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136-515: Fragments of the text were discovered in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology catalogue of the Babylonian section (CBS) from their excavations at the temple library at Nippur in modern-day Iraq. One fragment of the text found on CBS tablet number 11876 was first published by Hugo Radau in "Miscellaneous Sumerian Texts," number 8 in 1909. Radau's fragment

272-457: A mountain , at its lower end a spring ! House, at its upper end threefold indeed ... Whose well-founded storehouse is established as a household ... whose terrace is supported by lahama deities; whose princely great wall ... the shrine of Urim! Barton translated the actions of the Annanuki in and around the temple: In it their heroes were collected; they were noble. In decisions rendered,

408-401: A bull's horn sounding at temple ceremonies: "the wild bull's horn was made to growl, the algarsura instrument was made to thud." Samuel Noah Kramer suggested that the musical instruments mentioned in the hymn were played in accompaniment. He proposed that the tigi was probably a hymn accompanied by lyre , that irshemma was perhaps one accompanied by a type of drum and that adab possibly

544-439: A clue that would reveal who the original thieves were or how they committed the crime. The museum's collection of Egyptian artifacts is considered one of the finest in the world. The museum's Egyptian galleries house an extensive collection of statuary, mummies, and reliefs. Most notably, the museum houses a set of architectural elements, including large columns and a 13-ton granite Sphinx of Ramesses II , circa 1200 B.C., from

680-459: A collecting expedition across Mongolia and northern China in 1930-1931. The Mayer Collection consists of 464 small bronze daggers, harnesses, plaques, and a variety of ornaments that represent the "Ordos" style made by the Scythians and related nomadic peoples between the 12th century BCE and 3rd century CE, as well as some metalworks of more recent origin. Maxwell Sommerville (1829-1904), one of

816-544: A collection of almost 30,000 clay tablets inscribed in Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform , making it one of the ten largest collections in the world. The collection contains the largest number of Sumerian school tablets and literary compositions of any of the world's museums, as well as important administrative archives ranging from 2900 to 500 BCE. The Penn Museum holds approximately 1,300 skulls collected by 19th century physician Samuel George Morton . The museum acquired

952-401: A completely unknown writing system in 19th-century Assyriology . It was successfully deciphered by 1857. The cuneiform script changed considerably over more than 2,000 years. The image below shows the development of the sign SAĜ "head" (Borger nr. 184, U+12295 𒊕 ). Stages: The cuneiform script was developed from pictographic proto-writing in the late 4th millennium BC, stemming from

1088-574: A concentration from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Angola, Morocco, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Madagascar. The Penn Museum has one of the most extensive Sherbro Island collections in the world. During a museum sponsored expedition in 1936–1937, Curator of General Ethnology, Henry Usher Hall spent seven months conducting ethnographic research among

1224-530: A dozen crania, along with mid-19th century measuring devices, were on public display at the museum from 2012 to 2013 in an exhibit named "Year of Proof: Making and Unmaking Race". In 2018, students in the Penn and Slavery project discovered the collection includes 55 crania of enslaved people, with 53 of these crania from Havana and two from the United States. In July 2020 the museum announced it would move

1360-559: A given sign could have various meanings depending on context. The sign inventory was reduced from some 1,500 signs to some 600 signs, and writing became increasingly phonological . Determinative signs were re-introduced to avoid ambiguity. Cuneiform writing proper thus arises from the more primitive system of pictographs at about that time, labeled the Early Bronze Age II epoch by historians. The earliest known Sumerian king, whose name appears on contemporary cuneiform tablets,

1496-411: A hymn accompanied by another form of string instrument. The hymn finishes with an admonition repeated four times suggested to be both a warning and invocation of the divine presence in the temple. Such ambivalence about approaching temples has crucially influenced the development of Jewish and Christian mysticism . Draw near, man, to the city, to the city -- but do not draw near! Draw near, man, to

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1632-582: A language structure typical of the non-Indo-European agglutinative Sumerian language . The first tablets using syllabic elements date to the Early Dynastic I–II periods c.  2800 BC , and they are agreed to be clearly in Sumerian. This is the time when some pictographic element started to be used for their phonetic value, permitting the recording of abstract ideas or personal names. Many pictographs began to lose their original function, and

1768-758: A new direction in Chinese art. Four of the panels are at the Beilin Museum in Xi'an, while the only two to have left China were donated to the Penn Museum by Eldridge R. Johnson , the founder of the Victor Talking Machine Company . Johnson also donated the perfectly spherical crystal ball that sits in the center of the gallery, which is supposed to have belonged to Empress Cixi (1835–1908). Along with an Egyptian statue of Osiris ,

1904-439: A new dress for the gallery. Moore enlisted the help of her friend and Philadelphia artist, Emerson Ruffin, to create the dress titled “Wearable Literature”, now a popular item in the Penn Museum's African galleries. The North American archaeological collections contain heritage items from twenty thousand years old to a few hundred years old. In the 1960s, these were arranged chronologically. Some of these items were excavated in

2040-659: A phonetic complement. Yet even in those days, the Babylonian syllabary remained a mixture of logographic and phonemic writing. Elamite cuneiform was a simplified form of the Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform, used to write the Elamite language in the area that corresponds to modern Iran from the 3rd millennium BC to the 4th century BC. Elamite cuneiform at times competed with other local scripts, Proto-Elamite and Linear Elamite . The earliest known Elamite cuneiform text

2176-432: A pointed stylus, sometimes called "linear cuneiform". Many of the early dynastic inscriptions, particularly those made on stone, continued to use the linear style as late as circa 2000 BC. In the mid-3rd millennium BC, a new wedge-tipped stylus was introduced which was pushed into the clay, producing wedge-shaped cuneiform. This development made writing quicker and easier, especially when writing on soft clay. By adjusting

2312-494: A professor at Penn, and Janet Monge , Mann's graduate student and later curator of physical anthropology at the Penn Museum. Without the family's permission, in 2019 the bones were used as a case study in an online forensic course by Janet Monge. They were also used as the subject of a Penn senior thesis in anthropology which Monge supervised. Although the bones used by Monge in the online case study were given to MOVE members in 2021, accounts differ regarding how many remains were at

2448-425: A resemblance to Old Japanese , written in a Chinese-derived script, where some of these Sinograms were used as logograms and others as phonetic characters. This "mixed" method of writing continued through the end of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, although there were periods when "purism" was in fashion and there was a more marked tendency to spell out the words laboriously, in preference to using signs with

2584-548: A sharpened reed stylus or incised in stone. This early style lacked the characteristic wedge shape of the strokes. Most Proto-Cuneiform records from this period were of an accounting nature. The proto-cuneiform sign list has grown, as new texts are discovered, and shrunk, as variant signs are combined. The current sign list is 705 elements long with 42 being numeric and four considered pre-proto-Elamite. Certain signs to indicate names of gods, countries, cities, vessels, birds, trees, etc., are known as determinatives and were

2720-576: A slightly different way. From the 6th century, the Akkadian language was marginalized by Aramaic , written in the Aramaic alphabet , but Akkadian cuneiform remained in use in the literary tradition well into the times of the Parthian Empire (250 BC–226 AD). The last known cuneiform inscription, an astronomical text, was written in 75 AD. The ability to read cuneiform may have persisted until

2856-424: A staff comprising a single part-time librarian until 1942 when Cynthia Griffin became the first full-time librarian. It was under Griffin that the collection and library witnessed many developments. Prior to her arrival use of the library had been limited to employees of the museum and university professor; however, Griffin extended the accessibility to include students. She also augmented communication networks between

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2992-620: A stylus. Writing is first recorded in Uruk , at the end of the 4th millennium BC, and soon after in various parts of the Near-East . An ancient Mesopotamian poem gives the first known story of the invention of writing : Because the messenger's mouth was heavy and he couldn't repeat [the message], the Lord of Kulaba patted some clay and put words on it, like a tablet. Until then, there had been no putting words on clay. The cuneiform writing system

3128-517: A well-known Hymn to Enlil and the hymn to temples in Ur that introduces a Shulgi hymn ." The Enheduanna hymn/poem version is: "Towering Kesh. You are the image of heaven and earth. Like the mighty viper of the desert, you spread fear. House of Ninhursanga, you stand on a land of wrath. Glorious Kesh: your heart is deep, your form is huge. Great lion . . . the upland, roaming through the wild. Great mountain, brought here by holy incantations. Your heart

3264-451: A wild bull" ( Genesis 49:22 ) and " seed of a (the) steer, engendered by a wild ox ( Genesis 49:22 ). Jeremy Black noted that Kesh was no longer a major settlement by the time of the later Babylonian versions but presumed that the temple of Nintud still functioned. Wilfred G. Lambert noted that many kings had built temples and chapels to Ninhursag, but that the Kesh sanctuary "was the centre of

3400-428: Is Enmebaragesi of Kish (fl. c.  2600 BC ). Surviving records became less fragmentary for following reigns and by the arrival of Sargon, it had become standard practice for each major city-state to date documents by year-names, commemorating the exploits of its king. Geoffrey Sampson stated that Egyptian hieroglyphs "came into existence a little after Sumerian script , and, probably, [were] invented under

3536-528: Is a logo - syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East . The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era . Cuneiform scripts are marked by and named for the characteristic wedge-shaped impressions ( Latin : cuneus ) which form their signs . Cuneiform is the earliest known writing system and

3672-636: Is a ceramic statue of a Luohan , reputed to be one of a group of eight or ten statues from a cave in Yizhou that date between 947 and 1234 CE. Other rare Chinese works of art on display are two of the six horse panels from Emperor Taizong 's Mausoleum in Shaanxi Province. Each of these horses had names and poems commemorating their service in the fight to unify China during the Tang dynasty . The secular focus and historic realism of these reliefs marked

3808-418: Is a special emphasis on works published within the field of Mesoamerican archaeology as well as works which relate to the current research of the university's professors. As of 2008 there are approximately 115,000 volumes in the library's collection, 14,000 of these volumes have been circulated on an annual basis. The library also has subscriptions to an estimated 549 scholarly journals. Computing services within

3944-561: Is a treaty between Akkadians and the Elamites that dates back to 2200 BC. Some believe it might have been in use since 2500 BC. The tablets are poorly preserved, so only limited parts can be read, but it is understood that the text is a treaty between the Akkad king Nāramsîn and Elamite ruler Hita , as indicated by frequent references like "Nāramsîn's friend is my friend, Nāramsîn's enemy is my enemy". The most famous Elamite scriptures and

4080-597: Is an adaptation of the Old Assyrian cuneiform of c. 1800 BC to the Hittite language and was used from the 17th until approximately the 13th century BC. More or less the same system was used by the scribes of the Hittite Empire for two other Anatolian languages , namely Luwian (alongside the native Anatolian hieroglyphics ) and Palaic , as well as for the isolate Hattic language . When the cuneiform script

4216-429: Is called gunû or "gunification"; if signs are cross-hatched with additional Winkelhaken , they are called šešig ; if signs are modified by the removal of a wedge or wedges, they are called nutillu . "Typical" signs have about five to ten wedges, while complex ligatures can consist of twenty or more (although it is not always clear if a ligature should be considered a single sign or two collated, but distinct signs);

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4352-479: Is composed of close to 3,000 objects of art and artifacts from China, Tibet, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, India and other Asian countries. Through the concerted efforts of Dr. George Byron Gordon , the majority of this collection focuses on China. From 1914-1918 and again in 1923-1924, Penn Museum archaeologists attempted archaeological expeditions in China that ended in failure. Consequently,

4488-537: Is dusk, moon light cannot enter you. The Lady of Birth has given you beauty. House of Kesh: your brickwork is your birthing. Your terrace is a crown of lapis lazuli: your frame is your creation. Your lady is the lady who imposes silence. The great good queen of heaven.When she speaks, heaven shakes. When she opens her mouth, storms roar. Ninhursanga, Enlil’s sister, has built a home in your holy court, House of Kesh, and has taken her seat upon your throne. Thirteen lines. House of Ninhursanga in Kesh." Stephen Langdon suggested

4624-604: Is on display is Stela 14, a limestone rock with intricate carvings that stands at ten feet tall. Tatiana Proskouriakoff excavated this object in Piedras Negras, and at the time of its discovery, archaeologists could not decipher the Mayan hieroglyphics engraved in it. Proskouriakoff cross-referenced the glyphs on the Stela to historical events, eventually decoding the hieroglyphic language. Proskouriakoff's discovery transformed

4760-545: Is one of the landmarks of the University of Pennsylvania campus. The existing original building (onto which have been grafted several later additions) is actually only approximately one-third of an ambitious design that would have created one of the largest museum buildings in the United States. Features of the extant building include a dramatic rotunda , multiple courtyards and gardens, a fountain, reflecting pool, glass mosaics, iron gates, and stone statuary. The Penn Museum

4896-475: Is preserved for so long in later Nippur texts, saying "Although the Abu Saläbikh copies are approximately eight centuries earlier than copies known before, there is a surprisingly small amount of deviation (except in orthography ) between them. The Old Babylonian version is thus not a creation of Old Babylonian scribes using older material, but is a faithful reflection of a text that had already been fixed in

5032-471: The Alta Verapaz the early twentieth century. The museum houses the outstanding Lilly de Jongh Osborne collection of 19th and early 20th century Guatemalan textiles, exceptional because of its complete outfits for men, women and children acquired systematically across different Guatemalan villages. This collection includes raw material and other objects and tools related to weaving. Ruben Reina studied

5168-533: The British Museum in Iraq . Ur was an important and wealthy city-state in ancient Sumer , and the artifacts from its royal tombs showcase the city's wealth. The collections consists of a variety of crowns, figures, and musical instruments, many of which have been inlaid with gold and precious stones. The often traveling collection includes a well known Bull-headed lyre . The museum's Babylonian section houses

5304-710: The Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly the Belgian Congo). The majority of these artifacts were collected by the German ethnographer Leo Viktor Frobenius on his expedition to the Kasai district of the Congo in 1906. His collection illustrates the diverse sculptural forms found among the different cultural groups in the Central African region. Some of the cultures represented in the collection are

5440-452: The Ekur by Enlil. He also discusses the writing of the hymn by another god called Nisaba . Sabrina P. Ramet commented on the presence and role of Nisaba (or Nidaba) in the establishment of the temple. She refers to her as the "goddess of vegetation, writing and literature including astronomical texts, the deity of the "house of understanding" (most likely intelligence), and as she who 'knows

5576-458: The Iron Age (c. 10th to 6th centuries BC), Assyrian cuneiform was further simplified. The characters remained the same as those of Sumero-Akkadian cuneiforms, but the graphic design of each character relied more heavily on wedges and square angles, making them significantly more abstract: Babylonian cuneiform was simplified along similar lines during that period, albeit to a lesser extent and in

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5712-706: The Louvre in Paris, number AO 6717. Others are held in the Ashmolean number 1929-478, British Museum number 115798 and the Walters Art Museum number 48.1802, formerly called the "David prism". Further tablets containing the text were excavated at Isin , modern Ishan al-Bahriyat. More were found at Henri de Genouillac 's excavations at Kish (B 150) and Jean Perrot 's excavations at Susa . Sir Charles Leonard Woolley unearthed more tablets at Ur contained in

5848-579: The Ottoman Empire ). Provost William Pepper persuaded the trustees of the University of Pennsylvania to erect a fireproof building to house artifacts from the excavation. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, North American and European museums regularly sponsored such excavations throughout the Mediterranean and Near East, sharing the ownership of their discoveries with the host country. Penn Museum followed this practice in acquiring

5984-668: The Sherbro people of Sierra Leone . The collection consists of textiles, sculpture, artifacts related to subsistence and household items, secret society and examples of medicine bundles. Hall's papers include field notes, bibliographies, and textual commentaries that provide ethnographic information about the way of life of the Sherbro people and others—including the Mende , Krim , and Temne peoples —who lived among them. The Central African collection includes approximately 3000 artifacts from

6120-512: The University City neighborhood of Philadelphia, at the intersection of 33rd and South Streets. Housing over 1.3 million artifacts, the museum features one of the most comprehensive collections of Middle and Near-Eastern art in the world. The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology was founded in 1887 following a successful archaeological expedition to the ancient site of Nippur in modern-day Iraq (then part of

6256-724: The Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin , the Louvre , the Istanbul Archaeology Museums , the National Museum of Iraq , the Yale Babylonian Collection (approx. 40,000), and Penn Museum . Most of these have "lain in these collections for a century without being translated, studied or published", as there are only a few hundred qualified cuneiformists in the world. The decipherment of cuneiform began with

6392-531: The Winkelhaken impressed vertically by the tip of the stylus. The signs exemplary of these basic wedges are: Except for the Winkelhaken , which has no tail, the length of the wedges' tails could vary as required for sign composition. Signs tilted by about 45 degrees are called tenû in Akkadian, thus DIŠ is a vertical wedge and DIŠ tenû a diagonal one. If a sign is modified with additional wedges, this

6528-415: The garden of the god were green. Jeremy Black suggests the hymn describes the statues of bulls or lions that were placed at the entrances to temples "Kesh temple, <before which> (something) in the shape of winged lions stands, (something) in the shape of 'white' wild bulls stands facing the desert." The hymn discusses music being played at the temple towards the end with drums and the coarse sound of

6664-501: The "Ur excavations texts" from 1928. Other tablets and versions were used to bring the myth to its present form with the latest composite text by Miguel Civil produced in 1992 with latest translation by Gene Gragg in 1969 and Joachim Krecher in 1966. Gragg described the text as "one of the best preserved literary texts that we possess from the Old Babylonian period". Robert D. Biggs translated an exceptionally archaic version of

6800-411: The (inmost) secrets of numbers'." Nisaba records the events and provides a "standard version" of the events as they really happened. Charpin and Todd noted in the relationship between Enlil and Nisuba (similar to Yahweh and Moses ) how the text is the work of gods, who created and transmitted it to humans, giving the literature a reason for legitimacy. The princely one, the princely one came forth from

6936-522: The 1920s and 1930s respectfully. Twelve different indigenous groups are represented in the collections acquired in Guyana by Farabee in the 1920s. More than twenty-five native groups from Peru are represented as well. Smaller collections represent some of the indigenous peoples of Argentina ( Yahgan ), Chile ( Alacaluf , Mapuche ), Colombia ( Arhuaco , Chocó , Goajira , and Kogi ), and Ecuador ( Jívaro , Tumaco , Saparo). The Penn Museum's Asian collection

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7072-401: The 23rd century BC ( short chronology ). The Akkadian language being East Semitic , its structure was completely different from Sumerian. The Akkadians found a practical solution in writing their language phonetically, using the corresponding Sumerian phonetic signs. Still, many of the Sumerian characters were retained for their logographic value as well: for example the character for "sheep"

7208-509: The 3rd millennium Sumerian script. Ugaritic was written using the Ugaritic alphabet , a standard Semitic style alphabet (an abjad ) written using the cuneiform method. Between half a million and two million cuneiform tablets are estimated to have been excavated in modern times, of which only approximately 30,000 –100,000 have been read or published. The British Museum holds the largest collection (approx. 130,000 tablets), followed by

7344-808: The African-American community in Philadelphia, who said that they had not been consulted on the matter. In April 2021, following critical news coverage, the Penn Museum and the University of Pennsylvania apologized to the Africa "family" and the community in general for allowing human remains from the 1985 MOVE bombing to be used in research and training. In 1986, an official from the Philadelphia City Medical Examiner's Office gave burned human remains found at

7480-480: The Akkadian period, at the time of the Uruk ruler Lugalzagesi (r. c. 2294–2270 BC). The vertical style remained for monumental purposes on stone stelas until the middle of the 2nd millennium. Written Sumerian was used as a scribal language until the first century AD. The spoken language died out between about 2100 and 1700 BC. The archaic cuneiform script was adopted by the Akkadian Empire from

7616-557: The American Board of Forensic Anthropology disagreed with the claims published by Penn's legal team and agreed with those of the City of Philadelphia. The City of Philadelphia also questioned whether all the remains of Katricia Dotson which were at the Penn Museum were given to MOVE in 2021. 39°56′56″N 75°11′28″W  /  39.9490°N 75.1911°W  / 39.9490; -75.1911 Cuneiform Cuneiform

7752-527: The Chinese crystal ball was stolen in 1988. Shortly afterwards, a student found its elegant silver stand, a stylized ocean wave, in a culvert not far from the museum. The items were recovered in 1991 after a museum volunteer saw the statue in an antique shop across the Schuylkill River in New Jersey. The FBI then traced the crystal ball to a home in New Jersey and returned it to the museum without

7888-575: The Coxe Memorial Wing, which opened in 1926 to house the museum's Egyptian collection. The Sharpe Wing was completed in 1929. The Coxe Memorial Egyptian Wing was added to the museum in 1924 through a bequest by former museum board president Eckley Coxe. The administrative wing was added in 1929. The Academic Wing, which provided laboratories for the Anthropology department and classrooms was opened in 1971. The most recent major addition

8024-468: The Elkins Library up until 1971 upon when they were moved to their final home in the university extension of the museum. Prior to its move in 1971 the collection was built upon the support of museum curators contributing their personal monographs, negotiations with affiliate institutions here and abroad as well as endowments by philanthropic individuals. The library collection was maintained by

8160-698: The Kuba, Kongo, Luba, Suku, Yaka, Pende, Teke, Chokwe, and Luluwa. One of the lesser known collection within the African Section is the Moroccan collection. Dr. and Mrs. Talcott Williams travelled to Morocco in 1898 and returned with approximately 600 objects to document the cultures in Morocco. The collection consists of clothing, shoes, rugs, blankets, weapons, jewelry, pottery, baskets, cooking pots. This thorough collection of objects representing daily life

8296-509: The MOVE house to the museum for verification that the bones were those of 14 year old Katricia Dotson (a.k.a. Katricia or Tree Africa) and 12 year old Delisha Orr (a.k.a. Delisha Africa), although after the death certificates for both of those children were written, and after Dotson's family believed they were given Dotson's remains for burial in 1985. These remains were kept in a cardboard box in storage for decades and used for teaching by Alan Mann,

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8432-620: The Mediterranean World . On November 19, 2008, the Penn Museum's administration terminated eighteen Research Specialist positions in archaeological and anthropological research in the Mediterranean world, the Middle East, and Americas sections, effective May 31, 2009. The scientific research center MASCA (Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology) was also closed, although the MASCA scientists moved to other Sections within

8568-687: The Nippur collection of the Museum of the Ancient Orient in Istanbul (Ni). Chiera translated number Ni 2402 in "Sumerian Religious Texts" in 1924. Hermann Volrath Hilprecht and Samuel Noah Kramer amongst others worked to translate several others from the Istanbul collection including Ni 4371, 4465, 4555 & 9773, 4597, 9649, 9810, 9861 & 9903. A further tablet source of the myth is held by

8704-522: The Northwest Coast, Southwest, Southeast, and Sub-arctic regions. Many of the Northwest Coast materials were collected in the early 20th century by Louis Shotridge , the son of an influential Tlingit chiefly family. Penn Museum director George Byron Gordon hired Shotridge as a curator. He worked for the museum in various capacities between 1912 and 1932, including multiple field expeditions sponsored by John Wanamaker . Prominent ethnographers of

8840-488: The Old Persian text. Because Elamite is unlike its neighboring Semitic languages , the script's decipherment was delayed until the 1840s. Elamite cuneiform appears to have used far fewer signs than its Akkadian prototype and initially relied primarily on syllabograms, but logograms became more common in later texts. Many signs soon acquired highly distinctive local shape variants that are often difficult to recognise as related to their Akkadian prototypes. Hittite cuneiform

8976-422: The Penn Museum and whether all bones which were given to Mann and Monge in 1986 were returned in 2021. A legal team hired by the University of Pennsylvania stated that the bones of Delisha Orr were never at the Penn Museum. However, an investigation by the City of Philadelphia disagreed, and stated that there was evidence that remains of Delisha Orr were at the Penn Museum. Nine forensic anthropologists certified by

9112-407: The Sumerian literary tradition for centuries." Biggs suggested "that other traditional works of literature may also go back in essentially their present form to the last third of the third millennium BCE at least." Victor Hurowitz referred to it as the "Kesh Temple building hymn" and suggests the hymn begins with a description and Enlil praising the city Kesh and its selection and establishment of

9248-471: The Sumerian signs of the terms in question, added as a guide for the reader. Proper names continued to be usually written in purely "logographic" fashion. The first inscribed tablets were purely pictographic, which makes it technically difficult to know in which language they were written. Different languages have been proposed, though usually Sumerian is assumed. Later tablets dating after c.  2900 BC start to use syllabic elements, which clearly show

9384-399: The Sumerians was not intuitive to Semitic speakers. From the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age (20th century BC), the script evolved to accommodate the various dialects of Akkadian: Old Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian. At this stage, the former pictograms were reduced to a high level of abstraction, and were composed of only five basic wedge shapes: horizontal, vertical, two diagonals and

9520-509: The allusion to the goddess he called Nintu as "the mother of mankind." He suggested, "Apparently the text celebrated the primitive (or very early) conditions of some town; possibly the founding and growth of the town, but beyond this we can confidently affirm nothing." CBS tablet 6520 was published in 1929 by Edward Chiera in "Sumerian Lexical Texts". Chiera also published three more tablets—CBS 7802, CBS 13625 and CBS 14153—in "Sumerian Epics and Myths". Other translations were made from tablets in

9656-425: The ancient Mediterranean World, Egypt, the Near East, Mesopotamia, East Asia, and Mesoamerica, as well as artifacts from the indigenous peoples of Africa and Native America. Since 1958, the Penn Museum has published Expedition magazine. ( ISSN   0014-4738 ) The excavations and collections of the museum provide resources for student research and the museum hosts the Graduate Group in the Art and Archaeology of

9792-399: The archaic cuneiform and that "the literary texts of this period were unrecognized for so long is due to the fact that they present formidable obstacles to comprehension". He suggests that Abu Salabikh could have been the location of Kesh, however points out that it is not near Adab as described and that Kesh could have just been a variation in the spelling of Kish. He discusses how the hymn

9928-835: The artifacts recovered from the past by excavation, ethnology , the objects and ideas collected from living peoples, and physical anthropology , the physical remains of humans and nonhuman primates. For curation and display, the items in the archaeology and ethnology collections are organized by geographic regions. As of 2023, there are eleven permanent galleries: Africa, Asia, Egypt, Sphinx, Middle East, Eastern Mediterranean, Etruscan, Greece, Rome, Native American Voices and Mexico and Central America. The collections are organized along similar lines, but with larger geographic groupings for some regions. Collection areas include Africa, America (North, Central and South), Asia, Egypt, Europe (Etruscan, Greece and Rome), Mediterranean, Near East and Oceania. Many items within these collections are not on display in

10064-414: The beginning, similar-sounding words such as "life" [til] and "arrow" [ti] were written with the same symbol (𒋾). As a result, many signs gradually changed from being logograms to also functioning as syllabograms , so that for example, the sign for the word "arrow" would become the sign for the sound "ti". Syllabograms were used in Sumerian writing especially to express grammatical elements, and their use

10200-529: The collection from a private classroom into storage after criticism from students and the local community. The museum is also planning to repatriate or rebury skulls of enslaved individuals. In 2024, the museum buried the remains of 19 African-American residents of Philadelphia that it held in its collection in Eden Cemetery , that has been used by the African-American community. The interment sparked criticism from prominent members and groups representing

10336-499: The collection from the Academy of Natural Sciences in 1966. Morton has long been criticized for promoting white supremacist views, leveraging science to uphold racism, poor research quality, and unethically collecting human remains without consent. Despite this, the museum claims the collection is an important historic and research resource. The museum has actively conducted research using the collection in recent years. More than

10472-518: The collections in many areas. Penn Museum's Mesoamerican collections include objects from Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Costa Rica. The American Section's ethnographic collections from Mesoamerica include strong collections of masks, ceramics, and textiles from Guatemala , and very small collections from Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. In Guatemala, Robert Burkitt acquired ethnographic ceramics, textiles, tools, hammocks, fans and gourds from

10608-431: The compound IGI.A (𒅆𒀀) – "eye" + "water" – has the reading imhur , meaning "foam"). Several symbols had too many meanings to permit clarity. Therefore, symbols were put together to indicate both the sound and the meaning of a symbol. For instance, the word 'raven' (UGA) had the same logogram (𒉀) as the word 'soap' (NAGA), the name of a city (EREŠ), and the patron goddess of Eresh (NISABA). To disambiguate and identify

10744-422: The contemporary cities of Caracol and Piedras Negras . The gallery also displays many Aztecan, Oaxacan, and Teotihuacano artifacts. On November 16, 2019, the Penn Museum launched a new exhibit entitled "The Mexico and Central America Gallery." This gallery features art and artifacts from eight Central American countries, including Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Specifically, one object of importance that

10880-447: The cuneiform logo-syllabary proper. The latest known cuneiform tablet dates to 75 AD. Cuneiform was rediscovered in modern times in the early 17th century with the publication of the trilingual Achaemenid royal inscriptions at Persepolis ; these were first deciphered in the early 19th century. The modern study of cuneiform belongs to the ambiguously named field of Assyriology , as the earliest excavations of cuneiform libraries – in

11016-514: The decipherment of Old Persian cuneiform in 1836. The first cuneiform inscriptions published in modern times were copied from the Achaemenid royal inscriptions in the ruins of Persepolis , with the first complete and accurate copy being published in 1778 by Carsten Niebuhr . Niebuhr's publication was used by Grotefend in 1802 to make the first breakthrough – the realization that Niebuhr had published three different languages side by side and

11152-549: The development of Egyptian hieroglyphs, with the suggestion the former influenced the latter. But given the lack of direct evidence for the transfer of writing, "no definitive determination has been made as to the origin of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt". Others have held that "the evidence for such direct influence remains flimsy" and that "a very credible argument can also be made for the independent development of writing in Egypt..." Early cuneiform inscriptions were made by using

11288-506: The early Achaemenid rulers from the 6th century BC down to the 4th century BC. Because of its simplicity and logical structure, the Old Persian cuneiform script was the first to be deciphered by modern scholars, starting with the accomplishments of Georg Friedrich Grotefend in 1802. Various ancient bilingual or trilingual inscriptions then permitted to decipher the other, much more complicated and more ancient scripts, as far back as to

11424-478: The eighteen individuals affected. The museum affirmed its commitment to research, citing more than fifty active research projects spanning five continents that were engaging nearly 200 Museum-affiliated scholars—more than at any other archaeological and anthropological institute or museum in North America could claim at the time. The museum is housed in an Arts and Crafts and Eclectic style building that

11560-414: The election and praise of Kesh as recorded by Nisaba, twenty two to forty four liken the temple to the moon against the sky containing the life sources of Sumer and its cosmic dimensions filling the world. Lines forty five to fifty seven give a metaphorical description of the temple reaching both for the heaven and descending into the underworld. Lines fifty eight to seventy three discuss the complexities of

11696-907: The field of Maya Studies. The museum's South American collections are as varied as the regions from which they come – the arid coast of Peru, the Andean Highlands, and the tropical lowlands of the Amazon Basin. The collections include anthropological materials from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela. The American Section's ethnographic holdings from South America are strongest in materials from Bolivia, Brazil, Guyana, and Peru. The Aymara , Quechua , and Yuracaré of Bolivia are represented in early collections acquired by Max Uhle and William Curtis Farabee . More than thirty indigenous tribes from Brazil are represented in ethnographic collections acquired by Farabee and Vincenzo M. Petrullo in

11832-479: The first curators at the Penn Museum, contributed many items from Japan and India including a set of Kalighat paintings from India that represent almost the entire Hindu pantheon. The Asian Gallery is mounted in Harrison Rotunda, which measures ninety feet across and ninety feet from the floor. Since its completion in 1915, this gallery has showcased the Chinese collection. One of the central figures

11968-566: The goddess's cult from the Early Dynastic period into the Old Babylonian Dynasty; after this time it lost its importance". University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology Penn Museum , formally known as The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology , is an archaeology and anthropology museum at the University of Pennsylvania . It is located on Penn's campus in

12104-400: The house Kesh, to the city -- but do not draw near! Draw near, man, to its hero Acgi -- but do not draw near! Draw near, man, to its lady Nintud -- but do not draw near! Praise be to well-built Kesh, O Acgi! Praise be to cherished Kesh and Nintud! A.R. George suggests such hymns "can be incorporated into longer compositions, as with the eulogy to Nippur and Ekur which makes up a large portion of

12240-408: The house. Enlil, the princely one, came forth from the house. The princely one came forth royally from the house. Enlil lifted his glance over all the lands, and the lands raised themselves to Enlil. The four corners of heaven became green for Enlil like a garden. Kesh was positioned there for him with head uplifted, and as Kesh lifted its head among all the lands, Enlil spoke the praises of Kesh. Nisaba

12376-458: The hymn from Tell Abu Salabikh . He dated this version to around 2600 BCE based upon similarities to tablets found in Shuruppak and dated to a similar age by Anton Deimel in the 1920s. Subsequent radiocarbon dating of samples taken from Tell Abu Salabikh date the site to 2550–2520 BCE however, a timeframe slightly more recent than the one Biggs proposed. Biggs recognized various differences in

12512-576: The hymn gave evidence of the Sumerian theological view that Enlil and Ninlil created mankind and living things. He noted that Nintud , the primary goddess of Kesh was "a form of Ninlil in Nippur ;: in other words she is Ninlil of Kesh, where her character as goddess of begetting was emphasized." He noted based on an observation of Theophilus G. Pinches , that Ninlil or Belit Ilani had seven different names (such as Nintud, Ninhursag , Ninmah, etc.) for seven different localities. He also discussed

12648-413: The influence of the latter", and that it is "probable that the general idea of expressing words of a language in writing was brought to Egypt from Sumerian Mesopotamia". There are many instances of Egypt-Mesopotamia relations at the time of the invention of writing, and standard reconstructions of the development of writing generally place the development of the Sumerian proto-cuneiform script before

12784-925: The interwar years, Edgar B. Howard excavated some of the oldest items in the collection from the American Southwest . His excavations in 1932 and 1933 near Clovis, New Mexico , are significant in identifying the Clovis Point , and in proving the co-existence of humans and extinct animals such as the bison and mammoth . The North American ethnographic holdings number approximately 40,000 heritage items attributed to approximately 200 Indigenous nations and organized within eleven geographic regions (Arctic, Sub-Arctic, Northwest Coast, Plateau, California, Great Basin, Southwest, Great Plains, Southeast and Northeast). The strongest collections are those systematically created via ethnographic collecting expeditions in Alaska,

12920-633: The introduction reads: Temple ... Kesh Temple growing up like a mountain embracing the heaven. Growing up like Ekur when it lifted its head in the Land. The hymn is composed of 134 lines, formally divided into eight songs or "houses" or "temples", each of which ends with three rhetorical questions discussing the birth of Nintud's warrior son, Acgi : Will anyone else bring forth something as great as Kesh? Will any other mother ever give birth to someone as great as its hero Acgi? Who has ever seen anyone as great as its lady Nintud?. Lines one to twenty one describe

13056-449: The late 19th century and early 20th century, while others were purchased or donated by reputable collectors. In 1896, Frank Hamilton Cushing excavated wolf, deer and human masquettes that he found in the waters off of Key Marco, Florida. The masquettes were unfortunately distorted upon removal from the water, but they and the numerous tools and practical items had an unusually high level of preservation due to their underwater location. In

13192-447: The library and libraries worldwide. Within twenty years the library's collection more than doubled its capacity from nearly 20,000 volumes in 1945 to over 46,000 volumes in 1965, and by 1971 the breadth of the collection was well over 50,000 volumes increasing by 14,000 volumes annually. The range of disciplines featured in the collection is specific to the museum itself and incorporates all divisions of anthropology and archaeology. There

13328-446: The library include desktop and laptop computers. Other services encompass a range of printing and scanning utilities as well as accommodating seating for 154 individuals. The library supports two quiet rooms for patron study, a space to examine photographs, a room designed specifically for microform research, and a collection of audio and video materials. Penn Museum's extensive collections fall into three main divisions: archaeology ,

13464-407: The ligature KAxGUR 7 consists of 31 strokes. Most later adaptations of Sumerian cuneiform preserved at least some aspects of the Sumerian script. Written Akkadian included phonetic symbols from the Sumerian syllabary , together with logograms that were read as whole words. Many signs in the script were polyvalent, having both a syllabic and logographic meaning. The complexity of the system bears

13600-532: The location of Kesh appearing to be near Kish to the east of Babylon calling the temple of Kesh "Ekisigga". Raymond de Hoop noted similarities between Sumerian temple hymns and chapter forty nine of Genesis in the Bible ( Genesis 49:1–28 ). He suggests remarkably close syntactical and metaphorical parallels in the sayings about Joseph and Judah such as "the highly esteemed prince ( Genesis 49:8 ), "a leopard, who seizes prey" ( Genesis 49:9 ), "a great wild ox /

13736-443: The meaning and the other the pronunciation (e.g. 𒅗 ka 'mouth' was combined with the sign 𒉣 nun 'prince' to express the word 𒅻 nundum , meaning 'lip', formally KA×NUN; cf. Chinese phono-semantic compounds ). Another way of expressing words that had no sign of their own was by so-called 'Diri compounds' – sign sequences that have, in combination, a reading different from the sum of the individual constituent signs (for example,

13872-606: The mention of the Abzu in the myth saying it "occurs as a name for the cosmic waters of the water table beneath the earth's surface in Sumerian literature." Temple, great crown reaching heaven. Temple, rainbow reaching heaven. Temple, whose gleam stretches into 'Heaven's Midst', whose foundation is fastened on the Abzu. The latest translation describes its founders, geography and features: House founded by An , praised by Enlil, given an oracle by mother Nintud! ... house, at its upper end

14008-504: The mid-19th century – were in the area of ancient Assyria . An estimated half a million tablets are held in museums across the world, but comparatively few of these are published . The largest collections belong to the British Museum ( approx. 130,000 tablets), the Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin , the Louvre , the Istanbul Archaeology Museums , the National Museum of Iraq , the Yale Babylonian Collection ( approx. 40,000 tablets), and Penn Museum . Writing began after pottery

14144-489: The museum. The decision elicited local and world-wide criticism among concerned scholars, who felt that it departed from the Penn Museum's historic mission as a research institution. Museum administrators attributed this measure to the 2008 financial crisis and the deep budget cuts that had resulted at the University of Pennsylvania. The museum's director at the time, Dr. Richard Hodges later offered positions as "Associate Curators" or "Research Project Managers" to eleven of

14280-468: The near eastern token system used for accounting. The meaning and usage of these tokens is still a matter of debate. These tokens were in use from the 9th millennium BC and remained in occasional use even late in the 2nd millennium BC. Early tokens with pictographic shapes of animals, associated with numbers, were discovered in Tell Brak , and date to the mid-4th millennium BC. It has been suggested that

14416-477: The ones that ultimately led to its decipherment are the ones found in the trilingual Behistun inscriptions , commissioned by the Achaemenid kings. The inscriptions, similar to that of the Rosetta Stone 's, were written in three different writing systems. The first was Old Persian , which was deciphered in 1802 by Georg Friedrich Grotefend . The second, Babylonian cuneiform, was deciphered shortly after

14552-655: The palace of the Pharaoh Merenptah . These were excavated by a museum expedition to Egypt in 1915. In the late 1970s Karl-Theodor Zauzich (attendant of the Egyptian section) discovered 3 missing fragments of the Insinger Papyrus in the museum's collections. The museum's most important collection is arguably that of the Royal Tombs of Ur , which The University of Pennsylvania co–excavated with

14688-410: The permanent galleries, but may be used for research and temporary exhibits. None of the items in the physical anthropology collections are on display, but they are used for research. The Penn Museum has one of the largest collections of African ethnographic and archaeological objects in the country. Mostly obtained from 1891 to 1937, the collection contains objects from all regions of Africa, but with

14824-474: The primary disciplines. This library also consists of a manuscript collection of nearly two hundred volumes relevant to the study of autochthonous Central American languages; most of which are either severely endangered or have completely disappeared. The original location of the library holdings was the Furness Building until they were transferred to the museum building in 1898. They were relocated to

14960-530: The production of ceramics in Guatemala in the 1960s and 1970s, and collected ceramics and textiles from the region. The Section houses a large collection of Guatemalan masks amassed by James Moore in the 1960s. The Penn Museum conducted an excavation of the Mayan city of Tikal , Guatemala from 1956 to 1970. Many important artifacts from this excavation are on view in the museum, along with several stelae from

15096-449: The relative position of the stylus to the tablet, the writer could use a single tool to make a variety of impressions. For numbers, a round-tipped stylus was initially used, until the wedge-tipped stylus was generalized. The direction of writing was from top-to-bottom and right-to-left. Cuneiform clay tablets could be fired in kilns to bake them hard, and so provide a permanent record, or they could be left moist and recycled if permanence

15232-475: The same refrain, which he interpreted as referring "to the creation of man and woman, the Biblical Adam and Eve ." Langdon translated two further fragments in 1914 and 1917. The myth was developed with the addition of CBS 8384, translated by George Aaron Barton in 1918 and first published as "Sumerian religious texts" in " Miscellaneous Babylonian Inscriptions ," number eleven, entitled "A Fragment of

15368-428: The so-called 'Liturgy to Nintud.'" The tablet is 5.25 by 2.4 by 1.2 inches (13.3 by 6.1 by 3.0 cm) at its thickest point. Barton's tablet contained nine sections from which he was able to translate sections four, five and six. Barton argued for the abandonment of the myth's subtitle, the "creation of man." He claimed, "So far as the writer can see, there is no allusion in the text to the creation of man." He notes only

15504-415: The syllable [ɡu] had fourteen different symbols. The inventory of signs was expanded by the combination of existing signs into compound signs. They could either derive their meaning from a combination of the meanings of both original signs (e.g. 𒅗 ka 'mouth' and 𒀀 a 'water' were combined to form the sign for 𒅘 nag̃ 'drink', formally KA×A; cf. Chinese compound ideographs ), or one sign could suggest

15640-457: The temple with vast quantities of oxen and sheep. The temple is likened to the trees from which wood was used in its construction. The gods and functions of the temple are described and praised during temple dedication with different parts of the temple described: its interior and exterior appearance, its gate, courtyard, door and walls. The hymn ends on the conclusion to approach the temple. Wayne Horowitz working from Gragg's translation, discusses

15776-476: The third century AD. The complexity of cuneiforms prompted the development of a number of simplified versions of the script. Old Persian cuneiform was developed with an independent and unrelated set of simple cuneiform characters, by Darius the Great in the 5th century BC. Most scholars consider this writing system to be an independent invention because it has no obvious connections with other writing systems at

15912-506: The time also contributed to the North American collections. As a professor and chair of the anthropology department at the University of Pennsylvania , Frank Gouldsmith Speck was one of the most prolific donors to the museum's Sub-Arctic ethnology collections. In addition, Speck was an early adopter of audio recording technology with which he gathered examples of Creek and Yuchi songs. Individual donations significantly contribute to

16048-432: The time, such as Elamite , Akkadian, Hurrian , and Hittite cuneiforms. It formed a semi-alphabetic syllabary, using far fewer wedge strokes than Assyrian used, together with a handful of logograms for frequently occurring words like "god" ( 𐏎 ), "king" ( 𐏋 ) or "country" ( 𐏌 ). This almost purely alphabetical form of the cuneiform script (36 phonetic characters and 8 logograms), was specially designed and used by

16184-669: The token shapes were the original basis for some of the Sumerian pictographs. Mesopotamia's "proto-literate" period spans roughly the 35th to 32nd centuries BC. The first unequivocal written documents start with the Uruk IV period, from circa 3,300 BC, followed by tablets found in Uruk III, Jemdet Nasr , Early Dynastic I Ur and Susa (in Proto-Elamite ) dating to the period until circa 2,900 BC. Originally, pictographs were either drawn on clay tablets in vertical columns with

16320-601: The two languages are related, their writing systems seem to have been developed separately. For Hurrian, there were even different systems in different polities (in Mitanni , in Mari , in the Hittite Empire). The Hurrian orthographies were generally characterised by more extensive use of syllabograms and more limited use of logograms than Akkadian. Urartian, in comparison, retained a more significant role for logograms. In

16456-429: The vast majority of its collections, and, as a result, most of the museum's objects have a known archaeological context, increasing their value for archaeological and anthropological research and presentation. Since its beginning, the Penn Museum's scientists have conducted more than 300 archaeological and anthropological expeditions around the world. Today the museum's three floors of gallery space feature materials from

16592-413: The vast majority of the Chinese collection was purchased or donated through dealers in North America. Nevertheless, it includes a significant number of high quality works of antiquity, such as the over 290 porcelain vases and sculptures collected by banking magistrate, J.P. Morgan . The Penn Museum acquired another important Asian collection from amateur collectors William and Isabel Ingram Mayer who made

16728-565: The word more precisely, two phonetic complements were added – Ú (𒌑) for the syllable [u] in front of the symbol and GA (𒂵) for the syllable [ga] behind. Finally, the symbol for 'bird', MUŠEN (𒄷) was added to ensure proper interpretation. As a result, the whole word could be spelt 𒌑𒉀𒂵𒄷, i.e. Ú.NAGA.GA (among the many variant spellings that the word could have). For unknown reasons, cuneiform pictographs, until then written vertically, were rotated 90° counterclockwise, in effect putting them on their side. This change first occurred slightly before

16864-407: The word of all the gods, they rejoiced; The fields, - the sheep and oxen were like an ox of the stall; the cedars spoke; they were like messengers; The field invited the oxen all of them; The field strengthened the sheep all of them; Their fig-trees on the bank of the boat filled; The weapon the lord, the prince ... lifted up; The luluppi-tree of the wife of the god, the pi-pi-plants of ... In hursag

17000-561: Was adapted to writing Hittite, a layer of Akkadian logographic spellings, also known as Akkadograms, was added to the script, in addition to the Sumerian logograms, or Sumerograms, which were already inherent in the Akkadian writing system and which Hittite also kept. Thus the pronunciations of many Hittite words which were conventionally written by logograms are now unknown. The Hurrian language (attested 2300–1000 BC) and Urartian language (attested 9th–6th century BC) were also written in adapted versions of Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform. Although

17136-482: Was designed by a team of Philadelphia architects, all of whom taught on the faculty of the university: Wilson Eyre , Cope & Stewardson and Frank Miles Day . The first phase was completed in 1899 and housed the discoveries from an expedition sponsored by the university to the ancient site of Nippur . The rotunda, which houses the Harrison Auditorium, was completed in 1915. Charles Klauder designed

17272-406: Was further developed and modified in the writing of the Akkadian language to express its sounds. Often, words that had a similar meaning but very different sounds were written with the same symbol. For instance the Sumerian words 'tooth' [zu], 'mouth' [ka] and 'voice' [gu] were all written with the original pictogram for mouth (𒅗). Words that sounded alike would have different signs; for instance,

17408-452: Was in use for more than three millennia, through several stages of development, from the 31st century BC down to the second century AD. The latest firmly dateable tablet, from Uruk, dates to 79/80 AD. Ultimately, it was completely replaced by alphabetic writing , in the general sense, in the course of the Roman era , and there are no cuneiform systems in current use. It had to be deciphered as

17544-483: Was invented, during the Neolithic , when clay tokens were used to record specific amounts of livestock or commodities. In recent years a contrarian view has arisen on the tokens being the precursor of writing. These tokens were initially impressed on the surface of round clay envelopes ( clay bullae ) and then stored in them. The tokens were then progressively replaced by flat tablets, on which signs were recorded with

17680-455: Was its decision-maker; with its words she wove it intricately like a net. Written on tablets it was held in her hands: House, platform of the Land, important fierce bull ! The myth goes on to describe the temple dedication rites and explains that the Annanuki were the lords of the temple. He suggests that the hymn mentions "objects placed in the temple upon its completion." His translation of

17816-532: Was made in 2002, with the addition of the Mainwaring (Collections Storage) Wing. The Museum Library was established in 1900 when the personal library of University of Pennsylvania professor of American archaeology and linguistics Daniel Garrison Brinton was acquired. This library contained an estimated 4,098 volumes of which the ethnology and linguistics of the American Indigenous peoples were

17952-451: Was not needed. Most surviving cuneiform tablets were of the latter kind, accidentally preserved when fires destroyed the tablets' storage place and effectively baked them, unintentionally ensuring their longevity. The script was widely used on commemorative stelae and carved reliefs to record the achievements of the ruler in whose honor the monument had been erected. The spoken language included many homophones and near-homophones, and in

18088-656: Was originally developed to write the Sumerian language of southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq ). Over the course of its history, cuneiform was adapted to write a number of languages in addition to Sumerian. Akkadian texts are attested from the 24th century BC onward and make up the bulk of the cuneiform record. Akkadian cuneiform was itself adapted to write the Hittite language in the early second millennium BC . The other languages with significant cuneiform corpora are Eblaite , Elamite , Hurrian , Luwian , and Urartian . The Old Persian and Ugaritic alphabets feature cuneiform-style signs; however, they are unrelated to

18224-406: Was retained, but was now pronounced immerum , rather than the Sumerian udu . Such retained individual signs or, sometimes, entire sign combinations with logographic value are known as Sumerograms , a type of heterogram . The East Semitic languages employed equivalents for many signs that were distorted or abbreviated to represent new values because the syllabic nature of the script as refined by

18360-636: Was translated by Stephen Herbert Langdon in 1915. Langdon published a translation from a 4 by 4 by 4 by 4 inches (10 by 10 by 10 by 10 cm) perforated, four sided, Sumerian prism from Nippur and held in the Ashmolean in Oxford in 1913 (number 1911-405) in "Babylonian Liturgies." The prism contains around 145 lines in eight sections, similar to the Hymn to Enlil . Langdon called it "A Liturgy to Nintud, Goddess of Creation" and noted that each section ended with

18496-470: Was well documented by Dr. Williams who also collected on behalf of the Smithsonian. On November 16, 2019, the Penn Museum debuted a newly renovated African gallery alongside many other new galleries and rooms. Penn professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Dr. Tufuku Zuberi, was appointed as the head curator for the new Africa exhibit, and approached his former student Breanna Moore about designing

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