Holiday Festivals [Query]

[ummia-inim-gina]

On the 1st, 15th and 30th of each of the months of the Nippur Calendar the Mesopotamians observed holidays and apparently took the day off and had a festival. Does anyone know what kind of activities were performed at these gatherings? These were considered holy days, were the ceremonies specific to any Deity or just sacred in general? Are there any examples of prayers or incantations that were specifically used on these occasions?

[amarsin]

This is a good question. I know that some people have looked into this, and I'll try to report back to you on what I find. I've been curious about the 1st AND 30th notion, since those are back-to-back days.

And of course we have records of activities-- canal-digging, etc.-- on such days, so it wasn't a "national" holiday or something. But then we night ask, who got such days off? Or did people work half-days? Hmmm. This is interesting. I'll do some looking. I have an idea, and if the data confirm it, I'll be back with more information...

[us4-he2-gal2]

Amarsin:


I'm not sure precisely at moment either what the explanation for the significance of these days goes as. You seem quite taken with the subject though so I'll leave it up to you - and also add that I think something of it should be in M. Cohen's "The Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East" if you'd want to referrence there sometime too.

[ela]

Hi everybody!

This is my first post, so nice to join you!

This Festivals are based in lunar phases so being the first week the moon growing, the 15 the full moon and 30 new moon!

I hope to help you. I recommend you for that Dina Katz articles and the PHD of Sallaberger.

I am right now searching about some festival deities, and I have also a question: someone know some book/ressource about the places/cities =ki, that appear in CDLI, I search something exhaustive, with the little towns, not only the capital cities... and if I can have a map with the situation of the places would be amazing!

Thank you!

[creyente]

interesting thread this one, i guess that the moon phase is probably part of the explanation, but i doubt its just that... there is probably some explanation in the myths? i was reading the wikipedia article of babylon calendar(i know, not the best source), and it says:
"Further, reconstruction of a broken tablet[citation needed] seems to define the rarely attested Sapattum or Sabattum as the full moon. This word is cognate or merged with Hebrew Shabbat, but is monthly rather than weekly; it is regarded as a form of Sumerian sa-bat ("mid-rest"), attested in Akkadian as um nuh libbi ("day of mid-repose"). According to Marcello Craveri, Sabbath "was almost certainly derived from the Babylonian Shabattu, the festival of the full moon, but, all trace of any such origin having been lost, the Hebrews ascribed it to Biblical legend."[7] This conclusion is a contextual restoration of the damaged Enûma Eliš creation account, which is read as: "[Sa]bbath shalt thou then encounter, mid[month]ly."[" they name few other days and what gods were part of the festival... but again, its wikipedia.

[us4-he2-gal2]

creyente:





Generally, I am often impressed by the entries concerning ancient Mesopotamia on Wikipedia - despite Wikipedia's low reputation in academic circles, it seems the sort of entries are often written by students of Mesopotamian culture or by people in the public with access to important books on the topic. however, there are some problems with this entry on the Standard Calendar see link. The first footnote is to something writteb by Pinches (Pinches, T.G. (2003)) - perhaps that encyclopedia was reprinted in 2003, but Pinches died probably about 80 years ago, therefore, his opinions are badly out of date and most likely plain wrong by modern understandings. The same can be said about the scholar Delitzsch also referenced in this entry.


I prefer to use a book by Mark Cohen, The Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East (1993), Cohen does confirm that, yes, the Jews did adopt the Standard Mesopotamian calender at the time of the Jewish exile, so when the intellectuals and the elites of Jerusalem were taken to Babylon in captivity were exposed to this calendar system. Cohen states (p. 386):

The Jews, the Nabateans, the Palmyrans, and other Aramaic-speaking peoples
adopted the Standard Mesopotamian calendar. 2 All biblical references
to the Standard Mesopotamian month names occur in books dealing with
the Persian period, the period of the Jews return from exile

Cohen further provides this chart which compares Judean and Babylonian month names, one can easily see that the Babylonian month names were borrowed very closely:

So it is legitimate to suppose that the Jews got some ideas of Calendar from the Babylonians - as for the exact proposals above, that Sabbath (šbt) comes from a Babylonian words šabattu, I am doubtful because this is now very dated scholarship, but I would need to look into it to further to be sure.

[creyente]

that book is one that im trying to find, but i didnt have any luck yet, here in my country, its easy to find books about almost any other topic i could think off, but ANE is a topic i cant get almost any book arround here, the only book i found was a book called "babilonia, un misterio religioso" wich translates as "babylon, a religious mystery" and is a poorly written propagandistic christian book with conspiracy theories about a pagan cult surviving in disguise to this days... i will probably look it up online, but i would love to have the book in my hands while i read it.

wich other books could be beneficial for me if im trying to better understand the day to day life of the people of early sumeria and the importance of the religion in daily life? like... praying before eating, or something like that?

and im quite interested in the relation between religious practice and working. like those dates that they would do specific jobs related to the "day festival".

i will keep trying to find the cultic calendars of ancient near east. since everything ive read about that book seems to be the kind of material im looking for.

[us4-he2-gal2]

Creyente: You could e-mail me directly for some assistance with books and materials. [e-mail]

[creyente]

thanks, ill do that.