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132-577: Eridu ( Sumerian : 𒉣 𒆠 , romanized:  NUN.KI ; Sumerian : eridug; Akkadian : irîtu ) was a Sumerian city located at Tell Abu Shahrain ( Arabic : تل أبو شهرين ), also Abu Shahrein or Tell Abu Shahrayn, an archaeological site in Lower Mesopotamia . It is located in Dhi Qar Governorate , Iraq , near the modern city of Basra . Eridu is traditionally considered the earliest city in southern Mesopotamia based on

264-491: A logosyllabic script comprising several hundred signs. Rosengarten (1967) lists 468 signs used in Sumerian (pre- Sargonian ) Lagash . The cuneiform script was adapted to Akkadian writing beginning in the mid-third millennium. Over the long period of bi-lingual overlap of active Sumerian and Akkadian usage the two languages influenced each other, as reflected in numerous loanwords and even word order changes. Depending on

396-802: A nationalistic flavour. Attempts have been made without success to link Sumerian with a range of widely disparate groups such as Indo-European languages , the Austroasiatic languages , Dravidian languages , Uralic languages such as Hungarian and Finnish , Sino-Tibetan languages and Turkic languages (the last being promoted by Turkish nationalists as part of the Sun language theory ). Additionally, long-range proposals have attempted to include Sumerian in broad macrofamilies . Such proposals enjoy virtually no support among modern linguists, Sumerologists and Assyriologists and are typically seen as fringe theories . It has also been suggested that

528-611: A canal, Id-edin-Eriduga (NUN) "the canal of the Eridug plain", connected Eridu to the Euphrates river, which later shifted its course. The path of the canal is marked by several low tells with 2nd Millennium BC surface pottery and later burials. The site contains 8 mounds: The site was initially excavated by John George Taylor , the British Vice-counsel at Basra, in 1855. Among the finds were inscribed bricks enabling

660-588: A complex mixture of many different elements from different sources (not all from dissolved salts) in different molecular forms. The chemical properties of some of these forms depend on temperature and pressure. Many of these forms are difficult to measure with high accuracy, and in any case complete chemical analysis is not practical when analyzing multiple samples. Different practical definitions of salinity result from different attempts to account for these problems, to different levels of precision, while still remaining reasonably easy to use. For practical reasons salinity

792-430: A detailed and readable summary of the decipherment of Sumerian in his Sumerian Mythology . Friedrich Delitzsch published a learned Sumerian dictionary and grammar in the form of his Sumerisches Glossar and Grundzüge der sumerischen Grammatik , both appearing in 1914. Delitzsch's student, Arno Poebel , published a grammar with the same title, Grundzüge der sumerischen Grammatik , in 1923, and for 50 years it would be

924-435: A detour in understanding the language – a Paris -based orientalist , Joseph Halévy , argued from 1874 onward that Sumerian was not a natural language, but rather a secret code (a cryptolect ), and for over a decade the leading Assyriologists battled over this issue. For a dozen years, starting in 1885, Friedrich Delitzsch accepted Halévy's arguments, not renouncing Halévy until 1897. François Thureau-Dangin working at

1056-403: A few common graphic forms out of many that may occur. Spelling practices have also changed significantly in the course of the history of Sumerian: the examples in the article will use the most phonetically explicit spellings attested, which usually means Old Babylonian or Ur III period spellings. except where an authentic example from another period is used. Modern knowledge of Sumerian phonology

1188-409: A flying bird, left her city. The mother of E-maḫ , holy Damgalnuna , left her city. The divine powers of the city of holiest divine powers were overturned. The divine powers of the rites of the greatest divine powers were altered. In Eridug everything was reduced to ruin, was wrought with confusion." The following list should not be considered complete: "After the kingship descended from heaven ,

1320-456: A measured density. Marine waters are those of the ocean, another term for which is euhaline seas . The salinity of euhaline seas is 30 to 35 ‰. Brackish seas or waters have salinity in the range of 0.5 to 29 ‰ and metahaline seas from 36 to 40 ‰. These waters are all regarded as thalassic because their salinity is derived from the ocean and defined as homoiohaline if salinity does not vary much over time (essentially constant). The table on

1452-528: A non-Semitic language had preceded Akkadian in Mesopotamia, and that speakers of this language had developed the cuneiform script. In 1855 Rawlinson announced the discovery of non-Semitic inscriptions at the southern Babylonian sites of Nippur , Larsa , and Uruk . In 1856, Hincks argued that the untranslated language was agglutinative in character. The language was called "Scythic" by some, and, confusingly, "Akkadian" by others. In 1869, Oppert proposed

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1584-453: A number of suffixes and enclitics consisting of /e/ or beginning in /e/ are also assimilated and reduced. In earlier scholarship, somewhat different views were expressed and attempts were made to formulate detailed rules for the effect of grammatical morphemes and compounding on stress, but with inconclusive results. Based predominantly on patterns of vowel elision, Adam Falkenstein argued that stress in monomorphemic words tended to be on

1716-666: A pair of basalt stone lion statues, columns several meters in diameter coated with cones and gypsum, and extensive Uruk period pottery. Occupation increased in the Early Dynastic period with a monumental 100 meter by 100 meter palace being constructed. An inscription of Elulu , a ruler of the First Dynasty of Ur ( c.  2600 BC ), was found at Eridu. On a statue of the Early Dynastic ruler of Lagash named Entemena ( c.  2400 BC ), it reads, "he built Ab-zupasira for Enki, king of Eridu ...", Eridu

1848-489: A relation to the Sumerian language. Around 2600 BC, cuneiform symbols were developed using a wedge-shaped stylus to impress the shapes into wet clay. This cuneiform ("wedge-shaped") mode of writing co-existed with the proto-cuneiform archaic mode. Deimel (1922) lists 870 signs used in the Early Dynastic IIIa period (26th century). In the same period the large set of logographic signs had been simplified into

1980-520: A richer vowel inventory by some researchers. For example, we find forms like 𒂵𒁽 g a -kaš 4 "let me run", but, from the Neo-Sumerian period onwards, occasional spellings like 𒄘𒈬𒊏𒀊𒋧 g u 2 -mu-ra-ab-šum 2 "let me give it to you". According to Jagersma, these assimilations are limited to open syllables and, as with vowel harmony, Jagersma interprets their absence as the result of vowel length or of stress in at least some cases. There

2112-490: A sanctuary of Inanna of Eridu (built by Ur III ruler Ur-Nammu ). Ur-Nammu also recorded building a temple of Ishtar of Eridu at Ur which is assumed to have been a rebuild. One of the religious quarters of Babylon , containing the temple called the Esagila as well as the temple of Annunitum , among others, was also named Eridu. Eridu is located on a natural hill in a basin approximately 15 miles long and 20 feet deep, which

2244-408: A second vowel harmony rule. There also appear to be many cases of partial or complete assimilation of the vowel of certain prefixes and suffixes to one in the adjacent syllable reflected in writing in some of the later periods, and there is a noticeable, albeit not absolute, tendency for disyllabic stems to have the same vowel in both syllables. These patterns, too, are interpreted as evidence for

2376-539: A sequence of 17 Ubaid Period superseding temples and an Ubaid Period graveyard with 1000 graves of mud-brick boxes oriented to the southeast. The temple began as a 2 meter by 3 meter mud brick square with a niche. At Level XI it was rebuilt and eventually reached its final tripartite form in Level VI. In Ur III times a 300 square meter platform was constructed as a base for a ziggurat. These archaeological investigations showed that, according to A. Leo Oppenheim , "eventually

2508-460: A spoken language in nearly all of its original territory, whereas Sumerian continued its existence as a liturgical and classical language for religious, artistic and scholarly purposes. In addition, it has been argued that Sumerian persisted as a spoken language at least in a small part of Southern Mesopotamia ( Nippur and its surroundings) at least until about 1900 BC and possibly until as late as 1700 BC. Nonetheless, it seems clear that by far

2640-604: A survey of the field could not be considered complete. The primary institutional lexical effort in Sumerian is the Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary project, begun in 1974. In 2004, the PSD was released on the Web as the ePSD. The project is currently supervised by Steve Tinney. It has not been updated online since 2006, but Tinney and colleagues are working on a new edition of the ePSD, a working draft of which

2772-407: A text may not even have been meant to be read in Sumerian; instead, it may have functioned as a prestigious way of "encoding" Akkadian via Sumerograms (cf. Japanese kanbun ). Nonetheless, the study of Sumerian and copying of Sumerian texts remained an integral part of scribal education and literary culture of Mesopotamia and surrounding societies influenced by it and it retained that role until

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2904-454: A vowel quality opposite to the one that would have been expected according to this rule, which has been variously interpreted as an indication either of the existence of additional vowel phonemes in Sumerian or simply of incorrectly reconstructed readings of individual lexemes. The 3rd person plural dimensional prefix 𒉈 -ne- is also unaffected, which Jagersma believes to be caused by the length of its vowel. In addition, some have argued for

3036-464: A wide range of salinities is euryhaline . Salts are expensive to remove from water, and salt content is an important factor in water use, factoring into potability and suitability for irrigation . Increases in salinity have been observed in lakes and rivers in the United States, due to common road salt and other salt de-icers in runoff. The degree of salinity in oceans is a driver of

3168-441: A wide range of salinities, from less than 0.01 g/kg to a few g/kg, although there are many places where higher salinities are found. The Dead Sea has a salinity of more than 200 g/kg. Precipitation typically has a TDS of 20 mg/kg or less. Whatever pore size is used in the definition, the resulting salinity value of a given sample of natural water will not vary by more than a few percent (%). Physical oceanographers working in

3300-472: Is also relevant in this context that, as explained above , many morpheme-final consonants seem to have been elided unless followed by a vowel at various stages in the history of Sumerian. These are traditionally termed Auslauts in Sumerology and may or may not be expressed in transliteration: e.g. the logogram 𒊮 for /šag/ > /ša(g)/ "heart" may be transliterated as šag 4 or as ša 3 . Thus, when

3432-600: Is also the Old Akkadian period (c. 2350 BC – c. 2200 BC), during which Mesopotamia, including Sumer, was united under the rule of the Akkadian Empire . At this time Akkadian functioned as the primary official language, but texts in Sumerian (primarily administrative) did continue to be produced as well. The first phase of the Neo-Sumerian period corresponds to the time of Gutian rule in Mesopotamia ;

3564-459: Is available online. Assumed phonological and morphological forms will be between slashes // and curly brackets {}, respectively, with plain text used for the standard Assyriological transcription of Sumerian. Most of the following examples are unattested. Note also that, not unlike most other pre-modern orthographies, Sumerian cuneiform spelling is highly variable, so the transcriptions and the cuneiform examples will generally show only one or at most

3696-431: Is defined as that which can pass through a very fine filter (historically a filter with a pore size of 0.45 μm, but later usually 0.2 μm). Salinity can be expressed in the form of a mass fraction , i.e. the mass of the dissolved material in a unit mass of solution. Seawater typically has a mass salinity of around 35 g/kg, although lower values are typical near coasts where rivers enter the ocean. Rivers and lakes can have

3828-518: Is described in more detail. The following is the English translation of the tablet: (Obverse) 1 They (the chief deities) created humanity 2 After the [animals/vermin?] were proliferating below/from the earth in unison 3 They made livestock and quadrupeds as fitting things in the steppe(eden-na) 4 In the high steppe ... joyous plants broadly 5 At that time, the canal was not dug ... 6 The dike and ditch [were not dredged(?) ...] 7 The ox ...

3960-434: Is evidence of various cases of elision of vowels, apparently in unstressed syllables; in particular an initial vowel in a word of more than two syllables seems to have been elided in many cases. What appears to be vowel contraction in hiatus (*/aa/, */ia/, */ua/ > a , */ae/ > a , */ie/ > i or e , */ue/ > u or e , etc.) is also very common. There is some uncertainty and variance of opinion as to whether

4092-475: Is flawed and incomplete because of the lack of speakers, the transmission through the filter of Akkadian phonology and the difficulties posed by the cuneiform script. As I. M. Diakonoff observes, "when we try to find out the morphophonological structure of the Sumerian language, we must constantly bear in mind that we are not dealing with a language directly but are reconstructing it from a very imperfect mnemonic writing system which had not been basically aimed at

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4224-473: Is little speculation as to the affinities of this hypothetical substratum language, or these languages, and it is thus best treated as unclassified . Other researchers disagree with the assumption of a single substratum language and argue that several languages are involved. A related proposal by Gordon Whittaker is that the language of the proto-literary texts from the Late Uruk period ( c. 3350–3100 BC)

4356-520: Is pulled in to replace the sinking water, which in turn eventually becomes cold and salty enough to sink. Salinity distribution contributes to shape the oceanic circulation. Limnologists and chemists often define salinity in terms of mass of salt per unit volume, expressed in units of mg/L or g/L. It is implied, although often not stated, that this value applies accurately only at some reference temperature because solution volume varies with temperature. Values presented in this way are typically accurate to

4488-490: Is really an early extinct branch of Indo-European language which he terms "Euphratic" which somehow emerged long prior to the accepted timeline for the spread of Indo-European into West Asia, though this is rejected by mainstream opinion which accepts Sumerian as a language isolate . Pictographic proto-writing was used starting in c. 3300 BC. It is unclear what underlying language it encoded, if any. By c. 2800 BC, some tablets began using syllabic elements that clearly indicated

4620-651: Is referred to as brine . Salinity is an ecological factor of considerable importance, influencing the types of organisms that live in a body of water. As well, salinity influences the kinds of plants that will grow either in a water body, or on land fed by a water (or by a groundwater ). A plant adapted to saline conditions is called a halophyte . A halophyte which is tolerant to residual sodium carbonate salinity are called glasswort or saltwort or barilla plants. Organisms (mostly bacteria) that can live in very salty conditions are classified as extremophiles , or halophiles specifically. An organism that can withstand

4752-657: Is separated from the Euphrates by a sandstone ridge called the Hazem . This basin, the As Sulaybiyat Depression (formerly: Khor en-Nejeif ), becomes a seasonal lake (Arabic: Sebkha) during the rainy season from November to April. During this period, it is filled by the discharge of the Wadi Khanega. Adjacent to eastern edge of the seasonal lake are the Hammar Marshes . In the 3rd Millennium BC

4884-537: Is the first one from which well-understood texts survive. It corresponds mostly to the last part of the Early Dynastic period (ED IIIb) and specifically to the First Dynasty of Lagash , from where the overwhelming majority of surviving texts come. The sources include important royal inscriptions with historical content as well as extensive administrative records. Sometimes included in the Old Sumerian stage

5016-485: Is the king's house" (compare liaison in French). Jagersma believes that the lack of expression of word-final consonants was originally mostly a graphic convention, but that in the late 3rd millennium voiceless aspirated stops and affricates ( /pʰ/ , /tʰ/ , /kʰ/ and /tsʰ/ were, indeed, gradually lost in syllable-final position, as were the unaspirated stops /d/ and /ɡ/ . The vowels that are clearly distinguished by

5148-412: Is the most famous. These laments had a number of sections (kirugu) of which only fragments have been recovered. The Lament for Eridu describes the fall of that city. "Its king stayed outside his city as if it were an alien city. He wept bitter tears. Father Enki stayed outside his city as if it were an alien city. He wept bitter tears. For the sake of his harmed city, he wept bitter tears. Its lady, like

5280-470: Is usually related to the sum of masses of a subset of these dissolved chemical constituents (so-called solution salinity ), rather than to the unknown mass of salts that gave rise to this composition (an exception is when artificial seawater is created). For many purposes this sum can be limited to a set of eight major ions in natural waters, although for seawater at highest precision an additional seven minor ions are also included. The major ions dominate

5412-414: Is widely accepted to be a local language isolate . Sumerian was at one time widely held to be an Indo-European language , but that view has been universally rejected. Since its decipherment in the early 20th century, scholars have tried to relate Sumerian to a wide variety of languages. Because Sumerian has prestige as the first attested written language, proposals for linguistic affinity sometimes have

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5544-590: The Behistun inscription , a trilingual cuneiform inscription written in Old Persian , Elamite and Akkadian . (In a similar manner, the key to understanding Egyptian hieroglyphs was the bilingual [Greek and Egyptian with the Egyptian text in two scripts] Rosetta stone and Jean-François Champollion's transcription in 1822.) In 1838 Henry Rawlinson , building on the 1802 work of Georg Friedrich Grotefend ,

5676-489: The Old Babylonian period with Hammurabi stating in his 33rd Year Name "Year Hammu-rabi the king dug the canal (called) 'Hammu-rabi is abundance to the people', the beloved of An and Enlil, established the everlasting waters of plentifulness for Nippur, Eridu, Ur, Larsa, Uruk and Isin, restored Sumer and Akkad which had been scattered, overthrew in battle the army of Mari and Malgium and caused Mari and its territory and

5808-554: The Old Persian alphabet which was used to write the eponymous language . The impact was perhaps the greatest on Akkadian, whose grammar and vocabulary were significantly influenced by Sumerian. The history of written Sumerian can be divided into several periods: The pictographic writing system used during the Proto-literate period (3200 BC – 3000 BC), corresponding to the Uruk III and Uruk IV periods in archeology,

5940-528: The Semitic Akkadian language , which were duly deciphered. By 1850, however, Edward Hincks came to suspect a non-Semitic origin for cuneiform. Semitic languages are structured according to consonantal forms , whereas cuneiform, when functioning phonetically, was a syllabary , binding consonants to particular vowels. Furthermore, no Semitic words could be found to explain the syllabic values given to particular signs. Julius Oppert suggested that

6072-469: The Sumerian King List , Eridu is the first of five cities where kingship was received before a flood came over the land. The list mentions two rulers of Eridu from the Early Dynastic period, Alulim and Alalngar . [nam]- lugal an - ta èd-dè-a-ba [eri]du nam-lugal-la eridug a₂-lu-lim lugal mu 28800 i₃-ak a₂-lal₃-ĝar mu 36000 i₃-ak When kingship from heaven was lowered,

6204-497: The Sumerian King List . Located 24 kilometers south-southwest of the ancient site of Ur , Eridu was the southernmost of a conglomeration of Sumerian cities that grew around temples, almost in sight of one another. The city gods of Eridu were Enki and his consort Damkina . Enki, later known as Ea, was considered to have founded the city. His temple was called E-Abzu, as Enki was believed to live in Abzu , an aquifer from which all life

6336-434: The abyssal ocean , however, are often concerned with precision and intercomparability of measurements by different researchers, at different times, to almost five significant digits . A bottled seawater product known as IAPSO Standard Seawater is used by oceanographers to standardize their measurements with enough precision to meet this requirement. Measurement and definition difficulties arise because natural waters contain

6468-522: The e-abzu temple, including Elili of Ur; Ur-Nammu , Shulgi and Amar-Sin of Ur-III , and Nur-Adad of Larsa . Eridu is one of the earliest settlements in the region, founded c.  5400 BC during the early Ubaid period , at that time close to the Persian Gulf near the mouth of the Euphrates , although in modern times it is about 90 miles inland. Excavation has shown that

6600-522: The gifts of civilization . At first Enki, the god of Eridu, attempted to retrieve these sources of his power but later willingly accepted that Uruk now was the centre of the land. The fall of early Mesopotamia cities and empires was typically believed to be the result of falling out of favor with the gods. A genre called City Laments developed during the Isin-Larsa period , of which the Lament for Ur

6732-564: The hydrography is such that a possible cause of reduced circulation is the production of stratified oceans. In such cases, it is more difficult to subduct water through the thermohaline circulation. Not only is salinity a driver of ocean circulation, but changes in ocean circulation also affect salinity, particularly in the subpolar North Atlantic where from 1990 to 2010 increased contributions of Greenland meltwater were counteracted by increased northward transport of salty Atlantic waters. However, North Atlantic waters have become fresher since

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6864-413: The world's ocean circulation , where density changes due to both salinity changes and temperature changes at the surface of the ocean produce changes in buoyancy, which cause the sinking and rising of water masses. Changes in the salinity of the oceans are thought to contribute to global changes in carbon dioxide as more saline waters are less soluble to carbon dioxide. In addition, during glacial periods,

6996-408: The 1980s. Titration with silver nitrate could be used to determine the concentration of halide ions (mainly chlorine and bromine ) to give a chlorinity . The chlorinity was then multiplied by a factor to account for all other constituents. The resulting 'Knudsen salinities' are expressed in units of parts per thousand (ppt or ‰ ). The use of electrical conductivity measurements to estimate

7128-538: The 1st century AD. Thereafter, it seems to have fallen into obscurity until the 19th century, when Assyriologists began deciphering the cuneiform inscriptions and excavated tablets that had been left by its speakers. In spite of its extinction, Sumerian exerted a significant impact on the languages of the area. The cuneiform script , originally used for Sumerian, was widely adopted by numerous regional languages such as Akkadian , Elamite , Eblaite , Hittite , Hurrian , Luwian and Urartian ; it similarly inspired

7260-514: The 2004 The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages has also been recognized as a good modern grammatical sketch. There is relatively little consensus, even among reasonable Sumerologists, in comparison to the state of most modern or classical languages. Verbal morphology, in particular, is hotly disputed. In addition to the general grammars, there are many monographs and articles about particular areas of Sumerian grammar, without which

7392-428: The 21st century have switched to using readings from them. There is also variation in the degree to which so-called "Auslauts" or "amissable consonants" (morpheme-final consonants that stopped being pronounced at one point or another in the history of Sumerian) are reflected in the transliterations. This article generally used the versions with expressed Auslauts. The key to reading logosyllabic cuneiform came from

7524-639: The Iraqi Directorate General of Antiquities and Heritage. Among the finds were a Ubaid period terracotta boat model, complete with a socket amidship for a mast and hole for stays and rudder, bevel-rimmed bowls , and a "lizard type" figurine like those found in a sounding under the Royal Cemetery of Ur. Soundings in the cemetery showed it to have about 1000 graves, all from the end of the Ubaid period (Temple levels VI and VII). They found

7656-722: The Louvre in Paris also made significant contributions to deciphering Sumerian with publications from 1898 to 1938, such as his 1905 publication of Les inscriptions de Sumer et d'Akkad . Charles Fossey at the Collège de France in Paris was another prolific and reliable scholar. His pioneering Contribution au Dictionnaire sumérien–assyrien , Paris 1905–1907, turns out to provide the foundation for P. Anton Deimel's 1934 Sumerisch-Akkadisches Glossar (vol. III of Deimel's 4-volume Sumerisches Lexikon ). In 1908, Stephen Herbert Langdon summarized

7788-606: The Neo-Sumerian and especially in the Old Babylonian period. Conversely, an intervocalic consonant, especially at the end of a morpheme followed by a vowel-initial morpheme, was usually "repeated" by the use of a CV sign for the same consonant; e.g. 𒊬 sar "write" - 𒊬𒊏 sar-ra "written". This results in orthographic gemination that is usually reflected in Sumerological transliteration, but does not actually designate any phonological phenomenon such as length. It

7920-522: The Sumerian language descended from a late prehistoric creole language (Høyrup 1992). However, no conclusive evidence, only some typological features, can be found to support Høyrup's view. A more widespread hypothesis posits a Proto-Euphratean language family that preceded Sumerian in Mesopotamia and exerted an areal influence on it, especially in the form of polysyllabic words that appear "un-Sumerian"—making them suspect of being loanwords —and are not traceable to any other known language family. There

8052-444: The Sumerian site of Tello (ancient Girsu, capital of the state of Lagash ) in 1877, and published the first part of Découvertes en Chaldée with transcriptions of Sumerian tablets in 1884. The University of Pennsylvania began excavating Sumerian Nippur in 1888. A Classified List of Sumerian Ideographs by R. Brünnow appeared in 1889. The bewildering number and variety of phonetic values that signs could have in Sumerian led to

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8184-410: The Ubaid period cemetery and its associated Ubaid residential area. In March 2006, Giovanni Pettinato and S. Chiod from Rome's La Sapienza University claimed to have discovered 500 Early Dynastic historical and literary cuneiform tablets on the surface at Eridu "disturbed by an explosion". The tablets were said to be from 2600 to 2100 BC (rulers Eannatum to Amar-Sin) and be part of a library. A team

8316-459: The above cases, another stress often seemed to be present as well: on the stem to which the suffixes/enclitics were added, on the second compound member in compounds, and possibly on the verbal stem that prefixes were added to or on following syllables. He also did not agree that the stress of monomorphemic words was typically initial and believed to have found evidence of words with initial as well as with final stress; in fact, he did not even exclude

8448-399: The adaptation of Akkadian words of Sumerian origin seems to suggest that Sumerian stress tended to be on the last syllable of the word, at least in its citation form. The treatment of forms with grammatical morphemes is less clear. Many cases of apheresis in forms with enclitics have been interpreted as entailing that the same rule was true of the phonological word on many occasions, i.e. that

8580-574: The city of Eridu". From most southern city of Mesopotamia, Eridu, there is a good view to the south, so that about 6000 years ago due to the precession of the Earth's axis the first rising of the star Canopus in Mesopotamia could be observed only from there at the southern meridian at midnight. In the city of Ur this was the case only 60 years later. In the flood myth tablet found in Ur, how Eridu and Alulim were chosen by gods as first city and first priest-king

8712-553: The city was founded on a virgin sand dune site with no previous habitation. According to the excavators, construction of the Ur III ziggurat and associated buildings was preceded by the destruction of preceding construction and its use as leveling fill so no remains from that time were found. At a small mound 1 kilometer north of Eridu two Early Dynastic III palaces were found, with an enclosure wall. The palaces measured 45 meters by 65 meters with 2.6 meter wide walls and were constructed in

8844-417: The composition of seawater. They can also be determined by making direct density measurements. A sample of seawater from most locations with a chlorinity of 19.37 ppt will have a Knudsen salinity of 35.00 ppt, a PSS-78 practical salinity of about 35.0, and a TEOS-10 absolute salinity of about 35.2 g/kg. The electrical conductivity of this water at a temperature of 15 °C is 42.9 mS/cm. On

8976-437: The context, a cuneiform sign can be read either as one of several possible logograms , each of which corresponds to a word in the Sumerian spoken language, as a phonetic syllable (V, VC, CV, or CVC), or as a determinative (a marker of semantic category, such as occupation or place). (See the article Cuneiform .) Some Sumerian logograms were written with multiple cuneiform signs. These logograms are called diri -spellings, after

9108-537: The critiques put forward by Pascal Attinger in his 1993 Eléments de linguistique sumérienne: La construction de du 11 /e/di 'dire ' ) is the starting point of most recent academic discussions of Sumerian grammar. More recent monograph-length grammars of Sumerian include Dietz-Otto Edzard 's 2003 Sumerian Grammar and Bram Jagersma's 2010 A Descriptive Grammar of Sumerian (currently digital, but soon to be printed in revised form by Oxford University Press). Piotr Michalowski's essay (entitled, simply, "Sumerian") in

9240-401: The cuneiform script are /a/ , /e/ , /i/ , and /u/ . Various researchers have posited the existence of more vowel phonemes such as /o/ and even /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ , which would have been concealed by the transmission through Akkadian, as that language does not distinguish them. That would explain the seeming existence of numerous homophones in transliterated Sumerian, as well as some details of

9372-503: The demolished Leonard Woolley’s expedition house at Ur (clearly spelled out in the 1981 Iraqi excavation report to avoid confusion to future archaeologists. Most of the bricks in question were returned to Ur in 1962 fur use in restoration efforts. The urban nucleus of Eridu was Enki 's temple, called House of the Aquifer ( Cuneiform : 𒂍𒍪𒀊 , E₂.ZU.AB ; Sumerian : e₂ -abzu ; Akkadian : bītu apsû ), which in later history

9504-548: The eclipse of the tradition of cuneiform literacy itself in the beginning of the Common Era . The most popular genres for Sumerian texts after the Old Babylonian period were incantations, liturgical texts and proverbs; among longer texts, the classics Lugal-e and An-gim were most commonly copied. Of the 29 royal inscriptions of the late second millennium BC 2nd dynasty of Isin about half were in Sumerian, described as "hypersophisticated classroom Sumerian". Sumerian

9636-414: The entire south lapsed into stagnation, abandoning the political initiative to the rulers of the northern cities", probably as a result of increasing salinity produced by continuous irrigation, and the city was abandoned in 600 BC. In 1990 the site was visited by A. M. T. Moore who found two areas of surface pottery kilns not noted by the earlier excavators. In October 2014 Franco D’Agostino visited

9768-471: The extremely detailed and meticulous administrative records, there are numerous royal inscriptions, legal documents, letters and incantations. In spite of the dominant position of written Sumerian during the Ur III dynasty, it is controversial to what extent it was actually spoken or had already gone extinct in most parts of its empire. Some facts have been interpreted as suggesting that many scribes and even

9900-460: The father(s) of the gods(?) 11 They chose Alulim/the "seed of the red deer" for the shepherdship of the entirety of the many people 12 They named him(!) Alulim/named the "seed of the red deer" ... 13 After they served according to the command to check thusly/forever after(?) 14 [So that?] humanity, whoever possessed a name, were grasping his feet (in submission)/following his path(?) 15 They put both (capital) offense and sin(?) in his hand 16

10032-426: The first syllable and that there was generally stress on the syllable preceding a (final) suffix/enclitic, on the penultimate syllable of a polysyllabic enclitic such as -/ani/, -/zunene/ etc., on the last syllable of the first member of a compound, and on the first syllable in a sequence of verbal prefixes. However, he found that single verbal prefixes received the stress just as prefix sequences did, and that in most of

10164-411: The first syllable, and that the same applied without exception to reduplicated stems, but that the stress shifted onto the last syllable in a first member of a compound or idiomatic phrase, onto the syllable preceding a (final) suffix/enclitic, and onto the first syllable of the possessive enclitic /-ani/. In his view, single verbal prefixes were unstressed, but longer sequences of verbal prefixes attracted

10296-461: The first to span a greater variety of genres, including not only administrative texts and sign lists, but also incantations , legal and literary texts (including proverbs and early versions of the famous works The Instructions of Shuruppak and The Kesh temple hymn ). However, the spelling of grammatical elements remains optional, making the interpretation and linguistic analysis of these texts difficult. The Old Sumerian period (2500-2350 BC)

10428-467: The following consonant appears in front of a vowel, it can be said to be expressed only by the next sign: for example, 𒊮𒂵 šag 4 -ga "in the heart" can also be interpreted as ša 3 -ga . Salinity Salinity ( / s ə ˈ l ɪ n ɪ t i / ) is the saltiness or amount of salt dissolved in a body of water , called saline water (see also soil salinity ). It is usually measured in g/L or g/kg (grams of salt per liter/kilogram of water;

10560-491: The form of silicic acid , which usually appears as a neutral molecule in the pH range of most natural waters, may also be included for some purposes (e.g., when salinity/density relationships are being investigated). The term 'salinity' is, for oceanographers, usually associated with one of a set of specific measurement techniques. As the dominant techniques evolve, so do different descriptions of salinity. Salinities were largely measured using titration -based techniques before

10692-411: The global scale, it is extremely likely that human-caused climate change has contributed to observed surface and subsurface salinity changes since the 1950s, and projections of surface salinity changes throughout the 21st century indicate that fresh ocean regions will continue to get fresher and salty regions will continue to get saltier. Salinity is serving as a tracer of different masses. Surface water

10824-502: The glottal stop even serving as the first-person pronominal prefix. However, these unwritten consonants had been lost by the Ur III period according to Jagersma. Very often, a word-final consonant was not expressed in writing—and was possibly omitted in pronunciation—so it surfaced only when followed by a vowel: for example the /k/ of the genitive case ending -ak does not appear in 𒂍𒈗𒆷 e 2 lugal-la "the king's house", but it becomes obvious in 𒂍𒈗𒆷𒄰 e 2 lugal-la-kam "(it)

10956-577: The highest religious office in the land at that time. In each the first two cases it was also used as the succeeding Year Name. After the fall of Ur III the site was occupied and active during the Isin-Larsa period (early 2nd Millennium BC) as evidenced by a Year Name of Nur-Adad , ruler of Larsa "Year the temple of Enki in Eridu was built" and texts of Larsa rulers Ishbi-Erra and Ishme-Dagan showing control over Eridu. Inscribed construction bricks of Nur-Adad have also been found at Eridu. This continued in

11088-592: The identification of the site as Eridu. Excavation on the main tell next occurred by R. Campbell Thompson from April 10 untill May 8 in 1918, and H. R. Hall from April 21 until May 8 in 1919, who also conducted a survey in the area around the tell. An interesting find by Hall was a piece of manufactured blue glass which he dated to c.  2000 BC . The blue color was achieved with cobalt , long before this technique emerged in Egypt. Excavation there resumed from 1946 to 1949 under Fuad Safar and Seton Lloyd of

11220-421: The inorganic composition of most (but by no means all) natural waters. Exceptions include some pit lakes and waters from some hydrothermal springs . The concentrations of dissolved gases like oxygen and nitrogen are not usually included in descriptions of salinity. However, carbon dioxide gas, which when dissolved is partially converted into carbonates and bicarbonates , is often included. Silicon in

11352-412: The ionic content of seawater led to the development of the scale called the practical salinity scale 1978 (PSS-78). Salinities measured using PSS-78 do not have units. The suffix psu or PSU (denoting practical salinity unit ) is sometimes added to PSS-78 measurement values. The addition of PSU as a unit after the value is "formally incorrect and strongly discouraged". In 2010 a new standard for

11484-655: The kingship was in Eridu In Eridug, Alulim became king; he ruled for 28800 years. Alaljar ruled for 36000 years The bright star Canopus was known to the ancient Mesopotamians and represented the city of Eridu in the Three Stars Each Babylonian star catalogues and later around 1100 BC on the MUL.APIN tablets. Canopus was called MUL.NUN by the Babylonians, which translates as "star of

11616-581: The kingship was in Eridu." "2 kings; they ruled for 64800 years. Then Eridu fell and the kingship was taken to Bad-tibira ." Sumerian language Akkadian , a Semitic language , gradually replaced Sumerian as the primary spoken language in the area c.  2000 BC (the exact date is debated), but Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary, and scientific language in Akkadian-speaking Mesopotamian states such as Assyria and Babylonia until

11748-447: The late Middle Babylonian period) and there are also grammatical texts - essentially bilingual paradigms listing Sumerian grammatical forms and their postulated Akkadian equivalents. After the Old Babylonian period or, according to some, as early as 1700 BC, the active use of Sumerian declined. Scribes did continue to produce texts in Sumerian at a more modest scale, but generally with interlinear Akkadian translations and only part of

11880-481: The latter is dimensionless and equal to ‰). Salinity is an important factor in determining many aspects of the chemistry of natural waters and of biological processes within it, and is a thermodynamic state variable that, along with temperature and pressure , governs physical characteristics like the density and heat capacity of the water. A contour line of constant salinity is called an isohaline , or sometimes isohale . Salinity in rivers, lakes, and

12012-667: The length of the vowels in most Sumerian words. During the Old Sumerian period, the southern dialects (those used in the cities of Lagash , Umma , Ur and Uruk ), which also provide the overwhelming majority of material from that stage, exhibited a vowel harmony rule based on vowel height or advanced tongue root . Essentially, prefixes containing /e/ or /i/ appear to alternate between /e/ in front of syllables containing open vowels and /i/ in front of syllables containing close vowels; e.g. 𒂊𒁽 e-kaš 4 "he runs", but 𒉌𒁺 i 3 -gub "he stands". Certain verbs with stem vowels spelt with /u/ and /e/, however, seem to take prefixes with

12144-611: The literature known in the Old Babylonian period continued to be copied after its end around 1600 BC. During the Middle Babylonian period, approximately from 1600 to 1000 BC, the Kassite rulers continued to use Sumerian in many of their inscriptions, but Akkadian seems to have taken the place of Sumerian as the primary language of texts used for the training of scribes and their Sumerian itself acquires an increasingly artificial and Akkadian-influenced form. In some cases

12276-514: The logogram 𒋛𒀀 DIRI which is written with the signs 𒋛 SI and 𒀀 A . The text transliteration of a tablet will show just the logogram, such as the word dirig , not the separate component signs. Not all epigraphists are equally reliable, and before publication of an important treatment of a text, scholars will often arrange to collate the published transliteration against the actual tablet, to see if any signs, especially broken or damaged signs, should be represented differently. Our knowledge of

12408-401: The majority of scribes writing in Sumerian in this point were not native speakers and errors resulting from their Akkadian mother tongue become apparent. For this reason, this period as well as the remaining time during which Sumerian was written are sometimes referred to as the "Post-Sumerian" period. The written language of administration, law and royal inscriptions continued to be Sumerian in

12540-409: The measured conductivity at 5 °C might only be in the range of 50–80 μS/cm. Direct density measurements are also used to estimate salinities, particularly in highly saline lakes . Sometimes density at a specific temperature is used as a proxy for salinity. At other times an empirical salinity/density relationship developed for a particular body of water is used to estimate the salinity of samples from

12672-520: The most important sources come from the autonomous Second Dynasty of Lagash, especially from the rule of Gudea , which has produced extensive royal inscriptions. The second phase corresponds to the unification of Mesopotamia under the Third Dynasty of Ur , which oversaw a "renaissance" in the use of Sumerian throughout Mesopotamia, using it as its sole official written language. There is a wealth of texts greater than from any preceding time – besides

12804-477: The name "Sumerian", based on the known title "King of Sumer and Akkad", reasoning that if Akkad signified the Semitic portion of the kingdom, Sumer might describe the non-Semitic annex. Credit for being first to scientifically treat a bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian text belongs to Paul Haupt , who published Die sumerischen Familiengesetze (The Sumerian family laws) in 1879. Ernest de Sarzec began excavating

12936-422: The nugig midwife?], 3 Third ... were giving [Larak[ to Pabilsaĝ, 4 Fourth ... were giving [Sippar to Utu?] 5 Fifth ... were giving Š[uruppak?] to [Sud?]. 6 Those cities .. their settlements ... 7 An, Enlil, [Enki?] and Ninhursaĝ 8 Among(?) those cities, Eridu .. they established at the front/as the leader(?) 9 They led(?) a man who was lying(?) among its vast and many people ... 10 An, Enlil, and Enki,

13068-430: The ocean is conceptually simple, but technically challenging to define and measure precisely. Conceptually the salinity is the quantity of dissolved salt content of the water. Salts are compounds like sodium chloride , magnesium sulfate , potassium nitrate , and sodium bicarbonate which dissolve into ions. The concentration of dissolved chloride ions is sometimes referred to as chlorinity. Operationally, dissolved matter

13200-491: The order of 1%. Limnologists also use electrical conductivity , or "reference conductivity", as a proxy for salinity. This measurement may be corrected for temperature effects, and is usually expressed in units of μS/cm . A river or lake water with a salinity of around 70 mg/L will typically have a specific conductivity at 25 °C of between 80 and 130 μS/cm. The actual ratio depends on the ions present. The actual conductivity usually changes by about 2% per degree Celsius, so

13332-616: The overwhelming majority of surviving manuscripts of Sumerian literary texts in general can be dated to that time, and it is often seen as the "classical age" of Sumerian literature. Conversely, far more literary texts on tablets surviving from the Old Babylonian period are in Sumerian than in Akkadian, even though that time is viewed as the classical period of Babylonian culture and language. However, it has sometimes been suggested that many or most of these "Old Babylonian Sumerian" texts may be copies of works that were originally composed in

13464-444: The phenomena mentioned in the next paragraph. These hypotheses are not yet generally accepted. Phonemic vowel length has also been posited by many scholars based on vowel length in Sumerian loanwords in Akkadian, occasional so-called plene spellings with extra vowel signs, and some internal evidence from alternations. However, scholars who believe in the existence of phonemic vowel length do not consider it possible to reconstruct

13596-480: The place of stress. Sumerian writing expressed pronunciation only roughly. It was often morphophonemic , so much of the allomorphic variation could be ignored. Especially in earlier Sumerian, coda consonants were also often ignored in spelling; e.g. /mung̃areš/ 'they put it here' could be written 𒈬𒃻𒌷 mu-g̃ar-re 2 . The use of VC signs for that purpose, producing more elaborate spellings such as 𒈬𒌦𒃻𒌷𒌍 mu-un-g̃ar-re 2 -eš 3 , became more common only in

13728-651: The plow/farmer/furrow(?) ... 8 The lands ... a single track ... 9 Humanity ... their eyes/faces ... [rain?] 10 Šakkan/Šumugan [did not go out(?)] in the desert ... 11 Weaving the cap/headcloth(?) ... 12 Humanity ... 13 At that time, the snake was not present, [the scorpion was not present ...] 14 The lion was not present, [the hyena was not present ...] 15 The dog and wolf were not present ... 16 Humanity [had no opponent ...] 17 Fear and [gooseflesh(?) were not present ...] 18 ... 19 The king ... 20 ... (Reverse) 1 First ... were giving [Eridu or Ku’ara?] to Asalluhi, 2 Second ... were giving [Bad-tibira to

13860-412: The possibility that stress was normally stem-final. Pascal Attinger has partly concurred with Krecher, but doubts that the stress was always on the syllable preceding a suffix/enclitic and argues that in a prefix sequence, the stressed syllable wasn't the first one, but rather the last one if heavy and the next-to-the-last one in other cases. Attinger has also remarked that the patterns observed may be

13992-399: The preceding Ur III period or earlier, and some copies or fragments of known compositions or literary genres have indeed been found in tablets of Neo-Sumerian and Old Sumerian provenance. In addition, some of the first bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian lexical lists are preserved from that time (although the lists were still usually monolingual and Akkadian translations did not become common until

14124-602: The precursor to Proto-cuneiform , were found in the Ubaid levels of the site. Eighteen superimposed mudbrick temples at the site underlie the unfinished ziggurat of Amar-Sin (c. 2047–2039 BC). Levels XIX to VI were from the Ubaid period and Levels V to I were dated to the Uruk period . Significant habitation was found from the Uruk period with "non-secular" buildings being found in soundings. Uruk finds included decorative terracotta cones topped with copper, copper nails topped with gold,

14256-598: The properties of seawater called the thermodynamic equation of seawater 2010 ( TEOS-10 ) was introduced, advocating absolute salinity as a replacement for practical salinity, and conservative temperature as a replacement for potential temperature . This standard includes a new scale called the reference composition salinity scale . Absolute salinities on this scale are expressed as a mass fraction, in grams per kilogram of solution. Salinities on this scale are determined by combining electrical conductivity measurements with other information that can account for regional changes in

14388-520: The rapid expansion in knowledge of Sumerian and Akkadian vocabulary in the pages of Babyloniaca , a journal edited by Charles Virolleaud , in an article "Sumerian-Assyrian Vocabularies", which reviewed a valuable new book on rare logograms by Bruno Meissner. Subsequent scholars have found Langdon's work, including his tablet transcriptions, to be not entirely reliable. In 1944, the Sumerologist Samuel Noah Kramer provided

14520-544: The readings of Sumerian signs is based, to a great extent, on lexical lists made for Akkadian speakers, where they are expressed by means of syllabic signs. The established readings were originally based on lexical lists from the Neo-Babylonian Period , which were found in the 19th century; in the 20th century, earlier lists from the Old Babylonian Period were published and some researchers in

14652-586: The rendering of morphophonemics". Early Sumerian is conjectured to have had at least the consonants listed in the table below. The consonants in parentheses are reconstructed by some scholars based on indirect evidence; if they existed, they were lost around the Ur III period in the late 3rd millennium BC. The existence of various other consonants has been hypothesized based on graphic alternations and loans, though none have found wide acceptance. For example, Diakonoff lists evidence for two lateral phonemes, two rhotics, two back fricatives, and two g-sounds (excluding

14784-482: The result in each specific case is a long vowel or whether a vowel is simply replaced/deleted. Syllables could have any of the following structures: V, CV, VC, CVC. More complex syllables, if Sumerian had them, are not expressed as such by the cuneiform script. Sumerian stress is usually presumed to have been dynamic, since it seems to have caused vowel elisions on many occasions. Opinions vary on its placement. As argued by Bram Jagersma and confirmed by other scholars,

14916-400: The result of Akkadian influence - either due to linguistic convergence while Sumerian was still a living language or, since the data comes from the Old Babylonian period, a feature of Sumerian as pronounced by native speakers of Akkadian. The latter has also been pointed out by Jagersma, who is, in addition, sceptical about the very assumptions underlying the method used by Krecher to establish

15048-650: The right, modified from Por (1972), follows the "Venice system" (1959). In contrast to homoiohaline environments are certain poikilohaline environments (which may also be thalassic ) in which the salinity variation is biologically significant. Poikilohaline water salinities may range anywhere from 0.5 to greater than 300 ‰. The important characteristic is that these waters tend to vary in salinity over some biologically meaningful range seasonally or on some other roughly comparable time scale. Put simply, these are bodies of water with quite variable salinity. Highly saline water, from which salts crystallize (or are about to),

15180-478: The royal court actually used Akkadian as their main spoken and native language. On the other hand, evidence has been adduced to the effect that Sumerian continued to be spoken natively and even remained dominant as an everyday language in Southern Babylonia, including Nippur and the area to its south By the Old Babylonian period (c. 2000 – c. 1600 BC), Akkadian had clearly supplanted Sumerian as

15312-468: The site in preparation for the coming resumption of excavation, noting a number of inscribed Amar-Sin brick fragments on the surface. In 2019, excavations at Eridu were resumed by a joint Italian, French, and Iraqi effort which included the University of Rome La Sapienza and the University of Strasbourg. Work has included producing new detail topographic and photogrammetric maps and is mainly focused on

15444-624: The standard Early Dynastic period method of plano-convex bricks laid in a herringbone fashion. With possible breaks in occupation in the Early Dynastic III and Akkadian Empire periods, the city was inhabited until the Neo-Babylonian Empire , though in later times it was primarily a cultic site. During the Ubaid period the site extended out to an area of about 12 hectares (about 30 acres). Twelve neolithic clay tokens,

15576-564: The standard for students studying Sumerian. Another highly influential figure in Sumerology during much of the 20th century was Adam Falkenstein , who produced a grammar of the language of Gudea 's inscriptions. Poebel's grammar was finally superseded in 1984 on the publication of The Sumerian Language: An Introduction to its History and Grammatical Structure , by Marie-Louise Thomsen . While there are various points in Sumerian grammar on which Thomsen's views are not shared by most Sumerologists today, Thomsen's grammar (often with express mention of

15708-431: The stress could be shifted onto the enclitics; however, the fact that many of these same enclitics have allomorphs with apocopated final vowels (e.g. / ‑ še/ ~ /-š/) suggests that they were, on the contrary, unstressed when these allomorphs arose. It has also been conjectured that the frequent assimilation of the vowels of non-final syllables to the vowel of the final syllable of the word may be due to stress on it. However,

15840-531: The stress to their first syllable. Jagersma has objected that many of Falkenstein's examples of elision are medial and so, while the stress was obviously not on the medial syllable in question, the examples do not show where it was . Joachim Krecher attempted to find more clues in texts written phonetically by assuming that geminations, plene spellings and unexpected "stronger" consonant qualities were clues to stress placement. Using this method, he confirmed Falkenstein's views that reduplicated forms were stressed on

15972-410: The training of scribes. The next period, Archaic Sumerian (3000 BC – 2500 BC), is the first stage of inscriptions that indicate grammatical elements, so the identification of the language is certain. It includes some administrative texts and sign lists from Ur (c. 2800 BC). Texts from Shuruppak and Abu Salabikh from 2600 to 2500 BC (the so-called Fara period or Early Dynastic Period IIIa) are

16104-503: The undoubtedly Semitic-speaking successor states of Ur III during the so-called Isin-Larsa period (c. 2000 BC – c. 1750 BC). The Old Babylonian Empire , however, mostly used Akkadian in inscriptions, sometimes adding Sumerian versions. The Old Babylonian period, especially its early part, has produced extremely numerous and varied Sumerian literary texts: myths, epics, hymns, prayers, wisdom literature and letters. In fact, nearly all preserved Sumerian religious and wisdom literature and

16236-869: The various cities of Subartu to dwell under his authority in friendship" In an inscription of Kurigalzu I ( c.  1375 BC ), a ruler of the Kassite dynasty one of his epitaphs is "[he one who ke]eps the sanctuary in Eridu in order". An inscription of the Second Sealand Dynastic ruler Simbar-shipak (c. 1021–1004 BCE) mentions a priest of Eridu. The Neo-Assyrian emperor Sargon II (722–705 BCE) awarded andurāru -status (described as "a periodic reinstatement of goods and persons, alienated because of want, to their original status") to Eridu. The Neo-Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar II (605–562 BC) built at Eridu as evidenced by inscribed bricks found there. In some, but not all, versions of

16368-597: The velar nasal), and assumes a phonemic difference between consonants that are dropped word-finally (such as the g in 𒍠 zag > za 3 ) and consonants that remain (such as the g in 𒆷𒀝 lag ). Other "hidden" consonant phonemes that have been suggested include semivowels such as /j/ and /w/ , and a glottal fricative /h/ or a glottal stop that could explain the absence of vowel contraction in some words —though objections have been raised against that as well. A recent descriptive grammar by Bram Jagersma includes /j/ , /h/ , and /ʔ/ as unwritten consonants, with

16500-591: Was able to decipher the Old Persian section of the Behistun inscriptions, using his knowledge of modern Persian. When he recovered the rest of the text in 1843, he and others were gradually able to translate the Elamite and Akkadian sections of it, starting with the 37 signs he had deciphered for the Old Persian. Meanwhile, many more cuneiform texts were coming to light from archaeological excavations, mostly in

16632-408: Was active during the Third Dynasty of Ur (22nd to 21st century BC) and royal building activity is known from inscribed bricks notably those of Ur-Nammu from his ziggurat marked "Ur-Nammu, king of Ur, the one who built the temple of the god Enki in Eridu." Three Third Dynasty rulers designated Year Names based on the appointment of an en(tu) -priestess (high priestess) of the temple of Enki in Eridu,

16764-590: Was called House of the Waters ( Cuneiform : 𒂍𒇉 , E₂.LAGAB×HAL ; Sumerian : e₂ -engur; Akkadian : bītu engurru ). The name refers to Enki's realm. His consort Ninhursag had a nearby temple at Ubaid . During the Ur III period Ur-Nammu had a ziggurat built over the remains of previous temples. Aside from Enmerkar of Uruk (as mentioned in the Aratta epics), several later historical Sumerian kings are said in inscriptions found here to have worked on or renewed

16896-400: Was giving ... to him 17 ... 18 ... Adapa , a man of Eridu, is depicted as an early culture hero. Although earlier tradition, Me-Turan/Tell-Haddad tablet, describes Adapa as postdiluvian ruler of Eridu, in late tradition, Adapa came to be viewed as Alulim’s vizier, and he was considered to have brought civilization to the city as the sage of King Alulim . In Sumerian mythology, Eridu

17028-431: Was sent to the site by Iraq's State Board of Antiquities and Heritage which found no tablets, only stamped bricks from Eridu and surrounding sites such as Ur. Nor was there a permit to excavate at the site issued to anyone. At this point Pettinato stated that they had actually found 70 inscribed bricks. This turned out to be stamped bricks used to build the modern Eridu dig-house. The dig-house had been built using bricks from

17160-405: Was still so rudimentary that there remains some scholarly disagreement about whether the language written with it is Sumerian at all, although it has been argued that there are some, albeit still very rare, cases of phonetic indicators and spelling that show this to be the case. The texts from this period are mostly administrative; there are also a number of sign lists, which were apparently used for

17292-557: Was the home of the Abzu temple of the god Enki , the Sumerian counterpart of the Akkadian god Ea, god of deep waters, wisdom and magic. Like all the Sumerian and Babylonian gods, Enki/Ea began as a local god who, according to the later cosmology, came to share the rule of the cosmos with Anu and Enlil . His kingdom was the sweet waters that lay below earth (Sumerian ab =water; zu =far). The stories of Inanna , goddess of Uruk , describe how she had to go to Eridu in order to receive

17424-455: Was thought to stem. According to Sumerian temple hymns, another name for the temple of Ea/Enki was called Esira (Esirra). "... The temple is constructed with gold and lapis lazuli , Its foundation on the nether-sea (apsu) is filled in. By the river of Sippar (Euphrates) it stands. O Apsu pure place of propriety, Esira, may thy king stand within thee. ..." At nearby Ur there was a temple of Ishtar of Eridu (built by Lagash 's ruler Ur-Baba ) and

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