the first in-depth analysis of goddesses and the changes they underwent from the earliest visual and textual evidence around 3000 BCE to the end of ancient Mesopotamian civilization in the Seleucid period. Goddesses in Context is a compelling contribution to Mesopotamian religion and history as well as to history, art history, history of religion and gender studies.
Download or read book The God Enki in Sumerian Royal Ideology and Mythology written by Peeter Espak and published by Harrassowitz. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study analyzes the divine concept of the Sumero-Akkadian deity Enki in its literary and mythological development through different periods of Mesopotamian history. Sumerian myths and theology related to the god Enki are influential throughout the history of the Ancient Near East. Several mythological motives from the Sumerian cultural area later reach the creation stories of the Old Testament and beyond. Through the Biblical narratives the ancient Sumerian mythology of Enki reaches the later Christian world, and therefore this mythology has become a part of the collective memory and culture of the present day world. Seven chapters give a diachronical overview of the relevant source materials (royal inscriptions, hymns, etc.) related to the god Enki and other close divine figures and religious phenomena from the period of about 2500-1700 BC. The last two chapters concentrate on the aspects of comparative mythology and archaic Sumerian religion. The relations of Enki and the Mother Goddess in the Mesopotamian religion and YHWH and Eve in the Old Testament are briefly analyzed. Some aspects about the decline of the cult of the Mother Goddess and several details of the political history of the Ancient Near East reflected in the relevant texts are discussed in the book. It is claimed that there is no direct conflict between the theologies of Nippur and Eridu (Enlil and Enki), at least when analyzing the available source material.
Download or read book The God Ninurta written by Amar Annus and published by State Archives of Assyria. This book was released on 2002 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The current investigation has been divided into three main chapters. In the first two chapters, the primary focus is the relationship between Ninurta and kingship. The first chapter gives a diachronic overview of the cult of Ninurta during all historical periods of ancient Mesopotamia. This chapter shows that the conception of Ninurta's identity with the king was present in Mesopotamian religion already in the third millennium BC. Ninurta was the god of Nippur, the religious centre of Sumerian cities, and his most important attribute was his sonship to Enlil. While the mortal gods were frequently called the sons of Enlil, the status of the king converged with that of Ninurta at his coronation, through the determination of the royal fate, carried out by the divine council of gods in Nippur. The fate of Ninurta parallels the fate of the king after the investiture. Religious syncretism is studied in the second chapter. The configuration of Nippur cults left a legacy for the religious life of Babylonia and Assyria. The Nippur trinity of the father Enlil, the mother Ninlil, and the son Ninurta had direct descendants in the Babylonian and Assyrian pantheon, realized in Babylonia as Marduk, Zarpanitu, and Nabu, and as Assur, Mullissu, and Ninurta in Assyria. While the names changed, the configuration of the cult survived, even when, from the eighth century BC onwards, Ninurta's name was to a large extent replaced by that of Nabu. In the third chapter various manifestations or hypostases of Ninurta are discussed. Besides the monster slayer, Ninurta was envisaged as farmer, star and arrow, healer, and tree. All these manifestations confirm the strong ties between the cult of Ninurta and kingship. By slaying Asakku, Ninurta eliminated evil from the world, and accordingly he was considered the god of healing. The healing, helping, and saving of a believer who was in misery was thus a natural result of Ninurta's victorious battles. The theologoumenon of Ninurta's mission and return was used as the mythological basis for quite a few royal rituals, and this fact explains the extreme longevity of the Sumerian literary compositions Angim and Lugale, from the third until the first millennium BC. Ninurta also protected legitimate ownership of land and granted protection for refugees in a special temple of the land. The "faithful farmer" is an epithet for both Ninurta and the king. Kingship myths similar to the battles of Ninurta are attested in an area far extending the bounds of the ancient Near East. The conflict myth on which the Ninurta mythology was based is probably of prehistoric origin, and various forms of the kingship myths continued to carry the ideas of usurpation, conflict, and dominion until late Antiquity.
Download or read book Conceptualising Divine Unions in the Greek and Near Eastern Worlds written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-01-04 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is an interdisciplinary investigation and contextualization of the various concepts of divine union in the private and public sphere of the Greek and Near Eastern worlds.
Download or read book The Goddess written by David Leeming and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2016-03-15 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For as long as we have sought god, we have found the goddess. Ruling over the imaginations of humankind’s earliest agricultural civilizations, she played a critical spiritual role as a keeper of nature’s fertile powers and an assurance of the next sustaining harvest. In The Goddess, David Leeming and Christopher Fee take us all the way back into prehistory, tracing the goddess across vast spans of time to tell the epic story of the transformation of belief and what it says about who we are. Leeming and Fee use the goddess to gaze into the lives and souls of the people who worshipped her. They chart the development of traditional Western gender roles through an understanding of the transformation of concepts of the Goddess from her earliest roots in India and Iran to her more familiar faces in Ireland and Iceland. They examine the subordination of the goddess to the god as human civilizations became mobile and began to look upon masculine deities for assurances of survival in movement and battle. And they show how, despite this history, the goddess has remained alive in our spiritual imaginations, in figures such as the Christian Virgin Mother and, in contemporary times, the new-age resurrection of figures such as Gaia. The Goddess explores this central aspect of ancient spiritual thought as a window into human history and the deepest roots of our beliefs.
