Gilgamesh: Recent discoveries

The newly discovered fragment of the Epic

A new tablet has been discovered in Iraq that sheds new light on Humbaba, the monster slain by Gilgamesh and Enkidu in the famous Epic of Gilgamesh.

The article, with images and descriptions of the find, can be found on the excellent Ancient History blog so go check it out.

Hopefully there will be translations of the new (old) material soon!

The Time of the Amorites: Part II

The top of the stele of the Law Code of Hammurabi

Enki has esteemed him truly in the shrine, the august place -- the king who loves purification rites and is well-suited to the pure divine powers, the king who is skilled in the precious plans, who is reverent, eloquent and deft, the shepherd, favourite of Lord Nunamnir and beloved of Mother Ninlil, ......, who delights the great prince Enki, ......, who is cherished by holy Damgalnuna: the good shepherd Hammurabi.
Praise Hymn of Hammurabi

This is the second part of the post about the Amorite rulers and the period from the fall of the Third Dynasty of Ur to the fall of the Old Babylonian Empire, from 2004BC to 1595BC (Middle Chronology). Please click here for the first post.

If the robber is not caught, then shall he who was robbed claim under oath the amount of his loss; then shall the community, and . . . on whose ground and territory and in whose domain it was compensate him for the goods stolen.
Law Code of Hammurabi: Article 23

Hammurabi is the king best known to posterity from this period. Other rulers, such as Shamshi-Adad, are not really remembered. But what has cemented Hammurabi’s legacy in contemporary thought is not the scale of his conquests but the famous law code that was discovered. This is a law code which emphasises the role of the ruler as shepherd of the people and intermediary between the people and the gods. It would appear to be much more violent than modern legal systems but allowances must be made for the fact that societies that have no facilities for imprisonment or police forces in the strict sense of the word nearly always have harsher laws. The standard legal procedure was what is known as lex talionis, best known from the Old Testament phrase “an eye for an eye.” The law code was far from unique; there are similar codes that predate and postdate it and share many features with it. However, as it was one of the first ones to be discovered by archaeology and because, despite its harshness, it still contains concepts such as the presumption of innocence, it has grabbed the imagination.

Figure from Larsa/Isin

And it came to pass in the days of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of nations; That these made war with Bera king of Sodom, and with Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, and Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela, which is Zoar. All these were joined together in the vale of Siddim, which is the salt sea. Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer, and in the thirteenth year they rebelled. And in the fourteenth year came Chedorlaomer, and the kings that were with him, and smote the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim, and the Zuzims in Ham, and the Emims in Shaveh Kiriathaim, and the Horites in their mount Seir, unto Elparan, which is by the wilderness. And they returned, and came to Enmishpat, which is Kadesh, and smote all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites, that dwelt in Hazezontamar. And there went out the king of Sodom, and the king of Gomorrah, and the king of Admah, and the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (the same is Zoar;) and they joined battle with them in the vale of Siddim; with Chedorlaomer the king of Elam, and with Tidal king of nations, and Amraphel king of Shinar, and Arioch king of Ellasar; four kings with five. And the vale of Siddim was full of slimepits; and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and fell there; and they that remained fled to the mountain. And they took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their victuals, and went their way.
Genesis 14:1-11 (King James Version translation)

The Law Code of Hammurabi stands as one of the prime exhibits of the Louvre in Paris and a bas-relief of Hammurabi adorns the US Congress buildings in recognition of his prowess as a lawmaker. Some people who are familiar with Genesis in the Old Testament may remember notes about Hammurabi in the story of Abraham. While certain scholars thought that Hammurabi might be mentioned in Genesis this is now thought to be unlikely. Shinar is the Hebrew name for the plains around Babylon and Amraphel sounds like it might possibly be a Hebrew version of Hammurabi’s name. The description of a powerful Elamite king with allies from the Mesopotamian plain is not unlike the situation of the early reign of Hammurabi but the names of the other kings and cities do not match well (no Chedorlaomer of Elam is known to history for example). Also, the five cities of the plain are usually located in the Dead Sea Valley and there is no record of Hammurabi or other Mesopotamian monarchs controlling or attacking these regions in this era. The archives of Mari and Ebla might shed more light on this but for the moment the identification has to be treated as very hypothetical at best. It is interesting however that tar pits are mentioned in the Genesis passage; considering Hammurabi’s obsession with bitumen in his disputes with Zimri-Lim.

The valiant Ninurta is your helper. In the E-kur, Nuska the august minister of Enlil, the assembly leader of all lands, is your foremost palace superintendent. Throughout your life, may you carry your neck high; in princely manner may you lift your head high! Prolong the days of his life for Samsu-iluna, of princely worth!
Praise Hymn of Samsu-iluna

Venus Tablet of Ammi-saduqa

After the death of Hammurabi his son Samsu-iluna succeeded him and the empire almost immediately began to disintegrate. A large rebellion saw the southern regions of old Sumer break away. A person named Rim-Sin, who was probably related to the Rim-Sin defeated by Hammurabi, united nearly all the old Sumerian cities in rebellion against Babylon. Samsu-iluna was victorious but at a heavy cost and he appears to have commanded his troops to be very destructive of the old cities of the south, tearing down walls and possibly killing the priests who kept the records. The records of the old Sumerian cities begin to become silent at this time. To the north and east the Elamites and the city of Asshur tried to gain independence but were fought off by Samsu-iluna who also fought off a raid by a people called the Kassites.

Abi-eshuh, son of Samsu-iluna, set out to conquer Iluma-ilu. He dammed the Tigris but did not capture Iluma-ilu.
Chronicle of the Early Kings

Samsu-iluna had held the empire together (barely) but his successor, Abi-eshuh, was unable to replicate the success. The south had broken away and a new dynasty (called the Sealand Dynasty) had arisen. Abi-eshuh appears to have tried an engineering solution to the problem, campaigning against the Sealand kings and trying to control the water flows. It is unclear what is being attempted. Did he try to use this as a way of entering cities via the water gates, as Cyrus was said to have done millennia later? Was he trying to create a reservoir that could be loosed against the enemy to drown them? It is unclear but the attempt failed.

Year 8: superior Venus vanishes E on Adar 27 and after 2 months 16 days appears W on Simanu 13
The Venus Tablet of Ammi-Saduqa

Ammi-Ditana succeeded Abi-Eshuh, reigning over a much reduced empire peacefully for a number of years. His son Ammi-Saduqa also reigned in relative peace. The main significance of Ammi-Saduqa’s reign to history is that during his reign certain observations of the planet Venus were made that can be matched against known astronomical data. Because the years of the king are known and those of his successors and predecessors are also recorded, this date should allow all of Mesopotamian history to be dated quite accurately. However, due to certain ambiguities and because astronomical planetary phenomena repeat themselves the dates may have three possible interpretations (up to 120 years apart). Most historians follow the Middle or the Low Chronology but High, Middle and Low all have their advocates and good historical rationales.

At the time of Samsuditana the Hittites marched against Akkad.
Ea-gamil, the king of the Sealand, fled to Elam. After he had gone, Ulam-Buriaš, brother of Kaštiliašu, the Kassite, mustered an army and conquered the Sealand. He was master of the land.
Chronicle of the Early Kings

Hittite chariot from later Bronze Age

Samsu-ditana was the last king of the Hammurabi’s Dynasty. An impressive raid by Mursilis I, King of the Hittites, overthrew Babylon in 1595BC (Middle Chronology). Mursilis was too far from his base in Anatolia to hold Babylon however so he retreated (being promptly assassinated upon his return). The Kassite tribes moved into the vacuum as the Amorite tribes had done previously and the later Bronze Age kings of Babylon would be Kassites.

This period of four hundred years, with the initial instability followed by the empire-building of Shamshi-Adad and Hammurabi and the empire maintained by Hammurabi’s successors saw a number of impressive building works and projects but most of these have succumbed to the ravages of time. If Abi-eshuh was even able to attempt to dam the Tigris this speaks to considerable technological prowess. But the main legacy is their obsession with writing. I find it unusual that records of ownership are given such priority in the Code of Hammurabi. As long distance trade could not have proper witnesses the clause mentioned above meant that practically every transaction required recording, a far larger task than could be handled merely by scribes. The trading class must have acquired the rudiments of reading and writing leading to very high literacy rates by ancient standards. It is in this fertile ground of a reading population that the standard text of the first recorded epic (The Epic of Gilgamesh) received its standard form.

Kassite kudurru boundary marker

The tavern-keeper spoke to Gilgamesh, saying:
"lf you are Gilgamesh, who killed the Guardian,
who destroyed Humbaba who lived in the Cedar Forest,
who slew lions in the mountain passes,
who grappled with the Bull that came down from heaven, and
killed him,
why are your cheeks emaciated, your expression desolate!
Why is your heart so wretched, your features so haggard!
Why is there such sadness deep within you!
The Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet X

Related Blog Posts:
The Time of the Amorites: Part I
The Time of the Amorites: Part II
Sumer
Sumerian History: 3500-1940BC
The Late Bronze Age in the Middle East

Sumer

"Standard" of Ur showing scenes of battle

This will be the last post that I shall do for a while. The assignment that I have been doing will be completed this week. I shall continue the blog (I have grown to enjoy it) but time constraints mean that I shall probably put it on hold for a few weeks before resuming posting at some point after Christmas. I would like to thank everyone who took the time to read or comment on the blog. I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

This final post will be about my favourite ancient civilisation, Sumer. When I was in my early teens I wanted to study Sumerian (or Mesopotamian) history for a living and I occasionally still wish that I had gone down that route. I have alluded to this civilisation in earlier posts, such as The Gardener Who Became King and Hearing History but I never gave them a proper introduction to the reader.

A map of some of the cities of Sumer

Sumer is special because in many ways it is the first civilisation. There are Neolithic settlements around the world that are far older than any Sumerian sites and other areas could claim to have been roughly contemporary with Sumer but it is uncontested that Sumer is the oldest civilisation yet discovered that we can say anything about with certainty. They are indisputably the earliest culture to leave behind records that can still be read by scholars today.

Sumer is located in the south of Iraq, from the Persian Gulf in the south to roughly around Baghdad in the north and bounded by the Arabian Desert and Iranian Plateau to the west and east respectively. It is generally a flat floodplain for the two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates that give Mesopotamia its name (Mesopotamia literally means "the land between the rivers" in Greek). It lacks natural resources, including stone and wood and the deltas of the rivers have extensive marshland around the mouths.

King Gudea of Lagash

In or around 3500 BC (by most conventional dating) the inhabitants of the land banded together to create irrigation systems. These systems allowed the inhabitants to control the floodwaters of the two unpredictable rivers, drain the marshlands and irrigate the deserts. The new farmland was exploited to allow the Sumerians to produce multiple harvests per year. Their population expanded but not in a haphazard fashion. They needed to cooperate in order to maintain these complex irrigation systems. This led to communities living together in the world’s first cities.

The plain of Sumer lacked stone so to build their houses and monuments the Sumerians used mud bricks. This was a poor building material so they would periodically destroy their buildings and build new ones on top of them. This led to their cities (occupied for hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of years) to eventually rise above the plains on artificial hills. These mounds survive today across the Middle East and are referred to as "tells".

There are possible writing systems that may predate the Sumerian one, but many scholars are convinced that these systems are just collections of pictures and are not actually writing. The Sumerian script is the oldest decipherable script. It originally seems to have been a method for recording transactions but evolved into a medium for writing advanced mathematics and literature. They wrote on clay tablets. The scribes would use a wedge shaped stick to make impressions on the clay, which led scholars to name the script cuneiform ("cuneus" is Latin for "wedge"). The Sumerians kept a huge amount of records and thousands upon thousands of tablets and tablet fragments have been found documenting everything from their musical scales, to epic poetry, to humour (they liked situational comedy) to the price of sheep. Many civilisations leave behind a few enigmatic fragments. The Sumerians left behind libraries.

Cuneiform text of the Epic of Gilgamesh

The language that they wrote in is a language isolate. There is no language on earth today that is related to it. There are wild theories about extraterrestrial contact and stuff, but language isolates are not all that uncommon (Basque is one) and there were doubtless many languages spoken thousands of years ago that have died out without a trace. Fortunately for scholars, for thousands of years scribes would write parallel texts in Sumerian and Akkadian. Akkadian is a Semitic language that can be understood so the Sumerian texts could be read by measuring them against the parallel texts. Nevertheless the unique formation of the language leads to occasional difficulties in translation.

As fascinating as the price of sheep might be to an agricultural historian the rest of us can be glad that they left behind somewhat more interesting texts. They were deeply interested in astronomy, or more strictly speaking, astronomy mixed with astrology. They believed that there was a correlation between celestial events and earthly ones, plus they needed to keep a close track of the seasons to maximise their agriculture so they used their recording skills to develop a sophisticated astronomy and mathematics. Many of their ideas were subsequently transmitted to the Greeks and survive today. Did you ever wonder why, when we have a decimal system (with ten as a base) we have 24 hours in a day? The 24-hour day, twelve-signed zodiac and 360-degree circle are (possibly, as there is some debate about this) legacies of Sumerian astronomy and mathematics.

They also created some of the most poignant literary works the world has ever seen. The Sumerian worldview is generally held to have been a gloomy one. The gods ruled in heaven and the underworld and humanity lived a life of toil for a brief period before descending to the underworld for an uncomfortable life as an insubstantial ghost. The Sumerians were very concerned with the meaning of life and the greatest of their works (perfected by the successors of their civilisation but created originally by the Sumerians) is the Epic of Gilgamesh. This epic tells of a king who rules harshly until he finds a real friend. When his friend dies Gilgamesh falls into despair and goes on a quest to try and find eternal life and give meaning to his existence. Storytelling has changed greatly over the last four thousand years but the basic storyline is still gripping. The first known author (there are literary texts that predate her, but she is the first named author) was a priestess called Enheduanna writing in the Sumerian city of Ur.

The partially restored Ziggurat of Ur

Sumerian architecture is often overlooked for two reasons. Firstly because their buildings were built of mud-brick, which degenerates over time and made it difficult to truly build large structures and secondly because the near-contemporaneous Egyptian civilisation produced lasting architecture on a truly colossal scale. The Sumerian cities were ornamented with at least one ziggurat apiece. A ziggurat was a series of brick platforms built on top of each other with a temple at the top. The temples were the symbolic home of the gods of the city and may have doubled as astronomical observation platforms for the priests.

The Sumerians lived in city-states with rulers (who seem to have had advisory councils). These city-states rose or declined in prominence over the years and the latter part of the third millennium BC the cities were involved in direct warfare with each other. The Sumerians were either the first, or among the first, to invent the wheel and used chariots in battle. The horse was not yet domesticated in that area of the world so their chariots were massive, slow platforms for warriors to fight from, drawn by onagers (wild donkeys), that would lumber into battle. Their warriors had helmets, body armour, spears and bows. It is theorised, based on certain reliefs, that their armies may have used the phalanx formation but this is unclear and I suspect that it may have more to do with artistic conventions than actual military formations.

Over the years the Sumerian culture had imitators and similar cultures arose in what is now Iran and in northern Iraq. Around the year 2270 BC (according to certain dating systems) the Sumerian city-states were conquered by the Akkadian king Sargon and ruled from Akkad for several generations. The empire eventually broke down when Gutian invaders from the Iranian Plateau conquered the Akkadians. There was a revival in Sumerian culture (there were several major revolts by the Sumerian cities during the Akkadian Empire) after the Gutian invasion and a city called Ur (which is possibly the city identified by the Bible as the birthplace of Abraham) became the centre of an empire in the south of Iraq. But this empire only lasted a few generations and by the year 1800 BC Sumerian cities had declining populations, reduced farmland and were ruled from Babylonia. The Akkadian language gradually replaced Sumerian and Sumerian culture as a distinct entity effectively came to an end.

The Stele of Vultures: Lagash victory stele

Sumer had an impressive legacy however. Their language remained as a language of learning (rather like Latin used to be in Europe) and the last Sumerian texts were written around the first century AD. The Akkadians, Elamites and later Assyrian and Babylonian cultures were deeply influenced by them and in many ways Sumerian culture didn’t die so much as change into a broader Mesopotamian culture. While the later Persian Empire drew primarily on Iranian culture it was also influenced by the Mesopotamian empires it replaced, thus extending the range of Sumerian influence. The Greek philosophers borrowed concepts such as certain mythic cycles and mathematical and astronomical ideas from the Mesopotamians thus drawing on Sumerian cultural achievements in a way that perpetuates their influence to this day.

So, hopefully this has sparked some interest in this most ancient of civilisations, whose ultimate legacy to us is more than mathematics, the wheel, writing, irrigation etc. The real legacy of the Sumerians to us is, well, civilisation itself. 

Related Blog Posts:
Sumerian History: 3500-1940BC
The Time of the Amorites: Part I
The Time of the Amorites: Part II

Hearing History

Victory Stele of Naram-Sin, king of the Akkad

It is fascinating to read about history, but it can sometimes be difficult to really visualise it. Texts read on a screen or on the pages of a book can sometimes seem dead and lifeless as our imaginations fail to really capture the spirit of times past. Sometimes we require aids to spur the imagination.

Last year I discovered a site where academics attempted to recreate how ancient languages sounded. This site deals with the Akkadian language. Akkadian is a Semitic language, related to Hebrew and Arabic but thousands of years older than either and spoken mainly in what is now Iraq. It first makes an appearance around the early centuries of the second millennium BC and became the official language of the Akkadian Empire (the first empire the world has ever seen). Our best copies of the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is the world’s oldest epic and still a fantastic tale despite the passing of centuries, are written in Akkadian.

In the Bronze Age, when the kings and emperors of the Near East would communicate with each other they would use this language. It was at different times the language of commerce, of science, of sacred texts and of diplomacy. It was spoken as a proper language for millennia but, like Latin in the European Middle Ages, eventually became a dead language, preserved merely among the intellectuals. After Alexander’s conquests the old temples and centres of learning were gradually abandoned and the language died out around two thousand years ago. The tablets upon which it was written were lost and buried in Iraq to be discovered and deciphered in the late nineteenth century AD.

Ancient Akkadian clay tablet from the Epic of Gilgamesh

Working backwards from Semitic languages spoken today and using all the texts available to us, scholars have recorded themselves speaking in this language. I am not a linguist but I can only imagine the amount of work (and/or guesswork) that went into this project. It is one thing to translate a text but quite a different thing to try and understand how it was pronounced. I will leave you with a link to the site, which can be found here. I found it slightly eerie but intriguing to listen to our civilisations attempts to vocalise the works of the world’s first great literate civilisation. Enjoy.