Introductions [Sticky]

[enkidu7]

Hi Everyone I'm new here. Came across this website, doing some research, and been lurking around for awhile. I'm so glad to finally found a community centered around mesopatamian culture and their wonderful fascinating lore. Glad to be here!

[us4-he2-gal2]

Hello Enkidu:



Welcome to enenuru. Glad you have been getting some use from the community so far. If you email me with some idea of your background, interests and current access to material on the study of Mesopotamia, I may be able to provide you with further material for study. [e-mail]



Best Regards.

[enkidu7]

Jul 12, 2014 14:45:15 GMT -5 us4-he2-gal2 said:

Hello Enkidu:



Welcome to enenuru. Glad you have been getting some use from the community so far. If you email me with some idea of your background, interests and current access to material on the study of Mesopotamia, I may be able to provide you with further material for study. [e-mail]



Best Regards.

Thank you for the the warm welcome US4. I'd be very interested in more reading material, I'd like to learn anything I can. Just tossed you an email!

Hello jotapetrucci,



welcome on board! I hope we can help you. Cuneiform tattoos are the best

Hopefully, not too many people will discover this...



Sheshki

I just Discovered them and I Love Them! Truly A rare find! Excellent work on the tat's guys.

[phoitetes]

Hi all. Another newbie here. I am an academic with a focus on religious studies and Greek philosophy. I stumbled on this forum a few days ago and have greatly enjoyed the enthusiasm of its members, which has inspired me to pick up Snell and start learning some signs. I'm up to sign 13 and average about three to four new signs a day. I know very little about Assyriology in general. My chief interest right now is unlocking the complex language system to gain further insight into what kind of thoughts the earliest writers were capable of as well as what kind of contacts--linguistic and cultural--the Mesopotamians may have had with surrounding civilizations.

Warm regards to all.

[us4-he2-gal2]

Hello Phoitetes:




Thanks for joining enenuru, nice to see a Classicist around. Snell is the same guide to cuneiform signs that I started with, the book is nice and focused on the cuneiform which is something you don't often get (usually, learning books for Assyriology are focused on the language and the cuneiform is just something you struggle with in the process). As you may have noticed, cuneiform is dramatically different in form from earliest period to late, Snell gives you the late forms. While many Assyriologists learn Old Babylonian period signs first, a number of professors teach this Neo-Assyrian period cuneiform first, so that's fine. This is also the form of the signs from a period approaching the Classical period, so may be most relevant for you.

To access the thinking of the ancients in a quick and easy way, I suggest the ETCSL project (Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature). The Sumerian literature is quite early, but their cultural and intellectual influence runs the entire span of Mesopotamian civilization. You may find the proverbs , the folk wisdom, available at the ETCSL interesting:

etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/edition2/etcslbycat.php

etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=c.6.1*#


Feel free to contact me directly for suggestions on accessing Assyriological materials online (pdfs/ we databases) - [e-mail] .

[nocodeyv]

Hello everybody, I'm noqodeyv, but you can call me noqo.

I'm neither an academic nor a student at a university, but I do have a deep interest in the historical and religious elements of Mesopotamia. I'm self-taught regarding Mesopotamia, having only a handful of mythology and comparative religion classes from a local community college under my belt, but am always eager to learn more.

I'm definitely still just a layman or armchair student of Mesopotamian history and culture, but I have spent a great deal of time reading and theorizing with others about the gods and goddesses of Mesopotamia, the evolving pantheon as new waves of migrants settled, and how those core archetypes influenced the faiths of other cultures. I guess that would be what I am most interested in: the ways in which Mesopotamian religion evolved over time, and how it has impacted or influenced today's faiths.

When it comes to the more scholarly elements, I've only recently begun trying to learn how to read and deconstruct cuneiform, so any friendly advice on where to begin regarding that front would be welcomed! My main source of information and study has been the ETCSL and a handful of books by Samuel Noah Kramer, H.W.F Saggs, Anton Gill, and Izre'el Shlomo that I was able to find at a second-hand bookstore here in town. 

I think that about sums it up for introductions. I'm most likely going to lurk for a while, reading and seeing what new information I can uncover on the boards, but I'll do my best to offer input when I feel I have something that I can contribute.


~ Noqo

[us4-he2-gal2]

Hello Nocodeyv:





Welcome to enenuru! It is always good to see a new independent learner around, enenuru was formed partially with the intention of making the academic world more accessible to those interested in learning.


As for advice on where to learn cuneiform, I think it is best to study the writing system alongside the languages. Akkadian is usually learned before Sumerian. In that regard, there is an Akkadian study group forming on Yahoo, I will e-mail you the details.


In the meantime, feel welcome to post, ask questions, or e-mail me directly for assistance with materials etc.

[nocodeyv]

Thanks for the response, the welcome, and the email. I have been exploring a little bit around the forum, and have some questions forming in my mind. Once I have a more concise idea of what I want to ask about, I'll be sure to open a few threads and start learning.

I did have a few basic questions concerning some of the materials users have been quoting from:

Are any of the books in the public domain, and if so, is there a place you can recommend looking for free material? In town we only have a Barnes and Noble and a secondhand book store, so the pickings can be a bit slim, and I'm a little leery of buying books off of Amazon without knowing how accurate or current the contents may be these days. Any recommendations?

I suppose since I am among many learned individuals I am also curious if any of the books I currently have are considered outdated or in error by today's standards. I would appreciate any insight on that front. Here's a list of the small collection I already have:

"History Begins At Sumer: 39 Firsts In Man's Recorded History" by Samuel Noah Kramer
"The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character" by Samuel Noah Kramer
"Myths of Enki, the Crafty God" by Samuel Noah Kramer w/ John Maier
"Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth" by Samuel Noah Kramer w/ Diane Wolkstein
"Adapa And The South Wind" by Izre'el Shlomo
"The Babylonians" by H.W.F. Saggs - currently reading this one
"The Rise and Fall of Babylon" by Anton Gill
"Oxford World Classics: Myths From Mesopotamia" by Stephanie Dalley
"Dictionary of the Ancient Near East" by Piotr Bienkowski and Alan Millard - just picked this one up a week ago, haven't looked into it yet

Thanks for any advice, and for welcoming me to the forum.


~ Noqo

[us4-he2-gal2]

Nocodeyv: The books you have are for the most part nice choices.

- S.N. Kramer is a much beloved figure, particularly among N.American scholars. Reading his books helped me form my first enthusiasms with ANE studies, he has a way of sharing his own enthusiasm with his readers. For that reason, his books are great to start with. He is still considered to have been a great talent in the field, although some Sumerologists now have the task of trying to improve on his translations etc. a process that does sometimes lead to refinements.

- However, I would steer clear of the Kramer/ Wolkenstein collaboration. Kramer actually came to regret this particular project. See This thread

-Sclomo is an authority on those subjects he writes about i.e. Adapa and the South Wind, although these are very specialized treatments and also very technical (if I remember correctly).

- Dalley's translations are often used in university courses that concern themselves with Mythology older than the Greek's, at the very least, they make the recommended reading list in ANE courses. While they are professional grade translations, there are other more detailed versions ofthese myths, usually published individually, where are generally held to be more authoritative. But this is a generally reliable source.

- In my early reading I also read some H.W.F. Saggs. While his work is now somewhat dated I still appreciate his great grasp of life in the ANE, he always seems to be able to articulate something interesting about the ancient mind or worldview. So read with a little caution, but Saggs work was insightful in my opinion.

- I'm not sure about the other works.


Feel free to e-mail me at [e-mail] for suggestions on reading materials and some means to acquire them.

[nocodeyv]

Thanks for the reply, Ushegal. I read through the Wolkstein thread you linked to, and think I will be turning that one in for some cash next time I go visit the bookstore. Glad to see my other purchases served me well though.

I also enjoyed the first Kramer book I read (History Begins At Sumer) and have done my best to pick up his work whenever I found it. I am enjoying Saggs, he does get a tad bit too Biblical for my liking at times, although I don't hold that against the information in his book, which I find very informative.

~ Noqo

[alalu]

Hi everyone!

Kepa gá.e.me.en

I'm soooo glad to finally find some people with whoom I share interests.... I mean, I've been studying sumerian on my own, without any guidance at all. I'm already able to read a few lines but it's been quite a challenge so far. There's no litterature on the subject in Spain at all (well, in fact I'm from the Basque Country and you probaby know we have a specific language called euskera which is very similar in its structure and ergativity to the eme.gir and eme.sal).... so I've been looking for manuals like the one from Marie Louise Thomsen, or the one from John Hayes, and somehow managed to compile all signs and variations, but I must confess I'm a bit lost in the way.

I'm so excited I've found this board that I don't even know if that's the right forum to introduce myself.... anyway, hi to everyone once again!

[sheshki]

Hey Alalu,

welcome on board. Hope we can help you with your studies. And yes, this is the right place for introductions

Greetings

Sheshki

[us4-he2-gal2]

Alalu:



Welcome to enenuru! I am very glad to see another person studying Sumerian here. Although I have long wanted to study Sumerian, as you may see by this message board, it is only in the last year that it has been the right time to do so. So I am also a learner. I wasn't really aware of Euskera, it seems to have quite ancient roots for sure! And like Sumerian is is an agglutinative language. Interesting. If you would like some advise and also additional materials for the study of Sumerian, please contact me at [e-mail] .

[Udoch]

Hello, I've been looking for a way to learn the culture and languages of Mesopotamia. I enjoy reading ancient accounts because I view textbooks and the status quo as overrated and misleading. I was raised catholic and found the constant re translations corrupt and since then I've always sought out the source or original text even if it's written in Classic Maya, Nahuatl, Classical Greek. I'm here to learn and understand the ancients while others give Graeco-Roman Culture too much credit. I look forward to becoming part of this community.

[winter]

Hi, I'm Mike, 75, with a background that is much too peculiar for any of you nice people to have to hear about, so I'll just keep that to myself.  I'll say only that I'm not a government employee and have never been, and I'm not an academic and have never been.  I entered this site in a search for what might be going on in Assyrian studies, so here I am.  It's beautiful, to be sure.  A lovely site.  Lots of good people, no mean spirits, a soft couch,  good light, and beautiful paintings on the walls.  What more could I ask for?
  Now, to the point.  Elsewhere in this site I came across advice that anyone wanting to learn Sumerian or any one of the cuneiform languages would do best to stick to learning from recent material, certainly  not from something one hundred years old.  This prompted me to check a book that I have and that is now right in front of me--The Hippocrene book, Beginner's Assyria, by D.G. Lyon.  No. I don't yet read Assyrian, but I see that the book, first published as an Assyrian Manual over a century ago, has some nice features.   In the transliterations words that Lyon did not know the precise meaning of are in bold type.  Determinatives are in small letters.  Phonograms are spaced.  Ideograms are written as compact single words.  And at the beginning the book lists over 600 signs in cuneiform--determinatives, phonograms, and ideograms.  These are small, maybe too small for thrift-store glasses, but at least the list is numbered.  And the book has a glossary in English and Hebrew.  As I read Classical Arabic (that is, I decipher it as is usually done by anyone claiming to read it), or at any rate have a detailed knowledge of its grammar, the Assyrian grammar here doesn't look like it would give me much trouble.  Still, I'm unsure as to the quality of this book as something for a beginner.  Can an 1890s determination of the meaning of signs be relied upon?   Can anyone here give me some advice on this?   Bear in mind that I'm a long way from a library, way out in the country, a long way from a University, and for months on end I have no conversations with anyone but my cats (who have, though, large vocabularies).  Aside from a pretty good language library I get everything from the internet.
  I did just recently buy another book from Amazon, a book I know I can learn from.    Complete Babylonian, by Martha Worthington.  In fact, the book is splendid, and very well written.  Its inventory of cuneiform signs is, however, rather limited.  I consulted the internet to see about the Snell book, which is often mentioned on this website, but that book is way too expensive for me.   Any advice, here?
  Another book I bought that I have yet to see mentioned here is Introduction to Sumerian Grammar, revised in 2014, by Daniel A Foxvog, who was a lecturer in Assyriology at Berkeley.  I think I can learn from this.  I know I can, although I know, as all of you must, that Sumerian isn't a Semitic language-- if I just follow the beautiful, so hopeful, and guiding Ambition that drives this website.  (And don't go to bed too early). I reccommend this book to beginners like me.
   
 
 

[us4-he2-gal2]

Winter:


Welcome to enenuru! We certainly appreciate the arrival of any independent learners, as you likely have picked up, the group has always intended on bridging the academic and public domains. While a number of members here are students, a large number are independent and are eccentric enough to have decided to study Mesopotamia in one way or another. So you'll never need to worry about being a peculiar sort here.


To address some of your questions: wow! I have heard of a good number of old works, but I haven't yet come across Lyon's old book. The truth of the matter is that Assyriology was indeed a very young field of study back in those days, and we owe the decipherment of the languages to the genius of these pioneers. That said, yes, they made plentiful mistakes in those days assigned values to many cuneiform signs which are not maintained in the present decade. The general rule of thumb is 'don't use it unless if it was published before 1960' ..with certain exceptions. How does one get useful material then?


Assyriological books are very expensive to purchase largely because of the small number of times they are printed, the cost of printing must be made up by a small number of physical copies. Mainly, university libraries and professors are the ones buying these books. This is not the ideal situation, but it is the state of things. The people writing these books are not publishing them to make money really, and more and more scholars are scanning their published works and making them freely available to academia and to the public, to people who can't afford to buy the material. If you read from .pdf files (which some people prefer not to, but which has certain obvious advantages) I could easily supply you with enough learning material for a life time. Just e-mail me at [e-mail] .


Secondly, as for learning Sumerian, this is of course an excellent ambition as well. Traditionally in the field of Assyriology (which of course includes Sumerology as a sub-branch) students start with Akkadian. First of all, this was natural in the history of the field because Semitic languages were already known and in the earliest days many students came to Assyriology from the study of Biblical Hebrew or Arabic etc. In your case, that advantage is there as well. A further reason is that Akkadian (particular through the famous library of Ashurbanipal) was discovered first; for a long time scholars believed that Sumerian was simply some strange sort of 'cuneiform code' or unintelligible poetic writing of Akkadian scribes or some such. What really enabled scholars to start deciphering and understanding Sumerian to any degree (and distinguishing that it was a distinct language) was the lexical lists and bilingual school exercise tablets of the Akkadian speaking scribes who continued the Sumerian language tradition from the Old Babylonian period onward. Therefore, it was from the intellectual tradition of ancient Akkadian scribes that Sumerian was delivered to modern scholarship - another reason why Akkadian is typically studied first, as it has served as an important tool to understanding Sumerian. So I suggest to focus on Akkadian for the time being and this is quite a challenge of course. Sumerian can then be approached. But this is not absolutely necessary either.




All the best with your studies and feel free to ask for assistance on enenuru or by e-mail. Bill

[winter]

Winter here again,
  Back in the 60s of the last century the U. of Washington Book Store carried copies of cuneiform works by one Otto Neugebauer.  These were large format books--larger than 9 x 11 inches, as I recall, printed by Springer Verlag with the typical yellow cloth cover and paper that was almost like velum.  Very classy books there were, and even then they were expensive.  Also very intimidating.  It was my impression then that he was authoritative, but I haven't seen any mention of him, here.  I'm curious as to why that is.  The only work of his that I was nervy enough to buy, then, was a book I still have, a Harper Torchbook paperback, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity, first published in 1952.  Over half of its 240 pages are devoted to Babylonian math and astronomy, a subject that interests me.   How has our knowledge of Babylonian math expanded in the last fifty years?  The cuneiform in those Springer Verlag books was dense, large, and dark and crisp, and I looked at those books as works of beautiful calligraphy. 

As for the Arabic, yes, maybe that will turn out to be of some help.  At the very least it was an exercise of the will.  One of the books on the subject that I finally got around to using just a few years ago is the nice  little Teach Yourself Arabic of A.S. Tritton, which I bought at a bookstore behind the Palace of Fine Arts in the Alameda in Mexico City in 1959!  Somehow, in an excessively turbulent life I managed to keep that book and another that I bought there at the same time, a Teach Yourself Russian.  Why those languages, then, and not Spanish?   I don't know, but I do remember telling someone how pleased I was to be in a country where I couldn't understand the talk in a barber shop.   Of course, I needn't worry about Assyrian as I now cut my own hair.

Best to all of you.  I see impressive people here.

[us4-he2-gal2]

Winter: You certainly sound like someone with a healthy appreciation of books and literature, this is always good! As for Otto Neugebauer, I hadn't heard about him at all before now, but on asking another student, he is known still within the field yes. Perhaps one reason is that I have never looked into the mathematics of Mesopotamia, possibly due to my aversion to modern mathematics (or incompetence with modern mathematics).


However, I am aware of the work of Elaenor Robson who has done much to advance the study of Mesopotamian mathematics in more recent times. Many of her papers on these subjects can be downloaded for free at:

ucl.academia.edu/EleanorRobson/Articles



Again, should you want assistance with digital access to Mesopotamian scholarship, just let me know. I would love a nice hard copy of a thousand works, but don't have the money for it, either. As a result, I embrace digitized data which has vastly increased the data available to me.

[mesopotamiankaraite]

Hello, I'm a Karaite Ashkenazi Jew from the US with a huge interest in ANE studies, especially the languages, religions and history of Mesopotamia.

[us4-he2-gal2]

Hello mesopotamiankaraite:




Welcome to enenuru and thank you for using our introduction section, this is a convention often overlooked by new members. Well, since you have asked so many good questions on another thread, I will not move over there and see what I can answer

[sheshki]

Hello mesopotamiankaraite,
welcome on board. I hope you´ll find the informations you need. Ush will have some for you i´m sure.
I myself never went to a university so i can´t provide helpful tips
greetings
sheshki

[lilitudemon]

Hi there friend, and welcome.

[mesopotamiankaraite]

Thank you for the warm welcome everyone!

[seeker666utu]

My name is Matthew, I'm new to Mesopotamian retcon polytheism. Despite the 666 in my sn I'm NOT a Satanist. Since 666 is the magical box number for the sun & since I'm drawn to Utu, I chose to use it to split Seeker & Utu.I'm just beginning my research into Mesopotamian religion I'm looking forward to learning as much as I can from you all. I am also drawn to Inanna, Nergal/Erra and enki

[mesopotamiankaraite]

Welcome!

[sheshki]

Welcome on board!

Maybe you haven´t seen this thread yet. Some general information...

link

[us4-he2-gal2]

Hello Seeker666utu:




I hope you will find what you are looking for here at enenuru or a part of it. As you will probably note from the orientations area, the board is envisioned as bridging a gap between the academic and lay worlds, and the modern practice of religion is bit of an auxiliary topic. However, I hope persons with this interest will benefit from enenuru nonetheless by finding information which can be difficult to come across online or elsewhere. Additionally, there is a group of Mesopotamian recons over at TOD which is run by Ryversylt:
groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/TabletofDestiny/info

[seeker666utu]

Thank you both. I'll look to join the yahoo group. I've been going through various online sources & love this forum.The posts really make me think. I'm helping a friend in her research into Inanna as she has no access to such resources at this time.

[lilitudemon]

Hello and welcome!

[seeker666utu]

Thank you Lilitudemon