Sumerian Grammar

Sumerian Grammar
Author: Dietz Otto Edzard
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2003-08-01
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 9047403401

It seems safe to say that this Sumerian Grammar by Professor D.O. Edzard will become the new classic reference in the field. It is an up-to-date, reliable guide to the language of the Sumerians, the inventors of cuneiform writing in the late 4th millennium B.C., and thus essential contributors to the high cultural standard of the whole of Mesopotamia and beyond. Following traditional lines, the Grammar describes general characteristics, origins, linguistic environment, phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, and phraseology. Due attention is given to the symbiosis with Semitic Akkadian, with which Sumerian was to form a veritable linguistic area. With lucid explanations of all technical linguistic theory. Each transliteration carries its English translation.

An Introduction to the Grammar of Sumerian

An Introduction to the Grammar of Sumerian
Author: Gábor Zólyomi
Publisher:
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2017
Genre: Sumerian language
ISBN: 9789632848440

This textbook provides an introduction to the grammar of Sumerian, one of the oldest documented languages in the world. It not only synthesizes the results of recent scholarship but introduces original insights on many important questions. The book is designed to appeal to readers of all backgrounds, including those with no prior background in Sumerian or cuneiform writing.It is written for undergraduate students and structured for a semester-long course: the order of the topics is determined by didactic considerations, with the focus on syntactic analysis and evidence. It explains the functioning of Sumerian grammar in 16 lessons, illustrated with more than 500 fully glossed examples. Each lesson ends with a series of tasks; a solution key to selected exercises can be found at the end of the volume. Above all, this is the first Sumerian textbook that introduces and utilizes the online assyriological resources available on the internet. An Introduction to the Grammar of Sumerian has been written on the assumption that after decades of grammatical research it has become possible now to teach a general framework of Sumerian grammar that may function as the basis of further, more intensive and elaborate studies.

The Grammar of Perspective

The Grammar of Perspective
Author: Christopher Woods
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2008-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004148043

The so-called Sumerian conjugation prefixes are the most poorly understood and perplexing elements of Sumerian verbal morphology. Approaching the problem from a functional-typological perspective and basing the analysis upon semantics, Professor Woods argues that these elements, in their primary function, constitute a system of grammatical voice, in which the active voice is set against the middle voice. The latter is represented by heavy and light markers that differ with respect to focus and emphasis. As a system of grammatical voice, the conjugation prefixes provided Sumerian speakers with a linguistic means of altering the perspective from which events may be viewed, giving speakers a series of options for better approximating in language the infinitely graded spectrum of human conceptualization and experience.

The Pantheon of Uruk During the Neo-Babylonian Period

The Pantheon of Uruk During the Neo-Babylonian Period
Author: Paul-Alain Beaulieu
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2021-11-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004496807

This book is about the pantheon of the Babylonian city of Uruk, between the 9th and 5th centuries BC. It is a careful analysis of the archive of the Eanna temple in Uruk, the sanctuary of the goddess Ishtar, containing well over 8,000 cuneiform tablets in the Akkadian language. The tablets date in their majority to the Neo-Babylonian and early Achaemenid period. Paul-Alain Beaulieu sheds light on the hierarchy of the local pantheon, providing a wealth of data concerning the cult of each deity, such as identity and theology, ornaments and clothing of the divine image, offerings ceremonies, temples, and cultic personnel. An important contribution to our knowledge of the functioning of religion in Neo-Babylonian society.

Back to School in Babylonia

Back to School in Babylonia
Author: Susanne Paulus
Publisher: Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2023-09-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1614910995

This volume—the companion book to the special exhibition Back to School in Babylonia of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures of the University of Chicago—explores education in the Old Babylonian period through the lens of House F in Nippur, excavated jointly by the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania in the early 1950s and widely believed to have been a scribal school. The book's twenty essays offer a state-of-the-art synthesis of research on the history of House F and the educational curriculum documented on the many tablets discovered there, while the catalog's five chapters present the 126 objects included in the exhibition, the vast majority of them cuneiform tablets.

Problems of Canonicity and Identity Formation in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia

Problems of Canonicity and Identity Formation in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia
Author: Gojko Barjamovic
Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2016-04-24
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 8763543729

The term ‘canonicity’ implies the recognition that the domain of literature and of the library is also a cultural and political one, related to various forms of identity formation, maintenance, and change. Scribes and benefactors ‘create’ canon in as much as they teach, analyze, preserve, prom¬ulgate and change ‘canonical’ texts according to prevailing norms. From early on, texts from the written traditions of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt were accumulated, codified, and to some extent canonized, as various collections developed mainly in the environment of the temple and the palace. These written traditions represent sets of formal and informal cultures that all speak in their own ways of canonicity, normativity, and other forms of cultural expertise. Some forms of literature were used not only in scholarly contexts, but also in political ones, and they served purposes of identity formation. This volume addresses the interrelations between various forms of ‘canon’ and identity formation in different time periods, genres, regions, and contexts, as well as the application of contemporary conceptions of ‘canon’ to ancient texts.

A Grammar of Akkadian (Third Edition)

A Grammar of Akkadian (Third Edition)
Author: John Huehnergard
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 704
Release: 2018-06-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004369163

In the third edition of A Grammar of Akkadian, changes have been made in the section on the nom i n al morpheme -ån (§20.2) and the sections on the meaning of the D stem (§24.3) and the Gt stem (§33.1(b)); these revisions reflect recent scholarship in Akkadian grammar. Other changes include minor revisions in wording in the presentation of the grammar in a few other sections; a number of new notes to some of the readings; additions to the glosses of a small number of words in the lesson vocabularies (and the Glossary and English–Akkadian word list); and updates of the resources available for the study of Akkadian, and of the bibliography. A new appendix (F) has been added, giving Hebrew and other Semitic cognates of the Akkadian words in the lesson vocabularies. The pagination of the first and second editions has for the most part been retained, apart from the insertion of the new appendix and a few minor deviations elsewhere.

מקדש, מקרא ומנורה

מקדש, מקרא ומנורה
Author: Menahem Haran
Publisher: Eisenbrauns
Total Pages: 632
Release: 1996
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781575060033

Professor Menahem Haran is honored in this volume by a chorus of colleagues, disciples, and friends from Israel, Europe, North America, and the Far East. The diversity of Haran's expertise is reflected in the table of contents of this collection, organized around the topics: "Priests and Their Sphere," "The Torah," "The Prophets," "The Writings," and "Language and Writing.