Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Kesh temple hymn, Liturgy to Nintud, or Liturgy to Nintud on the creation of man and woman, is a Sumerian tablet, written on clay tablets as early as 2600 BCE. [1] Along with the Instructions of Shuruppak , it is the oldest surviving literature in the world.
The Zame Hymns are the oldest known collection of Mesopotamian hymns, and have been dated to Early Dynastic IIIa period. [6] More precise dating is not possible. [5]Alongside compositions from Fara discovered in 1902 and 1903, the Zame Hymns have been described by Robert D. Biggs as "testimonies of the first great flowering of Sumerian literature". [7]
He also worked with Samuel Noah Kramer to publish three other tablets CBS 8473, 10226, 13869 in "Sumerian texts of varied contents" in 1934. The name given this time was "Hymn to the Ekur", suggesting the tablets were "parts of a composition which extols the ekur of Enlil at Nippur, it may, however be only an extract from a longer text". [5]
This was translated by George Aaron Barton in 1918 and first published as "Sumerian religious texts" in "Miscellaneous Babylonian Inscriptions", number three, entitled "Hymn to Dungi" (Dungi was later renamed to Shulgi). [1] The tablet is 7 inches (18 cm) by 5.4 inches (14 cm) by 1.6 inches (4.1 cm) at its thickest point. [2]
[citation needed] The Sumerian language remained in official and literary use in the Akkadian and Babylonian empires, even after the spoken language disappeared from the population; literacy was widespread, and the Sumerian texts that students copied heavily influenced later Babylonian literature. [2]
A Hymn to Enlil praises the leader of the Sumerian pantheon in the following terms: You founded it in the Dur-an-ki, in the middle of the four quarters of the earth. Its soil is the life of the Land, and the life of all the foreign countries. Its brickwork is red gold, its foundation is lapis lazuli. You made it glisten on high. [28]
— Sumerian hymn to Enlil, translated by Samuel Noah Kramer [13] Cuneiform inscription on a diorite mortar from Nippur stating that this was an offering from Gudea to Enlil ( c. 2144–2124 BC) Enlil was the patron god of the Sumerian city-state of Nippur [ 14 ] and his main center of worship was the Ekur temple located there. [ 15 ]
Ugarit, where the Hurrian songs were found. The complete song is one of about 36 such hymns in cuneiform writing, found on fragments of clay tablets excavated in the 1950s from the Royal Palace at Ugarit (present-day Ras Shamra, Syria), [5] in a stratum dating from the fourteenth century BC, [6] but is the only one surviving in substantially complete form.