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177-508: Gilgamesh ( / ˈ ɡ ɪ l ɡ ə m ɛ ʃ / , / ɡ ɪ l ˈ ɡ ɑː m ɛ ʃ / ; Akkadian : 𒀭𒄑𒂆𒈦 , romanized:  Gilgameš ; originally Sumerian : 𒀭𒄑𒉋𒂵𒎌 , romanized:  Bilgames ) was a hero in ancient Mesopotamian mythology and the protagonist of the Epic of Gilgamesh , an epic poem written in Akkadian during the late 2nd millennium BC. He was possibly

354-691: A lingua franca of the empire, rather than it being eclipsed by Akkadian. Texts written 'exclusively' in Neo-Assyrian disappear within 10 years of Nineveh 's destruction in 612 BC. Under the Achaemenids , Aramaic continued to prosper, but Assyrian continued its decline. The language's final demise came about during the Hellenistic period when it was further marginalized by Koine Greek , even though Neo-Assyrian cuneiform remained in use in literary tradition well into Parthian times. Similarly,

531-650: A voiced alveolar trill /r/ but its pattern of alternation with ⟨ ḫ ⟩ suggests it was a fricative (either uvular /ʁ/ or velar /ɣ/ ). In the Hellenistic period, Akkadian ⟨ r ⟩ was transcribed using the Greek ρ, indicating it was pronounced similarly as an alveolar sound (though Greeks may also have perceived a uvular trill as ρ). Several Proto-Semitic phonemes are lost in Akkadian. The Proto-Semitic glottal stop *ʔ , as well as

708-553: A "cheery optimism" filled with "the sweet strains of love and harmony". In his 1904 book Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients , the German Assyriologist Alfred Jeremias equated Gilgamesh with the king Nimrod from the Book of Genesis and argued Gilgamesh's strength must come from his hair, like the hero Samson in the Book of Judges , and that he must have performed Twelve Labors like

885-524: A 19th-century BC ruler of Uruk named Naram-sin. Uruk continued as principality of Ur, Babylon, and later Achaemenid, Seleucid, and Parthian Empires. It enjoyed brief periods of independence during the Isin-Larsa period , under kings such as (possibly Ikūn-pî-Ištar , Sumu-binasa, Alila-hadum, and Naram-Sin), Sîn-kāšid , his son Sîn-irībam, his son Sîn-gāmil, Ilum-gāmil, brother of Sîn-gāmil , Etēia, AN-am 3 (Dingiram), ÌR 3 -ne-ne ( Irdanene ), who

1062-657: A character named "Gil Gamesh", who is the star pitcher of a fictional 1930s baseball team called the "Patriot League". Starting in the late twentieth century, the Epic of Gilgamesh began to be read again in Iraq. Saddam Hussein , the former President of Iraq , had a lifelong fascination with Gilgamesh. Saddam's first novel Zabibah and the King (2000) is an allegory for the Gulf War set in ancient Assyria that blends elements of

1239-499: A classic of German " queer literature " and set a decades-long international literary trend of portraying Gilgamesh and Enkidu as homosexual lovers. This trend proved so popular that the Epic of Gilgamesh itself is included in The Columbia Anthology of Gay Literature (1998) as a major early work of that genre. In the 1970s and 1980s, feminist literary critics analyzed the Epic of Gilgamesh as showing evidence for

1416-517: A comparison with other Semitic languages, and the resulting picture was gradually amended using internal linguistic evidence from Akkadian sources, especially deriving from so-called plene spellings (spellings with an extra vowel). According to this widely accepted system, the place of stress in Akkadian is completely predictable and sensitive to syllable weight . There are three syllable weights: light (ending in -V); heavy (ending in -V̄ or -VC), and superheavy (ending in -V̂, -V̄C or -V̂C). If

1593-610: A façade treatment was greatly developed as well, perhaps used to greatest effect in the Cone-Mosaic Temple. Composed of three parts: Temple N, the Round Pillar Hall, and the Cone-Mosaic Courtyard, this temple was the most monumental structure of Eanna at the time. They were all ritually destroyed and the entire Eanna district was rebuilt in period IVa at an even grander scale. During Eanna IVa,

1770-702: A historical king of the Sumerian city-state of Uruk , who was posthumously deified . His rule probably would have taken place sometime in the beginning of the Early Dynastic Period , c. 2900–2350 BC, though he became a major figure in Sumerian legend during the Third Dynasty of Ur ( c.  2112  – c.  2004 BC ). Tales of Gilgamesh's legendary exploits are narrated in five surviving Sumerian poems . The earliest of these

1947-588: A king Gligmos , Gmigmos or Gamigos as the last of a line of twelve kings contemporaneous with the patriarchs from Peleg to Abraham. The Akkadian text of the Epic of Gilgamesh was first discovered in 1849 AD by the English archaeologist Austen Henry Layard in the Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. Layard was seeking evidence to confirm the historicity of the events described in the Hebrew Bible , i.e.

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2124-549: A large number of myths and legends developed surrounding Gilgamesh. Five independent Sumerian poems have been discovered narrating his exploits. Gilgamesh's first appearance in literature is probably in the Sumerian poem "Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld". The narrative begins with a huluppu tree—perhaps, according to the Sumerologist Samuel Noah Kramer , a willow, growing on the banks of

2301-468: A locative ending in -um in the singular and the resulting forms serve as adverbials . These forms are generally not productive, but in the Neo-Babylonian the um -locative replaces several constructions with the preposition ina . In the later stages of Akkadian, the mimation (word-final -m ) and nunation (dual final -n ) that occurred at the end of most case endings disappeared, except in

2478-535: A minimal cost. Warka was also scouted by archaeologist Walter Andrae in 1902. In 1905 Warka was visited by archaeologist Edgar James Banks . From 1912 to 1913, Julius Jordan and his team from the German Oriental Society discovered the temple of Ishtar , one of four known temples located at the site. The temples at Uruk were quite remarkable as they were constructed with brick and adorned with colorful mosaics . Jordan also discovered part of

2655-412: A monumental limestone-paved staircase and a trough running parallel to the staircase was used to drain the ziggurat. The Eanna district is historically significant as both writing and monumental public architecture emerged here during Uruk periods VI–IV. The combination of these two developments places Eanna as arguably the first true city and civilization in human history. Eanna during period IVa contains

2832-651: A name, often independent of the epic context in which he originally became known. (As analogous examples one might think, for instance, of the Minotaur or Frankenstein's monster .)" The Epic of Gilgamesh has been translated into many major world languages and has become a staple of American world literature classes. Many contemporary authors and novelists have drawn inspiration from it, including an American avant-garde theater collective called "The Gilgamesh Group" and Joan London in her novel Gilgamesh (2001). The Great American Novel (1973) by Philip Roth features

3009-674: A new form and under a new name, 'The House of Inanna in Uruk' (Sumerian: e₂-ᵈinanna unuᵏⁱ-ga ). The location of this structure is currently unknown. Although it had been a thriving city in Early Dynastic Sumer, especially Early Dynastic II, Uruk was ultimately annexed by the Akkadian Empire and went into decline. Later, in the Neo-Sumerian period, Uruk enjoyed revival as a major economic and cultural center under

3186-555: A provincial capital. Under the Neo-Assyrians and Neo-Babylonians , Uruk regained much of its former glory. By 250 BC, a new temple complex the 'Head Temple' (Akkadian: Bīt Reš ) was added to northeast of the Uruk period Anu district. The Bīt Reš along with the Esagila was one of the two main centers of Neo-Babylonian astronomy . All of the temples and canals were restored again under Nabopolassar . During this era, Uruk

3363-523: A scholar of the ancient Near East, states that "precise dates cannot be given for the lifetime of Gilgamesh, but they are generally agreed to lie between 2800 and 2500 BC". An inscription, possibly belonging to a contemporary official under Gilgamesh, was discovered in the archaic texts at Ur; his name reads: "Gilgameš is the one whom Utu has selected". Aside from this the Tummal Inscription , a thirty-four-line historiographic text written during

3540-403: A separate East Semitic language. Because Akkadian as a spoken language is extinct and no contemporary descriptions of the pronunciation are known, little can be said with certainty about the phonetics and phonology of Akkadian. Some conclusions can be made, however, due to the relationship to the other Semitic languages and variant spellings of Akkadian words. The following table presents

3717-431: A seven-day sleep. Next, Utnapishtim tells him that, even if he cannot obtain immortality, he can restore his youth with a rejuvenating herb. Gilgamesh takes the plant, but leaves it on the shore while swimming and a snake steals it, explaining why snakes shed their skins . Despondent at this loss, Gilgamesh returns to Uruk, and shows his city to the ferryman Urshanabi. At this point the continuous narrative ends. Tablet XII

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3894-547: A shift in the Euphrates River. By 300 AD, Uruk was mostly abandoned, but a group of Mandaeans settled there, and by c. 700 AD it was completely abandoned. Uruk played a very important part in the political history of Sumer. Starting from the Early Uruk period, the city exercised hegemony over nearby settlements. At this time ( c. 3800 BC), there were two centers of 20 hectares, Uruk in

4071-591: A single chamber cella with a terrazzo floor beneath which bucrania were found. In phase E, corresponding to the Uruk III period (c. 3200–3000 BC), the White Temple was built. The White Temple could be seen from a great distance across the plain of Sumer, as it was elevated 21 m and covered in gypsum plaster which reflected sunlight like a mirror. In addition to this temple the Anu Ziggurat had

4248-577: A transition from the original matriarchy of all humanity to modern patriarchy . As the Green Movement expanded in Europe, Gilgamesh's story began to be seen through an environmentalist lens , with Enkidu's death symbolizing man's separation from nature. Theodore Ziolkowski , a scholar of modern literature, states, that "unlike most other figures from myth, literature, and history, Gilgamesh has established himself as an autonomous entity or simply

4425-555: A vast textual tradition of religious and mythological narrative, legal texts, scientific works, personal correspondence, political, civil and military events, economic tracts and many other examples. Centuries after the fall of the Akkadian Empire, Akkadian, in its Assyrian and Babylonian varieties, was the native language of the Mesopotamian empires ( Old Assyrian Empire , Babylonia , Middle Assyrian Empire ) throughout

4602-631: A wife' may further imply sexual intercourse." In 2000, a modern statue of Gilgamesh by the Assyrian sculptor Lewis Batros was unveiled at the University of Sydney in Australia . The Australian psychedelic rock band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard recorded a song titled "Gilgamesh" as the fifth track of their October 2023 album The Silver Cord , with references to the epic in

4779-499: A written language, adapting Sumerian cuneiform orthography for the purpose. During the Middle Bronze Age (Old Assyrian and Old Babylonian period), the language virtually displaced Sumerian, which is assumed to have been extinct as a living language by the 18th century BC. Old Akkadian, which was used until the end of the 3rd millennium BC, differed from both Babylonian and Assyrian, and was displaced by these dialects. By

4956-609: Is PaRiStum (< *PaRiS-at-um ). Additionally there is a general tendency of syncope of short vowels in the later stages of Akkadian. Most roots of the Akkadian language consist of three consonants, called the radicals, but some roots are composed of four consonants, so-called quadriradicals. The radicals are occasionally represented in transcription in upper-case letters, for example PRS (to decide). Between and around these radicals various infixes , suffixes and prefixes , having word generating or grammatical functions, are inserted. The resulting consonant-vowel pattern differentiates

5133-454: Is 𒀕𒆠 unugᵏⁱ ; in Akkadian , 𒌷𒀕 or 𒌷𒀔 Uruk ( UNUG). Its names in other languages include: Arabic : وركاء or أوروك , Warkāʾ or Auruk ; Classical Syriac : ܐܘܿܪܘܿܟ , ʿÚrūk ; Biblical Hebrew : אֶרֶךְ ‎ ʾÉreḵ ; Ancient Greek : Ὀρχόη , romanized :  Orkhóē , Ὀρέχ Orékh , Ὠρύγεια Ōrúgeia . Though the Arabic name of

5310-543: Is 3 km (1.9 miles) north/south, and 2.5 km (1.6 miles) east/west. There are three major tells within the site: The Eanna district, Bit Resh (Kullaba), and Irigal. Archaeologically, the site is divided into six parts 1) the É-Anna ziggurat ' Egipar-imin, 2) the É-Anna enclosure (Zingel), 3) the Anu-Antum temple complex, BitRes and Anu-ziggurat, 4) Irigal, the South Building, 5) Parthian structures including

5487-417: Is a direct borrowing of the Akkadian 𒄑𒂆𒈦 , rendered as Gilgameš . The Assyrian form of the name derived from the earlier Sumerian form 𒄑𒉋𒂵𒎌 , Bilgames . It is generally concluded that the name itself translates as "the (kinsman) is a hero", though what type of "kinsman" was meant is a point of controversy. It is sometimes suggested that the Sumerian form of the name was pronounced Pabilgames , reading

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5664-485: Is always weaker than the other and dies sooner. In Gilgamesh this ages-old motif of the unequal pair of brothers served to represent the relationship between a man and his libido ." He also saw Enkidu as representing the placenta , the "weaker twin" who dies shortly after birth. Freud's friend and pupil Carl Jung frequently discusses Gilgamesh in his early work Symbole der Wandlung (1911–1912). He, for instance, cites Ishtar's sexual attraction to Gilgamesh as an example of

5841-554: Is an appendix corresponding to the Sumerian poem of Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Netherworld describing the loss of the pikku and mikku . Numerous elements reveal a lack of continuity with the earlier portions of the epic. At the beginning of Tablet XII, Enkidu is still alive, despite having previously died in Tablet VII, and Gilgamesh is kind to Ishtar, despite the violent rivalry between them in Tablet VI. Also, while most of

6018-669: Is built on structures from earlier periods dating back to the Ubaid period . According to the SKL , Uruk was founded by the king Enmerkar . Though the king-list mentions a father before him, the epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta relates that Enmerkar constructed the House of Heaven (Sumerian: e₂-anna ; cuneiform: 𒂍𒀭 E₂.AN) for the goddess Inanna in the Eanna District of Uruk. In

6195-416: Is clear Eanna was dedicated to Inanna from the earliest Uruk period throughout the history of the city. The rest of the city was composed of typical courtyard houses, grouped by profession of the occupants, in districts around Eanna and Anu. Uruk was extremely well penetrated by a canal system that has been described as " Venice in the desert". This canal system flowed throughout the city connecting it with

6372-807: Is described in De Natura Animalium ( On the Nature of Animals ) 12.21, a commonplace book written in Greek around 200 AD by the Hellenized Roman orator Aelian . According to Aelian, an oracle told King Seuechoros ( Σευεχορος ) of the Babylonians that his grandson Gilgamos would overthrow him. To prevent this, Seuechoros kept his only daughter under close guard at the Acropolis of Babylon, but she became pregnant nonetheless. Fearing

6549-476: Is described in an anecdote in On the Nature of Animals by the Greek writer Aelian (2nd century AD). Aelian relates that Gilgamesh's grandfather kept his mother under guard to prevent her from becoming pregnant, because an oracle had told him that his grandson would overthrow him. She became pregnant and the guards threw the child off a tower, but an eagle rescued him mid-fall and delivered him safely to an orchard, where

6726-442: Is divided into several varieties based on geography and historical period : One of the earliest known Akkadian inscriptions was found on a bowl at Ur , addressed to the very early pre-Sargonic king Meskiagnunna of Ur ( c.  2485 –2450 BC) by his queen Gan-saman, who is thought to have been from Akkad. The Akkadian Empire , established by Sargon of Akkad , introduced the Akkadian language (the "language of Akkad ") as

6903-551: Is likely "Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld", in which Gilgamesh comes to the aid of the goddess Inanna and drives away the creatures infesting her huluppu tree. She gives him two unknown objects, a mikku and a pikku , which he loses. After Enkidu 's death, his shade tells Gilgamesh about the bleak conditions in the Underworld . The poem Gilgamesh and Aga describes Gilgamesh's revolt against his overlord Aga of Kish . Other Sumerian poems relate Gilgamesh's defeat of

7080-463: Is marked by the Kassite invasion of Babylonia around 1550 BC. The Kassites, who reigned for 300 years, gave up their own language in favor of Akkadian, but they had little influence on the language. At its apogee, Middle Babylonian was the written language of diplomacy of the entire Ancient Near East , including Egypt ( Amarna Period ). During this period, a large number of loan words were included in

7257-474: Is only possible to identify a figure as Gilgamesh if the work clearly depicts a scene from the Epic of Gilgamesh itself. One set of representations of Gilgamesh is found in scenes of two heroes fighting a demonic giant, clearly Humbaba. Another set is found in scenes showing a similar pair of heroes confronting a giant winged bull, clearly the Bull of Heaven. The Epic of Gilgamesh exerted substantial influence on

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7434-507: Is preserved on clay tablets dating back to c.  2500 BC . It was written using cuneiform , a script adopted from the Sumerians using wedge-shaped symbols pressed in wet clay. As employed by Akkadian scribes, the adapted cuneiform script could represent either (a) Sumerian logograms ( i.e. , picture-based characters representing entire words), (b) Sumerian syllables, (c) Akkadian syllables, or (d) phonetic complements . In Akkadian

7611-501: Is then [awat+su] > /awatt͡su/ . In this vein, an alternative transcription of ⟨ š ⟩ is ⟨ s̱ ⟩, with the macron below indicating a soft (lenis) articulation in Semitic transcription. Other interpretations are possible. /ʃ/ could have been assimilated to the preceding /t/ , yielding /ts/ , which would later have been simplified to /ss/ . The rhotic ⟨ r ⟩ has traditionally been interpreted as

7788-562: The Epic of Gilgamesh , Gilgamesh builds the city wall around Uruk and is king of the city. Uruk went through several phases of growth, from the Early Uruk period (4000–3500 BC) to the Late Uruk period (3500–3100 BC). The city was formed when two smaller Ubaid settlements merged. The temple complexes at their cores became the Eanna District and the Anu District dedicated to Inanna and Anu , respectively. The Anu District

7965-564: The Iliad and the Odyssey , the Homeric epic poems written in ancient Greek during the eighth century BC. According to classics scholar Barry B. Powell , early Greeks were probably exposed to and influenced by Mesopotamian oral traditions through their extensive connections to the civilizations of the ancient Near East. German classicist Walter Burkert observes that the scene in Tablet VI of

8142-563: The Achaemenid (550–330 BC), Seleucid (312–63 BC) and Parthian (227 BC to AD 224) periods until it was finally abandoned shortly before or after the Islamic conquest of 633–638. William Kennett Loftus visited the site of Uruk in 1849, identifying it as "Erech", known as "the second city of Nimrod ", and led the first excavations from 1850 to 1854. Uruk ( / ˈ ʊ r ʊ k / ) has several spellings in cuneiform ; in Sumerian it

8319-556: The Anzû -bird and Lilitu to flee. Gilgamesh's companions chop down the tree and carve it into a bed and a throne for Inanna. The goddess responds by fashioning a pikku and a mikku (perhaps a drum and drumsticks) as a reward for Gilgamesh's heroism. But Gilgamesh loses the pikku and mikku and asks who will retrieve them. His servant Enkidu descends to the Underworld to find them, but he disobeys its strict laws and can never return. In

8496-516: The Aramaic Uruk incantation . The last dated cuneiform tablet from Uruk was W22340a, an astronomical almanac, which is dated to 79/80 AD. The oldest known writing to feature a person's name was found in Uruk, in the form of several tablets that mention Kushim , who (assuming they are an individual person) served as an accountant recording transactions made in trading barley – 29,086 measures barley 37 months Kushim . Beveled rim bowls were

8673-516: The British Museum , who published the Flood story from Tablet XI in 1880 under the title The Chaldean Account of Genesis . Gilgamesh's name was originally misread as Izdubar . Early interest in the Epic of Gilgamesh was almost exclusively on account of the flood story from Tablet XI. It attracted enormous public attention and drew widespread scholarly controversy, while the rest of the epic

8850-591: The Cedar Forest by the ruling god Enlil . In Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven , Gilgamesh and Enkidu slay the Bull of Heaven , who has been sent to attack them by the goddess Inanna . The details of this poem differ substantially from the corresponding episode in the later Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh . In the Sumerian poem, Inanna remains aloof from Gilgamesh, but in the Akkadian epic she asks him to become her consort. Also, while pressing her father An to give her

9027-853: The Cedar Forest , which is guarded by Humbaba (the Akkadian name for Huwawa). The heroes cross the seven mountains to the Cedar Forest, where they begin chopping down trees. Confronted by Humbaba, Gilgamesh panics and prays to Shamash (the East Semitic name for Utu), who blows eight winds in Humbaba's eyes, blinding him. Humbaba begs for mercy, but the heroes decapitate him. Tablet VI begins with Gilgamesh returning to Uruk, where Ishtar (the Akkadian name for Inanna) comes to him and demands him as her consort. Gilgamesh rejects her, reproaching her mistreatment of all her former lovers. In revenge, Ishtar goes to her father Anu and demands that he give her

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9204-587: The Epic of Gilgamesh and the One Thousand and One Nights . Like Gilgamesh, the king at the beginning of the novel is a brutal tyrant who misuses his power and oppresses his people, but, through the aid of a commoner woman named Zabibah, he grows into a more just ruler. When the United States tried to pressure Saddam to step down in February 2003, Saddam gave a speech to a group of his generals posing

9381-533: The Epic of Gilgamesh in which Gilgamesh rejects Ishtar's advances and she complains before her mother Antu , but is mildly rebuked by her father Anu , is directly paralleled in Book V of the Iliad . In this scene, Aphrodite , the Greek analogue of Ishtar, is wounded by the hero Diomedes and flees to Mount Olympus , where she cries to her mother Dione and is mildly rebuked by her father Zeus . Powell observes that

9558-402: The Epic of Gilgamesh , but also made major changes. For instance, Hamilton omitted the famous flood story entirely and instead focused on the romantic relationship between Ishtar and Gilgamesh. Ishtar and Izdubar expanded the original roughly 3,000 lines of the Epic of Gilgamesh to roughly 6,000 lines of rhyming couplets grouped into forty-eight cantos . Hamilton significantly altered most of

9735-542: The Northwest Semitic languages and South Semitic languages in its subject–object–verb word order, while the other Semitic languages usually have either a verb–subject–object or subject–verb–object order. Additionally Akkadian is the only Semitic language to use the prepositions ina and ana ( locative case , English in / on / with , and dative -locative case, for / to , respectively). Other Semitic languages like Arabic , Hebrew and Aramaic have

9912-465: The Old Babylonian period . The following table shows Proto-Semitic phonemes and their correspondences among Akkadian, Modern Standard Arabic and Tiberian Hebrew : The existence of a back mid-vowel /o/ has been proposed, but the cuneiform writing gives no good proof for this. There is limited contrast between different u-signs in lexical texts, but this scribal differentiation may reflect

10089-595: The Persian conquest of the Mesopotamian kingdoms contributed to the decline of Babylonian, from that point on known as Late Babylonian, as a popular language. However, the language was still used in its written form. Even after the Greek invasion under Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC, Akkadian was still a contender as a written language, but spoken Akkadian was likely extinct by this time, or at least rarely used. The last positively identified Akkadian text comes from

10266-406: The antediluvian giants, rendered (in consonantal form) as glgmš and ḩwbbyš . This same text was later used in the Middle East by the Manichaean sects , and the Arabic form Gilgamish / Jiljamish survives as the name of a demon according to the Egyptian cleric Al-Suyuti ( c. 1500). The story of Gilgamesh's birth is not recorded in any extant Sumerian or Akkadian text, but a version of it

10443-469: The city wall . It was later discovered that this 40-to-50-foot (12 to 15 m) high brick wall, probably utilized as a defense mechanism, totally encompassed the city at a length of 9 km (5.6 mi). Utilizing sedimentary strata dating techniques, this wall is estimated to have been erected around 3000 BC. Jordan produced a contour map of the entire site. The GOS returned to Uruk in 1928 and excavated until 1939, when World War II intervened. The team

10620-550: The consonants of the Akkadian language, as distinguished in Akkadian cuneiform. The reconstructed phonetic value of a phoneme is given in IPA transcription, alongside its standard ( DMG-Umschrift ) transliteration in angle brackets ⟨ ⟩ . Evidence from borrowings from and to Sumerian has been interpreted as indicating that the Akkadian voiceless non-emphatic stops were originally unaspirated, but became aspirated around 2000 BCE. Akkadian emphatic consonants are typically reconstructed as ejectives , which are thought to be

10797-400: The status absolutus (the absolute state ) and the status constructus ( construct state ). The latter is found in all other Semitic languages, while the former appears only in Akkadian and some dialects of Aramaic. The status absolutus is characterised by the loss of a noun's case ending (e.g. awīl < awīlum , šar < šarrum ). It is relatively uncommon, and is used chiefly to mark

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10974-399: The 'Great Sanctuary' (Cuneiform: E₂.IRI₁₂.GAL, Sumerian: eš-gal) of Ishtar was added between the Anu and Eanna districts. The ziggurat of the temple of Anu, which was rebuilt in this period, was the largest ever built in Mesopotamia. When the Seleucids lost Mesopotamia to the Parthians in 141 BC, Uruk continued in use. The decline of Uruk after the Parthians may have been in part caused by

11151-408: The 'Sumerian Mona Lisa ', dating from 3100 BC, is one of the earliest representations of the human face. The carved marble female face is probably a depiction of Inanna. It is approximately 20 cm tall, and may have been incorporated into a larger cult image. The mask was looted from the Iraq Museum during the fall of Baghdad in April 2003. It was recovered in September 2003 and returned to

11328-399: The 10th century BC when the Assyrian kingdom became a major power with the Neo-Assyrian Empire . During the existence of that empire, however, Neo-Assyrian began to turn into a chancellery language, being marginalized by Old Aramaic . The dominance of the Neo-Assyrian Empire under Tiglath-Pileser III over Aram-Damascus in the middle of the 8th century led to the establishment of Aramaic as

11505-506: The 1st century AD. The latest known text in cuneiform Babylonian is an astronomical almanac dated to 79/80 AD. However, the latest cuneiform texts are almost entirely written in Sumerian logograms. The Akkadian language began to be rediscovered when Carsten Niebuhr in 1767 was able to make extensive copies of cuneiform texts and published them in Denmark. The deciphering of the texts started immediately, and bilinguals, in particular Old Persian -Akkadian bilinguals, were of great help. Since

11682-399: The 21st century BC Babylonian and Assyrian, which were to become the primary dialects, were easily distinguishable. Old Babylonian, along with the closely related dialect Mariotic , is clearly more innovative than the Old Assyrian dialect and the more distantly related Eblaite language . For this reason, forms like lu-prus ('I will decide') were first encountered in Old Babylonian instead of

11859-428: The 25th century BC, texts fully written in Akkadian begin to appear. By the 20th century BC, two variant dialectic forms of the same language were in use in Assyria and Babylonia, known as Assyrian and Babylonian respectively. The bulk of preserved material is from this later period, corresponding to the Near Eastern Iron Age . In total, hundreds of thousands of texts and text fragments have been excavated, covering

12036-485: The 8th century BC. Akkadian, which is the earliest documented Semitic language , is named after the city of Akkad , a major centre of Mesopotamian civilization during the Akkadian Empire ( c.  2334 –2154 BC). It was written using the cuneiform script , originally used for Sumerian , but also used to write multiple languages in the region including Eblaite , Hurrian , Elamite , Old Persian and Hittite . The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian went beyond just

12213-523: The Babylonian epic." He then proceeded to argue that Abraham , Isaac , Samson, David , and various other biblical figures are all nothing more than exact copies of Gilgamesh. Finally, he declared that even Jesus is "nothing but an Israelite Gilgamesh. Nothing but an adjunct to Abraham, Moses, and countless other figures in the saga." This ideology became known as Panbabylonianism and was almost immediately rejected by mainstream scholars. The most stalwart critics of Panbabylonianism were those associated with

12390-476: The Bull of Heaven, in Sumerian Inanna threatens a deafening cry that will reach the earth, while in Akkadian she threatens to wake the dead to eat the living. A poem known as The Death of Gilgamesh is poorly preserved, but appears to describe a major state funeral followed by the arrival of the deceased in the Underworld. The poem may have been misinterpreted, and may actually depict the death of Enkidu. Eventually, according to Kramer (1963): Gilgamesh became

12567-508: The Bull of Heaven, which she sends to attack Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the Bull and offer its heart to Shamash. While Gilgamesh and Enkidu are resting, Ishtar stands up on the walls of Uruk and curses Gilgamesh. Enkidu tears off the Bull's right thigh and throws it in Ishtar's face, saying, "If I could lay my hands on you, it is this I should do to you, and lash your entrails to your side." Ishtar calls together "the crimped courtesans, prostitutes and harlots" and orders them to mourn for

12744-417: The Bull of Heaven. Meanwhile, Gilgamesh holds a celebration over the Bull's defeat. Tablet VII begins with Enkidu recounting a dream in which he saw Anu, Ea , and Shamash declare that either Gilgamesh or Enkidu must die to avenge the Bull of Heaven. They choose Enkidu, who soon grows sick. He has a dream of the Underworld, and then dies. Tablet VIII describes Gilgamesh's inconsolable grief for his friend and

12921-548: The Christian Old Testament , which was believed to contain the oldest texts in the world. Instead, his and later excavations unearthed much older Mesopotamian texts and showed that many of the stories in the Old Testament may be derived from earlier myths told throughout the ancient Near East. The first translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh was produced in the early 1870s by George Smith , a scholar at

13098-454: The Eanna and Anu Districts. Temple N, Cone-Mosaic Courtyard, and Round Pillar Hall are often referred to as a single structure; the Cone-Mosaic Temple. It is clear Eanna was dedicated to Inanna symbolized by Venus from the Uruk period. At that time, she was worshipped in four aspects as Inanna of the netherworld (Sumerian: ᵈinanna-kur), Inanna of the morning (Sumerian: ᵈinanna-hud₂), Inanna of

13275-647: The Early Dynastic IIIb period (2500–2334 BC), also called the Pre-Sargonic period (before the rise of the Akkadian Empire under Sargon of Akkad ), Uruk continued to be ruled by Ur. Dynastic categorizations are described solely from the Sumerian King List , which is of problematic historical accuracy; the organization might be analogous to Manetho's . In 2009, two different copies of an inscription were put forth as evidence of

13452-570: The Elder Siamun Psusennes II Akkadian language Akkadian ( / ə ˈ k eɪ d i ən / ə- KAY -dee-ən ; Akkadian: 𒀝𒅗𒁺𒌑(𒌝) , romanized:  Akkadû(m) ) is an extinct East Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia ( Akkad , Assyria , Isin , Larsa , Babylonia and perhaps Dilmun ) from the third millennium BC until its gradual replacement in common use by Old Aramaic among Assyrians and Babylonians from

13629-406: The English translation of the same. The stratigraphy of the site is complex and as such much of the dating is disputed. In general, the structures follow the two main typologies of Sumerian architecture , Tripartite with 3 parallel halls and T-Shaped also with three halls, but the central one extends into two perpendicular bays at one end. The following table summarizes the significant architecture of

13806-480: The Flood story in the Book of Genesis was directly copied from the Epic of Gilgamesh . Delitzsch's lecture was so controversial that, by September 1903, he had managed to collect thousands of articles and pamphlets criticizing this lecture about the Flood and another about the relationship between the Code of Hammurabi and the biblical Law of Moses . The Kaiser distanced himself from Delitzsch and his radical views and by

13983-639: The Gareus-temple, and the Multiple Apse building, 6) the "Gilgameš" city-wall with associated Sinkâsid Palace and the Seleucid Bit Akîtu. The location of Uruk was first noted by Fraser and Ross in 1835. William Loftus excavated there in 1850 and 1854 after a scouting mission in 1849. By Loftus' own account, he admits that the first excavations were superficial at best, as his financiers forced him to deliver large museum artifacts at

14160-668: The German Archaeological Institute in Baghdad as Jan J. A. Djik, Hermann Hunger , Antoine Cavigneaux, Egbert von Weiher , and Karlheinz Kessler  [ de ] , or others as Erlend Gehlken. Many of the cuneiform tablets form acquisitions by museums and collections as the British Museum , Yale Babylonian Collection , and the Louvre . The latter holds a unique cuneiform tablet in Aramaic known as

14337-538: The German archaeologists spent 39 seasons working at Uruk. The results are documented in two series of reports: Most recently, from 2001 to 2002, the German Archaeological Institute team led by Margarete van Ess, with Joerg Fassbinder and Helmut Becker, conducted a partial magnetometer survey in Uruk. In addition to the geophysical survey, core samples and aerial photographs were taken. This

14514-819: The Golden Age. During the Early Dynastic II period (2800–2600 BC), Uruk was again the dominant city exercising control of Sumer. This period is the time of the First Dynasty of Uruk sometimes called the Heroic Age. However, by the Early Dynastic IIIa period (2600–2500 BC) Uruk had lost sovereignty, this time to Ur. This period, corresponding to the Early Bronze Age III, is the end of the First Dynasty of Uruk. In

14691-765: The Limestone Temple was demolished and the Red Temple built on its foundations. The accumulated debris of the Uruk IVb buildings were formed into a terrace , the L-Shaped Terrace, on which Buildings C, D, M, Great Hall, and Pillar Hall were built. Building E was initially thought to be a palace, but later proven to be a communal building. Also in period IV, the Great Court, a sunken courtyard surrounded by two tiers of benches covered in cone mosaic,

14868-568: The Riemchen Building. In the following period, Uruk V, about 100 m east of the Stone-Cone Temple the Limestone Temple was built on a 2 m high rammed-earth podium over a pre-existing Ubaid temple, which like the Stone-Cone Temple represents a continuation of Ubaid culture. However, the Limestone Temple was unprecedented for its size and use of stone, a clear departure from traditional Ubaid architecture. The stone

15045-567: The Stone Temple, has been discovered. The Stone Temple was built of limestone and bitumen on a podium of rammed earth and plastered with lime mortar. The podium itself was built over a woven reed mat called ĝipar , which was ritually used as a nuptial bed. The ĝipar was a source of generative power which then radiated upward into the structure. The structure of the Stone Temple further develops some mythological concepts from Enuma Elish , perhaps involving libation rites as indicated from

15222-586: The Tummal. Gilgamesh is also connected to King Enmebaragesi of Kish, a known historical figure who may have lived near Gilgamesh's lifetime. Furthermore, he is listed as one of the kings of Uruk by the Sumerian King List . Fragments of an epic text found in Mê-Turan (modern Tell Haddad) relate that upon his death Gilgamesh was buried under the river bed, and the workmen of Uruk temporarily diverted

15399-539: The Underworld and both find themselves unhappy while living in an otherworldly paradise in the company of a seductive sorceress: Siduri (for Gilgamesh) and Calypso (for Odysseus). Finally, both have a missed opportunity for immortality, Gilgamesh when he loses the plant, and Odysseus when he leaves Calypso's island. In the Qumran scroll the Book of Giants ( c. 100 BC) the names of Gilgamesh and Humbaba appear as two of

15576-540: The abysmal condition of the Underworld. Although stories about Gilgamesh were wildly popular throughout ancient Mesopotamia, authentic representations of him in ancient art are uncommon. Popular works often identify depictions of a hero with long hair, containing four or six curls, as representations of Gilgamesh, but this identification is known to be incorrect. A few genuine ancient Mesopotamian representations of Gilgamesh do exist, however. These representations are mostly found on clay plaques and cylinder seals. Generally, it

15753-404: The archaeological evidence is typical of Anatolia rather than of Assyria, but the use both of cuneiform and the dialect is the best indication of Assyrian presence. Old Babylonian was the language of king Hammurabi and his code , which is one of the oldest collections of laws in the world. (see Code of Ur-Nammu .) Old Assyrian developed as well during the second millennium BC, but because it

15930-575: The biblical Erech ( Genesis 10:10), the second city founded by Nimrod in Shinar . In addition to being one of the first cities, Uruk was the main force of urbanization and state formation during the Uruk period, or 'Uruk expansion' (4000–3200 BC). This period of 800 years saw a shift from small, agricultural villages to a larger urban center with a full-time bureaucracy, military, and stratified society. Although other settlements coexisted with Uruk, they were generally about 10 hectares while Uruk

16107-411: The cardinal directions, a central hall flanked along the long axis by two smaller halls, and buttressed façades; the prototype of all future Mesopotamian temple architectural typology . Between these two monumental structures a complex of buildings (called A–C, E–K, Riemchen, Cone-Mosaic), courts, and walls was built during Eanna IVb. These buildings were built during a time of great expansion in Uruk as

16284-567: The channels, tanks, and vessels found there. The structure was ritually destroyed, covered with alternating layers of clay and stone, then excavated and filled with mortar sometime later. The Anu Ziggurat began with a massive mound topped by a cella during the Uruk period (c. 4000 BC), and was expanded through 14 phases of construction. These phases have been labeled L to A₃ ( L is sometimes called X ). The earliest phase used architectural features similar to PPNA cultures in Anatolia :

16461-455: The characters and introduced entirely new episodes not found in the original epic. Significantly influenced by Edward FitzGerald 's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Edwin Arnold 's The Light of Asia , Hamilton's characters dress more like nineteenth-century Turks than ancient Babylonians. Hamilton also changed the tone of the epic from the "grim realism" and "ironic tragedy" of the original to

16638-699: The city grew to 250 hectares and established long-distance trade, and are a continuation of architecture from the previous period. The Riemchen Building, named for the 16×16 cm brick shape called Riemchen by the Germans, is a memorial with a ritual fire kept burning in the center for the Stone-Cone Temple after it was destroyed. For this reason, Uruk IV period represents a reorientation of belief and culture. The facade of this memorial may have been covered in geometric and figural murals. The Riemchen bricks first used in this temple were used to construct all buildings of Uruk IV period Eanna. The use of colored cones as

16815-401: The component bilga as pabilga ( 𒉺𒉋𒂵 ), a related term which described familial relations, however, this is not supported by epigraphic or phonological evidence. Most historians generally agree that Gilgamesh was a historical king of the Sumerian city-state of Uruk , who probably ruled sometime during the early part of the Early Dynastic Period ( c. 2900–2350 BC). Stephanie Dalley ,

16992-624: The cuneiform script; owing to their close proximity, a lengthy span of contact and the prestige held by the former, Sumerian significantly impacted Akkadian phonology, vocabulary and syntax. This mutual influence of Akkadian and Sumerian has also led scholars to describe the languages as a Sprachbund . Akkadian proper names are first attested in Sumerian texts in the mid-3rd millennium BC, and inscriptions ostensibly written in Sumerian but whose character order reveals that they were intended to be read in East Semitic (presumably early Akkadian) date back to as early as c.  2600 BC . From about

17169-534: The decline of Uruk. Archeologists have discovered multiple cities of Uruk built atop each other in chronological order. Unlike the Eanna district, the Anu district consists of a single massive terrace, the Anu Ziggurat , dedicated to the Sumerian sky god Anu . Sometime in the Uruk III period the massive White Temple was built atop the ziggurat. Under the northwest edge of the ziggurat an Uruk VI period structure,

17346-496: The details of Enkidu's funeral. Tablets IX through XI relate how Gilgamesh, driven by grief and fear of his own mortality, travels a great distance and overcomes many obstacles to find the home of Utnapishtim , the sole survivor of the Great Flood , who was rewarded with immortality by the gods. The journey to Utnapishtim involves a series of episodic challenges, which probably originated as major independent adventures, but, in

17523-485: The dialects of Akkadian identified with certainty so far. Some researchers (such as W. Sommerfeld 2003) believe that the Old Akkadian variant used in the older texts is not an ancestor of the later Assyrian and Babylonian dialects, but rather a separate dialect that was replaced by these two dialects and which died out early. Eblaite , formerly thought of as yet another Akkadian dialect, is now generally considered

17700-401: The earlier stages of the language, the dual number is vestigial, and its use is largely confined to natural pairs (eyes, ears, etc.). Adjectives are never found in the dual. In the dual and plural, the accusative and genitive are merged into a single oblique case . Akkadian, unlike Arabic , has only "sound" plurals formed by means of a plural ending. Broken plurals are not formed by changing

17877-525: The earliest examples of writing. The first building of Eanna , Stone-Cone Temple (Mosaic Temple), was built in period VI over a preexisting Ubaid temple and is enclosed by a limestone wall with an elaborate system of buttresses . The Stone-Cone Temple, named for the mosaic of colored stone cones driven into the adobe brick façade, may be the earliest water cult in Mesopotamia. It was "destroyed by force" in Uruk IVb period and its contents interred in

18054-467: The earliest recorded writing , dating to approximately 3300 BC. Later cuneiform tablets were deciphered and include the famous SKL , a record of kings of the Sumerian civilization. There was an even larger cache of legal and scholarly tablets of the Neo-Babylonian , Late Babylonian , and Seleucid period, that have been published by Adam Falkenstein and other Assyriological members of

18231-429: The emerging Religionsgeschichtliche Schule . Hermann Gunkel dismissed most of Jensen's purported parallels between Gilgamesh and biblical figures as mere baseless sensationalism. He concluded that Jensen and other Assyriologists like him had failed to understand the complexities of Old Testament scholarship and had confused scholars with "conspicuous mistakes and remarkable aberrations". In English-speaking countries,

18408-454: The epic, Gilgamesh is a demigod of superhuman strength who befriends the wild man Enkidu . Together, they embark on many journeys, most famously defeating Humbaba (Sumerian: Huwawa) and the Bull of Heaven , who is sent to attack them by Ishtar (Sumerian: Inanna) after Gilgamesh rejects her offer for him to become her consort. After Enkidu dies of a disease sent as punishment from the gods, Gilgamesh becomes afraid of his own death and visits

18585-443: The epic, they are reduced to what Joseph Eddy Fontenrose calls "fairly harmless incidents". First, Gilgamesh encounters and slays lions in the mountain pass. Upon reaching the mountain of Mashu , Gilgamesh encounters a scorpion man and his wife; their bodies flash with terrifying radiance, but once Gilgamesh tells them his purpose, they allow him to pass. Gilgamesh wanders through darkness for twelve days before he finally comes into

18762-414: The evening (Sumerian: ᵈinanna-sig), and Inanna (Sumerian: ᵈinanna-NUN). The names of four temples in Uruk at this time are known, but it is impossible to match them with either a specific structure and in some cases a deity. The site, which lies about 50 miles (80 km) northwest of ancient Ur , is one of the largest in the region at around 5.5 km (2.1 sq mi) in area. The maximum extent

18939-490: The evolution of writing ; writing may have originated in Uruk around 3300 BC. Evidence from excavations such as extensive pottery and the earliest known tablets of writing support these events. Excavation of Uruk is highly complex because older buildings were recycled into newer ones, thus blurring the layers of different historic periods. The topmost layer most likely originated in the Jemdet Nasr period (3100–2900 BC) and

19116-602: The fall of 1904, Delitzsch was reduced to giving his third lecture in Cologne and Frankfurt am Main rather than in Berlin. The putative relationship between the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Hebrew Bible later became a major part of Delitzsch's argument in his 1920–21 book Die große Täuschung ( The Great Deception ) that the Hebrew Bible was irredeemably "contaminated" by Babylonian influence and that only by eliminating

19293-420: The first one bears stress. A rule of Akkadian phonology is that certain short (and probably unstressed) vowels are dropped. The rule is that the last vowel of a succession of syllables that end in a short vowel is dropped, for example the declinational root of the verbal adjective of a root PRS is PaRiS- . Thus the masculine singular nominative is PaRS-um (< *PaRiS-um ) but the feminine singular nominative

19470-546: The flow of the Euphrates for this purpose. It is certain that, during the later Early Dynastic Period , Gilgamesh was worshiped as a god at various locations across Sumer. In the 21st century BC, King Utu-hengal of Uruk adopted Gilgamesh as his patron deity. The kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur ( c.  2112  – c.  2004 BC ) were especially fond of Gilgamesh, calling him their "divine brother" and "friend." King Shulgi of Ur (2029–1982 BC) declared himself

19647-540: The fricatives *ʕ , *h , *ḥ are lost as consonants, either by sound change or orthographically, but they gave rise to the vowel quality e not exhibited in Proto-Semitic. The voiceless lateral fricatives ( *ś , *ṣ́ ) merged with the sibilants as in Canaanite , leaving 19 consonantal phonemes. Old Akkadian preserved the /*ś/ phoneme longest but it eventually merged with /*š/ , beginning in

19824-444: The gardener raised him. The Epic of Gilgamesh was rediscovered in the Library of Ashurbanipal in 1849. After being translated in the early 1870s, it caused widespread controversy due to similarities between portions of it and the Hebrew Bible . Gilgamesh remained mostly obscure until the mid-20th century, but, since the late 20th century, he has become an increasingly prominent figure in modern culture. The modern form "Gilgamesh"

20001-514: The giant Huwawa and the Bull of Heaven , while a fifth, poorly preserved poem relates the account of his death and funeral. In later Babylonian times, these stories were woven into a connected narrative. The standard Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh was composed by a scribe named Sîn-lēqi-unninni, probably during the Middle Babylonian Period ( c.  1600  – c.  1155 BC ), based on much older source material. In

20178-505: The god Anu creates the wild man Enkidu. After being tamed by a prostitute named Shamhat , Enkidu journeys to Uruk to confront Gilgamesh. In the second tablet, the two men wrestle and though Gilgamesh wins in the end, he is so impressed by his opponent's strength and tenacity that they become close friends. In the earlier Sumerian texts, Enkidu is Gilgamesh's servant, but, in the Epic of Gilgamesh , they are companions of equal standing. In tablets III through IV, Gilgamesh and Enkidu travel to

20355-542: The hero Heracles in Greek mythology . In his 1906 book Das Gilgamesch-Epos in der Weltliteratur , the Orientalist Peter Jensen declared that the Epic of Gilgamesh was the source behind nearly all the stories in the Old Testament, arguing that Moses is "the Gilgamesh of Exodus who saves the children of Israel from precisely the same situation faced by the inhabitants of Erech at the beginning of

20532-482: The hero par excellence of the ancient world—an adventurous, brave, but tragic figure symbolizing man's vain but endless drive for fame, glory, and immortality. By the Old Babylonian Period ( c.  1830  – c.  1531 BC ), stories of Gilgamesh's legendary exploits had been woven into one or several long epics. The Epic of Gilgamesh , the most complete account of Gilgamesh's adventures,

20709-521: The historical tradition as preserved in the Sumerian king-list confirms it. From Uruk the center of political gravity seems to have moved to Ur . The recorded chronology of rulers over Uruk includes both mythological and historic figures in five dynasties. As in the rest of Sumer, power moved progressively from the temple to the palace. Rulers from the Early Dynastic period exercised control over Uruk and at times over all of Sumer. In myth, kingship

20886-546: The human Old Testament entirely could Christians finally believe in the true, Aryan message of the New Testament . The first modern literary adaptation of the Epic of Gilgamesh was Ishtar and Izdubar (1884) by Leonidas Le Cenci Hamilton, an American lawyer and businessman. Hamilton had rudimentary knowledge of Akkadian, which he had learned from Archibald Sayce 's 1872 Assyrian Grammar for Comparative Purposes . Hamilton's book relied heavily on Smith's translation of

21063-418: The idea in a positive light by comparing himself to the epic hero. Scholars like Susan Ackerman and Wayne R. Dynes have noted that the language used to describe Gilgamesh's relationship with Enkidu seems to have homoerotic implications. Ackerman notes that, when Gilgamesh veils Enkidu's body, Enkidu is compared to a "bride". Ackerman states, "that Gilgamesh, according to both versions, will love Enkidu 'like

21240-533: The king's wrath, the guards hurled the infant off the top of a tall tower. An eagle rescued the boy in mid-flight and set him down in a distant orchard. The caretaker found the boy and raised him, naming him Gilgamos ( Γίλγαμος ). Eventually, Gilgamos returned to Babylon and overthrew his grandfather, proclaiming himself king. This birth narrative is in the same tradition as other Near Eastern birth legends, such as those of Sargon , Moses , and Cyrus . The Syriac writer Theodore Bar Konai ( c. AD 600) also mentions

21417-845: The language from Northwest Semitic languages and Hurrian . However, the use of these words was confined to the fringes of the Akkadian-speaking territory. From 1500 BC onwards, the Assyrian language is termed Middle Assyrian. It was the language of the Middle Assyrian Empire . However, the Babylonian cultural influence was strong and the Assyrians wrote royal inscriptions, religious and most scholarly texts in Middle Babylonian, whereas Middle Assyrian

21594-479: The largest urban area in the world at the time. King Gilgamesh , according to the chronology presented in the Sumerian King List ( SKL ), ruled Uruk in the 27th century BC. After the end of the Early Dynastic period, marked by the rise of the Akkadian Empire , the city lost its prime importance. It had periods of florescence during the Isin-Larsa period, Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods and throughout

21771-454: The last syllable is superheavy, it is stressed, otherwise the rightmost heavy non-final syllable is stressed. If a word contains only light syllables, the first syllable is stressed. It has also been argued that monosyllabic words generally are not stressed but rather function as clitics . The special behaviour of /V̂/ syllables is explained by their functioning, in accordance with their historical origin, as sequences of two syllables, of which

21948-661: The later Bronze Age, and became the lingua franca of much of the Ancient Near East by the time of the Bronze Age collapse c.  1150 BC . However, its gradual decline began in the Iron Age, during the Neo-Assyrian Empire when in the mid-eighth century BC Tiglath-Pileser III introduced Imperial Aramaic as a lingua franca of the Assyrian empire. By the Hellenistic period , the language

22125-404: The latter being used for long vowels arising from the contraction of vowels in hiatus. The distinction between long and short is phonemic , and is used in the grammar; for example, iprusu ('that he decided') versus iprusū ('they decided'). There is broad agreement among most Assyriologists about Akkadian stress patterns. The rules of Akkadian stress were originally reconstructed by means of

22302-590: The light. He finds a beautiful garden by the sea in which he meets Siduri , the divine Alewife . At first, she tries to prevent Gilgamesh from entering the garden, and then attempts to persuade him to accept death as inevitable and not journey beyond the waters. When Gilgamesh persists in his quest, she directs him to Urshanabi , the ferryman of the gods, who takes Gilgamesh across the sea to Utnapishtim. When Gilgamesh finally arrives at Utnapishtim's home, Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh that, to become immortal, he must defy sleep. Gilgamesh attempts this, but fails and falls into

22479-434: The locative. Later, the nominative and accusative singular of masculine nouns collapsed to -u and in Neo-Babylonian most word-final short vowels were dropped. As a result, case differentiation disappeared from all forms except masculine plural nouns. However, many texts continued the practice of writing the case endings, although often sporadically and incorrectly. As the most important contact language throughout this period

22656-480: The maritime trade on the ancient Euphrates River as well as the surrounding agricultural belt. The original city of Uruk was situated southwest of the ancient Euphrates River, now dry. Currently, the site of Warka is northeast of the modern Euphrates river. The change in position was caused by a shift in the Euphrates at some point in history, which, together with salination due to irrigation, may have contributed to

22833-733: The middle section of the trilogy centers around a composer whose twenty-year-long homoerotic relationship with a friend mirrors that of Gilgamesh with Enkidu and whose masterpiece turns out to be a symphony about Gilgamesh. The Quest of Gilgamesh , a 1953 radio play by Douglas Geoffrey Bridson , helped popularize the epic in Britain. In the United States , Charles Olson praised the epic in his poems and essays and Gregory Corso believed that it contained ancient virtues capable of curing what he viewed as modern moral degeneracy. The 1966 postfigurative novel Gilgamesch by Guido Bachmann became

23010-482: The missing parts with material from the earlier Sumerian poems or from other versions of the epic found at other sites throughout the Near East . In the epic, Gilgamesh is introduced as "two thirds divine and one third mortal". At the beginning of the poem, Gilgamesh is described as a brutal, oppressive ruler. This is usually interpreted to mean either forced labor or sexual exploitation. As punishment for his cruelty,

23187-400: The most common type of container used during the Uruk period. They are believed to be vessels for serving rations of food or drink to dependent laborers. The introduction of the fast wheel for throwing pottery was developed during the later part of the Uruk period, and made the mass production of pottery simpler and more standardized. The Mask of Warka , also known as the 'Lady of Uruk' and

23364-543: The mother's incestuous desire for her son, Humbaba as an example of an oppressive father-figure whom Gilgamesh must overcome, and Gilgamesh himself as an example of a man who forgets his dependence on the unconscious and is punished by the "gods", who represent it. In the years following World War II , Gilgamesh, formerly an obscure figure known only by a few scholars, gradually became increasingly popular with modern audiences. The Epic of Gilgamesh ' s existential themes made it particularly appealing to German authors in

23541-405: The museum. The Sumerian King List (SKL) lists only 22 rulers among five dynasties of Uruk. The sixth dynasty was an Amorite dynasty not mentioned on the SKL . The following list should not be considered complete: "Then Kish was defeated and the kingship was taken to Eanna (Uruk)." "Meshkiangasher entered the sea and disappeared." "12 kings; they ruled for 2,310 years. Then Uruk

23718-542: The older la-prus . While generally more archaic, Assyrian developed certain innovations as well, such as the "Assyrian vowel harmony ". Eblaite was even more so, retaining a productive dual and a relative pronoun declined in case, number and gender. Both of these had already disappeared in Old Akkadian. Over 20,000 cuneiform tablets in Old Assyrian have been recovered from the Kültepe site in Anatolia . Most of

23895-516: The oldest realization of emphatics across the Semitic languages. One piece of evidence for this is that Akkadian shows a development known as Geers's law , where one of two emphatic consonants dissimilates to the corresponding non-emphatic consonant. For the sibilants, traditionally ⟨ š ⟩ has been held to be postalveolar /ʃ/ , and ⟨ s ⟩, ⟨ z ⟩, ⟨ ṣ ⟩ analyzed as fricatives; but attested assimilations in Akkadian suggest otherwise. For example, when

24072-509: The opening lines of the Odyssey seem to echo the opening lines of the Epic of Gilgamesh , both praising and pitying their heroes. The storyline of the Odyssey likewise bears many similarities to the Epic of Gilgamesh . Both Gilgamesh and Odysseus encounter a woman who can turn men into animals: Ishtar (for Gilgamesh) and Circe (for Odysseus). Odysseus blinds the giant cyclops Polyphemus , while Gilgamesh slays of Humbaba. Both heroes visit

24249-464: The original meaning of the root. The middle radical can be geminated, which is represented by a doubled consonant in transcription, and sometimes in the cuneiform writing itself. The consonants ʔ , w , j and n are termed "weak radicals" and roots containing these radicals give rise to irregular forms. Formally, Akkadian has three numbers (singular, dual and plural) and three cases ( nominative , accusative and genitive ). However, even in

24426-877: The other Semitic languages in the Near Eastern branch of the Afroasiatic languages , a family native to Middle East , Arabian Peninsula , parts of Anatolia , parts of the Horn of Africa , North Africa , Malta , Canary Islands and parts of West Africa ( Hausa ). Akkadian is only ever attested in Mesopotamia and neighboring regions in the Near East. Within the Near Eastern Semitic languages, Akkadian forms an East Semitic subgroup (with Eblaite and perhaps Dilmunite ). This group differs from

24603-403: The parts of the epic are free adaptations of their respective Sumerian predecessors, Tablet XII is a literal, word-for-word translation of the last part of Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld , and was probably relegated to the end because it did not fit the larger epic narrative. In it, Gilgamesh sees a vision of Enkidu's ghost, who promises to recover the lost items and describes to his friend

24780-463: The possessive suffix -šu is added to the root awat ('word'), it is written awassu ('his word') even though šš would be expected. The most straightforward interpretation of this shift from tš to ss , is that ⟨ s, ṣ ⟩ form a pair of voiceless alveolar affricates /t͡s/ /t͡sʼ/ , ⟨ š ⟩ is a voiceless alveolar sibilant /s/ , and ⟨ z ⟩ is a voiced alveolar affricate or fricative /d͡z/~/z/ . The assimilation

24957-510: The predicate of a nominal sentence, in fixed adverbial expressions, and in expressions relating to measurements of length, weight, and the like. Uruk Uruk is the type site for the Uruk period . Uruk played a leading role in the early urbanization of Sumer in the mid-4th millennium BC. By the final phase of the Uruk period around 3100 BC, the city may have had 40,000 residents, with 80,000–90,000 people living in its environs, making it

25134-525: The prepositions bi/bə and li/lə (locative and dative, respectively). The origin of the Akkadian spatial prepositions is unknown. In contrast to most other Semitic languages, Akkadian has only one non-sibilant fricative : ḫ [x] . Akkadian lost both the glottal and pharyngeal fricatives, which are characteristic of the other Semitic languages. Until the Old Babylonian period, the Akkadian sibilants were exclusively affricated . Old Akkadian

25311-413: The present-day country of al-ʿIrāq is often thought to be derived directly from the name Uruk , it is more likely loaned via Middle Persian ( Erāq ) and then Aramaic ’yrg , which nonetheless may still ultimately refer to the Uruk region of southern Mesopotamia. In myth and literature, Uruk was famous as the capital city of Gilgamesh , hero of the Epic of Gilgamesh . Scholars identify Uruk as

25488-711: The prevailing scholarly interpretation during the early twentieth century was one originally proposed by Sir Henry Rawlinson, 1st Baronet , which held that Gilgamesh is a "solar hero", whose actions represent the movements of the sun, and that the twelve tablets of his epic represent the twelve signs of the Babylonian zodiac . The Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud , drawing on the theories of James George Frazer and Paul Ehrenreich, interpreted Gilgamesh and Eabani (the earlier misreading for Enkidu ) as representing "man" and "crude sensuality" respectively. He compared them to other brother-figures in world mythology, remarking, "One

25665-518: The reign of Ishbi-Erra ( c.  1953  – c.  1920 BC ), also mentions him. The inscription credits Gilgamesh with building the walls of Uruk. Lines eleven through fifteen of the inscription read: For a second time, the Tummal fell into ruin, Gilgamesh built the Numunburra of the House of Enlil . Ur-lugal, the son of Gilgamesh, Made the Tummal pre-eminent, Brought Ninlil to

25842-405: The remaining dialog, Gilgamesh questions the shade of his lost comrade about the Underworld. Gilgamesh and Agga describes Gilgamesh's successful revolt against his liege lord Agga , king of the city-state of Kish . Gilgamesh and Huwawa describes how Gilgamesh and his servant Enkidu , with the help of fifty volunteers from Uruk, defeat the monster Huwawa , an ogre appointed as guardian of

26019-465: The river Euphrates . The goddess Inanna moves the tree to her garden in Uruk with the intention to carve it into a throne once it is fully grown. The tree grows and matures, but the serpent "who knows no charm," the Anzû -bird, and Lilitu , a Mesopotamian demon , invade the tree, causing Inanna to cry with sorrow. Gilgamesh, who in this story is portrayed as Inanna's brother, slays the serpent, causing

26196-434: The sage Utnapishtim , the survivor of the Great Flood , hoping to find immortality . Gilgamesh repeatedly fails the trials set before him and returns home to Uruk, realizing that immortality is beyond his reach. Most scholars agree that the Epic of Gilgamesh exerted substantial influence on the Iliad and the Odyssey , two epic poems written in ancient Greek during the 8th century BC. The story of Gilgamesh's birth

26373-483: The same syllable in the same text. Cuneiform was in many ways unsuited to Akkadian: among its flaws was its inability to represent important phonemes in Semitic, including a glottal stop , pharyngeals , and emphatic consonants . In addition, cuneiform was a syllabary writing system—i.e., a consonant plus vowel comprised one writing unit—frequently inappropriate for a Semitic language made up of triconsonantal roots (i.e., three consonants plus any vowels). Akkadian

26550-404: The script practically became a fully fledged syllabic script , and the original logographic nature of cuneiform became secondary , though logograms for frequent words such as 'god' and 'temple' continued to be used. For this reason, the sign AN can on the one hand be a logogram for the word ilum ('god') and on the other signify the god Anu or even the syllable -an- . Additionally, this sign

26727-475: The son of Lugalbanda and Ninsun and the brother of Gilgamesh. Over the centuries, there may have been a gradual accretion of stories about Gilgamesh, some possibly derived from the real lives of other historical figures, such as Gudea , the Second Dynasty ruler of Lagash (2144–2124 BC). Prayers inscribed on clay tablets address Gilgamesh as a judge of the dead in the Underworld. During this period,

26904-1542: The song's lyrics. ( Shamshi-Adad dynasty 1808–1736 BCE) (Amorites) Shamshi-Adad I Ishme-Dagan I Mut-Ashkur Rimush Asinum Ashur-dugul Ashur-apla-idi Nasir-Sin Sin-namir Ipqi-Ishtar Adad-salulu Adasi (Non-dynastic usurpers 1735–1701 BCE) Puzur-Sin Ashur-dugul Ashur-apla-idi Nasir-Sin Sin-namir Ipqi-Ishtar Adad-salulu Adasi ( Adaside dynasty 1700–722 BCE) Bel-bani Libaya Sharma-Adad I Iptar-Sin Bazaya Lullaya Shu-Ninua Sharma-Adad II Erishum III Shamshi-Adad II Ishme-Dagan II Shamshi-Adad III Ashur-nirari I Puzur-Ashur III Enlil-nasir I Nur-ili Ashur-shaduni Ashur-rabi I Ashur-nadin-ahhe I Enlil-Nasir II Ashur-nirari II Ashur-bel-nisheshu Ashur-rim-nisheshu Ashur-nadin-ahhe II Second Intermediate Period Sixteenth Dynasty Abydos Dynasty Seventeenth Dynasty (1500–1100 BCE) Kidinuid dynasty Igehalkid dynasty Untash-Napirisha Twenty-first Dynasty of Egypt Smendes Amenemnisu Psusennes I Amenemope Osorkon

27081-487: The south and Nippur in the north surrounded by much smaller 10 hectare settlements. Later, in the Late Uruk period, its sphere of influence extended over all Sumer and beyond to external colonies in upper Mesopotamia and Syria. In Uruk, in southern Mesopotamia, Sumerian civilization seems to have reached its creative peak. This is pointed out repeatedly in the references to this city in religious and, especially, in literary texts, including those of mythological content;

27258-461: The southern Caucasus and by communities in the Assyrian diaspora . Akkadian is a fusional language with grammatical case . Like all Semitic languages, Akkadian uses the system of consonantal roots . The Kültepe texts , which were written in Old Assyrian , include Hittite loanwords and names, which constitute the oldest record of any Indo-European language . Akkadian belongs with

27435-486: The sovereignty of Ur . The Eanna District was restored as part of an ambitious building program, which included a new temple for Inanna. This temple included a ziggurat , the 'House of the Universe' (Cuneiform: E₂ . SAR.A ) to the northeast of the Uruk period Eanna ruins. Following the collapse of Ur ( c. 2000 BC), Uruk went into a steep decline until about 850 BC when the Neo-Assyrian Empire annexed it as

27612-407: The superimposition of the Sumerian phonological system (for which an /o/ phoneme has also been proposed), rather than a separate phoneme in Akkadian. All consonants and vowels appear in long and short forms. Long consonants are transliterated as double consonants, and inconsistently written as such in cuneiform. Long vowels are transliterated with a macron (ā, ē, ī, ū) or a circumflex (â, ê, î, û),

27789-591: The texts contained several royal names, isolated signs could be identified, and were presented in 1802 by Georg Friedrich Grotefend . By this time it was already evident that Akkadian was a Semitic language, and the final breakthrough in deciphering the language came from Edward Hincks , Henry Rawlinson and Jules Oppert in the middle of the 19th century. In the early 21st century it was shown that automatic high-quality translation of Akkadian can be achieved using natural language processing methods such as convolutional neural networks . The following table summarises

27966-434: The word stem. As in all Semitic languages, some masculine nouns take the prototypically feminine plural ending ( -āt ). The nouns šarrum (king) and šarratum (queen) and the adjective dannum (strong) will serve to illustrate the case system of Akkadian. As is clear from the above table, the adjective and noun endings differ only in the masculine plural. Certain nouns, primarily those referring to geography, can also form

28143-490: The years following the war. In his 1947 existentialist novel Die Stadt hinter dem Strom , the German novelist Hermann Kasack adapted elements of the epic into a metaphor for the aftermath of the destruction of World War II in Germany , portraying the bombed-out city of Hamburg as resembling the frightening Underworld seen by Enkidu in his dream. In Hans Henny Jahnn 's magnum opus River Without Shores (1949–1950),

28320-476: Was Aramaic , which itself lacks case distinctions, it is possible that Akkadian's loss of cases was an areal as well as phonological phenomenon. As is also the case in other Semitic languages, Akkadian nouns may appear in a variety of "states" depending on their grammatical function in a sentence. The basic form of the noun is the status rectus (the governed state), which is the form as described above, complete with case endings. In addition to this, Akkadian has

28497-461: Was a purely popular language — kings wrote in Babylonian — few long texts are preserved. It was, however, notably used in the correspondence of Assyrian traders in Anatolia in the 20th-18th centuries BC and that even led to its temporary adoption as a diplomatic language by various local Anatolian polities during that time. The Middle Babylonian period started in the 16th century BC. The division

28674-499: Was built. A small aqueduct drains into the Great Courtyard, which may have irrigated a garden at one time. The impressive buildings of this period were built as Uruk reached its zenith and expanded to 600 hectares. All the buildings of Eanna IVa were destroyed sometime in Uruk III, for unclear reasons. The architecture of Eanna in period III was very different from what had preceded it. The complex of monumental temples

28851-441: Was composed in Akkadian during the Middle Babylonian Period ( c. 1600 – c. 1155 BC) by a scribe named Sîn-lēqi-unninni . The most complete surviving version of the Epic of Gilgamesh is recorded on a set of twelve clay tablets dating to the seventh century BC, found in the Library of Ashurbanipal in the Assyrian capital of Nineveh , with many pieces missing or damaged. Some scholars and translators choose to supplement

29028-423: Was defeated by Rīm-Sîn I of Larsa in his year 14 (c. 1740 BC), Rîm-Anum and Nabi-ilīšu. Uruk has some of the first monumental constructions in architectural history, and certainly the largest of its era. Much of Near Eastern architecture can trace its roots to these prototypical buildings. The structures of Uruk are cited by two different naming conventions, one in German from the initial expedition, and

29205-580: Was divided into five main districts: the Adad Temple, Royal Orchard, Ištar Gate, Lugalirra Temple, and Šamaš Gate districts. Uruk, known as Orcha ([Ὄρχα] Error: {{Lang}}: Non-latn text/Latn script subtag mismatch ( help ) ) to the Greeks, continued to thrive under the Seleucid Empire . During this period, Uruk was a city of 300 hectares and perhaps 40,000 inhabitants. In 200 BC,

29382-615: Was followed up with high-resolution satellite imagery in 2005. Work resumed in 2016 and is currently concentrated on the city wall area and a survey of the surrounding landscape. Part of the work has been to create a digital twin of the Uruk archaeological area. The current effort also involves geophysical surveying. The soil characteristics of the site make ground penetrating radar unsuitable so caesium magnetometers, combined with resistivity probes, are being used. About 400 Proto-cuneiform clay tablets were found at Uruk with Sumerian and pictorial inscriptions that are thought to be some of

29559-532: Was largely confined to scholars and priests working in temples in Assyria and Babylonia. The last known Akkadian cuneiform document dates from the 1st century AD. Mandaic spoken by Mandean Gnostics and the dialects spoken by the extant Assyrians ( Suret ) are three extant Neo-Aramaic languages that retain Akkadian vocabulary and grammatical features, as well as personal and family names. These are spoken by Assyrians and Mandeans mainly in northern Iraq , southeast Turkey , northeast Syria , northwest Iran ,

29736-424: Was largely ignored. Most attention towards the Epic of Gilgamesh in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries came from German-speaking countries, where controversy raged over the relationship between Babel und Bibel ("Babylon and Bible"). In January 1902, the German Assyriologist Friedrich Delitzsch gave a lecture at the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin before the Kaiser and his wife, in which he argued that

29913-453: Was led by Jordan until 1931 when Jordan became Director of Antiquities in Baghdad, then by A. Nöldeke, Ernst Heinrich, and H. J. Lenzen. Among the finds was the Stell of the Lion Hunt, excavated in a Jemdat Nadr layer but sylistically dated to Uruk IV. The German excavations resumed after the war and were under the direction of Heinrich Lenzen from 1954 to 1967. He was followed in 1968 by J. Schmidt, and in 1978 by R.M. Boehmer. In total,

30090-580: Was located in the southern part of Mesopotamia, an ancient site of civilization, on the Euphrates river. Through the gradual and eventual domestication of native grains from the Zagros foothills and extensive irrigation techniques, the area supported a vast variety of edible vegetation. This domestication of grain and its proximity to rivers enabled Uruk's growth into the largest Sumerian settlement, in both population and area, with relative ease. Uruk's agricultural surplus and large population base facilitated processes such as trade, specialization of crafts and

30267-409: Was lowered from heaven to Eridu then passed successively through five cities until the deluge which ended the Uruk period. Afterwards, kingship passed to Kish at the beginning of the Early Dynastic period, which corresponds to the beginning of the Early Bronze Age in Sumer. In the Early Dynastic I period (2900–2800 BC), Uruk was in theory under the control of Kish. This period is sometimes called

30444-399: Was originally called 'Kullaba' (Kulab or Unug-Kulaba) prior to merging with the Eanna District. Kullaba dates to the Eridu period when it was one of the oldest and most important cities of Sumer. The Eanna District was composed of several buildings with spaces for workshops, and it was walled off from the city. By contrast, the Anu District was built on a terrace with a temple at the top. It

30621-412: Was quarried from an outcrop at Umayyad about 60 km east of Uruk. It is unclear if the entire temple or just the foundation was built of this limestone . The Limestone Temple is probably the first Inanna temple, but it is impossible to know with certainty. Like the Stone-Cone temple the Limestone temple was also covered in cone mosaics. Both of these temples were rectangles with their corners aligned to

30798-407: Was replaced with baths around the Great Courtyard and the labyrinthine Rammed-Earth Building. This period corresponds to Early Dynastic Sumer c. 2900 BC, a time of great social upheaval when the dominance of Uruk was eclipsed by competing city-states . The fortress -like architecture of this time is a reflection of that turmoil. The temple of Inanna continued functioning during this time in

30975-408: Was significantly larger and more complex. The Uruk period culture exported by Sumerian traders and colonists had an effect on all surrounding peoples, who gradually evolved their own comparable, competing economies and cultures. Ultimately, Uruk could not maintain long-distance control over colonies such as Tell Brak by military force. Geographic factors underpin Uruk's unprecedented growth. The city

31152-441: Was used as a determinative for divine names. Another peculiarity of Akkadian cuneiform is that many signs do not have a well defined phonetic value. Certain signs, such as AḪ , do not distinguish between the different vowel qualities. Nor is there any coordination in the other direction; the syllable -ša- , for example, is rendered by the sign ŠA , but also by the sign NĪĜ . Both of these are often used for

31329-505: Was used mostly in letters and administrative documents. During the first millennium BC, Akkadian progressively lost its status as a lingua franca . In the beginning, from around 1000 BC, Akkadian and Aramaic were of equal status, as can be seen in the number of copied texts: clay tablets were written in Akkadian, while scribes writing on papyrus and leather used Aramaic. From this period on, one speaks of Neo-Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian . Neo-Assyrian received an upswing in popularity in

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