This contribution contains the first complete edition of the Fāra School Text SF 36. The two prot... more This contribution contains the first complete edition of the Fāra School Text SF 36. The two protagonists are Sud and, to a lesser extent, Enlil. The composition may be considered a hymn to Sud, with an awakening idyll between Sud and Enlil in the background.
This contribution contains the first edition of a Sumerian myth about the grain goddess Ezinan/Aš... more This contribution contains the first edition of a Sumerian myth about the grain goddess Ezinan/Ašnan and her seven children or her seventh child. Its other protagonists are the deities Enki with his vizier Isimud, the sky god An, and the moon god Nanna. The composition is exclusively preserved on several more or less fragmentary tablets from Abū Ṣalābīḫ.
The literary text IAS 327 (AbS-T 171) from the Early Dynastic IIIa period, found in Abū Ṣalābīḫ a... more The literary text IAS 327 (AbS-T 171) from the Early Dynastic IIIa period, found in Abū Ṣalābīḫ and qualified as an ‘exercise tablet’,2 was partly translated by Bing, and translated and edited by Jacobsen and by Wilcke,3 and became known as the story of Lugalbanda and Ninsumuna. This composition is still unique: no new copies of it have been discovered. Also unique is the content of this tablet. There is no reference in any other (Sumerian) composi- tion whatsoever to the story of Lugalbanda and Ninsumuna as told in the composition in question. Both Jacobsen and Wilcke agreed about the problems involved in it. Jacobsen put this as follows: ‘The text presents obvious difficulties, not the least of which are due to the highly elliptic orthography of its period.’ Wilcke limited himself in this respect to: ‘Reading, translation and interpretation are still very subjective.’ On the other hand, Jacobsen and Wilcke disagreed about the translation and interpretation at several points. The different interpretations of both authors were partly caused by the expression I M . R U , for Jacobsen a weapon called ‘Niri’, and for Wilcke a ‘clan (list?)’.4 We present now a new edition of the text of IAS 327.
Man is always searching for the beginnings, for the ultimate source of our world and of our exist... more Man is always searching for the beginnings, for the ultimate source of our world and of our existence. Nowadays physicists are able to come close to the beginning of our universe, the moment of the 'big bang'; the development of life from atomic and molecular level to living cell to living organisms is being unravelled; details of the evolution of man are becoming more and more clear. But what were the ideas about the beginnings in the remote past? To discover this we have to look at the oldest texts that are available to us: Sumerian texts. In 2004, during a seminar about 'Der Ursprung der Welt in griechischer und altorientalischer Sicht' 1 , I was confronted for the first time with the Assyriologist's publications about the Sumerian beginnings.
A diachronic survey of the Sumerian ideas about Beginnings -cosmogony, theogony and anthropogeny ... more A diachronic survey of the Sumerian ideas about Beginnings -cosmogony, theogony and anthropogeny -is described. Third millennium Sumerian texts describe the 'marriage' of the primaeval pair an and ki -Heaven and Earth, thereafter the sky god An and the mother goddess Ninḫursaĝa -and the birth of their children: gods. From the second millennium onwards the Sumerian culture disappeared, except from the scribal schools; there was an increasing Semitic influence. The beginning became a primaeval ocean, Namma who gave birth to anki. Later the pair Apsû and Ti'amat produced heaven and earth -not yet in their final form -and the ancestors of An. Apsû and Ti'amat were killed. Marduk gave heaven and earth their final appearance with both halves of Ti'amat's body. In the Sumerian myth 'Enki and Ninmaḫ', man is created with the aid of clay (Enki's idea), and borne by Namma. In the Akkadian text atra-ḫasīs a god is killed; with his flesh and blood together with clay man was created. The purpose of the creation of man was always the same: the gods do not want to provide for themselves; the maintenance of the gods is man's daily duty.
Jan J. W. Lisman, Properties of β-glucosidase and β-galactosidase from bovine and human brain [PhD biochemistry;1974].
Many people were and are searching for the beginnings, for the ultimate source of our world and ... more Many people were and are searching for the beginnings, for the ultimate source of our world and of our existence. Nowadays physicists are able to come close to the beginning of our universe, the moment of the 'big bang'; the development of life from atomic and molecular level to living cell to living organisms is being unravelled; details of the evolution of man are becoming more and more clear. But what were the ideas about the beginnings in the remote past? To discover this we have to look at the oldest texts that are available to us: Sumerian texts.
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