"The sculptured Dendera zodiac ... is a widely known Egyptianbas-relief from the ceiling of the [portico] of a chapel dedicated to Osiris in the Hathor temple at Dendera, containing images of Taurus (the bull) and Libra (the scales). This chapel was begun in the late Ptolemaic period; its [portico] was added by the emperor Tiberius. This led Jean-François Champollion to date the relief to the Greco-Roman period, but most of his contemporaries believed it to be of the New Kingdom. The relief, which John H. Rogers characterised as 'the only complete map that we have of an ancient sky', has been conjectured to represent the basis on which later astronomy systems were based. It is now on display at the Musée du Louvre, Paris." (Wikipedia)
Note: "The actual origins of the First Babylonian dynasty [roughly 1894 - 1595 BC] are rather hard to pinpoint with great certainty simply because Babylon itself, due to a high water table, yields very few archaeological materials intact. Thus, the evidence that survived throughout the years includes written records such as royal and votive inscriptions, literary texts, and lists of year-names. The minimal amount of evidence in economic and legal documents makes it difficult to illustrate the economic and social history of the First Babylonian Dynasty, but with historical events portrayed in literature and the existence of year-name lists, it is possible to establish a chronology." (Wikipedia)
"A scientist has revealed that an ancient clay tablet could be the oldest and most complete example of applied geometry. The surveyor's field plan from the Old Babylon period shows that ancient mathematics was more advanced than previously thought." Source: Science Daily.
"The tablet -- known as Si.427 -- was discovered in the late 19th century in what is now central Iraq, but its significance was unknown until the UNSW scientist's detective work was revealed today."
Si.427 is thought to date back to the First Babylon Dynasty in the second millennium BC.
Note: According to this 2017 RT report (next video), the Babylonians were also familiar with a form of trigonometry.
"Researcher finds evidence of ancient solar magnetic storms based on cuneiform astrological records and carbon-14 dating. This work may help with our understanding of intense solar activity that can threaten modern electronics." Source: Science Daily (2019).
"...Some of the observations made by ancient Assyrian and Babylonian astrologers more than two millennia ago survive in the form of cuneiform records. These rectangular clay tablets were messages from professional scholars to kings who had commissioned astronomical observations for the purpose of discerning omens -- including comets, meteors, and planetary motions.
"Now, a team led by the University of Tsukuba has matched three of these ancient tablets that mention an unusual red glow in the sky with the carbon-14 concentrations in tree rings and demonstrate how they are evidence of solar magnetic storms. These observations were made approximately 2,700 years ago in Babylon and the Assyrian city of Nineveh, both of which are mentioned contemporaneously in the Bible."
"A 2,550-year-old inscription, written in the name of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, has been discovered carved on basalt stone in northern Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage recently announced." Source: Live Science.
"An engraving at the top of the inscription shows King Nabonidus holding a scepter alongside four other images that include a snake, a flower and a depiction of the moon, the commission said in a statement, noting that these symbols likely have a religious meaning.
"These engravings are followed beneath by about 26 lines of cuneiform text that experts with the commission are currently deciphering. This is the longest cuneiform inscription ever found in Saudi Arabia, the commission said in the statement. "
Note: No one knows what happened to Nabonidus after the conquest of the Neo-Babylonian Empire by the Achaemenid Empire (the first Persian Empire) in 539 BC. He may have been killed, but it seems more likely that he ended up going into exile.
"A 3,500-year-old clay tablet purchased by the Hobby Lobby arts and crafts chain for $1.6 million has been forfeited to the United States." Source: CNBC.
"The tablet, which bears a portion of the epic of Gilgamesh, a Sumerian poem considered one of the world’s oldest works, originated in the area of modern-day Iraq and was illegally transported to the U.S. in 2003 and 2014.
"A false provenance letter was used to sell the tablet several times before Hobby Lobby purchased the item from a London-based auction house [Christie's] in 2014.
"The Gilgamesh Dream Tablet [1] was seized by law enforcement agents from Hobby Lobby’s Washington, D.C.-based Museum of the Bible in 2019. In a complaint filed in May 2020, prosecutors said the 5-by-6-inch tablet is considered the property of the Iraqi government and should be returned. The arts and crafts company cooperated with the investigation."
[1]According to ArtNet, "The Gilgamesh Dream Tablet is so named because it contains a segment from the Epic of Gilgamesh, believed to be one the world’s oldest religious texts, in which the poem’s titular hero recounts his dreams to his mother."
Comment: Thousands of archaeological artifacts were smuggled out of Iraq during GW Bush's glorious invasion and occupation of that country. Apparently, this Gilgamesh tablet was one of them. Sold on the black market, many of these artifacts ended up in museums and private collections where they were no doubt much safer than they would have been in Iraq, which is still in a state of chaos almost 20 years later:
"Serious civil unrest rocked the country beginning in Baghdad and Najaf in July 2018 and spreading to other provinces in late September 2019 as rallies to protest corruption, unemployment, and public service failures turned violent.Protests and demonstrations started again on 1 October 2019, against 16 years of corruption, unemployment and inefficient public services, before they escalated into calls to overthrow the administration and to stop Iranian intervention in Iraq. The Iraqi government at times reacted harshly, resulting in over 500 deaths by 12 December 2019." (Wikipedia)
Baghdad, May 2021. This looks like a great place to store priceless artifacts.
There's no telling what will happen to the stolen artifacts that are now being returned to Iraq. Many of them, I expect, will either be destroyed, stolen again or end up gathering dust in museum basements due to lack of funds. The US government created the conditions that lead to the widespread looting of artifacts in the first place; and it would be ironic, to say the least, if this Gilgamesh tablet ends up getting destroyed in an ISIL terrorist attack or a bombing carried out by some faction sponsored by the same US government that sent the artifact back to Iraq years later.
Hobby Lobby got screwed in this deal, if you ask me. They made what they thought was a legitimate purchase through legitimate channels and now they're out $1.6 million. And this isn't the first time they've been burned in the antiquities market:
I don't blame Hobby Lobby or their Museum of the Bible for any of this. I've always been impressed by the professional way they run their museum. The problem here is that the traffic in antiquities has always been kind of dodgy. It's a black market to a certain extent and even the experts have trouble authenticating artifacts and their supporting documentation. With any luck, Hobby Lobby will get some restitution from Christie's and Christie's will get some restitution from whoever originally sold them the Gilgamesh tablet. The most important thing, however, is the preservation of the artifact itself. Personally, I think the tablet would be better off in the Museum of the Bible than it will be in the hands of the unstable Iraqi government.
"The werewolf is a staple of supernatural fiction, whether it be film, television, or literature. You might think this snarling creature is a creation of the Medieval and Early Modern periods, a result of the superstitions surrounding magic and witchcraft." Source: The Conversation.
"In reality, the werewolf is far older than that. The earliest surviving example of man-to-wolf transformation is found in The Epic of Gilgamesh from around 2,100 BC. However, the werewolf as we now know it first appeared in ancient Greece and Rome, in ethnographic, poetic and philosophical texts."
Note:The Werewolf in Ancient History came out in March of this year (2021). A full transcript of the World History Encyclopedia (formerly the Ancient History Encyclopedia) interview with Daniel Ogden can be found here.
"Sargon of Akkad ... also known as Sargon the Great, was the first ruler of the Akkadian Empire, known for his conquests of the Sumeriancity-states in the 24th to 23rd centuries BC. He is sometimes identified as the first person in recorded history to rule over an empire." (Wikipedia)
Note:According to Wikipedia, "The claim that Sargon was the original founder of Akkad has been called into question with the discovery of an inscription mentioning the place and dated to the first year of Enshakushanna, who almost certainly preceded him." As far as I can tell, everything we know about Enshakushanna comes from the Sumerian King List, an ancient text which "blends prehistorical, presumably mythicalpredynastic rulers enjoying implausibly lengthy reigns with later, more plausibly historical dynasties."
"The Akkadian Empire was the first political entity to make extensive and efficient use of bureaucracy and administration on a large scale and set the standard for future rulers and kingdoms. [Sargon's] story was long known throughout Mesopotamia where, in time, he came to be considered the greatest man who had ever lived, celebrated in glorious tales down through the Persian Empire, along with his grand-son Naram-Sin." (World History Encyclopedia)
"The Akkadian Empire reached its political peak between the 24th and 22nd centuries BC, following the conquests by its founder Sargon of Akkad. Under Sargon and his successors, the Akkadian language was briefly imposed on neighboring conquered states such as Elam and Gutium. Akkad is sometimes regarded as the first empire in history, though the meaning of this term is not precise, and there are earlier Sumerian claimants." (Wikipedia)
"The empire of Akkad fell, perhaps in the 22nd century BC, within 180 years of its founding, ushering in a 'Dark Age' with no prominent imperial authority until the Third Dynasty of Ur. The region's political structure may have reverted to the status quo ante [the way things were before] of local governance by city-states." (Wikipedia)
"An imposing figure standing over 6ft, it seems clear Urfa man was a cult statue even though only one of his kind has been found to date. That he may have had connection with fertility is persuasive, but ‘fertility’ can be applied as an answer to everything from the ancient world. Turning our attention to the strange, vaguely unsettling appearance of the face, Urfa man’s voiceless image cast by a conspicuously absent mouth and gazing obsidian-filled eyes is hauntingly enigmatic, but offers a link with another class of ancient statuary known as the eye idol." Source: Ancient Origins.
The myth of Hell can be traced all the way back to the first civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia, but I'm guessing that the concept of an "underworld of the dead" had its origins in the earliest funerary religions of the Stone Age. The dead were buried under the earth, so the land of the dead was also seen as being somewhere underground.
Hell wasn't called Hell in Mesopotamia and it wasn't a place of punishment for sinners. That's a much more modern idea. Originally, the place we call Hell was just a grim vision of the afterlife waiting for everyone. In other words, back around 3,000 BC or so, everybody went to "Hell" so I guess you could say that Hell was the original Heaven:
"The Sumerian afterlife was a dark, dreary cavern located deep below the ground, where inhabitants were believed to continue 'a shadowy version of life on earth'. This bleak domain was known as Kur, and was believed to be ruled by the goddess Ereshkigal. All souls went to the same afterlife, and a person's actions during life had no effect on how the person would be treated in the world to come." Source: Wikipedia.
Closed-captions helpful. Sort of.
The Old Testament Sheol, also known as Hades, is basically identical to the Mesopotamian Kur. According to Wikipedia, "Sheol is a place of darkness to which all the dead go, both the righteous and the unrighteous, regardless of the moral choices made in life, a place of stillness and darkness cut off from life and from God."
The concept of an underworld where sinners are punished after death seems to have evolved in ancient Egypt and Greece, but several different versions of the myth were floating around the Near East and Mediterranean world back then.
The Greeks, for instance, had a concept of the underworld (Hades) as a "deep, gloomy place" where everyone went after death, but the element of judgment was also present in their mythology. " In the Gorgias, Plato (c. 400 BC) wrote that souls were judged after death and those who received punishment were sent to Tartarus," a pit or cave in Hades that was used as a dungeon. (Wikipedia) "Tartarus is the deep abyss that is used as a dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked and as the prison for the Titans."
The next clip is from the great 1997 miniseries, The Odyssey, with Armand Assante (highly recommended). It starts off with the scene where Odysseus travels to Hades to ask the blind prophet Tiresias how to get home. The Hades in this scene is more of an underworld of shades than a place of divine punishment.
Hades was not only a place, but the name of the god of the underworld. Originally, he appears to have been one of many anonymous chthonic deities and it was dangerous to mention his actual name:
"...Hades lacked a proper name; as in the case of other nameless chthonians, his anonymity was a precaution. He was referred to by descriptive circumlocutions as 'chthonian Zeus' ... 'the chthonian god,' 'king of those below,' 'Zeus of the departed' ... 'the other Zeus,' 'the god below,' or simply 'lord.' As the Lord of the Dead, he was dark and sinister, a god to be feared and kept at a distance." Source: Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised).
The history of Hell and its demons is too long and complex to describe in detail here, but our modern concept of Hell apparently originated with the Abrahamic religions, particularly Christianity. From what I've read, Judaism sees Hell as a state of shame and atonement rather than a physical place. The full-blown description of Hell as a literal pit of fire and brimstone and eternal torment seems to be an invention of the medieval Christian church.
Interestingly enough, "[t]he Christian doctrine of hell derives from passages in the New Testament. The word hell does not appear in the Greek New Testament; instead one of three words is used: the Greek words Tartarus or Hades, or the Hebrew word Gehinnom (1)." So the Hell of the New Testament has clear roots in the underworld of the dead as described by the ancient Greeks and Mesopotamians.
(1) The word Gehinnom derives from Gehenna, a reference to the "Valley of Hinnom," a garbage dump outside of Jersualem where people burned their trash. According to Wikipedia, "[b]odies of those deemed to have died in sin without hope of salvation (such as people who committed suicide) were thrown there to be destroyed. Gehenna is used in the New Testament as a metaphor for the final place of punishment for the wicked after the resurrection."
The valley is said to be cursed because some of the early kings of Judah sacrificed children to Moloch there.
These days, a majority of Americans still believe in Hell and a 2007 Harris poll revealed that more Americans believe in a literal Hell and Devil than they do in the theory of evolution. Some Christian denominations reject the concept of Hell altogether, while others still embrace the literal version of Hell famously described by Jonathan Edwards in his notorious 1741 sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.
The full text of this sermon is a classic well worth reading.
Back in 2018, Pope Francis created a storm of controversy when he supposedly said that Hell doesn't exist and that condemned souls just disappear, though it's possible that his actual words were misreported. If Francis doesn't believe in Hell, he apparently still believes in demons, however, because the Vatican announced in the same year that it would hold a "training course for priests in exorcism ... amid claims that demands for deliverance from demonic possession have greatly increased across the world."
US Seizes Gilgamesh Tablet From Hobby Lobby
"A 3,500-year-old clay tablet purchased by the Hobby Lobby arts and crafts chain for $1.6 million has been forfeited to the United States." Source: CNBC.
"The tablet, which bears a portion of the epic of Gilgamesh, a Sumerian poem considered one of the world’s oldest works, originated in the area of modern-day Iraq and was illegally transported to the U.S. in 2003 and 2014.
"A false provenance letter was used to sell the tablet several times before Hobby Lobby purchased the item from a London-based auction house [Christie's] in 2014.
"The Gilgamesh Dream Tablet [1] was seized by law enforcement agents from Hobby Lobby’s Washington, D.C.-based Museum of the Bible in 2019. In a complaint filed in May 2020, prosecutors said the 5-by-6-inch tablet is considered the property of the Iraqi government and should be returned. The arts and crafts company cooperated with the investigation."
[1] According to ArtNet, "The Gilgamesh Dream Tablet is so named because it contains a segment from the Epic of Gilgamesh, believed to be one the world’s oldest religious texts, in which the poem’s titular hero recounts his dreams to his mother."
Comment: Thousands of archaeological artifacts were smuggled out of Iraq during GW Bush's glorious invasion and occupation of that country. Apparently, this Gilgamesh tablet was one of them. Sold on the black market, many of these artifacts ended up in museums and private collections where they were no doubt much safer than they would have been in Iraq, which is still in a state of chaos almost 20 years later:
"Serious civil unrest rocked the country beginning in Baghdad and Najaf in July 2018 and spreading to other provinces in late September 2019 as rallies to protest corruption, unemployment, and public service failures turned violent. Protests and demonstrations started again on 1 October 2019, against 16 years of corruption, unemployment and inefficient public services, before they escalated into calls to overthrow the administration and to stop Iranian intervention in Iraq. The Iraqi government at times reacted harshly, resulting in over 500 deaths by 12 December 2019." (Wikipedia)
Baghdad, May 2021. This looks like a great place to store priceless artifacts.
There's no telling what will happen to the stolen artifacts that are now being returned to Iraq. Many of them, I expect, will either be destroyed, stolen again or end up gathering dust in museum basements due to lack of funds. The US government created the conditions that lead to the widespread looting of artifacts in the first place; and it would be ironic, to say the least, if this Gilgamesh tablet ends up getting destroyed in an ISIL terrorist attack or a bombing carried out by some faction sponsored by the same US government that sent the artifact back to Iraq years later.
Hobby Lobby got screwed in this deal, if you ask me. They made what they thought was a legitimate purchase through legitimate channels and now they're out $1.6 million. And this isn't the first time they've been burned in the antiquities market:
"Hobby Lobby has already been forced to restitute over 11,000 artifacts—mostly papyrus fragments, cuneiform tablets, and clay seals—to Egypt and Iraq. The company, which was forced to pay a $3 million fine, has filed lawsuits against Christie’s for the sale of the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet and an Oxford University classics professor alleged to have sold the company ancient Bible fragments that were stolen." (Art Net)
I don't blame Hobby Lobby or their Museum of the Bible for any of this. I've always been impressed by the professional way they run their museum. The problem here is that the traffic in antiquities has always been kind of dodgy. It's a black market to a certain extent and even the experts have trouble authenticating artifacts and their supporting documentation. With any luck, Hobby Lobby will get some restitution from Christie's and Christie's will get some restitution from whoever originally sold them the Gilgamesh tablet. The most important thing, however, is the preservation of the artifact itself. Personally, I think the tablet would be better off in the Museum of the Bible than it will be in the hands of the unstable Iraqi government.
Posted at 07:00 AM in Ancient Literature, Archeology News, Books, Commentary, Culture, Current Affairs, Mesopotomia, Videos | Permalink