Babylonian Culture Research Articles

Constructing Identities: Greek names as a marker of Hellenizing identity

Even as Babylonia came under foreign rule, cuneiform documentation continued to record traditional activities. In the transition to the Hellenistic period, it is assumed that Greek practices became more prevalent, although documentary evidence for them remains limited. Cuneiform legal texts documented a narrower range of transactions. In Uruk, these were primarily real estate transactions and prebend sales, which continued to be framed in traditional Babylonian formulaic language. However, in those texts, some actors display personal attributes and/or form networks suggesting they are promoting Hellenizing identities. The attributes include the adoption of Greek names, the use of polyonymous Akkadian-Greek names, and of Hellenistic motifs in the iconography of their seals. These practices appear in the records of three groups of individuals, including members of the elite Ah’ūtu family; the Dumqi-Anu/Arad-Rēš family, which held a share in the atû (porter) prebend; and of the ēpiš dulli ša ṭīdi (clay workers) class. The evidence suggests active construction of a Hellenizing identity is most apparent among members of the ēpiš dulli ša ṭīdi, who belonged to the lowest stratum of the groups considered, while the social networks of members of the Dumqi-Anu/Arad-Rēš family often attest to individuals who bridge communities grounded in Babylonian culture and to those who adopt features of Hellenizing identities.

From ki-en-gi to Šumerum: how Sumer was Created?

This paper deals with the gradual formation of the Sumerian tradition, about which most information came from Old Babylonian sources (first quarter of the second millennium BC). In these sources, the territory, people, language and tradition are named šumerum, and according to bilingual texts (Babylonian-Sumerian), the Sumerian compound that corresponds to that name is ki-en-gi. I analyzed the texts in which the Sumerian name appears, from the Early Dynastic I-II period (around 2700 BC) until the end of third third millennium BC. My intention was to see how the meaning of ki-en-gi transformed over the course of 700 years until it was eventually equated with šumerum. Along with the change in the meaning and orthography of that Sumerian name, I also investigate the socio-political changes in Southern Mesopotamian society that influenced the creation of a special Sumerian tradition. Within the Babylonian culture, Sumerian became a unique culture that is understood as the origin of urban life in the Mesopotamian kingdoms, and Sumerian acquired the status of the language of culture and education.

İslâm Felsefesi Tarihi ve İlim Tasnifleri

When Islam had offered a new perspective both politically and intellectually to the humanity at the beginning of the 7th century, Muslims have conquered important, antique, cultural centers like Damascus (15 / 636), Aleppo (h.16) and Antioch (h.17) in a short period of time. While Islam was quickly spreading in a wide geographic area, the works which contains the knowledge of ancient cultures and civilizations were translated into Arabic language. Muslim Scientists developed the ancient theoretical and practical knowledge and demonstrated an original and creative scientific model. Important works of ancient cultures were being translated at the House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikmah). The place provided a material opportunity for philosophical and scientific translations from the Greek civilization in that era. Islamic scholars, especially, studied the balance between theory and practice. They prioritized scientific studies based on observation and experiment. Thus the scientific knowledge which was being translated, assimilated had expanded, and a new scientific terminology created. In this context, starting with natural sciences, studies in areas like philosophy, philology and literature were carried out a worldly understanding, not theological. Muslims did not take regard the masters’ race or religion who were carrying the culture, and established teacher-student contact. They paid attention to fair criticism, academic and ethical rules. Thus they established a new concept of knowledge and science. This understanding of science was carried to the West in different ways and played an important role in the formation of the Renaissance. Each kind of knowledge, science and civilization has its own system/episteme and an internal coherence, among which there is an “incomparable” situation. If each one is examined with its own criteria, it is seen that Egypt, Babylon, Indian, Chinese, Roman, Ancient Greek and Islamic civilizations are different cultural units of the world. As a matter of fact, there are 21 different dynamic cultures in the world, and there are unique and systematic responses of creative, original views of political, religious, military and geographical areas. Examining this under ibn Khaldun's vision of cyclic and organismal history gives quite consistent results. The purpose of the text; In 610, Islam claimed a new concept of knowledge, science and civilization while it was taking its place in history. The course focuses on the confrontation of Hind, Sassanid/Persian, Chinese, Sabii cultures and the Hellenistic philosophy of ancient cultures and civilizations that synthesized ancient Greek, Byzantine, Egyptian and Babylonian cultures. How these scholars grew up and translated these works in a short time and developed them with new discoveries. In order to understand this, it will be emphasized that a qualified knowledge and philosophy of history and history of sciences should be examined. If we re-read the philosophical accumulation of humanity (perennial philosophy) formed since Adam, in the context of Muhammad's teachings; our suggestion is: We must overcome categorical distinctions about the Philosophy-Kalam and Sufism. These disciplines should be read in parallel. This can be done within the Department of Islamic Philosophy because Islamic philosophy examines the accumulation of humanity by overcoming the dilemmas of East-West and religion-philosophy or reason/revelation.

Panbabylonismus. Der „furor orientalis“, die Metrologie und die Suche nach der Harmonie der Welt

Panbabylonism was a trend of assyriology at the beginning of the 20th century, postulating that the ancient Babylonian culture was the common origin of human culture. Since it was older than the cultures of Greeks, Hebrews, and Egyptians, Babylonian culture was attributed global influence. The paper focuses on the reconstruction of the Babylonian metric system according to the principles of Panbabylonism: Historians such as Carl-Friedrich Lehmann assumed that all historical systems were based on it. In contrast to the “système métrique”, however, it was not treated as a purely conventional system, but was regarded as naturally founded. In addition, the significance of the sexagesimal is examined and Panbabylonism is presented as a school that tried to find a common natural basis of diverse cultural traditions in numbers, measures, and astronomical entities.

Selected Ancient Stone Bridges with Corbelled False-Arch Structure

The oldest man-made false-arch stone bridges are presented and briefly described. It is shown that this construction technique was based on the experiences of the first builders, formed at the junction of ancient Egyptian, Mycenaean as well as Assyrian and Babylonian cultures. Arches in such bridges have not yet been constructed in a classical manner, i.e. one that was later prevalent by the Romans, but these were only the primitive arch-like structures, with a false needle vault, that were shaped mainly by corbelling. This type of the structure, if it was used in bridges, turned out to be much more stable than the well-known at that time and commonly used in gateway passages oval “true-arch” built from sun-dried mud bricks.

Enoch’s Imaginary Ancestor

This paper examines a foundational tradition of Second Temple scholarship: that the figure of Enoch was inspired by the mythical Babylonian diviner-king Enmeduranki because both revealers were the seventh of ten figures before the flood. It finds that no preserved pre-Christian texts present Enmeduranki this way, and no evidence that anybody in the ancient world believed in this connection. Astonishingly, this theory – dating from 1903, it is literally the first Babylonian-Second Temple connection ever made – has survived repeated disconfirmation and been repeated uncritically for 115 years. Why did nobody critically reexamine the data for over a century? Scholarship on this topic has key features that modern scholars themselves associate with folklore: the handing down of a chain of unchallenged authoritative traditions to create a compelling narrative of the past. It is part of a larger way that the story of Judaism has been told as one of nativization. These studies in continuity provide internalist narratives that present what could be seen as sharp Jewish departures from prior Hebrew traditions as instead part of an inclusive patrimony, a reworking of a shared past. In this view, patterns shared with other cultures recede into matters of “influence” and “background” to Judaism, a creative reuse of an older and sometimes otiose culture to fertilize a new and changing one. In response, the paper concludes by looking to a better documented medium connecting Judean and Babylonian cultures, and a theoretical model that goes beyond borrowing and influence. Rather than an obscure borrowed “tradition,” the heavenly sage was a shared piece of Aramaicbased high culture common to Judean and Mesopotamian scholars. The figure exemplified a type of scribal thought in which the mastery of language meant mastery of a linguistically structured universe.

Rethinking Babylonian Rabbinic Acculturation in the Sasanian Empire

The study of the Babylonian rabbis in their Persian context(s) has largely adopted a binary paradigm whereby certain rabbis, usually associated with specific regions, are characterized as adopting a strategy of either accommodation or resistance to Persian language and culture. A central piece in the discussion of rabbinic attitudes to Persian culture has been the question of Babylonian rabbinic use – or lack thereof – of Persian language, often cited as a sign for the disconnect between, perhaps even the intentional distancing of, the Babylonian rabbis and Persian culture more generally. Taking the locus classicus of this scholarly discussion, a story in b. Qiddushin 70a–b, as its starting point, this article proposes that both the dichotomy between accommodating and resisting rabbis, and the larger claims about Babylonian rabbinic (lack of) knowledge of Persian language, do not aptly capture the dynamic between the Babylonian rabbis and their environment. Instead, the article reveals the strength of approaches that seek to situate competing rabbinic views as part of broader social dynamics and tensions among Babylonian Jews of different status generated by Sasanian values, norms, and hierarchies, which are paralleled among other similar situated groups living in the Sasanian Empire, such as Syriac Christians. In the process, the article illuminates the rich elite Sasanian cultural scripts lying behind the oft-studied story in b. Qiddushin 70a–b, and the value of certain Sasanian sources to better understand Babylonian rabbinic stories and dynamics.

Human niches, abandonment cycling, and climates

The stressors associated with the amount of water available to a society and its engineered landscape are shown to affect cultural longevity in a region. The long-term affects of aridity may actually accommodate occupation and reoccupation of a previously established human niche constructed and built by a significantly different cultural group following the abandonment of that setting by the earlier colonizers. Cultural turnover can be rapid and turbulent. On the other hand, wetter semitropical regions are suggested to be yet more vulnerable to cultural "cycling" and result in extended periods of fragmentation and abandonment if an occupying population does not maintain a previously altered or human niche constructed setting. Here, the longevity of a society is maintained through deep time and space, with the original colonists responsible for continuous and frequently a low-density residency. What is then identifiable as Maya or Khmer has a less interrupted culture history than that of a Near Eastern Assyrian or Babylonian culture history.

Religious Continuity and Change in Parthian Mesopotamia: A Note on the Survival of Babylonian Traditions

Abstract During the period of Arsacid domination, Mesopotamia was characterized by an extraordinarily varied religious landscape. Religion in Arsacid Mesopotamia has not received much attention so far and an all-encompassing study dealing with religious continuity and change in the region is still lacking. For most Assyriologists, religion in the Parthian period is quite different from the preceding periods. Graeco-Roman historians have not shown a great interest in the period either. In short, the study of religion in Parthian Mesopotamia is still split up in diverse cultural and linguistic traditions that are the result of the academic training of the researchers. A profound study of religion in Mesopotamia during this period has to break free from these traditional confines and study the various religious traditions in their social, cultural, and religious context, with a keen eye for religious interaction and diversity on a local level. In present-day research, the focus is on continuity of Babylonian culture and religion. In the first part of this article, I shall argue that the case for continuity has been overstated of late. In fact, change was equally important and this change set in as early as the Achaemenid period. In the second part I shall argue that Babylonian culture was never confined to temples and cuneiform and that the Babylonian deities always had led a life outside their traditional homes as well.

A Mythopoeic Glossary of the Latin Middle Ages, 350 to 1250 AD

To study the tradition of Hellenistic myth and legend in the West is to study the development of principally figurative language in the literatures of its peoples; an appreciation of which figurative language cannot be fully realized without understanding the writers themselves and the historical and literary context in which they are writing. Hellenistic, or even Christian, myth and legend do not exist anywhere beyond the stories in which they appear, each of which only resonate in their own particular literary and historical context. This may seem obvious to a literary scholar but not so obvious to someone seeking for universal truths or archetypes in ancient legend. The search for universality in ancient legend which has dominated the study of myth in the last 100 years has unfortunately obscured and in many cases completely disregarded their linguistic foundations and importance in the historical development of human languages.In antiquity , the vocabulary of myth and legend served as figurative language for a large variety of human activities as well as toward the comprehension of the natural world for a population with an extremely limited set of words and phrases to describe such events and activities. Indeed, the tremendous flowering of the written records of what is known as Greek myth and legend in the Archaic age, the works of Hesiod, Pindar, Homer, indicate that the Aegean peoples were beginning to explore the complexities of human existence and their place on the earth not through the signs and symbols handed down to them by Akkadian and Babylonian cultures but through the products of a unique literary language.The Middle Ages inherited a number of methods of interpretation regarding Hellenistic myth from Antiquity. The myths and legends of antiquity were seen as (i) allegories of terrestrial elements and forces of Nature: Fire/Vulcan, Air/Juno, Sky/Juppiter, Water/Neptune, Earth/Terra, Underworld/Pluto; (ii) Cosmology, the names of the stars; (iii) moral etymology; their names reveal their morality; (iv) moral metaphorical; their descriptions and acts reveal their morality; (v) Euhemeristic, historical.

The “Halakhic Kernel” as a Criterion for Dating Babylonian Aggadah: Bavli Ḥullin 110a–b and Parallels

Contemporary scholarship no longer seeks to identify what was once termed “the historical kernel” of stories in the Bavli. According to scholarly consensus these longer narratives in the Bavli were formulated more or less while the Bavli as a whole was being redacted and, as Jeffrey Rubenstein has argued, reflect later Babylonian rabbinic culture. Regarding the building blocks of these stories, literary analysis at times indicates that what the historian once believed to be primitive exaggeration is in fact the earliest element of the story. With this in mind, Shamma Friedman coined the term “literary kernel” to replace the former “historical kernel.” The advantage of the term “literary kernel” is that it can be defined in a fairly objective way as the common storyline that can be identified by comparing the Bavli narrative with the story as it appears in aggadic sources in the Yerushalmi or other Palestinian traditions.

The aftermath of the intermediate value theorem

The solvability of nonlinear equations has awakened great interest among mathematicians for a number of centuries, perhaps as early as the Babylonian culture (3000-300 B.C.E.). However, we intend to bring to our attention that some of the problems studied nowadays appear to be amazingly related to the time of Bolzano's era (1781-1848). Indeed, this Czech mathematician or perhaps philosopher has rigorously proven what is known today as the intermediate value theorem, a result that is intimately related to various classical theorems that will be discussed throughout this work.

New Light on Secret Knowledge in Late Babylonian Culture

New Light on Secret Knowledge in Late Babylonian Culture

Poggio and Visual Tradition: "Uomini Famosi" in Classical Literary Description

The subject of this study concerns the question of what visual examples Renaissance humanists, such as Poggio, had in mind in recommending and designing cycles of paragons of heroic virtue for contemporary patrons. Because the humanists were conscious that the notion of uomini famosi, which they regarded as an antique one, had virtually died out in medieval times, and because no antique artistic precedent is known to have survived, the search of Poggio and his contemporaries for antique example was limited to literary mention. Study of citations by Greek and Roman authors whose works were known at least in fragmentary form to Renaissance humanists reveals that Poggio and his contemporaries were correct in holding up the example of the ancients. Indeed it would appear that the practice is a far more ancient and extensive one than Poggio had imagined. The artistic tradition of rewarding merit through public art is one which appears to have been known in Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Roman cultures and to have been expressed in programs in sculpture, painting, tapestry and the minor arts.

The Great Berlin Beer Boycott of 1894

Consider the subject of beer. For millennia this homely brew has been a staple of the human diet and a central ingredient of our social activity. Records dating as far back as 2800 B.c. show that there were four types of beer brewed in the Babylonian culture, and that the ancient Egyptians were often sealed into their tombs with a ceremonial supply of the frothy beverage. But of all the cultures producing beer, the Germans are the most closely associated with it in modern times. It was the Germans who perfected the practice of adding wild hops to the brew to give it its characteristic tang, and also to help preserve it. Whereas elsewhere in northern Europe brewing was usually a cottage activity, the Germans began very early to treat brewing as an important commercial activity. In 1146, even before the founding of the great city of Munich, the abbey in Weihenstephan in Bavaria received a patent from the local duke to brew beer. In 1516 the Bavarian dukes instituted the brewing code which stipulated that thereafter beer must be brewed naturally with grain, hops, water, and yeast. This has since been the standard for purity in brewing throughout Germany.

セフイレ碑文における神々の機能

To define the correlation of ‘treaty’ with ‘covenant’, the functions of the gods in the Aramaic Inscriptions from Sefire (Sf) are investigated from the religious-historical point of view. It is stated in stele IA lines 7-14 that this treaty was concluded in the Presence of the gods of the contracting parties and the names of the gods as witnesses are listed. In the first half of these lines (11. 7-10) the gods of KTK, an unknown city or territory, are enumerated in pairs, showing clearly the influence of the Babylonian pantheon. The construction of these lines suggests that the Babylonian culture exerted a remarkable influence on KTK. The latter part of the same enumeration lists the gods in Arpad as witnesses (11. 10-12). There both western semitic gods, such as Hadad, 'El and 'Elyon, and natural phenomena were worshipped. Unlike the former enumeration, there is no pair consisting of a god and his consort. To enumerate gods as witnesses in such a way was very prevalent in the Ancient Near Eastern traditions. In Sf natural phenomena were adored as well as gods, but in the OT phenomena listed were limited to only heaven and earth (e. g. Dt. 31:28 etc.). In addition, God appears as the witness to the treaty between Laban and Jacob (Gen. 31:50). These examples show that the function of the gods in Sf is similar to that of God in the OT. There was a traditional thought in Ancient Orient that the transgressors of the treaties were cursed and doomed to extinction by the treaty-gods. A similar type of curses appears in stele IA lines 14-35, in which Hadad plays quite an important role and most curses are closely related with his character as the storm-god. Furthermore, it was essential that the gods themselves conclude the treaty, which means, they were not only witnesses but also parties to the treaty. The following verbal usages are discussed in detail here: sym and nsr. Frequent appearances of the expression 'lhy ‘dy’ or ‘treaty-gods’ emphasize the inseparable connection of Sf with the OT and Ugaritic Literature. My final conclusion is: although there may be no direct borrowings on the part of the OT from Sf, the covenant thought in the OT and the treaty thought in Sf are closely related each other.

Cultural Interchange Over a Water-Clock

It once seemed almost self-evident that the extraordinary progress of Greek astronomy and mathematics in the Hellenistic age were, at least in part, the result of contact with Babylonian and Egyptian culture. But, whatever they may have owed to Babylonia in the exact sciences, there is now a growing consensus that even as early as Eudoxus the Greeks had advanced beyond the point where they might have profited from Egyptian help, and it is not easy to find a solid basis for the widespread Greek belief in the superior wisdom of the Egyptian hierarchy. Yet the preface to the famous Calendar for the Saite nome, P. Hibeh 27, provides circumstantial evidence that one Greek, at least, in the fourth or early third century B.C., found in Egypt an instrument for measuring the time at night which was new to him and which he may well have found impressive in its accuracy.

The automatic rain-gauge of Sir Christopher Wren, F. R. S

SAMUEL JOHNSON once said ‘when two Englishmen meet their first talk is of the weather. They are in haste to tell each other what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm’. More than two hundred years have elapsed, but, not surprisingly, the preoccupation of the English with the weather has still persisted. The interest in meteorological phenomena, however, could be traced to the old Babylonian culture (3000-1000 B.C.) when the priests were interested in Astro-Meteorology which became an integral part of the Assyric-Babylonian religion. The astrological cuneiform library of Assurbanipal (at present in the British Museum) indicates that the Chaldeans (race name of the Babylonians) made observations of clouds, winds, storms and thunder.

The Role of the Desert in Israelite Thought

HE religion of Israel resulted from the interaction of many phenomena: the personal religious experiences of individuals (Gen. 12:1-3; Ex. 3), the contemporary national situation and the environmental influences of surrounding cultures. The influence of Canaanite and Babylonian culture has been quite clearly demonstrated' and significant efforts have been made to link certain Hebrew religious concepts with Egypt.2 Another environmental factor, the desert, is worthy of consideration. It was probably from the desert that the early ancestors of the Israelites came (Dt. 32:10). It was in the desert of Sinai that Israel had its initial experience with Yahweh and it was to the desert that later prophets looked for a normative criterion for the pure religion of Yahweh (Hos. 2:14). Studies of the desert have not had at their